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

 

Seriously, are meals in the military as bad as MASH portrayed them?

Photo courtesy of U.S. Army

This time of the year is always about the food.   We go over to family’s house and load up on turkey, stuffing, cranberries, and my favorite, pumpkin pie, and repeat again at Christmas.  The food’s always delicious.   But what about the military?  When I was growing up, I watched MASH and saw Hawkeye Pierce inciting a strike because the food was so bad.  Was it really that bad?

The field is a challenging environment even for the most experienced of cooks.  The Next Iron Chef recently aired where the chiefs all had to cook on a beach.  They had limited resources, which not only included the types of food available, but the equipment, and environment.    These were extremely experienced chefs, and they struggled with the environment at times.  Now imagine someone inexperienced in the harsh environment of the desert, where food spoils quickly and they’re using portable stoves.

We left Dhahran after about six weeks, leaving our catered food behind.   Our cooks had to prepare the meals for our battalion.  The battalion had two active duty units, one National Guard, and one Reserve.  The latter two met once a month and trained two weeks a year, so not much experience cooking in the field.

In a logic only the army could have, the battalion pared the two experienced units on one shift and the two inexperienced ones on the other.  The result was two meals that were great, and two meals that were … well, bad seems kind.  How the heck can you botch up  hamburgers and hot dogs?!

Then there was the chili mac, which was the most common army meal.  Tim Dugan, an army cook, notes:

Sometimes we get to change it up, but as a whole, we are required to follow the recipe card exactly.  As a result, when you eat at an Army quality dining facility, you get the same product.  Cooks want to “flex” and make the product a little different, taste a little better, or have a little more flavor.  However, a good shift leader, first cook or DFAC [Dining Facility Manager] manager will keep his or her eye out, and will prevent that from happening.  Non-cooks should know that the Army sets these standard recipe cards to limit cost, control nutrition and prevent allergens.

As a result the soldiers will add hot sauce.  So we’re having chili mac in the mess tent.  We sit down, and there’s this guy across from us pouring on the hot sauce.  He eats a spoonful of it and then takes off his hat and slams into the table.

Oh, dear.  Seems someone got a little too creative with the seasoning …

Yup.  Military meals can have their moments of serious badness.

Okay, I know everyone’s got holiday food horrors.   What’s the worst holiday meal horror story?

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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 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.

 

What it’s like on a military post?

My next stop on my military tour of duty is at what life is like for a soldier living on a military post.  It is always referred to as a post, by the way — not a fort or a base.  It’s actually a little difficult to get around, especially if you don’t have a car.  Before I got one, I was hitching rides with the supply sergeant, who also lived in the barracks, taking a cab, or walking.

It was particularly tough on the weekends if wanted to use the mess hall.  Because attendance was always lower on the weekend, they would alternate mess halls, and sometimes they weren’t that easy to get to!  It was worse after we got to North Fort because they often didn’t bother to tell us which ones were even open.  One year, over a holiday, they reused the same prepared food four days in a row.  It was really obvious because the chicken got drier and drier with each serving!

For the single soldiers, they just had a community center, several libraries, gyms, and the Class 6 (place to buy booze).  The libraries got their hours cut any time the budget needed reduction — it always felt like no one cared about the single soldiers because we were always the first ones affected.  I remember my first exposure to banned books was at the main library.  They had a spiral bound book on the counter listing all the banned books for the year so we could pick one.

I thought the rec center was relatively nice — especially compared to some of the other places available to us.  Though when I used it in my story “A Soldier’s Magic,” my critique group commented that it sounded more like a hospital.  Of course, they didn’t see what the hospital looked like …

The original hospital, which was there when I first came, consisted of the old World War II temporary buildings.  All one story, and connected together with hallways.  Sort of like those futuristic space pods you see in some science fiction shows.  It was a maze trying to figure out where everything was because it was all separate buildings, and yet, it wasn’t.  Eventually, the post had to build a new hospital facility because they couldn’t make the old one meet code any more.

Other facilities included the PX (Post exchange), the commissary, and clothing sales.  The PX is like a department store.  The commissary is the grocery store.  Clothing sales is where we bought uniforms.  I don’t know if this is still true, but even though that was a new facility (it opened the same year I arrived) it was not made for women.  You could not try on the class A uniform and make sure it fit properly before you bought it.   Everything was done like the men’s section at the department store.  Uniforms were folded up and stacked; class A’s were hung on a rack like suits.  Shoes were the only thing I could try on.

I found this video, which was shot in 2009 — 14 years after I left North Fort.  It still looks the same as when I was there (though I’ve been told they’ve opened newer, more modern barracks since then).

What do you think about military life from what you’re seeing here?

