FLOG

3 X 5 cards from the edge

My mom writes:

I received this 3x5 card from Mike today via Jacksonville, FL. ... Please forward it to anyone else who might want to hear from Mike.

"Hey ma, my buddy offered to piggy-back this card in his letter to his wife, since I have no staionary or stamps. I'm writing this at 00:14 9/26 under my red lense flashlite in my team tent. I have survived the 1st week here, and what a week it was. We were in the woods from Tuesday morning 'til Saturday afternoon, doing exhausting training. I got an average of 1.5-2 hrs of sleep a night, and it was a chore just to stay hydrated. I was soaked through with sweat the entire time, running hard and carrying my huge rucksack everywhere. My uniform smelled like someone had poured pure ammonia on it. My team's Captain, a Westpoint Grad, explained that ammonia is the by-product of your body cannibalizing itself. How lovely.

Oh yeah, hands, arms, knees and thighs are all torn up from crawling around in brush, on the sandy ground. Sounds pretty miserable, but I can't complain, it hasn't rained yet. I've learned more in the 1st week here than in my entire time in Baumholder [Germany]. It's been noisy, what with all the machine gun fire, and whatnot, but its all very therapeutic. I feel like I'm becoming a real soldier finally. My team is really cool. I totally lucked out--our instructor is cool as Hell, the best here. He's not about being an ass**le and yelling, he's all about teaching. Has some good stories from secret missions in un-named South American countries. The leaders on my team are awesome: there's the Westpointer, and a staff Sergeant (E6) from the Rangers and a staff Sergeant from the 82nd Airborne. They are both experienced veterans and cool dudes. So are the rest of us. We are clicking really well and are way ahead of our class.

Gotta go, email this to others for me. Love, Mike"

For those of you who don't know, Mike is my brother and is in the midst of Phase II of Army Special Forces training. He's also credited with the first use in human history of the word combination "oom-pah-pah oom-pah-pah KAH-BOOM."

It's weird, because he's only in North Carolina, yet he's also in some nether world far away from, for lack of a better term, the Square Community of North Carolina. You tell yourself, "at least he's not in Iraq right now." But he is in North Carolina, doing very dangerous things in very dangerous circumstances. The training's so real, what's the difference? It's like that one M. Night Shmyalamayyyalanyaman movie where Adrien Brody plays himself.

Even so, it sounds like he's having fun. Definitely in his element.

Posted by FLOG at October 4, 2005 7:53 PM