Good Training? HAI!

For all troops in the military, and especially those of us who were Cold Warriors, training for chemical warfare attacks is a sad reality, a legacy of World War I, and then or now it's a hot, sweaty, claustrophic, and generally damned uncomfortable experience.

Taking this, and multiplying the fun-factor by sub-tropical weather, and a relative humidity of more than 90%, and you have what proud officers call "good training", and what the rank and file refer to as "a serious pain in the @$$".

Thus imagine my joy upon the revelation that we'd be conducting battery emplacement/displacement drills in those nice, quilted, MOPP IV suits, in Okinawa's Central Training Area, in August.

And to provide added incentive and realism, a number of our NCOs were assigned to help stimulate the realism by occasionally tossing CS tear gas grenades amongst us.

So, as we were merrily jumping into and out of our trucks, lifting the trail end of 15,000 pounds of howitzer, and digging holes for the back end to dig into for their imaginary fire missions, then undoing all that to get them ready to drive away, on an island hundreds of miles from Japan (or anywhere else) in the Pacific, and uncomfortably close to the equator for those wearing rubber boots, rubber gloves, and the chemical protective snowmobile suits, topped with a nice comfy rubber gas mask, you can imagine exactly how much any one of us wanted to be there. In case taking the rubber gloves off between go arounds to pour out the glovefuls of accumulated perspiration that was pouring off everyone wasn't a big enough clue.

And then doing it again, while the selected sergeants randomly tossed tear gas right in amongst us, to make sure no one had forgotten (accidentally or on purpose) to completely take the exercise seriously.

And finally, to rub salt in the wounds, we were working right near the fenceline border with the civilian community that is greater Okinawa.

So just as we're getting a well-deserved water break, and getting an appropriate lecture on our tasks in the shade, the group of whiny protesters du jour march up the road to the fenceline 30 feet away, carrying their banners, and yelling at us in Japanese and Engrish (that's not a typo), "Yankee Go Home!"

For background, the Japanese still hate us because they got their @$$ handed to them in WWII, and polite as they are overall, the resentment is there 24/7, just because we're still here, at that point, more than 40 years after redecorating several of their cities, including 2 via thermonuclear means. That isn't the sort of thing you "get over" right away, and they haven't, official protestations to the contrary notwithstanding.

The Okinawans, meanwhile, are pissed at us too. Ethnically descended from Japanese, they nonetheless regard themselves as a separate people, and hold the status in Japan that Indians held in American society circa 1880. So they're royally pissed that after WWII, we didn't give them their independence, but instead returned the island to Japan. And of course, there's also a smidge of peevishness over having shelled, bombed, and napalmed their parents for a couple of months back in 1945, prior to rompystomping through the place with a few divisions of Marines and soldiers too.

But every man jack of us is on an unaccompanied tour, leaving wives, sweethearts, families, and even hamburgers, 8000 miles and more westward, back in the land of the big PX. Were it left up to us, we'd have entirely skipped coming to "the Rock" as it's none-too-affectionately known, with about 1 second's careful thought, had the decision been ours, instead of one made by people in pay grades far above reality.

So to come protest us and our presence because your community college class was boring, is like bitching at the guy who cleans the floors at Exxon for their company having spilled a tanker on your beach. Which is to say, rather annoyingly misplaced. But the whiny entitled juvenile I'm-against-everything class is much the same on every continent: brains are entirely optional, and rather seldom in evidence.

So listening to a bunch of pampered college kids and pissed off dithering housewives rant through 2/3rds-size bullhorns in Engrish that we should go back home and stop warmongering kind of pissed us off. We also seem to recall a certain field trip their fathers and grandfathers organized to Pearl Harbor in 1941, and a little hike across Bataan they took some of our forefathers on shortly afterwards, which memories seems to have slipped their collective notice for 40 years, as they do to this day.

And worst of all, it's really just an annoyance, but it's just loud enough that the lecture is becoming problematic, thus finished in abbreviated fashion, forcing us all to suit back up, and go back to playing howitzer-on/howitzer off, in the lovely noonday humidity and heat of a 90-degree Okinawa afternoon. Again. Thanks, @$$holes.

So we're about one or two iterations into the process. Right next to the fenceline, with only that and a short hedge separating us from the lovely and gracious hospitality of these model citizens of Okinawa.

I should also mention that when you put 150 or so Marines in identical quilted woodland camo suits, gas masks, gloves, and booties, other than height, there is no discernable difference between a captain, a sergeant, and a private, nor anyone in between.

So we'll never know who did it, but at some point when we were going through the motions, one of the dozens of CS tear gas grenades getting tossed seems to have been accidentally pitched the wrong way, and landed about 20 feet over the fence, and ever so slightly upwind of the Charge of the Pissed Off Brigade.

So instead of repeated Engrish demands that "Yankees Go Home!" we heard "Yankees COUGH COUGH  Go COUGH CHOKE RETCH  Aaaaaaahh! VOMIT COUGH PUKE  ahhh......"! followed by what was surely the Japanese version of "Run away! Run Away!".

Followed, in short order, by sounds last witnessed when Godzilla was stomping on plastic tanks on a Tokyo soundstage, and the pitter patter of little feet retreating rapidly away from our exercise.

It's hard to hear in MOPP Level IV protective gear, but I know I heard 150 guys laughing their asses off, and could see their heads and chests vibrating as proof as they chained the howitzers back to the trucks just before things were brought to a halt.

The field command investigation was suitably short.
The CO asked "Who did that?"

All the NCOs carrying gas grenades looked like choirboys and asked "Sir, did what?"

And we were returned to our barracks, having yet again vanquished the human waves of the yellow horde on their own turf. Take that, ye Minions Of Stupidity. Or as they might put it there, "Banzai!"

Read This Until You Get It

I know, with the 24 hour newscycle, and the endless rotation of stories that suit the agenda of Damning The Things The Liberal Media Hates intersects so nicely with Ratings, Ratings, Ratings Until Our Heads Explode, that lately certain stories pound you on the head until you think you have to opine.

Rule One of Having An Opinion: Make sure it's an informed opinion. Take it to the library and read to it, maybe get it a cable subscription and learn a thing or two, before you turn it loose in the city unaccompanied. Sort of precisely like you'd do with those other supergeniuses of Western civilization, your teenaged offspring. Until that point, resist the urge to prematurely launch.

And I know that some people mistake having earned certain letters after their name with The Right To Think For All Those Great Unwashed Stoopid People Over There.

So whether you're a doctor, nurse, professor, butcher, baker, or candlestickmaker, I would counsel that before you let your mouth, or your fingers, run away with you, you steadfastly avoid plopping out opinions that, much like your smelly socks, ought to be kept to yourself on Some Weighty Topic. Because usually, they just stink, and you embarrass yourself.

My case in point:

"I'm a really bitchin trauma nurse who's seen too many shooting victims, and if only people had to see what I saw, they'd set the Constitution on fire and melt all the guns down for scrap, just like I want to do. But they haven't, so they're not as smart as me. You don't need any gun I don't like for anything that isn't absolutely criminal."*

When you spew that much non-sequitr magical thinking childish psychotic nonsense out in one breath, you aren't speaking as a nurse (or a doctor, professor, etc., etc.). You're speaking purely as as a fucktard jackhole, and you've just wasted the few brain cells that your body hoarded all those years to maintain a pulse and respirations, and shot them right out of your ass. In front of the entire Internet, forever.

Unless you think that once someone had seen enough diabetic patients, they should be allowed to discuss banning Twinkies and Ding dongs.
And that once someone had seen enough rape patients they should be able to demand all men surrender their penises.
Or that after seeing enough drunks, we should re-enact Prohibition, or that enough MVA patients would justify banning all cars. Because, really, who NEEDS anything faster than a skateboard, unless you're a criminal, you frightened stupid babykilling kitten-stomping loser??

That's the level of retarded jackassical thinking we train 3 year olds out of, and which we document as proof of psychosis in crazy people.

If guns bug you, there's a far simpler solution: don't buy any. By no strange coincidence, that approach is also entirely legal under the Constitution. You can even tell your friends that in the realm of being a victim, you've elected to surrender, rather than risk being able to defend yourself against someone younger, bigger, stronger, and meaner. And to make sure all your family members are equally helpless, including children and infants. So if you don't have the moral resolve to announce what a cowardly jackass you are, don't try to ascend the mountain of your own imaginary moral superiority, and tell everyone else to follow your example, or worse, declare fiat ex cathedra that you'll just do all their thinking for them, based on your superior global omniscience.

