bktheirregular

In boot camp, everyone was required to be clean-shaven; stubble got you put on report. It happened often enough; there were a lot of youngsters in the regiment, but very few of them were too young to need to shave. Some of them had patchy stubble at best, the beginnings of a beard, but more often, it was a race to get to the latrine sinks and shave before morning inspection. A hundred and fifty conscripts per company, fourteen sinks per company barracks: ugly math.

I was in a very distinct minority: I didn't use blade and foam, but rather, an electric shaver. My bunk-mate kept on being surprised at this, saying that the shaver irritated the skin, and that I'd have problems, even after I told him I'd been using an electric shaver for twenty years. (I had a rather dense bunk-mate.) I'd also packed along a tiny pocket-sized battery-powered shaver, for use when I couldn't get to a plug to recharge my Norelco - power outlets were at even more of a premium in the barracks, and kept being hogged by people charging cell phones.

It worked out very well, so much so that one time a platoon-mate who hadn't had time to shave asked me if he could borrow my electric - and when he came out of the latrine clean-shaven, he proceeded to ask me if he could buy the thing off me. I was tempted, but also a bit selfish, I have to confess; having the little shaver in my uniform tunic pocket was a bit of a comfort to me. It made life easier.

So much so that when I got leave at one point, I got a second battery shaver for my field pack.

To backtrack a bit: the field gear that was issued to the conscripts was antique. I kept griping that the web gear was probably American army surplus from Vietnam; turns out it was even older than that - a little researched matched up my gear with the old M-1956 load-carrying equipment. And yeah, I think the 1956 stands for the year in which the design was put into service. Cumbersome, nearly impossible to adjust to fit, ammo pouches that never seemed to want to close, that sort of thing.

Part of the gear was a small satchel, to hold one's mess kit, spare socks and underwear, towels, and toiletries. The drill instructors gave us a list - quickly rattled off in Greek - of exactly what had to be in the satchel, and if you were lacking anything if the satchel was inspected, you went on report for probably four or five days.

Among the absolute requirements was a razor and shaving foam. For those that don't know, shaving foam is fairly bulky - and I don't know how to shave with a razor anyway. So instead, I packed that second battery shaver, smaller than a deck of playing cards. Served the same purpose, I figured.

Maybe I was lucky my satchel never got inspected. Even though I had everything else that was required, separated into plastic bags just as ordered.

The battery shaver came back with me, and now sits in a desk drawer at my office. I'm no longer at risk of going on report for being unshaven, but sometimes I have to rush out the door. The little shaver serves its purpose still.

Weapons, field gear, uniforms, boots all turned in. Collect discharge papers starting 0730 tomorrow. Permitted to leave the front gate for the last time at 0900.

1) Midnight barracks watch, 0000-0200.
2) Garrison assembly, 0730.
3) Barracks watch, 0800-1000.
3) Slicing potatoes, 1030-1130, thereby missing regimental commander's Christmas party.
4) Lunch, nearly missed, 1400.
5) Barracks watch, 1600-1800.
6) Catch up on sleep.
7) Dinner, 2000.
8) Brief time to read.
9) Get briefed on upcoming inspection of barracks from off base, due during midnight watch. (Guess who drew midnight watch second day in a row.)
10) Lights out, 2230.
11) Wake up, 2330.
12) Barracks watch, 0000-0200.

Bright side: it's less than 48 hours until I get my discharge papers and walk out a free man. And I finally got an off-base pass today, after three straight days on barracks watch.

Heading back to the army camp today. Sunday the 28th is my last day - I've officially paid out the rest of my six-month tour, and only need to deliver the official orders from the Athens conscription office to the base office.

Christmas in the barracks: yech.

New Year's in my own home: looking forward.

Me: "Ever see Aliens?"
Other disenchanted conscript: "Sure."
Me: "I was just thinking about the sergeant, and the speech he gave right at the beginning. 'A day in the Marine Corps is like a day on the farm. Every meal's a banquet, every paycheck a fortune, every formation a parade. I love the Corps!'" *beat* "He got eaten by the aliens in the first wave."
Him: "Hooray, bugs."

Yesterday I was on sentry duty for three shifts, including 2 to 4 in the morning. This afternoon and evening, I have an off-base pass. Found an internet cafe in Mesologi, so quick update.

***

The other day:
Me: "I know the duty is lousy, but if it's got to be done, might as well do the best job I can, right?"
Sergeant: "If all our trainees were like you, we'd have one hell of an army."
Me: "Sarge, if all the troops were like me, in two months you wouldn't *have* an army."

***

Health: apparently the mandatory chest x-ray the army gives you turned up the same hinky something-or-other that had me scared in the spring. Monday they told me that I needed a spiral-CT scan urgently. Wednesday they shipped me back to Athens to the army hospital - three and a half hours by bus each way, I might add, and every time they do that I've got to be in what they laughingly call "dress uniform" - standard BDU's with a flag patch on one shoulder and a unit patch on the other - at five o'clock in the stinking morning. Anyway, Wednesday they told me to come back Monday (i.e. tomorrow) for that "urgent" spiral-CT. And a visit from a thoracic surgeon. They basically do medicine by the numbers in the army here.

***

Paperwork: as of yesterday, I'm one month in, eligible to get my good-conduct paper, bring it to Athens, and finalize my buyout. Except that I have to get the paper at the base in Mesologi, and I'm getting sent to Athens at five in the morning (see health above). So instead of going to get my paper tomorrow and asking for leave to go back to Athens (three days: one to travel, one full day for paperwork as per Murphy's Law, one day to return), I'm going to be up at 4am to get on a bus at 5:45am (assembly is at 5:00, and you have to be shaved and boot-shined), don't know when I'll get back but probably too late to get to the office on base, then Tuesday or Wednesday try to find a five-minute sliver of time to grab the paper. And then ask for leave.

