5 military things about me

1.  I was in the Army Reserve, the Army, and the Army National Guard.

Those are three different services.  I started out with the Reserve because it helped me make the decision and decided to enlist in the regular Army after Basic Training.  The National Guard was a big mistake, and I was glad to be finished with it.

2. I was the least likely soldier to be in the military.

I have “Adams Feet,” or flat feet.  The whole family on my father’s side has them.  In my case, I have high arches and they drop.  It makes me a terrible runner, and I can’t march well either.  They debated about me, then decided to let me in.  The debate happened again during Basic Training, and then again at my first duty station.  No one ever told me I had flat feet!

3. I went to war.

It was Desert Storm, when the thought of women deploying was strange and new and different.  The photo above was taken when President Bush visited us for Thanksgiving.

4. I was enlisted.

With the way everyone talks about the military in movies and film, you would think that everyone is an officer.  They make up only a small percentage of the military.  Enlisted are the bulk of the service.  Because I had a degree from a community college, I came in as a Private First Class (still a private) and left the military as a Specialist.  I’m afraid I didn’t aspire much to come up in the ranks!

5. My Basic Training was at Fort Dix, NJ.

I went during the summer.  Hot, really humid.  Imagine a heavy cotton jacket soaked with sweat, and that was what it was like for us.  Most alarming though were the signs posted on the words warning us about ticks.  Yikes!

More military stuff to see:

• Seriously, are meals in the military as bad as MASH portrayed them?
• What’s it like on a military post?
• Getting shot at on Paragon Trail
• The League of Extraordinary Women Veterans

 

Photo of soldier girl from Desert Storm

I was cleaning up and ran across this photo of me taken in November, 1990.  We had gone to see President Bush speak, and there were thousands of soldiers.  The belt is the gas mask, more properly known as a “protective mask.”  I later wore it more like a purse because it kept pulling down my pants.

 

Nancy Drew’s Influence on my Action-Adventure Life

I have a guest post over at Sherry Issac’s blog on the influence of Nancy Drew on me when I was growing up.  Here’s a taste of it:

In Tamora Pierce’s book Squire, Kel is the first girl to become a knight in the realm.  When she jousts, the other girls — future knights — come to hungrily watch, wanting to be like her.  That was me when I was growing up.  I was magnetized when saw Lieutenant Uhura on Star Trek, in a command position.  Women had been allowed to enter West Point in 1976 and receive the same elite training that men did.

As reader,  I wanted to see girls have adventures and get action … Read more

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Linda Adams – Solider, Storyteller

My short story “Six Bullets” is now available from Starcatcher Publishing in the the anthology A Princess, A Boatman, and A Lizard.  The story is about a princess who enlists in the military and then must battle her way up a river with only six bullets.

 

Thanksgiving During War

We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures.  ~Thornton Wilder

I always think it’s strange to have a sit down Thanksgiving indoors.  When I was growing up in Southern California, our neighbor had a potluck outside — yes, outside!  We’d haul out the lawn chairs or sit on the asphalt as Candy, their black dog, wandered around, collar jingling.

But when I was in Desert Storm, Thanksgiving was another thing entirely.  We’d been over there maybe a month and were still at the exposition center in Dhahran.  We called the building “the white house,” because it was white, because it was air conditioned, and because the officers took it over.  We stayed in tents on the sand and ate meals in a gigantic tent.  Meals were catered, and repeated themselves about every three days.  Usually chicken, salad, and fingers of cake.  The food was pretty good, but tiresome because it was always the same.  No fresh fruit because of the heat — everything went bad too fast.

But because we were in Dhahran, we had the opportunity to see President Bush when he came to visit the troops.   Each platoon picked a person to go, and I got picked.  We had to stand in a long line that ran next to a runway.  Air Force One sat on the runway, sharply outlined against the blue sky.   It was hard to believe I would be so close to the President of the United States!  Granted, President Bush was too far away from me to see much more than an ant-sized version — there were a lot of soldiers out there!