"Medical misadventure" and pharmaceutical mistakes by doctors and nurses kill 10 times more people annually than all 300,000,000 guns in this country, going back to probably Jamestown Colony. Shouldn't we ban doctors and nurses then, because really, who needs a doctor more than once a year? And why should doctors be allowed to see more than 15 patients a week? Only a criminal would want to give them access to more victims.
I'm sorry you were sick the day they covered logic in school every year from about 10th grade to your Ph.D., but it doesn't work like that.

And such monumental jackassery is exactly the reason the Founding Fathers of this republic made sure that the closest you came to directly voting for anyone was to elect a bare 1 congressperson, thus ensuring that at any one given time, almost 49% of the brilliant "people" would be soundly ignored in each district, and up to 49% of the congress would be ignored in the capitol, on every issue, on every vote, forever. And they saw this limit on your would-be dictatorship as a feature, not a bug.

So next time you great a great idea, and you want to hear it echo because of its pure brilliance, go to the local big box hardware store, buy a galvanized bucket, put it over your head, then launch into your tirade, and drown out the sound of the rest of us with the cacophony of your own awesomeness.

Both you and we will be properly ecstatic at the results that step will guarantee on future results.





*Lovingly edited and paraphrased so that you'll never find out the actual identity of the intarwebxz Soopergeneyus who plopped that nugget out, while carefully paraphrasing every thought so that you, gentle reader, got the full impact of the author's self-evident rhetorical brilliance.

Women In The Military, Pt. Deux

{Full disclosure: This was intended and began its life first as a reply to a post about a recent Weekly Standard piece regarding the same topic, over on WeaponsMan's blog, which is a blog you should read anyway.
But this little rant is mine - except for statistical citations - it's long, and he recognized it as blog fodder when all I was looking for was a worthy reply, but slapping it up here assuages some of my personal guilt when I go a day or three without posting...stuff.
Yes, I did shoot, gut, and cook this, but in my defense, I needed to get the trout out of that rainbarrel anyways, even if it took the entire magazine. And neither Army Times nor the Marine Gazette are taking my calls on this subject.}

The strongest 1% of women are weaker than 84% of men.
But don’t believe me.

William Gregor, professor of social sciences at the Army’s Command and General Staff College, reports that in tests of aerobic capacity, the records show, only 74 of 8,385 Reserve Officers’ Training Corps women attained the perfomance level of even the lowest 16 percent of men.
In his examination of physical fitness test results from the ROTC, dating back to 1992, and 74,000 records of male and female commissioned officers, only 2.9 percent of women were able to attain the men’s average pushup ability and time in the two-mile run. (For the math-challenged, that means 97.1% of women were below average. And common sense means half of them are horrendously below average.)

So, just out of curiousity, what do they call the bottom 16% of performers at Ranger training, Airborne School, or SF Selection?

And what do those places tell people who can’t complete their pushups or make their run times? I’m spitballing here, but I don’t think any of the phrases used sound anything like “Welcome to the club!”

“USMC Women in the Service Restrictions Review” found that women, on average, have 20 percent lower aerobic power, 40 percent lower muscle strength, 47 percent less lifting strength and 26 percent slower marching speed than men.

Quick, let’s name an MOS or five that might conceivably require aerobic power, strength, lifting, and marching.

So when one is pinned down under fire, and waiting 26% longer for their relief to arrive on foot because they have women slowing them down, what should we call that? (Other than an unbudgeted need for buglers and pallbearers at Arlington.)

The “fight load” — the gear an infantryman carries on patrol — is 35 percent of the average man’s body weight but 50 percent of the average Army woman’s weight. Because tragically, packs, water cans, ammo loads, pyro, demo, and MREs don’t come in junior miss sizes, even if the troops carrying those loads do.

And nearly half of the women actually tested over 3 years at MCRD Parris Island lacked the basic strength to throw the crushingly heavy  (less than a pound) issue M67 frag grenade far enough away to escape self-injury from its casualty producing radius of shrapnel.

Despite this, the four-star invertebrates and the legislative and executive knobs they slob with such talent, finesse, and service-destructive abandon, seem hell-bent on saddling combat arms units with a failureproof quota of guaranteed slamdunk hopelessly unqualified, mostly unwilling, and all-around foolishly selected members, apparently solely on the dual theories of warfare best entitled
“Hey, we did it before, and Vietnam didn’t turn out so bad for us” and
“Women In Combat Arms: What could possibly go wrong?”

A 155mm arty round weighs 95 pounds. A tank shell is 44 pounds, and a section of track for an Abrams is around 100 pounds. When Suzy Cupcake can’t lift her pack, her basic ammo component, or her wounded fellow soldier, we’ll see another warm and fuzzy legacy of Vietnam, when the group’s perception is that their group’s survival in combat hinges on getting rid of the weakest links, even at the risk of fighting short-handed, and contrary even to the taboo of murder: they’ll introduce a growing number of their weaker co-workers to the blast effect radius of the issue frag grenade, by leaving same in the soldierette sleeping areas minus the safety pins. Or just hand them the mortar base plate before each stream crossing, and let Mr. Darwin take care of the problem.

And the invertebrate command staff will throw their hands to their foreheads and exclaim, “How can this be, for we need women in combat arms in order to win. Just like we needed them in the front line in Mogadischu, Panama, Grenada, Khe Sanh, Ia Drang, Chosin, Pusan, Bastogne, Normandy, Guadalcanal, Meuse-Argonne, San Juan Hill, Gettysburg, Yorktown, and Lexington. Where would we be if Wellington’s Amazon Legion had failed us at Waterloo, or if the Sisters of the Holy Tantrum hadn’t stood their ground against the Janissary hordes at the gates of Vienna?

The difference with this far-beyond-the-pale decision, and the integration of blacks or gays into the force, is that both black servicemembers and gays have the documented fact of actually having performed their service to the exact same standards of their fellow soldiers etc. for years beforehand, an accomplishment which has been accomplished by exactly no woman ever serving, either now or in living memory, in the armed forces of this country since females last snuck into ranks during the Civil War.

If women could hack it, I’d be the first to hand them a sword and spear, point them towards the enemy lines, and tell them just before the battle that the other side said that their cammies make them look fat.
But since they not only can’t, but likely never will, due to simple inconquerable physical differences, be able to do the job, the kindest thing to do would be to split their rations and ammo amongst everyone else who can do it, and send the G.I. Janes to the rear, defined as anywhere between Seattle and Savannah.

But maybe while the men are gone to war, that s.o.b. master sergeant at base ops will finally have soldiers who can clean, wax, mop, and dust a barracks well enough to get him to STFU.


UPDATE 2017:
I'm saving this here, as a mark of respect for what it meant to me, and from whom, in case the original ever goes away:

http://weaponsman.com/?p=7709

Sort of OT: We love our commenters

We have had a lot of good commenters, and sometimes one turns out to have his own blog, which is usually a little treasure of clever baubles.

Yesterday, “Aesop” launched a rant of remarkable clarity and vision into our (actually briefer and less well documented) latest rant on the Pentagon suit-and-brass-club’s brain-damaged push for women in infantry. This is a development that will work no good to women nor to the infantry. Despite that, it’s eagerly awaited by the mercifully small but large and loud bull-dyke subset of the set of extreme careerist Academy graduates (as if a small number of weaselly Academy men didn’t have any such requirement for rank-ascending weasels 100% covered, to the irritation of the actual mission-focused Academy folkss).
It was not the first such comment that he left us. We commented that he ought to blog himself, although we didn’t say what we were thinking, which was along the lines of “Dang. That’s a better post than the one we wrote.”

To which Aesop replied that he already is a blogger, over here at Raconteur Report. And so we went and looked. He did indeed extend his comment into a blog post so that many more people, we hope, will read his wise words. He also, though he doesn’t post on a schedule, has some very entertaining and characteristically well-written tales; he doesn’t abuse the term “raconteur” in the least. We particularly liked the previous post, a story of… well, let’s just say entrepreneurship in the shadow of mighty Hollywood. It brought a tear to our eye.
And then there were a couple of stories of wildlife encounters whilst serving in the Marines. Damn, the guy can tell a peacetime war story. We’re still grinnin’ — and still readin’. Raconteur Report. Highly recommended. Not too heavy on guns, but there’s attitude enough to cover ya.

