Chapter II: In the Rear

Recruiters can often seem like used car salesmen.  When a recruiter finds a high school or college student that scores high enough on the entrance exam to qualify for a Military Occupational Specialty (MOS) (a.k.a. what our job is) in the military intelligence branch, that sales pitch goes into overdrive. 

“Oh man, we’ve got a braniac here!  Let me tell you what’s gonna happen: we’re gonna sign you up to be James Fucking Bond.  You’re gonna get a FAT bonus, you’ll learn some languages, and then you’ll go all over the world being a mother fucking spy.  Or you could stay here in this podunk shithole, smoke weed with your buddies, weigh about 300 pounds, and never do a god-damned thing with your life.  Your call, bud.”

My recruiter was no exception.  As a matter of fact, the above statements are direct quotes from him.

It was the overwhelming exuberance of my recruiter that filled my mind as I tried to square his words with the experience you are about to read.

Remember the two worlds of garrison and deployed that I mentioned?  Well there is a shadow world in between those two worlds that no one talks about.  This shadow world is called “Rear Detachment,” or “Rear D” for short, but this name fails to capture the unadulterated insanity that happens in many Rear Ds. The FOX network tried to pierce the veil of this bizarro world with an extremely short-lived comedic series but failed for a number of reasons.  One of those reasons was that no one believed that such insanity could happen in real life.

The reality is that for a soldier who wants to serve their country and find meaning in their life, Rear D is a nightmarish mutation of the military.  For those who have a modicum of experience in being part of a functioning and effective unit, being placed into a Rear D is infinitely more painful.  Having a frame of reference about “what right looks like” makes the daily scene of most Rear Ds seem like a gang of rabid monkeys has broken into your home and is raping all of your furniture.  Come to think of it, that’s not even an analogy; Rear D is a gang of monkeys sodomizing your home. 

The idea of a rear detachment is to serve as a staging area for a deployed unit: when new recruits come to a deployed unit, they are placed in the unit’s Rear D until they have their equipment and some training, and then they are shipped off to the war.  When soldiers downrange are injured and sent home, they come to the Rear D while they take care of their medical appointments and recover from their wounds.  If those had stayed the only functions of a Rear D, that might have been tolerable, if not honorable work for a young sergeant learning to lead soldiers.  At least, that was how I justified the task at hand when I was told that I was being placed in a leadership position with the Rear D instead of deploying with the rest of the unit.

Alas, there was another population of soldiers who were also a part of each Rear D.   This population was made up of a robust combination of soldiers who did not deploy with the main unit because they had gone AWOL (Absent Without Leave), soldiers that were being court-martialed for a variety of charges, and soldiers being discharged from the Army altogether.  I can pretty much guarantee that the success and quality of a unit’s Rear D will be entirely dependent upon the size of this specific population.

Imagine for a moment that you are a young 18-year old kid from… let’s say New York City.  You were in high school a few miles away from the towers on 9/11 and have first-hand knowledge on the damage that was done that day.  You resolve to take the fight to the monsters who did this and enlist in the Army. 

You complete basic training and advanced individual training (AIT) at the top of your class, and the moment you’ve been waiting for finally comes: you receive orders to a unit that is already downrange, meaning that you just need to get your gear issued to you and you can jump in the fight you’ve been training to join for so long. 

You report to your unit’s Rear D with enthusiasm and anticipation to get going.  Your first day of in-processing goes well, just a few more hurdles to jump and you’ll be in the fight.  Then you are issued a key for your barracks room and sent off to get some sleep for the next day. 

You find your assigned room and open the door, and you are greeted by a human turd hurtling directly toward your face.

In the split second between opening the door and receiving a face full of shit, you can see the loss of all that training, all that excitement, and everything that young soldier holds dear.  If you reviewed it in slow motion, you could probably see the very instant that the light of righteousness in his eyes flicks off, never to be there again.  In one fell swoop, his entire life has been reduced to wiping the human shit from his eyes only to see his new roommate wearing a brown-streaked bedsheet toga and laughing maniacally in-between huffs of canned air. 

This is but one of the many situations that an NCO on Rear D has to deal with.  A normal unit functions like a body’s immune system.  Toxic soldiers that come in are usually handled by the overwhelming majority of good soldiers who either rehabilitate the individual or remove them from the unit altogether.  When that normal unit deploys, what happens is that all those excised tumors are placed into one giant petri dish.  The few NCOs left behind are forced to babysit these tumors on top of preparing new soldiers for combat and helping receive and rehabilitate wounded soldiers coming back, as well as honoring those who have fallen in battle and helping their families as much as possible.  As a result, most of those NCO’s time is spent on the tumors, because they are the most dangerous. 

As a Rear D NCO, the main task is to navigate the good soldiers around the walking gonorrhea nodules in the unit long enough to get the good soldiers onto a plane and away from the cesspool.  In order to do this, accountability of where viruses are located at all times is a necessity.  Morning formations are used as a warning system to identify who the problem is going to be for the day.  If someone is missing, it is critical to find them to ensure their toxins have not spread outside of the petri dish.  Sometimes this absence will be due to nothing more than oversleeping, but often it will be due to something you would never expect.  When a toxic soldier is not at your formation you may just need to wake them up; but you are equally likely to have to stop them from making crystal meth inside their barracks room.