 

This, That, and Zap! 9/21

This week we got a horrendous downpour — so bad that I had a scary moment on the freeway when I went through a puddle and water planed.  The concrete barrier was one lane away, but it looked entirely too close!  And the next day?  Like the storm never happened!

But that’s Washington, DC.  I’m going to close up with week with a few tidbits that crossed my path this week.

THIS is Anne of Green Gables.  I’m afraid I’m not much for classics — not enough action for this action girl.  But I’ve been trying to be better, so I started reading Anne of Green Gables on my return from Wisconsin.  It turns out it’s a fairly enjoyable and fun book, and it’s in omniscient viewpoint.  If you want to study the viewpoint, this book would be worth a look.

THAT is Heroes and Villains from Writer Unboxed.  It brings up a point that I hadn’t thought about it but is most definitely true: A villain needs to be a leader.  Now if only villains would be easier to spell!

ZAP! is a video called “Dangerous Garden Path of the Day.”  Toy soldiers engage in battle with deadly vegetables — but no carrot men!  Some profanity and toy violence, so it may not be safe for work.

What book has caught your eye this week?

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Linda Adams – Soldier, Storyteller

Since I have an action link above, also check out my flash fiction Stone Magic on Writer Unboxed, weighing it at 250 words.  If you don’t guess what the setting is, it’s Washington, DC.

 

The Front Lines of Exploration

This week, I’ve been working on my notes for a workshop on military culture for my writing group, Cat Vacuuming Society, and one of the questions I was asked was “What writers have gotten it right?”  Robert Heinlein, for his book Starship Troopers.  He enlisted in the military, though he later had health problems.  But he took what he knew and applied to to what he didn’t know — space exploration.  It was published in 1959, 10 years away from a milestone: Apollo 11 going to the moon, and the first man, Neil Armstrong, to walk on the moon.

Neil Armstrong died on August 25.  Space exploration, as Heinlein and other science fiction writers predicted, a military operation.  Commander Neil Armstrong was a Navy pilot, and he served in the Korean War. Up until the space shuttle program, NASA largely pulled astronauts  from the military.

Image Credit: NASA

I’ve only seen Neil Armstrong walk on the moon in TV clips and the video below.

When ‘mission control’ is mentioned, I think of men in white dress shirts and horn-rimmed glasses seated in rows and rows of consoles.  Now we have technology like this air traffic controller from the USS Makin Island:

U.S. Navy photo by Chief Mass Communication Specialist John Lill

It’s hard to believe the leaps we’ve made in our technology, especially in the last 20 years.  What do you think is coming for us in the future?

 

Portraying Disability in Fiction

This post started with one tweet that turned into a lengthy discussion.  I’d found a submission call for Crossed Genres said they wanted stories on characters with disabilities and passed it along to fellow blogger Day Al-Mohamed, who puts characters with disabilities into her stories.  Day reported she had heard often the following (which she doesn’t agree with):

@sandykidd @LindaAdamsVA @crossedgenres It’s tough.Disability (similar to race) if you mention it, there MUST be a reason.Not just be there.

No, I’m not disabled, which is why I wanted to write this.  I have a hard time understanding why writers require reasons to have it in a story.  While Day wants more disabilities in the stories, I want more women.  There are books where I feel like the writer checked off ‘woman protagonist’ but didn’t actually write a woman character.  You write a character first, then gender — but you have to do both, because that perception will influence the story. Read the rest on Unleaded – Fuel for Writers.

 

60th Anniversary of the Great Alien Invasion of Washington DC

When I was growing up, every weekend was a movie or TV show about aliens invading Earth.  H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds is probably among the most famous.  During the days of radio, they did it as a radio show and scared people to death — the newscast style sounded like it was really happening!  Then it was a movie, and one of the frightening scenes for me was when the soldiers got reduced to skeletons and then dust by the ray beam.  Stargate SG-1 jumped in with aliens pretending to be Egyptian gods.

Oh dear. I can imagine the traffic jams already starting.

But did you know that in 1952, unidentified flying objects (UFO) were spotted over Washington, DC?  It was a cluster of 7 UFOs, so it wasn’t just one flash of light everyone got excited about.  Then it happened again a week later — now 12 UFOs.  It was labeled an inversion layer, though people still have doubts today.

But let’s take a step further.  When I was at Marscon, they had a workshop on the military and the zombie apocalypse.   What if aliens did land in Washington, DC? How would the military respond?

In just about every movie about UFOs, it seems like it’s always the Air Force.  UFOs fly, planes fly, so it seems logical.  But once the aliens land, it might be a little different.  Probably no Navy involvement, unless the UFO ended up in the Potomac River.  Irwin Allen did that on Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, with the episode “The Terrible Toys.”