This entry was posted in Administrivia on March 15, 2013 by Hognose.

If You Give A Mouse A Cookie

A sunny morning in Southern California finds me enjoying a lovely breakfast burrito (wait, scrambled eggs, bacon, potatoes, cheese, ham chunks, and a dash of salsa to open my eyes, and I can WALK AROUND WITH IT? I'm THERE!), and visiting with two of the local constables sitting on their motors, as my crew is going about on Day Twenty-Two of our little excursion into screen production, in yet another nice neighborhood location.

It's sunny, the birds are singing, we aren't blowing anything up, so other than supplying sunscreen, and the occasional Tums or Tylenol for minor maladies in lieu of the sufferer having to visit the local pharmacy, I should be able to enjoy a rather pleasant working day. If we use the term "working" rather loosely where I'm concerned.

And then, to disturb the karmic joy of it all, a battered little riceburner pickup, loaded with suitable lawnmowers, leafblowers, and various other well-worn accoutrements for lawn and yard care pulls up right in the middle of the planned next shot, and its occupants exit and begin to unload various gas-powered implements of disturbance, and fire same up to begin trimming the lawn.

Obviously, when you're trying to do dialogue shots, this a problem for the soundtrack, so in short order, the constables and I observe the locations manager sprinting at full speed for his years towards the operators of said machinery, with one hand already reaching for his wallet. No doubt, with a view towards suggesting to...let's call them Hose A and Hose B...that perhaps for $50 they might consider doing their next day's stops today, and returning here tomorrow, with this small token of our esteem to compensate them for the inconvenience. Usually, it works like a charm, which is why it's the standard operating procedure.

Unfortunately for the two Hoses, whatever one thinks of police officers, they in general, and motor officers in particular, tend to have a recollection like elephants when it suits them.

Which is why Officer Joe turned to Officer Steve, and observed, "Hey, isn't that the same p.o.s. pickup that pulled up on that shoot we covered last week on the other side of town?"

Whereupon Officer Steve, like myself enjoying the wonders of a movable feast that is the well-constructed breakfast burrito, lowered his gaze over his de rigeur mirrored sunglasses to the offending vehicle and allowed that yes, it did in fact look awfully familiar.

And then Officers Joe and Steve strolled over to where Hose A and Hose B were just about to the point in the conversation where they would receive the photograph of President Grant, embossed in finely etched detail upon the official notepaper of the Federal Reserve.

"Just a moment there, Mr. Location Manager, we seem to recall meeting the Hoses here. Weren't you, in fact, the same gentlemen that got paid to not mow a lawn over in Calabasas yesterweek? And in fact, come to think of it, weren't you also paid not to mow lawns on a shoot last month in Brentwood? As a matter of fact, isn't 60 miles across town quite a wide swath of territory for two operators of such a...humble...vehicle as you now possess? You guys must be mowing every lawn in the city!"

After a moment's pause, and a mutual shrug, Hose B spilled the beans. No, they really didn't mow lawns hereabouts. And yes, that was probably them in Brentwood, and Calabasas, and so on.

Cue the sound of Location manager's wallet slamming shut, followed by the sound of his heels clacking in the distance.

Turns out the Hoses were, at some point in the murky past, actual landscape gardeners, and pretty diligent ones at that. And then, one fortuitous day, another location manager on another show had given them $50 to beat it, at a house they were actually supposed to maintain. So they did, in fact rearrange their personal weekly schedule, split the $50, with neither their clients nor their boss any the wiser. And then, as it usually does, greed weaseled into their mercenary little hearts. Because yet another time, on yet another day, another location manager on another show slipped them another $50 for the same consideration.

Realizing they had somehow stumbled onto the lost City of Gold, these two geniuses concocted a fabulous plan. Instead of sweating all day actually mowing lawns and shovelling sh..., er rose fertilizer, Hose A and Hose B decided the path to wealth beyond the dreams of mortal men could be theirs, by simply driving around, finding the herd of white semi-trailers, RV trailers, orange cones, yellow signs, and general confusion that signified the Official Hollywoodland Circus And Travelling Freakshow was in town. And then, driving into the middle of the confusion, firing up the mowers and weedblowers, and waiting for the nice but harried gentleman nearby to rush over, introduce himself, and slip them another $50 to go away.

Which is exactly what they proceeded to do.

Filming all over town was booming then, and in short order, they'd rack up 5 or 6 different shows, easily doubling what they were making by actually working, and call it a day. And they'd set out again the next day and repeat the whole process. They'd been doing it for...well, they'd been doing it for so long, they didn't want to say just how long. But clearly, this wasn't their first effort.

The only fly in their buttermilk turned out to be the elephantine recollection of two motor cops, and the fact that the number of retired and off-duty guys who do that work hovers around at less than 100, most of the time. So the law of averages finally closed the long overdue trap firmly around their hindquarters.

Pleased at this rather rapid coming to Jesus behavior, Officers Joe and Steve took pity upon the Hoses.

"So here's the deal guys. We have your names, and your license plate. We're putting out notice with our boss, and the location managers' jungle telegraph, and if either of you two show up looking for a handout in this city again in your lifetimes, we'll see that you get well and properly prosecuted for fraud, extortion, public nuisance, immigration violations, no business license, and a broken rear taillight. And THEN we'll get medieval on you. Because we have 8000 friends who all write traffic tickets for a living. Comprende, amigos?"

And then profuse and heartfelt thankings were exchanged, for as long as it took Hose A and Hose B to load up their mowers, get in their truck, and quickly and lawfully exit the area.

I hope they got their old jobs back without too much trouble.

But given their obvious talents and how this town works, they're probably working for a major film or recording studio as producers.

Falklands Vote

 “Do you wish the Falkland Islands to retain their current political status as an Overseas Territory of the United Kingdom?”

Yes                                              1514
No                                                     3


Thus leaving Falklands Spring Break 2 as the only way Argentina's getting its hands on Las Islas Malvinas.

So they can either endure another epic military smackdown, or decide to go back to trying to fix their far-beyond-f****d-over economy, which has the novelty of never being the default option in most regimes where "generals" who've never won a war in living memory have more decorations on them than the Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center.

Night Raid

Las Pulgas Area, 1980something
(Yet another month or two after the last time)

If you read the previous two installments, no points for guessing who had the duty on a balmy midsummer Friday night.

For some reason, the Gunny hadn't given me orders to kill anything this time, which was a disappointment to my cold green amphibious heart, but at the same time, made for a far less stressful stint of making sure everything stayed quiet and peaceful with most of the adult supervision away for the weekend.

There were other Duty nights when I had to be the Bad Guy, and inform a couple of crestfallen young lance corporals that NO, they weren't allowed to bring their sleazy hookers scantily-clad girlfriends into their 4-man room, not leastly because they were dumb enough to let me catch them sneaking them in, which meant they would probably be dumb enough to let the OD or worse catch them sneaking them out. Tactical lessons are where you find them, and they lost that battle.

There was the time I'd had to break up a fight between a beat-down Marine, who'd acquired a pick handle and done quite a spiffy job of avenging himself on one of the four guys who'd jacked him up, "by mistake" it later came out. A gaggle of ambulances and MPs later, that was sorted out.

But this wasn't one of those nights.

Even at midnight, the air was warm, it was a perfect weekend, and the only sound outside was crickets, and the occasional far-off yips and howls of coyotes prowling somewhere in the distance among the surrounding hills.

All I had to do was keep anyone from stealing the 400-foot-long building until 6 AM, and I could sleep in while my assistant watched over the place for the rest of the day.

So just past midnight, I took a walk around the battery area to make sure no one had violated the sanctity of the supply warehouse, the battalion aid station, and finally the armory. The guards there were perfection personified, the midnight relief had gone off flawlessly, and I returned to the battery office to finish out the night with a stack of Louis L'Amour novels and military correspondence courses.

On my way back, I was passing by the trash dumpsters.