This daily insanity was too much for me.  My pride in my new unit, my enthusiasm to lead soldiers in combat, and my desire to serve my country was put to the test every single day without fail.  Captain Morgan, the acting commander of the Rear D, had apparently already given up hope and spent most of his time hiding in his locked office with the lights turned out.  I could tell that the other NCOs were shells of their former selves and were going down a dark path as well.  It seemed like there was no way out.  My only hope was to survive this ordeal until the rest of the unit returned from the war in nine months.  I steeled myself for the task at hand and gave myself the personal mission to save as many new soldiers as possible in the meantime.  This definition of my role worked for the most part.  Then came the prostitutes.

When one of your toxic soldiers is absent from the morning formation, you might be in for a bad day.  When more than two of them are absent, this likelihood experiences an exponential increase.  On this fateful day, our ill-fated crew discovered that we were missing approximately…all of them, as well as three of our new soldiers.  We knew the shit was about to hit the fan, but we had no idea how much shit or how big the fan was. 

As one of the least broken NCOs, I was tasked to run to the barracks to identify the location of our wayward population while the others gathered reinforcements for what we assumed would be something akin to a prison riot.

While the rest of our unit was entering the combat theater, Captain Morgan had determined that our unit barracks should be renovated.  This was a fine idea, because our barracks at the time were little more than rotten cinder blocks speckled with wasp nests.  The inherent problem was that at the same time, we had soldiers that needed to live in said barracks.  It was the brainchild of my illustrious commander that half of the barracks should be walled off and renovated, while our remaining soldiers lived four or six to a room.  So, we had scrounged up some plywood and walled off half of the barracks.  Four months into our unit being gone, there had still been zero renovations.

I rounded the corner at full tilt, half-expecting to see columns of smoke pouring out of the building.  Instead, it was the very definition of tranquility.  Not a soul was in the area.  Even the federally protected deer that usually graze throughout the day were nowhere to be seen.  I slowed down, hoping that there had just been some miscommunication and all our missing soldiers were just sleeping off a drinking binge.  How magnificent it would be if a few hangovers were the only problem.

As hope for a peaceful day slowly crept into my consciousness, I spotted the new kid from New York sitting quietly in the parking lot.  Still reconning the exterior of the building, I jogged over to Private New York.  About five paces away from him, I realized he had been there for some time.  His face was ashen and streaked with tears.  A cigarette dangled from his mouth, the ashes falling occasionally onto his shirt.  His eyes never moved as I called to him.

“Hey, Private, everything copacetic?” (editor’s note: military leaders love to use this word because we think it sounds cool and don’t realize how much of a douchebag it makes us sound like) “You were told to be at formation this morning, right?  Was there a problem here last night?” I stopped peppering him with questions when I realized he was in shock.  Like a robot, New York pulled the cigarette from his mouth and used it to light another cigarette-a move that seasoned smokers call monkey-fucking.  As if there was a time delay for my words to reach his brain, New York took a long drag from the cigarette and exhaled.  Suddenly his head snapped to point in my direction.  His eyes still had that distant look in them, but somehow, he seemed to recognize me.  Even more disturbing than the glazed-over look in his eyes was his response.

“Sorry Sergeant!” The Private screamed at the top of his lungs. The veins in his thin neck seemed to be straining to break free.  Still looking through me, he continued screaming, “I guess I found it a little hard to find my way to formation… with ALL THE GODDAMNED SHIT IN MY EYES!”  At this, the young soldier broke down, sobbing into his hands.

While I tried to wrap my head around this new information, yet more insanity ensued.  I was stammering, trying to think of something to say to comfort Private New York and at the same time trying to figure out what the hell he was talking about.  That’s when I heard what sounded like a cattle stampede coming from the barracks.  As if to add to this mental image, someone began shouting YEEEHAAWW at the top of their lungs.

Although I only had a working-level knowledge in battlefield triage, it was clear that Private New York’s state of shock would need to wait while I traversed the area to diagnose what kind of fucked-up rodeo was happening in our barracks.  As I ran toward the yeehaws, Private New York monkey-fucked another cigarette.

If the scene on the outside of the barracks was like a peaceful pond full of water lilies, the inside of the barracks was like the scene from Jaws when the shark eats an entire boat.  The plywood barriers separating the wings appeared to have been blasted off the walls by explosives.  Toilet paper and empty cans of canned air littered the dingy hallway, leading into the darkness like a fucked-up Hansel and Gretel trail of breadcrumbs. 

I should probably wait until the others get here, I thought to myself as I slowly stepped forward.  From the darkness, a loud STOMP echoed off the walls. 

Another STOMP.  

