A long day

The worst thing about going to Iraq?

Not the mind numbing counting down the days till we go
Not the preparation of your last will
Not coming up a list of whom my mom should call if I die

But the amazingly incompetent way we pack our unit equipment and personal/professional gear.

We pack it and we're told we're all set.

Nope, wait, we need to lay it out to make sure we have everything
Oh no, wait, take it back out, we have to inventory it.

It doesn't help that it's 104 degrees outside either. ha.

But surprisingly, this reflection isn't about the incompetency of the system, but is about how fortunate I am to be surrounded by some genuinely good people.

Here we are after 6pm, and they finally say we're done for the day (We're normally let our about 5). The married folks drive home and the single joes go back to the barracks, to complain to each other, to hang out with each other, to finally eat our microwave dinners or order pizza; the chow hall closes at 6.

Not even 5 minutes in my room, and I get a phone call.

Head back out, we have more packing to do.

Wow.

Seriously?

Are you fucking kidding me?

So here we are, close to 7, haven't eaten dinner, rolling out to have more packing fun.

It's mostly single soldiers and a select few married folks that didn't leave in time. Everyone that's around. Lucky us.

You can only imagine the atmosphere and the pent up anger and frustration amongst the men. Even the Senior NCO's are visibly pissed.

We come to find out that our 3 biggest shipping containers were not inventoried nor packed correctly, even though we spent 2 days doing it.

2 days of packing and none of the leaders figured to do any of this?

Wow.

So much for that college degree....

So we're out there, packing and complaining, just another stupid "Hey, It's the Army, what'd you expect" explanation.

But then towards the end I notice something.

The mood is different, we were all laughing, and joking, even through the heat and the stupidity of things, even the fact that it's past 8pm.

The men were bonding, and it was at that point I realized just how amazing the men next to me really were. I mean, this ain't no sappy shit or nothing. It's just...Goddamn...this shit is the epitome of the suck and we don't give a fuck. We gotta do it, so let's do it and say fuck it all. We did it right and we did it laughing.

I don't know if I quite wrote down the situation properly but fuck it, because I understand.

And because of this, I know, no matter what happens in the hellhole we're going to....

Things will be alright...