Now, military dumpsters aren't like civilian dumpsters, exactly. They stand about 3' taller, thus they hold more trash. The flapping top is way too high to access, so trash is dumped in through two sliding doors on either side, about chest high, and 2 feet square each. Then you close the doors, to keep the trash and the smell inside. That's the theory.

But as I approach, I hear the sound of someone digging through the garbage.
After midnight.
In the dark.

Oh great. SomedumbMarine has probably thrown away his watch/I.D. card/sweetheart's torrid semi-porno love letter by mistake, and in a drunken frenzy, he's trying to locate it by Braille.

Just what I want to deal with at literally oh-dark-thirty at night, a desperate trash-covered drunken Marine private.

So I approach the open hatch on the side I'm closest to, and say to whoever's inside, "Hey what the f---...  !"

I mentioned it's dark, right? Like as in, there's a couple of outside lights on the building half a block away, and a streetlight half a block the other way, but the trash bin is by its lonesome in the middle of a big dark area, on a night with no moon, and the inside of the bin is even darker.

But I'm young, and gradually, the information transmitted from the rods and cones of my retinas starts to take shape in my brain, revealing in slow motion an unfamiliar camouflage pattern, which I finally work out is wearing a black mask, staring right at me in frozen astonishment, and belonging to about 50 pounds of raccoon, just about 3 feet from my head and chest.

Time halts, while with the speed of supercomputers, my brain further informs me that:
I have no gun
I have no stick
I'm standing absolutely flat-footed
I'm between the raccoon and its freedom
I don't speak raccoon
Anything spry enough to leap up to a 5 foot high opening could vault the 3 feet to my face like Spiderman on crack
Raccoons are crazy mad when cornered
Raccoons have sharp fangs and claws
Raccoons are sometimes rabid
I'm probably going to either die a horrible rabies death, or be clawed and maimed for life about the face and neck,and become the base laughingstock, somewhere in the next 2 seconds
I didn't sign up for this shit
There's not a damned thing I can do about it

Mind you, my life didn't flash before me. I didn't crap my cammies nor wet my drawers.
I didn't panic, and I didn't freeze.

I just wondered how in the wide world all this was going to work out, and when, because I was over it about a heartbeat after I realized I'd stepped in it.

And then, about a heartbeat after the info-dump to my situation hit my brain, the biggest damned raccoon I'd ever seen hissed once, jumped out the open door, hit the ground with a palpable thud, and waddled off across the parking lot at what, for 50-pound racoons, was probably something approaching ninja-speed.

NOW the adrenaline-fueled dry mouth fight-or-flight rush hit me.

"M-----f-----," I quietly swore at the retreating ring-tailed little terrorist.
And to preclude a repeat engagement another time, I reached over and slammed the near-side sliding access door firmly closed with a good hard metallic clang.

Whereupon a far bigger raccoon jumped out of the other side open sliding door, and ran even faster to catch up with his friend, now making a beeline to the drainage culvert that led under the main road, the woodlands across it, and freedom.

I felt around in the gravel nearby, and threw everything I could claw out of the ground at the receding furry little bastards. Then walloped the dumpster hard and loud to make good and certain this wasn't any more of a clowncarnucopia of garbage thieves.

After a decent interval and no additional threats to my life or health, I slammed the other side door shut too, and let my heart rate ease back down into second gear.

"Davy Crockett should've made your great-grandparents into hats back in 1830 when he had the chance!" I muttered.

And then, relieved that no one had witnessed my near-death experience, I quickly and smartly slunk back to the battery office, closed the door, and occupied myself with tales of the Sacketts and the intricacies of the M249 SAW until sun-up.

Never get out of the f-----g boat! Absolutely g--d----d right.

Lesson learned: there's nothing in regulations that says I can't carry a pick handle and a flashlight after dark. And the next guy I catch leaving the hatch open to the dumpster after emptying his trash is going to get skinned, so help me Chesty Puller.

Hose Job

Las Pulgas Area, 1980something
(a couple of months after the last time...)

It's another fine day in the Corps, every day a holiday, every meal a feast.
Except that they forget to tell me that every other month means I've got the Duty. And invariably, on a weekend.

So, naturally, owing to my superior job performance last time, Battery Gunny drops another tactical exercise on me before we secure for the weekend.

"Water that lawn."

"Lawn" is a charitable description. What it is, is a pair of scraggly 6 foot wide by 100 yard long strips between the building and the parking lot on each side, with random patches of grass, and a couple of dozen ankle-twisting gopher holes. Included among their random casualties on more than one occasion has been yours truly.

"But Gunny, it's full of gopher holes."

"Yeah. Do what you can about that, too."

And after Fredo's got the pole in his hand, and he's looking the other way, see that he doesn't make it back to the dock.

"Aye aye, Gunny."

"Problem: Given a patch of lunar landscape, a tactical unit, comprised of one NCO, and equipped with 100' of rubber hose, a shovel, and a pressurized water supply, will clear enemy bunkers, and hold and improve the position IAW commander's intent until relieved."

And hey, I'd seen Caddyshack. Unfortunately, no C-4 and blasting machines.
So instead, I deployed the hose. Found a nice big hole, snaked 3-4' of hose into it, and let rip with the pressure. Then went to the Duty office to catch up on letter-writing.

When I came out to survey my domain an hour later, water has percolated up out of three other holes, and is now starting to drain onto the parking area. As I'm picking out a new complex, I catch sight of my elusive prey: the Varmint Cong!

I finish my next deployment of hose and fire it up, then retrieve a shovel from the supply locker.

Victor Charles is stretched out prone, looking rather waterlogged. And, I swear to Buddha, doing the cartoon-approved "Kaff! Kaff!" of every near-drowning victim in every cartoon from Chip and Dale to Bugs Bunny ever made. Like a wet little house pet with a hairball. So, apparently, gophers don't have gills. Pity, that. I cock back with the shovel to make gopher pate, and just as my swing is at the apex, a voice from behind me says,
"What are you doing?"

It's Sgt. Fiveminutestoolate, famous platoon guide who's always brilliant, just a bit tardy with his pearls of wisdom. In this case, in his liberty attire, heading out for the weekend.

"Oh, just taking care of the First Sergeant's gopher problem, Sgt." I reply non-chalantly.

"Well, don't get caught. The base game wardens from Provost Marshall's Office will cite the unit and skin you alive they find out you're dispatching wildlife on post. Everything's protected except mosquitoes."

"You're $#!^^ing me."

"Nope. Gospel truth. They take that tree-hugging noise pretty serious at Base HQ."

Son of a...! After the Mouse Massacre, I don't need any more heart-to-heart chats with First Sergeant. And yet, they told me to get rid of the gopher problem. So clearly, it's time to deploy Initiative, Judgement, and Integrity to solve this little poser.

Meanwhile, Mister Charles is drying off a bit, and getting a bit friskier as he coughs up most of that delicious base tap water I was putting out for him to drink, Officer, I swear. So I decide that, like the Forest Service on the Wonderful World of Disney, if I can't dispatch the unruly bears, I'll transplant them. In this instance, just across the road.

Our side, the west side, of the road, is nothing but barracks, warehouses, parade field, chow hall, armory, and all the other stuff we need to kill people and break things when so ordered. But the east side of the road, just across the street, is boundless square miles of gopher paradise.

So instead of rendering Victor Charles into crow bait, I gently scoop him up with the business end of the long shovel, walk him across the road, and deposit him daintily on a nice piece of real estate, safe and sound, and freshly laundered.

PMO's duly appointed Game Wardens can now officially eat me.

An hour later, 5 more holes are bubbling over like Jed Clampett's pool of crude. And two more relatives of Mister Charles are doing the land crawl. Once again, I scoop up the furry little bastards and drop them off on their new homeland to the east. I note that Mr. Charles has already made a hasty escape, and is not where I left him.

By dark, all the holes have percolated with a satisfying fullness. And I've made half a dozen trips across the road with about a dozen gophers, killing not a blessed one, ye minions of stupidity, note it well!

Lacking a body count, and suitably warned off in my prior encounter with the First Sergeant, no entry was made in the duty logs outside the normally expected prose.

But when 1600 Saturday rolled around, all the gopher holes had been filled in, and the grass median was as flat as a billiard table. Seeding it can be some other schmuck's problem, but at least I'll never twist another ankle coming and going to morning PT in the dark.

