A SOLDIER'S STORY
Keep On Laughing
By
Franke Gracia
When you’re writing about an overseas deployment with an infantry task force in a combat zone, your articles are going to be serious. This is very serious business I’m involved in. However, being serious 24/7 is just not possible if I’m to somehow preserve my sanity over here. I honestly think a hearty, healthy sense of humor is an absolute necessity – just as important as air, food, water and mail from home.
Amid all the terrible things I’ve seen in this place, amid all the horrendous stress that has pushed me to the very brink of insanity on many an occasion, I must take the time to laugh. I must.
And so, since my two wounded brothers-in-arms are progressing so well; since SFC Juan Urbina has been visited by none other than our commander-in-chief himself; since 1SG Ramiro Martinez informed us by phone that it’s going to take a lot more than a mere suicide bomber to take him out; since his company commander informed him that he was “cabeza dura” (hard-headed) and this made him laugh; I’d like to try and relate some of the more light-hearted moments of this deployment. My handicap is that since I’m serving with infantry grunts, much of my material is not suitable for a family newspaper.
To begin with, all you veterans out there will be pleased to know that young soldiers still loudly announce “Fire in the hole!” or “Fire mission!” before cutting loose with ballistic, nuclear flatulation. Older soldiers still give no such warning. And yes, after such events, there’s always some troop that announces a “chemical warfare attack” as if it’s the first time anybody’s ever been so clever.
Some things never change.
I guess what has changed is technology – and the pranks that go along with it. In the offices where I work, leaving your computer unattended for even the briefest amount of time without logging off will prompt a very vigilant sergeant to send an email originating from your address – a very embarrassing email. Signed by you. Use your imagination. I can’t be upset though, as I’ve sent a few myself. My favorite being the one that elicited a one-word email response from the victim – the word “payback.”
I just love being around guys with a sharp wit, and we’ve got a boatload. When we first arrived in country, some of our troops were wearing pistol holsters that, when worn, were concealed by our uniforms. At a meeting we were informed by our sergeant major that theater policy did not allow weapons to be concealed to which Major Plummer, our operations officer, remarked off the cuff, “OK, you heard the sergeant major men – expose yourselves.”
Then there was the hilarious lament one day of Lt Harvison: “Hey sir, I just got ambushed at the TOC (Tactical Operations Center). I was the only guy there that wasn’t Catholic, so I had to stay back and watch the weapons while everybody went to Mass . . . I think I’m gonna convert . . . I’m not sure, but I think my constitutional rights were just violated.”
Or when we were being briefed on the procedures involving the field ordering officer and pay agent – military acronyms FOO and PA. When I recited a purchasing procedure that was incorrect, Sergeant Armentrout immediately corrected me and informed me I had just committed a . . . are you ready for this? . . . a “FOO PA”. That’s clever.
Then there was the time it was explained to us that we needed to apply for badges to enter the restricted area of the JOC (Joint Operations Center), to which someone dramatically intoned, “Badges? Badges?” . . . and we all chimed in, “We don need no stinkin’ badges!” That was funny.
Then there was that intel dump prior to a mission in a far, remote part of Afghanistan. I kept hearing references to possible “Halle Berrys” here and possible “Halle Berrys” there. I was new and completely lost. After the brief, I immediately asked someone I knew, “Hey, what’s with the Halle Berry stuff? What are they talking about?” I was informed that Halle Berrys were IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices). Why? Well, because as anyone knows, she’s . . . (wait for it) “the bomb!” Good one.
Our soldiers live together, worry together, sweat together, hope together, pray together, BS together, eat together, cry together, go “outside the wire” together. To stay sane we must also laugh together.
We must.
Someday soon we’ll laugh together and not have to go “outside the wire” anymore. That’ll be a good day. A very good day.
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Franke Gracia lives in Temple, Texas and was deployed in Afghanistan with the National Guard from May 2005 to April 2006. He is a math professor at Temple College and is very close to his family that includes two brothers and two sisters. He earned a bronze star while he was deployed, which he gave to his mother. As to why he decided to write this series of articles he says, "I hope folks who read my scribbling will gain a greater appreciation of what a citizen-soldier goes through during a deployment."