A pale, ghostly glow emanated from the darkness when suddenly, a massively obese and unnecessarily naked hunchbacked woman galloped full speed out of an open door.  Her eyes widened in the darkness as she appeared to realize she was going too fast for her own good, but momentum took over and hurtled the hunchbacked beast into a wall like a failed Kool-Aid Man.  As she spun around I realized that she was not, in fact, hunchbacked; she was being ridden by one of my wayward soldiers who happened to be equally naked.  Without noticing me watching this scene in abject horror, Private “Cowboy” pushed off from the wall with his pale white legs and slapped the ass of his trusty steed, riding her off back into the darkness.

As I stood frozen in place trying to purge this horrific image from my brain, the cavalry arrived.  My peers had adequately determined that more backup was needed and enlisted the help of NCOs from other units.  I stepped outside to see a brute squad a la The Princess Bride, possibly the most welcome sight I have ever seen to this day.  Together we executed a classic pincer move with two groups circling the building on either side and a third group entering the building to flush out “the Thieves Forest.”

I would like to tell you that our brute squad was unnecessary, that once we found Private Cowboy and his trusty steed, all was right with the world and everyone lived happily ever after.  But his is only chapter two, bro.

The inside of the “renovation barracks” was part horror movie and part porno.  As our brute squad pushed forward, clearing the barracks from room to room became a test of our resilience.  More than one NCO in our group reached their limit of what they could handle and had to leave.  Each room was a different clue for us to recreate the insanity that must have occurred within.  Many rooms looked like a tornado had torn through them, littered with broken furniture and strangely colored puddles.  One room was pristine, looking as though it had even been polished in preparation for a room inspection- until we opened the bathroom door to see a soldier sleeping in a bathtub sarcophagus made of tequila bottles and packaging tape.  One particular hallway stood out from the others, possibly due to the “red carpet” that had been spray painted down the entire path.  Each room had a dollar amount also spray painted upon it.  We don’t need to go into what we saw behind those doors, right?  This is supposed to be a wholesome book that you can read to your kids.  Let’s just say that I had a burning desire to scour my retinas with sandpaper in the hopes of removing images of the flesh-colored freakshows behind those doors.

After a full two hours of room clearing this ghetto orgy, the battle was over.  Our brute squad had successfully cleared the wings, with only minor casualties (mainly our souls which were condemned for eternity just from the exposure to that depravity).  We had established a makeshift P.O.W. camp full of our wayward soldiers (including a few from other units).   There had been no trace of their clothes in our sweep of the rooms, so all of them were wrapped in blankets and huddled in a circle.  None of the women were willing to produce identification, but all of them claimed to be sisters.  The only response that any of them were willing to provide was “You just wait until Momma and Daddy get here, you’re gonna get it mother fucker.”

When you become an NCO, you think you are ready for anything.  You are full of hope and optimism, eager for your chance to lead soldiers into battle.  The military sends you to leadership school to prepare you even more.  No one tells you that part of your duties will be to bust a ring of huffing  prostitutes set up inside your barracks.  We had called the military police for the base to help us figure out what to do with the situation, but an hour had passed with no response.  We were trying to plan our next moves when our usually non-existent commander and his wife stalked up to us.

Captain Morgan looked like his only goal in life had been to reach the rank of captain so that he could dress like a pirate and pretend that he had invented rum.  With his life goal complete at an early age, he had nowhere to go but down.  Now with sunken eyes, a bulbous nose, and a receding hairline, he looked more like what would remain after his ideal had been keel-hauled.  His attitude reflected his lost ideals, and this day was no exception.

“Mahones, what in the blue blazes is going on here?” Captain Morgan had tried to summon his best pirate captain command voice but achieved only a high-pitched whine that might have been more like a pirate’s wench. 

“Well Sir, I guess these ladies are here to renovate the barracks,” I said with a sigh. I was so drained that decorum was just not going to happen on this day. Better to go with sarcasm. “I’m not sure they are licensed, though-you might want to look into that.”

I could tell that Captain Morgan really wanted to have me walk the plank, but he only managed to make a few little squeaking noises. It became clear who the real pirate was when his rotund wife, dressed in a golden jumpsuit with the word “juicy” adorned all over it more than made up for her husband’s deficit.

“What are you sons of bitches doing to my daughters?”  Mrs. Morgan’s voice boomed through the courtyard, immediately capturing everyone’s attention.  The circle of girls immediately jumped up and cheered for their long-lost maternal unit while the rest of us looked on in a dumbfounded stupor.

Even now, looking back on that moment, I can feel the slow creep of realization flow through my body like a snake devouring me one inch at a time. 

Momma Morgan rushed to her girls, who seemed to flock to her for protection.  At some point, the girls began producing greasy wads of cash and handing it to Momma Morgan.  The very same girls that were before, and remained now, pretty much naked other than the blankets we had provided.  Rather than ponder where the money had come from, I turned on my heels and left to figure out how many bottles of vodka it would take to remove these images from my head.  Since I am still writing about the visions to this day, you can safely assume that I may not have found the solution to my algebraic alcoholism, but please rest assured that it was not due to a lack of trying.