Mission accomplished, Gunny.
In fact, the little freeloaders got a bath and free drinks, courtesy of me and Uncle Sam.
So I guess I could report that the gopher's quarters were given a proper Field Day.
And no godless communist bastard gophers were harmed in the making of this post.

Repel Boarders

Las Pulgas Area, 1980something

It's a Friday afternoon, it's a beautiful spring weekend in Southern California, I have money, a hot car, and a hot girlfriend less than an hour's drive away.

Except despite being the most senior NCO in grade, I'm also the newest NCO in unit, meaning when the duty roster came out, guess who drew Duty NCO?

Saigon. Shit. I prayed for a mission, and for my sins, they gave it to me.
And after this one, I'd never want another one.

Battery Gunny pulls me aside after Friday liberty call formation, and says to me, "Corporal, the Skipper and the First Sergeant have a problem. The Battery office space is infested by a bunch of free-loading mice. I got some traps and some bait, and I want you to get rid of those mice while you're Duty NCO. Clear?"

"Aye aye, Guns. I'm on it. Consider it done."

Strapping on my shiny and well-utilized cartridge belt, with suitably flawless polished eagle, globe and anchor insignia, I strut right into the company offices, and relieve the lucky SOB sergeant who gets a full weekend off. He hands me the log book, duty roster, and a paper sack, courtesy of Guns.

"The mice are probably coming in through here," he points to a hole in the drywall, about the size of a dime, at the floorboard. "Good luck, and good hunting."

Full disclosure: I'm a city boy. Big yard, lots of time in the woods, but the only mice I've seen are either white, for snake food at the pet store, or black, large, and supervising festivities about 50 miles north, at a big castle next to the Matterhorn in Anaheim.

Number one, this is a new barracks, Steel, and concrete. So I'm wondering WTF a bunch of mice are doing in a brand new building.
Number two, that hole is way too small for a mouse. I know this because I know nothing about mice except a lifetime of Tom and Jerry cartoons, and how in real life they're the all-time ninjas of the home. Especially when the home is built on the middle of 200 square miles of fairly pristine Southern California chapparral and scrub oak environment. With a decided lack of housecats or snakes in the building to winnow their numbers.

Ours not to reason why, I look around the offices, sans CO or First Sgt. If I'm going to "take charge of this post and all government property in view," by God, I'll do it right!
I move a couple of filing cabinets, and lo and behold, there's two more holes, one of them with mouse turds and freshly nibbled sheetrock around it. Gotcha, you little rodents!

I open the bag left by Guns.
Half a dozen Victor mousetraps, and a packet of MRE peanut butter. "Geez, that stuff kills grown men. Why bother with the mouse traps, that's just piling on." I think to myself. But orders are orders, so I deploy my weaponry, applying a squirt of (government alleged) peanut butter to the triggers, and place my little Claymore minefield ambush around each hole, two traps per hole, one on each side.

I go back to the phone in the front office where the Duty is supposed to sit, knowing that this'll never amount to anything, and why doesn't Guns know that mice eat cheese, so he should have gotten me
SNAP!

I go back to the Ambush Zone, survey my trap line, and sure enough, smacked asunder, sits one fat stinking mouse. And the little sumbitch didn't even get any peanut butter. I unspring the trap, dropping his dead carcass into the trash, reset the catch and redeploy my M1 Mousetrap as per before. I flip the lights off, sit back down in my chair and open the duty log to
SNAP!
SNAP!

WTF?! I get back up, turn the lights in the back room on again, and sure enough, note two more casualties, one still reflexively twitching. Another trip to the trash, plus replacing the displaced bait, and back down they go. I figure this ought to do it for the night, three holes, three mice, so now I can make a quick trip to my room to fetch that new Tom Clancy novel about the submarine I've been meaning to read
SNAP! SNAP! SNAP! SNAP!

Okay, someone's f*****g with me here. Back to the kill zone, and amazingly, four sprung traps, three fresh kills. Either one got away, or one of them tripped two traps for the price of one body.
Back to the trash, then the bait, then reset.

I make it out of the office this time, get the book, and come back.
Just to be safe, I check the trapline, but everything's still set.
Checking my watch, I note it's near the hour, so I make the obligatory entry in the book, noting the details of conditions and results for future generations. Normally, this amounts to a terse and straightforward block-printed entry like
"1700. BATTERY AREA ALL SECURE." which repeats endlessly back in time and presumably, through volume after volume, at every command Marine Corps-wide, since they wore tri-corner hats and carried flintlocks on sailing ships.
But not today. I make my notations, and go back to my novel.

The night wears on. Every hour I make a circuit of the area, to make sure the concrete building hasn't been stolen or burned down. Every 4 hours I check on the Armory guards, the Supply warehouse, the parking area, etc. Swap visits to chow with my similarly screwed assistant, a lance corporal. And, with a random regularity, answer the decreasing but steady patter of trap snaps.

All goes to plan, trading duty back and forth with my assistant, and checking my ambush zone, until I hand the whole deal over to the guy stuck with the next day's duty, at 1600 Saturday.

I enjoy my abbreviated weekend, and return safely back to base. After standing formation Monday, word is passed that I'm to report to the Battery First Sergeant ASAP.

"Reporting as ordered, First Sergeant."

Standing at ease in the prescribed position of parade rest, my hawk-eyed peripheral vision detects that the First Sgt. has the duty logbook in front of him.

"You had duty Friday night and Saturday, Corporal?"

"Yes, First Sergeant."

"You maintained the duty log during that time?"

"Yes, First Sergeant."

"And what about all that?"

"First Sergeant, the Battery Gunny told me that you and the CO wanted the mice in the office spaces gone."

"Yes, so we did, and so they seem to be. So you were the one who recorded, among the other similar entries, quote '0600 - AMBUSH SUCCESSFUL, 27 GODLESS COMMUNIST MICE KIA, NO FRIENDLY CASUALTIES, ALL WEAPONS DEPLOYED AND OPERATIONAL, WILL REQUIRE BAIT RESUPPLY BEFORE DUSK, BATTERY AREA ALL SECURE.' unquote?"

"Yes, First Sergeant."

"Well done. They were shittin' all over the office and messin' up my paperwork and reports. Really pissed me off. That's some funny shit too. But the CO reads the logbook every workday, and the Colonel looks all the logs over once or twice a month. Don't ever do that again. Understand?"

"Aye aye, First Sergeant!"

"Dismissed."

And that was all that was ever said about the Las Pulgas Mouse Massacre.
I figure it's been long enough that the federal statute of limitations on crimes against the legions of Mousitania has expired, but if I'm mistaken, and they drag me in, I'm pretty sure to the best of my recollection that I was acting on direct telephonic orders from CIA Director William Casey by way of Lt. Col. Ollie North.

But never underestimate the power of MRE peanut butter to inflict casualties.

Reality Check

There has been lately a lot of blogging regarding "lone wolves" as survivors, and pointing out the tough row to hoe that individuals will face as opposed to those who group up.

It's all true.

It will be tough.

But for a variety of reasons, I'm currently in the solo category. I'm not married, and what relatives I have are scattered geographically, and not likely to be very preparedness-minded. That last not due to any failure on my part to drop some rather clear hints.

Consequently, should some variety of Zombiepocalypse befall us collectively, or myself regionally, I will almost certainly be one of those one-man bands.

And lately, along with historically every other week, a constant theme from the gun-rich and brain- and supply-poor variety of prepper/survivalist, is the expressed plan to be "comin' to  your house when times get tough", presuming on either my good nature or your overwhelming force to share or take what's mine.

So let's cut the crap, and get right down to the hog-killing.

If you - and that means anyone to whom it applies - come knocking on my door, or sniffing around Camp Snoopy, after the balloon goes up, you can look forward to a quick death, and a decent burial. I may even say a few words over you after the ground's tamped down.

If you're really, really lucky, surrender immediately, and I take pity, you can look forward to leaving in your socks and underpants, minus anything you had in your hand or on your person, and walking away with your lives and your skins, and just about nothing else. As Ving Rhames said to Bruce Willis at the end of Pulp Fiction, "Your privileges here are revoked."