Afterwards, we were treated to a huge Thanksgiving feast — really, all you could eat.  They’d done a lot of work getting all the food out to us and serving it to us.  A table in the center of the tent had Thanksgiving decorations, and scattered at the base were Mars Bars.  I hadn’t seen candy bars in a month, which doesn’t seem long now.  But then, time was longer because each day was the same.  It felt like ages.  So I was pocketing as many as I could manage for later.  Then, at last, the meal was over, and we all had to return to reality.

What are your favorite Thanksgiving memories?

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Linda Adams – Solider, Storyteller

Yay!  My short story “Six Bullets” is now available from Starcatcher Publishing in the the anthology A Princess, A Boatman, and A Lizard.

 

The GI Party — No, it’s not what you just thought

I bet you had an immediate image of a soldiers out there partying things up.  The term G.I. party comes from World War II.  Then it was an intensive cleanup of the barracks on Friday evening (!) for an inspection on Saturday morning.  Ours was done during the week, and we didn’t have a choice in participating.

What would happen is the first sergeant, who was the senior enlisted in the company, would do random inspections of the barracks.  If he was unhappy with a section, then the platoon sergeant would be notified, and next thing the soldiers knew, it was time for a G.I. Party.  With the female section, it was a little different because there were only about seven of us.  No platoon sergeant was in charge of our area because we were a mix of platoons.

But we heard about it at final formation when the first sergeant declared our area “Fubar,” which means (fowled) up beyond all recognition.  No one told us what was wrong, so launched into massive cleanup for several hours.  We didn’t do it with toothbrushes or anything weird like that — it was all floor stripper, wax, bleach, pine oil, green scrubbing pads, mops, and brooms.  We had to do both our rooms and the common areas, which were the hallways and the latrine.

The G.I. Party included bleaching the bathroom floor because that kept the grout from discoloring.  I also liked bleach because you knew when you walked in the door that it had been cleaned, and with luck, maybe an inspection for the area was bypassed.  Sinks, toilets, and showers were cleaned.

For the hallway, we stripped the wax off the floor, cleaned it, and then waxed it again.  After that, we buffed the floor with our buffer (which we sometimes had to hide, since the males stole it on occasion).  The buffer isn’t like the ones you see in the office — those are easy to handle.  With the ones the army had, it was like a bucking bronco.  Very hard to control.  Sometimes it seemed like it had a mind of its own and would smash from wall to wall.

The floors in the rooms were also stripped, cleaned, waxed, and buffed.  We wiped off the top of the wall lockers, window sills, and anything else we could find.  The barracks gleamed.  There’s really nothing like a freshly polished floor.

Next day: Fubar again.  Another G.I. Party.  What else can we clean?  It seemed to be something in the common area, but what?  We renew our efforts and make everything shinier and cleaner.

Next day: Fubar again.  Another G.I. Party.  Now we’re begging our sergeants to tell us what he’s finding so we can get it taken care of and no one will tell us.  No one wants to be responsible for the female area..

Next day: Fubar again, and now the first sergeant is threatening to put all our belongings out in the parking lot.  I’m envisioning my TV set sitting out, either waiting for a Washington state rainstorm or a thief to steal it.

One of the women drags in her squad leader, and he reluctantly tells us the problem.

Paint.

On the hallway light fixtures.

You have to be kidding.  It had been there years.

We got an exacto knife and scraped it off.  First sergeant was happy.

Do you have any questions on barracks life?

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Linda Adams – Soldier, Storyteller

Later in November, I will have a short story called “Six Bullets” coming out in the 2012 Forward Motion Anthology.  The story features a princess who enlists in the military and has to use the skills she’s learned to save her country.

 

Is There a Strong Woman Character or Are We Being Fooled?

Did urban fantasy excite you when it first came out because it was about women in something other than romantic roles?  I found one of Laurell K. Hamilton’s early books, and it was the greatest, marvelous thing.  This was a woman who knew her strengths and weaknesses, and better still, actively participated in the action scenes.

But something changed.  We have more women characters in books now, and especially as lead characters, and it still doesn’t feel like we’ve made progress.  I think that’s because of three reasons:

Heeelllppp meee!