I think the Marines would get called in.  They always go in first.  A former Marine told me, “If the Marines can’t stir up trouble, there isn’t any trouble worth stirring up.”  The Army would probably send in 82nd Airborne and the Rangers.  I don’t think the aliens would be treated as friendly forces by the military — honestly, you call in the military, it’s not for high tea.

Clearly Washington DC is a bad influence.

Of course traffic would instantly snarl up for miles and miles in either direction.  Heck, even a few raindrops will do that will send drivers into a panic.  An alien invasion?  Oh, yeah.  The resulting road blocks that would likely occur would definitely add to this problem.  It’s bad enough here when the Cherry Blossoms bloom!

Meanwhile, downtown workers would be trying to get past the roadblocks to go to work.  The aliens clearly aren’t a threat, and the workers need to finish their work.  (Trust me, people do think like this.  We have a fire drill, and there are always employees who want to stay back and continue working).  Since martial law probably would have been declared (then again, not; that would be really bad politically for any politician in DC), the military would be arresting workers.  The military would also be especially concerned by the other types of people arriving — family members demanding alien abduction victims be returned; alien groupies; people wanting to “shoot me some aliens”; and reporters hoping to get the money shot of the aliens.

It would be complete chaos!

What do you think would happen if alien spaceships landed in Washington, DC?

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Photos are from ClipArt.com

 

Can You be too Goal-Focused?

Though I’ve read a lot of time management books, I’ve never thought of setting goals.   If you’d asked me a few years ago if I had goals, I would have said I was a goal-less person.  Turns out I’m very goal-focused.  Maybe too much.

Can you be too goal-focused? Read the rest on Unleaded Fuel for Writers.

 

Adventures on the Potomac River

Being on a boat conjures up images of going on an adventure to a strange and exotic place like Indiana Jones.  As a child, my grandfather went to Korea on the ships of the early 1900s with names like Empress of Australia and the Empress of Asia.  His father was the first missionary there, so it was truly an adventure!

For me, it was a 40 minute cruise from Alexandria, Virginia, around the Potomac River on the Admiral Tild.  Getting on a boat made me nervous.  When I was in the Girl Scouts, I took the Catalina Flyer.  The boat rocked so much that I got sea sick.  All I could do was sit on the stairs and try not to throw up.  So I kept my fingers crossed.  Exploring is no fun if you’re turning green (aliens don’t count).

The day started out hot, layered with humidity.  The sweat stayed on my skin, and I kept feeling the tickle of drops running down my shins.  Even the ducks near the wharf weren’t motivated to do much beside float — until the two kids with bread came along.  The 5-year old hurled half a heel into the water and started a duck war.  Every duck for himself!

A breeze from the water carried the briny smell of the river but didn’t do much to cool me down.  So I melted while I waited to board the boat.  This Indian boy of about seven tried to take my picture.  Didn’t bother me, but his father chided him, telling him to ask permission first.  Instead, the boy took a picture of his father.

The boat consisted of two decks.  A curving, steep staircase went up to the second deck.  That probably had the better view, but I thought the lower deck would be cooler.  So did grandparents with their grandchildren.  The Indian family went on the top deck.  As I sat down on one of the bench seats, vibration from the engine came up at me through the deck and into the seat.

The captain gave us our safety briefing and pointed out the locations of the tiny bathrooms, opening one up to show us.  I think he was trying to discourage anyone from using them except in an emergency.  I think I would have turned into a pretzel inside.

The captain gave long pull on the horn.  No one was going to miss that we were leaving the dock!  As we did a 180 degree turn,  my sinuses lurched sickingly, and I hope this wasn’t a sign of things to come.  It turned out that I was okay as long as I didn’t stand up and move around too much.  The vibration changed to a steady rumble and we were off on our adventure.

This looked like damage from the recent storm — a lot of trees were ripped apart and tossed aside as if they were discarded paper.

The underside of the Woodrow Wilson drawbridge.  As we passed under it, we could hear the ghostly whistle of traffic speeding across it.

The bridge marks the unofficial border between Virginia and Maryland.  There’s a lagoon on the other side where the military trained frogmen.  Frogmen were the early version of the Navy SEALS.  Isn’t that cool?

I thought these were the wreckage of an old pier, but they were used to tie up boats.  It was strange seeing this burst of green out in the middle of the water.

And where would a trip on the Potomac be without the Capitol?  If you’re having trouble spotting it, it’s on the right third of the photo.

All that humidity may turn into a thunderstorm later today.  If you were on the boat and a thunderstorm hit, what would you do?  What kind of adventure would it take you on?

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Read my flash fiction story The Librarian at the Writer Unboxed’s 7 Sizzling Sundays of Flash Fiction!