But the odds are that if you're desperate enough to come try to take my stuff, you won't be leaving, and neither will anyone with you. Better OPSEC, and no lost sleep wondering who else you'd tell. So I'd rather dig your grave than mine.

I don't tell anyone what I do or don't have, or where it is, and at this point, nobody but me knows where Camp Snoopy is. Thus anyone there uninvited is presumed guilty from the get-go.

Now multiply me by the number of people out there who haven't formed their own SF A-team, and who'll treat you the same way.

That's the gauntlet the yahoos and jacktards will be facing. Come the day, you and your method will be indistinguishable from that of the "golden horde" of refugees, and any number of Mutant Biker Zombies who think ordinary folks can be run like cattle. You'll find your intended prey has invested long on ammunition and short on pity and mercy, to your own hazard.

I'm here to tell you, it ain't going to work out like you planned, and your stuff will be available to pass out to those both brighter and more self-reliant, after you're dead and gone.

And it may come to pass that eventually, someone, or some group of someones will have more badassery on hand than I do, and the same fate will befall me. But by then, rest assured that you'll be history,which dictates that the first thing that happens after that is you won't give a damn.

Hence I would earnestly advise, for anyone mulling over the prospects of becoming a land pirate, that you consider soberly the option to make a better plan now, or else get really comfortable with the sooner-rather-than-later likelihood of going to be with your deceased relatives should you elect to go rogue.

I will have no compunction whatsoever at thinning the herd and culling humanity of someone so reprobate and morally vacuous, come the day.

Certified Rat Assassins

So I'm working for a movie-of-the-week, and this day we're in a really sterling location in downtown, in a vacant building that deserves to be vacant. All the working trucks are parked in the alley in back. We're shooting nights, so we get there just before dusk for an all-night funfest.

And it just happens that the location is right across the alley from the local downtown Taco Bell, who have their dumpster out back. Our alley hits another one in a T, so from the back loading dock, you can see for blocks across downtown.

Everything's going fine, I'm outside grabbing a soda from the craft service truck, and it's maybe 9 or 10 PM. All of a sudden, there's the most ear-shattering scream, and it's coming from one of the 40-footer trucks.

Everyone goes running to the sound, and it turns out that it was one of the special effects assistants, in this case also the girlfriend of the son of the effects master. The male assistant, his boss/dad, his uncle, and their long-time friend, all come thundering out along with a number of other crew members to see what's going on.

The victim calms down enough, and Papa EFX asks her "What happened?"

"It...it was...was a...a big, black...RAT!!!" she sobs out between shudders."Over in THAT dumpster!"

Most of the crew, notified that a rat(!) has been sighted in an alley downtown, yawn, turn away and go back to work.

But not the EFX Family. This is a matter of the Family's honor.

"There, there, babygirl. We'll take care of that nasty old rat, and he'll never bother you again."

Whereupon they all retire to the bowels of the EFX truck. In about 2 minutes, they come out armed for Ratmageddon.

"Hey, Doc, can you point this over there when we're ready?" asks Papa EFX, as he hands me a bazillion-power handheld floodlight.

"Sure, just say when."

We're all standing on the liftgate of the EFX truck, about 5 ft. off the ground, and right across from a Taco Bell dumpster brimming over with piles of the greasy leftovers and trashbag detritus piled up to the top by the dining room cleaners. Grease and salsa literally leak out the bottom through holes, and pool underneath the thing on the asphalt below.

Looking like the Wild Bunch, the EFX family are standing shoulder to shoulder, with me off to the side next to them on the left.

"Okay Doc, hit it!"

I switch on the handheld equivalent of the Bat-signal, and there, in the spotlight, sits Our Villain. And he doesn't even act like we're a threat to his dinner. He's about to find out how wrong he is.

"Open fire!" sez Papa.
All four of them open up with a barrage of paintball guns, all loaded to the brim with spark hits. These are special pellets that make a bright flash when they hit anything, to simulate sparks during gunfire. Well, somewhere in the fusillade, Rat Fink takes a bullseye, and dives into the dumpster with a soprano squeal of sheer rat-terror.

A momentary explosion of laughter is uttered by the Wild Bunch, until about two seconds later, it becomes clear that the squeal is apparently not just an exclamation of Rat Fink terror, it's also evidently the rodent equivalent for "Everyone! Get the **** out of here NOW!" because right then easily 80 rats, all bigger than Rat Fink, come boiling up out of the smorgasbord of grease-laden Taco Bell delights, bounce out of the dumpster, and hit the alley at a dead stampede.

I swing the light onto the new targets, and what ensues next can only be described as a rat-hater's wet dream in a target-rich environment. Spark hits are smacking the rats silly, knocking them over again and again, but not killing them, further terrifying the herd, and driving them in a tsunami of rodentia. They bounce off dumpsters and brick walls on all sides, until finally by process of elimination, they hit upon the open alley to the north, and begin scampering thataway at a ferocious speed as fast as their little legs can carry them.

And the Wild Bunch all have 200-round hoppers of spark hits, and they're going hog-wild, like this is The Matrix, and Neo and Trinity have hit the lobbyful of Agents. In this case, Agent Rat.

Like a strobe light on crack, the sparks fly, the rats bounce, tumble in a maelstrom of tails, fur, and little feet, pick themselves up, and scamper on in a full-tilt panic-stricken frenzy, until, some multiple dozens of yards away, they are finally safely out of range of the Wild Bunch's aim. Which is just as well, because after loosing off hundreds of shots, most of which connected, they're almost all out of ammo, and the laughing they're doing is degrading their accuracy severely.

"There ya go, baby, those rats won't bother you any more, okay?" says Papa EFX.

I'm in tears, and my sides hurt, as I hand them back the nuclear-powered flashlight.

I've never been a Forward Observer for Certified Rat Assassins before, and I'll never forget this mission. That smell...that flash powder smell. Nothing smells like that.
It smells like...victory.

Jumping The Shark

Working in the dream business is far more, and far less, than outsiders imagine.

The Magic usually comes when the nice person from Accounting comes by on Thursdays with the shoe box full of paychecks for all the good little girls and boys.
The Glamour is working on Skid Row at 3AM in the rainin January, freezing, so that some genius idea will sell more self-sealing diapers or some other dubious widget.

You might think that would inhibit the number of hamsters seeking entry to the Tinseltown Habitrail set-up, but you'd be sorely mistaken in that assumption.

Friend of mine was undergoing preparation for the upcoming Glamour one afternoon, preparatory to an all-night shoot near Skid Row. Like most of my species, he was standing by and minding his own business, and trying to stay out of the way while the working crew was moving heavy things.

So naturally, with a radio and an earpiece, he's the first one approached by Local Homeless Guy, with the obligatory purloined shopping cart full of random sacks of detritus in various stages of purulence.

But this guy was a true one-of-a-kind. He wasn't looking for a handout, he wanted a job.

Whereupon my friend pointed him towards one of the assistant directors doing the cellphone parade on the nearby sidewalk. My friend, being both bored, and astonished at the prospect of witnessing a panhandler with both a potentially marketable skill and the desire to use it gainfully, tagged along within earshot to hear the following conversation.

"Hey, are you guys looking for any extras?"

"Sorry buddy, this is a union shoot. SAG only." replied the AD, thinking he'd dodged the bullet.

Without missing a beat, Homeless Guy says, "No problem, I'm in the Screen Actors' Guild."
Then goes pawing through a voluminous pile of miscellaneous paperwork in the upper basket of his buggy, and produces his current valid SAG membership card, paid in full through the rest of the year.

"Yeah, I've got my resume here somewhere, I worked a lot on a lot of cop shows, I usually play a homeless guy, I have all my props (we know, we can smell them - ed. ) but if you need a business man I've got a suit and a briefcase in here too, and I can do a lot of other looks." Picture Michael Keaton's interviewing with Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis in Beetlejuice and you've got the scene pegged to a T. It really is pure brilliance: why pay yuppies to get dressed and made up as homeless people, when you can just be a homeless person and get paid for the gig? And we do a catered lunch!

AD shifts back into professional-to-professional mode. "Uh, okay, thanks, we're all crewed up, everyone showed, so we won't be needing anyone else today. Sorry."

Homeless Guy says, "No problem, I understand. I was just specking*." And he moves along with Whatever He Was Doing Before He Saw The Bright Lights And Big White Trucks.