Maybe you’ve read a few books with women protagonists — main characters — and yet been vaguely dissatisfied, though aren’t sure why.  I’ve found this consistently with thrillers.  Women protagonists are “in” now.  The writer gives her the starring role but doesn’t make her a star.  She’s smart enough to get into trouble, but not smart enough to try to figure out a way to get out of trouble so the male detective has to come to the rescue.  Yet, I can read a Clive Cussler book, and his male lead doesn’t have to be rescued by someone else.

Urban fantasy seems better with the kick-ass heroines, but when they get into real trouble, they still fall into the same pattern of needing the male sidekick to come to the rescue.   I think the most problematic part about this is that these books are being written by women.

Lone Woman

This one’s so insidious it’s hard to see because it’s common.  It’s in the movies, it’s on TV, and it’s in books.  The woman character might be the protagonist, but she’s often the only woman.   How many women do you work with?  Probably more than one.  I was in the army, a male-dominated place, and there were still more women than there was in the last book I read.

Covers

Do the way the women look on the covers reflect the women you see every day?  They sure don’t for me.  I don’t know anyone who dresses in such skin tight clothes that they need perfect proportions or serious airbrushing help.  Yet, it’s common on covers. The publishers are appealing to the men because they know the women will buy the book anyway.  But the message it sends is: “Women are objects.  Look.  Enjoy.”  Coupled with the other elements above, one more disturbing element gets added: “They can’t do anything by themselves.”

I think indie books are going to offer a big opportunity for women readers who want to see better roles that reflect who we are and not what everyone wants us to be.

Your turn:  What would you like to see for women characters?  What would you like to stop seeing?  Post your comments below.

 

Getting Shot At on Paragon Trail

This post was inspired by Reetta Raitanen, who was interested in several gun articles that I mentioned I’d read.  I started thinking about when I was in the army, because it’s still a little unusual for women to handle guns.  Then I started thinking about when I had gotten shot at.  It was military training, and not war.  But that didn’t make it any less terrifying.

As part of the last few weeks of basic training, we went on Paragon Trail at Fort Dix, New Jersey.  It was a live fire exercise with real bullets flying overhead and grenades going off.  While it was controlled, it was still dangerous.  A soldier from the last cycle had been struck by grenade shrapnel.  We could get hurt!

And I nearly did.

It was so dark out when we went on the trail that it was hard to see anything. But we heard everything, from the staccato of the bullets and the booms of explosions. It was all around us, and we had to get across, while in full gear — helmet, equipment belt, gas mask, and rifle — navigating around various obstacles.

I remember bits and pieces of it. It was like my whole world narrowed to getting across the trail and away from the danger. It’s one thing to hear bullets on TV. It’s another thing to have them firing over my head, and the only thing I’m thinking is, “I’m going to get shot! I’m going to die!”

It was my turn to go, and I ran, faster than I’ve run in my life, the rifle clunking against my legs.  I didn’t breathe, I didn’t think — I just reacted.  There were flashes of light from the tracer rounds above my head, and the gunfire. That’s what I remember the most, because sound punctuated how close those bullets really were.

A video of tracer rounds from a machine gun.:

Part of the trail was getting through an obstacle of concertina wire.

It’s nasty stuff, with lots of pointy parts.  We had a soldier fall into several years later, and it took the fire department two hours to get him out.  And I had to crawl under it on my back?!  I had to lay the rifle on my stomach, and I kept envisioning that my hands would get cut up by it.   The tracers were still streaking through the sky above me as I scraped along the ground.  At last I was free of the concertina and bolting toward the end of the trail.

By then, I was sweating so much that it was pouring down my face like Robert Hayes on Airplane!  I needed windshield washers for my glasses, because I could not see anything.  I took them off, but now the sweat was getting into my eyes.  My eyes stung, and between the dark and the sweat, I couldn’t see much.  But  I’m still running, because I have to keep moving.  I had to get to safety now!

I’m almost there.  And then this shape darted at me, and it’s screaming.  The words didn’t make any sense.  The shape grabs me and drags me in another direction.  It’s the drill sergeant, and I scared him.  I’d almost run into the concertina wire!

Reading about action is fun.  Being in it … well, not so much.

Are there any topics you want me to write about?  Let me know in the comments.