Tag Archives: Washington State
Military Accident = More than Fifteen Minutes of Fame
There’s an old saying that everyone gets their fifteen minutes of fame. In Washington, DC I imagine that happens if your car stalls out in rush hour and every news station reports on “stalled car blocking the middle lane.” But we had one soldier who got far more than fifteen minutes of it, all over …
Drinking water out in the field
Whenever we went out to the field for training, our squad leaders had to bring “potable water.” Potable water is what you can drink and fill your canteens with. The field on Fort Lewis was always way out in the middle of nowhere, so we always had to bring out water and food. There wasn’t …
Eating out in the Field
The military is really big about training. But then, the entire mission of the military is war, and the only thing soldiers can do is train until and if a war happens. The purpose is to know everything by rote so when the big scary stuff happens, the soldier doesn’t have to think about what …
Pizza debuting in the MRE in 2017
Pizza’s the mainstay of the military. When I was stationed at Fort Lewis, Domino’s set up shop just off post, in Tillicum. Tillicum was a run down strip of restaurants, a few cheapie car dealerships, and that kind of thing. Domino’s would send their drivers over on Friday or Saturday night with boxes of cheese …
Desert Storm: Arrival in Saudi Arabia
I guess I imagined the enemy shooting at us as our plane flew into Saudi Arabia. It’s like that in the movies, and when McLean Stevenson wanted to leave MASH, the character was killed just like that. Being a writer is not a good thing when you’re going to war. There’s too many things you …
Desert Storm: Logistics and the Build Up
Everything to do with supplies and carrying equipment and troops is called logistics in the military. If you don’t have the supplies, soldiers can have problems with basic things like not get enough food. That was one of the reasons the First Battle at Manassas during the Civil War was such a surprise to everyone. …
The Magic of Rain
We just had several days of rain and thunderstorms in Washington, DC. The humidity gets so high during the summer that the rain just bursts in a thunderstorm like it’s releasing all this pressure. It’s also the opposite of where I grew up, which was in Los Angeles. If you’ve never been there, Los Angeles …
Visiting a war memorial the first time after war
Sometimes, immediately following war, little things can have an unexpectedly profound effect. Pretty much everywhere now that I go, there’s a veteran’s memorial of some kind. Even when I take a drive trip down to Richmond, Virginia, I can find a small war memorial at a rest stop. But in 1991, that wasn’t the case. …