And the AD mutters towards no one in particular in his retreat to the safety of the magic circle of Hollywoodland back on the set, "Geezus, even the BUMS in this town are SAG."

Which may not be one of the Four Horseman of The Apocalypse, but it's definitely a precursor ingredient. Just remember that when you're looking at anything on TV or film that isn't a live shoot in public, when you think that anybody within sight of the camera "just happened to be passing by" anywhere you (or rather, the cameras) could see.







*(Standing around "on spec" is what desperate extras do for the merest chance of about $50 for the day and a bologna sandwich box lunch when a shoot needs 50 of something, on the hope that their route to the Oscars will begin when only 49 of the ballerinas or bald guys in tuxedos booked with casting agencies will actually show up for a shoot on time, and they're hired by the desperate/thankful production staff on the spot, so as not to disturb the director's/producers/ad agency's delicate karma and harmonic balance.
The frightening thing is that in L.A., you could crew up anything from a restaurant to a coup at City Hall at minimum wage simply by pretending to be a movie shoot, and pointing a camera at the proceedings. You could get 500 ninjas, or a fully-staffed 5-star restaurant, as long as you looked like a movie, provided props and wardrobe, and catered a lunch for everyone after 6 hours. If Al Queda wanted to really mess with this town, they wouldn't establish sleeper cells, they'd open a production company and start casting for "Airport 2014".)

Lesson Twenty: Prevention - Pack Light

"An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure."

Uh, yeah. And then some.

Goggles weigh 8 ounces. We're still working on the prosthetic eyes.

A watch cap, wooly pully, fresh socks, and fire starting kit weigh a pound, maybe two. A casket weighs about 80 pounds.

Carry your survival kit. I repeat, carry your survival kit. I repeat, carry your survival kit.
Pocket tin, less than a pound.
Belt kit, couple of pounds.
Casket, 80 pounds.

Your body is overwhelmingly water.
A bottle of water purification tabs weighs a couple of ounces.
A 5-star water purification pump or desalinating pump weighs a couple of pounds.

I can fix your shrapnel to the eye, sucking chest wound, broken arms and legs, traumatic head injury, dehydration, hypothermia, and shock a lot better if it never happens because you didn't break 27 safety guidlines, than if I have to start using an ambulance-load of Secret Medic Ninjitsu on all your little screw-ups.

It's a well-documented fact, that in the wilderness and in combat, the vast majority of all casualties are caused by a loose nut behind the trigger. Tighten yourself up, and safety-wire that thing, before you hurt yourself.

Wear your helmets, your seatbelts, your vests, both life- and bullet-resistant-, your goggles, your earplugs/muffs.
Do all the do's and avoid all the don'ts somebody smarter than you told you about.
Like the Doc told the cherry grunts in "Hamburger Hill", "If you want to get out of this place alive, you will listen to people who know!"

Yeah, you're a candyass, sugar-coated killer. You're also not blind, deaf, and all jacked up after the plane crashes/boat sinks/IED goes off/zombies attack.

Which means as the dust settles and the screaming starts, you can help be part of the solution, instead of part of the problem.
You can return fire conscious, instead of soaking up incoming fire as you lay there knocked out.
You can go home to your friends and family and kids and hobbies, instead of being hauled out in a plastic bag, or strung up from a bridge by your gonads, or getting a wreath tossed over the side because they couldn't find the body after the sharks and crabs ate it.

Any of those things might happen anyways, but if it does, you'll at least have had a chance.
If I was going to get thrown into a pit with a bear no matter what, and they asked whether I wanted a spear and a knife, or nothing, I know which option I'd chose. And it wouldn't be nothing but the firm resolve to taste very bad.

There are two certainties in life. The first is that any number of things in the big bad universe are trying to end yours, with no malice aforethought, simply the cold, unyielding facts of physics, the laws of nature, and random chance, and exactly zero regard for what a splendid all-around human being you are. Rocks don't fall on only bad people, and tigers and sharks express no preference for jerks over stand-up folks. Crocodiles snack on heathens and missionaries with equal relish.

So your good looks, sense of humor, and busy social register won't cut you any slack in the back of beyond, and you shouldn't expect it to do so either.

The second rule is that eventually, the Universe is going to win, and you won't be here.
Bring your stuff, follow the rules, and learn and practice what you know how to do, and you can put that day off an amazing amount of time so that by the time it happens, you're old and feeble enough that when Death comes knocking, it'll be a welcome rest and a new adventure, and not you screaming with your last breath that it isn't time to go yet. The former is much more pleasant. And the kicking and screaming almost never avails, because Death's sense of what's right usually has more to do with what you did before things went sideways than what you do afterwards.

So pack a small kit, and an ounce of common sense, and save everyone else having to haul your carcass out feet first.

Lesson Nineteen: Survival Medical Kit

Everybody who's anybody writing about survival has taken a shot at concocting their medical kit for whatever survival-esque scenario one might imagine. Some of them are great, some are at least okay, and some are, to be charitable, rather optimistic.

The kit recommended in Lofty Wiseman's SAS Survival Guide is hard to beat for simplicity, utility, and compactness, even 25 years later.

Tylenol and ibuprofen, for pain relief/fever.
Imodium for diarrhea.
Broad-spectrum antibiotic.
Benadryl - an antihistamine.
Water sterilizing tablets.
Antimalarial prophylaxis meds.
Butterfly bandages.
Band-aids.

He also lists potassium permanganate, which is a PITA to obtain in the U.S., but which has multiple excellent uses.

Note that several other items in his recommended survival kit like the mirror, matches and candle, needle and thread, scalpel/razor blades, magnifying glass, condom, salt and sugar packets, and pen and paper all have medical utility as well, at least secondarily or in extreme situations.

Given more space, I'd add

Neosporin antibacterial spackle.

Old school:{A military field dressing.
                 {A muslin triangular bandage.
                 {A 4" Ace type wrap.
 New School:[Combat Gauze hemostatic dressing.
                    [Israeli 4" bandage
                    [Asherman chest seal.

If I couldn't find the field dressing, a small stack of gauze 4x4s, a 3" gauze wrap, and a roll of medical tape would substitute.

As a rule, you should be able to stuff all of that, or whatever you concoct into something the size of a military 3-magazine pouch for M-16 mags, or something equivalent. (It's about 4x4x9 inches, for reference.) In an emergency, you'll either need a lot less, or a lot more, so that should do for 75% of situations. The other 25%, you won't use it at all, or you'll need to improvise what you don't have, or you're not going to make it no matter what you have. Unfortunate, but true.

If you're thinking about carrying less, when the shortfall becomes apparent, you'll have no one else to blame for your imminent decline except your own short-sightedness.

Don't be that guy.

Lesson Eighteen: TCCC TFC

Following on immediately after Care Under Fire, Tactical Field Care begins whenever things calm down enough to allow this level of care in the field. The fight may be over, there may be a lull, it may re-commence at any moment, and/or you may have a place of security and cover from immediate battlefield actions where secondary care of a casualty or casualties is appropriately rendered. You may have minutes to hours for this phase. Work like it was minutes. The tactical and medical situation may change at any moment, so work your casualties rapidly through the steps, and move on to the next one, and/or re-evaluate the ones you have, with a view towards getting any patients ready for the next, Evacuation, phase of care.

Casualties with an altered mental status should be disarmed immediately, before further care. Rifles, pistols, knives, grenades, pyro and demo. Everything. “Hey buddy, let me hold onto this for you while the doc checks you out” is a good way to approach it with conscious patients. At any rate, it’s embarrassing to have a patient who’s not in his normal state of mind attack your doc or others because you didn’t take away his toys. And if he’s later being evacuated, that gear is going to need to be re-distributed anyway.

TFC starts with M-A-R-C-H. The acronym is broken down as follows:

Massive hemorrhage control. If tourniquet(s) were applied during CUF, drive on. If not, apply any you need to. And if one wasn’t enough, a second CAT may be applied above the first one to control further bleeding from the already once-tourniquetted extremity.

Airway Management

You next want to establish and maintain a patent airway.

Conscious patients, esp. those with trauma to face, jaw, and upper airway, may be able to self-manage by sitting up and leaning forward. Let them.