***

Health again: once I'm back, need to get my knee looked at. Also need to see if my blood chemistry has altered any from a month and a half of medicine-by-numbers that ignored one critical test for my progress with the thyroid. I'm the old man of the company, and feeling it more and more every day.

***

And once I'm back, I have to start learning how to interact with people. It's obviously something that I never got right, growing up.

Going to bring Monstrous Regiment back with me to base. Probably read over it a few more times during down time, if there is any.

Wonder which one of the privates I'm closest to. Probably Igor.

It's Friday, November 21. My discharge day is in 37 days, so call today D-Day minus 37.

I started scribbling in a little block notepad while I was at the base at Mesologi; various musings about life as a conscript. Not sure it's worthwhile to transcribe them here; most of the time they got interrupted anyway.

One thing about the army that I really don't like, that really tired me out over the first week: the sense that I've got to be constantly on alert, never knowing how long I can stand down and relax. You've got to jump when they say "frog", but there are punks in the platoon and probably throughout the battalion who keep shouting "platoon, atten-TION!" just for kicks. Which leaves me in the position of one of the old men who kept running when the boy cried "wolf", only I don't have the luxury of ignoring the cry.

Punishment for infractions isn't so much time in the stockade, as extra duty added to the time you have to serve - time during which your countdown to discharge is stopped. Example: bring a cell phone with a camera on base, and you get twenty days extra duty. For some kids, that may sound like a small risk across an entire year, but me, I'm a short-timer - forty-five days' service and out - so twenty days is a major bite out of my hide.

On a four-day pass now, given after swearing-in - there's another whole story about that. I think only three conscripts out of the entire battalion of over six hundred aren't Greek Orthodox, so we got sworn in separately. Church and state are badly tangled together here, to the point where they don't even seem to understand the difference between "agnostic" and "atheist". It's a cultural thing, I guess; indoctrination into the Orthodox church happens alongside their alphabet lessons and their two-plus-twos.

My bunk-mate collided with that wall when trying to get me to explain my beliefs. Starting from "obviously, someone created the world. So who was it?" I don't have the language to discuss stellar accretion, primordial soup, evolution, and all that. My answer at that point was "who knows? Maybe it was a committee."

"More than one God?"

"Could be a million of them out there, for all I know."

"But one of them would have to be in charge, right?"

I shudder to think what would have happened if I'd been on the books as a Wiccan. I did make some headway with explaining that there's something like a thousand different churches and other religions and what-have-you in the United States, so if the government had to start choosing to support one church over another, the arguments would never stop.

...where was I?

Eh. Anyway, one other thing that really bothers me is the pervasive attitude that one should only look out for oneself, and only do the minimum necessary to get by; the place looks like a garbage pit half the time, from all the cigarette butts and empty drink cans and water bottles thrown around. Every day, different squads and platoons get assigned to police different areas of the base, and I keep getting funny looks because I keep picking up trash and looking for a can to toss it into.

In a perverse way, I think it might be a streak of selfishness that compels me to keep doing this: I don't care if nobody else is doing their job; I want to do my job and get out of that chicken outfit free and clear.

One thing that scares me, though, is that I might have no choice but to start looking for ways to gold-brick everywhere, out of pure self-defense, and that I'll end up carrying some of those habits back to the real world. And in the process, I'll lose a part of myself that I didn't really realize I had, a bit of pride I have in myself that I didn't know I had until I took a good hard look on the parade grounds, surrounded by other boots loafing around.

The word I learned for it in Greek classes over the summer was "νοοτροπια" - "nootropia", or "way of thinking". And to the kids surrounding me, my way of thinking isn't just foreign, it's flat-out alien. Combination of being a foreigner, and being an old man, I suppose, but more than one person has told me that I need to change how I go about things.

OK, in some respects they've got a point. I've also discovered that I spend way too much time wound tighter than a watch spring, and that can't be good for me; but for me to just walk by the strewn-around garbage when I'm on clean-up detail ... it rubs me the wrong way, badly. And I don't think I'd like the person I'd be if that changed.

Maybe, in addition to the old man's perspective (how many of those kids have had to maintain a home, or even a simple apartment, on their own?), it's a short-timer's perspective. Some of the kids are looking at how to endure for a year, which seems like an eternity in their young lives; I've seen two years for every one of theirs, and I'm at D-Day minus 37.

On a minor bright note, at least the drill instructors understand that I've got trouble with the language. More than once, a non-com (or maybe an officer; I can't tell who's what rank yet) has told me not to worry.

*sigh* Time flies. A third of my leave is already gone. And I've spent way too long on this entry.

4:45 in the morning. Taxi to the bus to the army induction center is due in fifteen minutes.

Signing off.

So right as I'm getting ready to go back to New York for a week, for some reason, the military conscription office (they don't recruit people into the military here in Greece, except in the loosest sense of the word) called my aunt, even though I'd given them all my information back at the end of last month.

The message I'd gotten then: sometime this year I'd have to go to boot camp.

The message my aunt got today: I've got to go to boot camp right away.

And in the same phone call, the lady calling my aunt said "I'm on vacation in August, get back to me in September.

Right hand, meet left hand. The two of you get f@$&ing acquainted and call me back when you've got your goddamn stories straight.