One of the worst things about the post on which I was stationed in Iraq was that there really were no basic amenities. For the first three months, we had to truck in fresh water in huge rubber containers, and there was nothing so advanced as a flush toilet. Everyday, some poor bastard in one of the platoons that wasn’t working in the city had to pull out the steel tubs that were filled with shit, and burn the stuff until it was a fine ash. Since my platoon was running convoys every day, I got to miss out on that neat little aspect of camp life. ‘Course, I still got to experience the thrill of crapping through a hole into a steel tub, which smelled delightful in the 90-115 degree heat.
Being in my platoon was a blessing, lemme tell you. We got to head to posts with more advanced latrines, and showers, and mess halls, and PX’s, pretty much every day. And there was a certain amount of hatred focused on us by the guys who hadn’t had showers in three weeks, and had run out of cigarettes last week.
Sometimes, you’d just have to crap on our post, though, which exposed me to one of the weirder aspects of Army life. In a situation like that, where you’re doing your business in an outside latrine, with other crappers on both sides and separated by a relatively thin slice of plywood, there was always some cat who’d take the next stall and want to chat. It never failed. You’d get settled, and through the wall would come some idiot’s voice, “Hey, who is that? Lee? What’s up man? How you doing?” What the hell kind of idiot question is that? I’m sitting in an outhouse in a foreign country, trying to lose a little weight, and being pestered by some moron.
So, all in all, I could have been doing better.
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