Unconscious patients get the chin lift jaw thrust maneuver. If that isn’t enough, and they have no facial/airway trauma, deploy the “Nose Hose”, a nasopharyngeal (NP) airway. It looks like a trumpet. Lube it first, slide it into either nostril at a 90 degree angle, twist it into place, and tape it in place. It’s mildly uncomfortable, but tolerated, even by conscious patients. If one nostril won’t take it, try the other side. Don’t force it. Slow is better than trying to ram it in in a hurry. If the patient gags once it’s inserted to the flared end, it’s probably hitting the back of their throat and triggering the gag reflex. Withdraw it slightly, and resecure it.

Once either of these airways are accomplished, assess the patient for adequate breathing.

If both of these fail, the next option is a cricothyroidotomy. Describing this is fine, but you need to review diagrams to understand how to perform this intervention. (And if your patient is still conscious, some injectable lidocaine local anesthetic is a great idea!)

On males, there’s a prominent hump at the Adam’s apple. This is the thyroid cartilage. Just below this, there’s a depression (it’s roughly diamond shaped), then there’s another smaller harder ring, which is the cricoid cartilage. The flat diamond-shaped depression is the intended site for performing a “crike”. After prepping the patient’s skin with Betadine, a sterile scalpel should be used to make a vertical incision (that means from top to bottom) about ½ to ¾ of an inch long. You should be able to insert your gloved finger and/or a hemostat (scissor-looking clamp for non-medical types) to spread the opening slightly. If you have an 6.0 ET tube, insert it. If not, that failed nasal trumpet, or a fresh one, will also work. Once you’ve placed either into the hole, the patient should now have a new way to suck air and blow off CO2 if you did it right. Put some sterile gauze around the outside of the new wound you created to help stop any bleeding, and secure your new airway device with tape to keep it in place.

Place unconscious patients in the recovery position: Rolled onto left side, head resting on extended left arm, right arm and right leg drawn up and across the left limbs. This way, if they vomit, or have blood draining into their airway, they won’t choke on either.

Respiration

Decompress tension pneumothorax. Anyone with penetrating chest or upper back trauma may have an air leak. The lungs work as a closed system. When air leaks in from outside, it gets between the lung and the chest wall, preventing full inflation. Eventually, the lung on the injured side will collapse, with the other lung pulling their airway structures to the better side. This is a tension pneumothorax.

To decompress the built up air inside the chest cavity, insert a 14G 3 ¼ “ needle catheter on the injured side* on the mid clavicular line (an imaginary up-and-down line halfway between the sternum and the shoulder), which is roughly above and slightly outside of the nipple, at the 2^nd intercostal space (over the top of the second rib down from the collarbone). Ribs have their nerves, arteries, and veins in a notch underneath each rib, so by inserting over the top of the 2^nd rib, you won’t hit these structures. The needle goes in at 90 degrees, and not pointed towards the heart. Air and/or fluid and blood may be ejected with pressure when this is done. If you have goggles or other eye protection, pop them on first if you hadn’t already been wearing them. Once the needle is in place, it should allow the trapped air out. Remove the inner metal needle, leaving the hollow tube (the catheter) in place, and tape the hub in place to continue doing its job.

Seal open chest wounds with an occlusive dressing.

So find the original cause of the problem, and apply an Asherman Chest Seal (ACS) or similar device, or an air-occlusive dressing, over the wound(s).

*Note that patients can get wounded on both sides, get tension pneumothorax on both sides, even from one wound, and/or need multiple chest decompressions on the injured side(s) and multiple chest seals/occlusive dressings. All of these are appropriate field medical interventions under combat conditions to prevent treatable causes of death.

Assist breathing/oxygenation.  Place unconscious patients in the recovery position. Conscious patients may wish to sit upright. If you have supplemental oxygen or bag valve masks, serious airway injury patients may require assisted ventilations, from an uninjured/less-injured buddy when possible to allow you to deal with other casualties.

Circulation

Assess any issues with bleeding, and tourniquet and Combat Gauze placement.

Mark the time the tourniquet was applied indelibly on the CAT. A proper tourniquet should completely occlude pulses beyond where it is placed. Don’t loosen tourniquet once applied. Never remove a tourniquet on an amputated limb, or if the casualty is in shock, or if they will get to treatment in 2 hours or less, or if the tourniquet has been in place for 6 hours or longer.

If casualties have torso wounds not suited for treatment with the CAT, now’s the time to break out your Combat Gauze and stuff it into any open wounds. Apply direct pressure for at least 3 minutes once the gauze is applied. Do NOT remove pressure of the gauze to “check” to see if it’s working. You’ll only waste the gauze, and have to re-start the whole process. That'll be a problem if things get sporty again, so do it right the first time.

Once the time is up, observe for continued bleeding. If it continues, more gauze. Then pressure wrap with a field dressing, an Israeli 4” or 6” bandage, and/or ACE wraps or Coban-style self-adhering bandages.

Remember you’re treating notable hemorrhaging, not applying bandaids and 4x4s to superficial wounds at this point.

Any casualties in shock, or seriously at risk for it, like torso GSWs or major wounds, should get IV/IO access and fluids. I’m not covering this here and now, beyond telling you yet again that you need serious training to learn this beyond what a post on the internet can accomplish. Not least of which is the required hands-on supervised practice that can, in a couple of hours, get you to where you could start an IV if you had to, and none of which I can provide online in a blog. TAKE A SERIOUS CLASS.

The takeaway point I can give you is that the best way to treat shock due to blood loss is to prevent the blood loss in the first place. Dumping Hextend and LR into a patient who’s entering shock are a distant second to stopping the bleeding in the first place.

Aggressive early treatment vastly outperforms aggressive late treatment.

Head Injury/Hypothermia

Head injury patients need their O2 saturation maintained at greater than 90%. Whether you’re bagging them, or adding supplemental oxygen, keep their sats up. This is also why you need a pulse oximeter, even one of the $50 specials from the drugstore.

Remove wet clothing, and cover the casualty, top and bottom, to prevent heat loss. Shock and hypothermia are a lethal combination.

Other considerations

Eye trauma

WEAR YOUR FRIGGIN’ EYE PROTECTION, and avoid the problem. For those who didn’t, the injured eye should be covered with a rigid shield (not a pressure dressing, which can squeeze the fluid out of an injured eye and result in  loss of the eye.

Monitor pulse ox in patients with brain injury, major trauma, airway compromise, shock, or unconsciousness or altered mental status. Know that altitude decreases normal sea level pulse ox from 98% @ sea level to 86% @ 12K’ altitude in normal healthy individuals, and the decrease in available oxygen for the body is real. Casualties at altitude are thus at greater risk for notable hypoxia.

After MARCH, assess and treat all other wounds on all casualties. Expose the casualty using trauma shears to remove clothing, and check for wounds all over, top, bottom, and sides.

Patients capable of self-care may self-medicate with Mobic (if carried) and Tylenol, per TCCC dosages and guidelines. Aspirin and ibuprofen decrease clotting for 7 days after taking, and should be avoided for combat personnel for this reason.

Patients out of the fight are normally cared for using Rx IM/IV medication requiring diligent monitoring by the medic, per protocols.

Splint fractures and check pulses afterwards. SAM splints are your friend.

Burns Cover with dry sterile dressing, wrap with hypothermia blankets, treat for pain, and initiate fluid therapy for burns greater than 20% body surface area.

NO battlefield CPR. 100% failure rate for CPR, even for civilians with traumatic full arrest in non-combat environment. Dead is dead. Focus medical care efforts and resources on the salvageable living patients. Exceptions: hypothermia, electrocution, near-drowning. Bilateral needle decompression for tension pneumothorax rule-out is advised, may save a life, and won’t do any harm to a fully arrested patient.

Communicate with your patients, and reassure them as you reassess them.

Document patient condition, care and treatments rendered, and ensure the record gets passed along to higher levels of care when the patient is evacuated.

{Note: I won't be covering the Casualty Evacuation phase. If you're in the military, the training you receive on CASEVAC will be far more thorough than anything you'll find here. If you're not, casevac consists of using commercial or improvised litters until you get to a pack mule, truck, van, or phone to call for an ambulance, so going into 9-line medevac requests is kind of pointless. If you're hung up about it, take the class.}