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All The Stuff I Left Out

Before I get to the European portion of my trip, there are some things I left out of my other recaps for various reasons and I’ll include them here.

One aspect of military tours I really love is getting to do things I never would have had the opportunity to do otherwise. Probably the coolest experience for me this time around was shooting an M4 semi-automatic weapon. A can was set up about 30 yards away and I plugged away at it, hitting it on each of my first three shots. Here you can witness my prowess with the M4:

I was pretty proud of my shooting, especially considering the only other time I’ve ever shot a gun was at a gun club and after firing off about 10 rounds I had to ask where they went and learned that because of the kickback I’d been hitting the ceiling.

Another unique experience I had was driving a humvee. The soldiers wanted me to go full speed through the mud puddles but I knew with my luck I’d somehow flip the truck and have to explain that. So I left the crazy maneuvers to the experienced drivers but I still had some fun doing a little off-roading (actually, the roads are so ripped up in Afghanistan that even on-roading is the equivalent of off-roading).

Soldiers in war zones have some tight rules, including no sex, no booze. But of course that doesn’t stop them, they just keep it on the down low. Here’s a picture of me and Ira partaking of a bit of Stoli. I think it was the only time Ira smiled the whole trip.

A few times the topic of the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy came up and I was pleased to find that most of the guys I talked to said they didn’t care if someone in their unit was gay and a couple guys said they knew at least one who had admitted to being homosexual. But there was one soldier who spewed some “fags go to hell” comments. It took a lot of restraint on my part not to lash back but unfortunately the law of the land prevented me from trying to enlighten his ignorant ass. There was one civilian contractor who was obviously gay and he went out of his way to make anti-gay comments. I understand he can’t tell but going to lengths to lie just seemed silly to me.

At the end of the Afghanistan portion of the trip one of the soldiers asked me what I’d missed while I was gone. I told him I missed “Lost” and I really wasn’t joking. A few weeks away from family and friends is nothing for me but knowing there were new episodes of “Lost” that I couldn’t watch was pure torture. I also missed ice. I’m a big fan of ice and a lot of the bases didn’t have any. None. I wish there was some way to pack that.

All right, that’s pretty much it for Afghanistan. Paris (recap) is calling.

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