I’ve never considered myself “Old Breed” till today. I had a couple of young men outside my office. They were waiting to interview with another department here. From their conversation I gathered they were both recently deployed. They spent about five minutes complaining to each other about the quality of their gear, deployment, etc. It was a mix of everything from digital sucks, Velcro sucks, didn’t want an M4/ wished we got the SCAR, on and on and on. I finally had enough and stepped out of my office. What follows is my best recollection of what I said.
“Sorry to interrupt ladies, but I couldn’t help but overhear your conversation. Let me say first off one vet to another, congratulations on making it back in one piece. But let me fill you kids in on my perspective. My first trip to the sandbox was many time many years ago. Back then we deployed with a fun-time mix of chocolate chip, coffee stains and woodland camo. That’s right we looked like retarded monkeys who raided the discount bin at the local Army Surplus store. Optics on your rifle usually meant a personally acquired commercial scope mounted on the carry handle. That’s right, a carry handle on a 16. That’s what we carried back then, and we liked it/ we loved it. Of course a real tactical operator back then had a light too, it was usually a maglight secured to the handguard with 100mph and hose clamps. As for the rest of our kit, the armor sucked, weighed 5000 lbs, wouldn’t stop a spitwad and gave you the upper body mobility of a he-man action figure. The NOD we had also weighed 5000 lbs, was bulky as hell, gave you scoliosis and lower back sprains. I’ll grant you that the food probably still sucks, I can’t imagine that ever changing. But do you know what we did, we sucked it up, got the job done and came back home. And when we bitched about it, the old folks chewed our asses off.”
(by now both of them were smiling at me broadly.)
“ Now, carry on girls.”
( I spun around and started to march back into my office, I made it a few feet till another thought hit me. I spun around again and proceeded.)
“And another thing ladies. Back then we did it all while keeping our pants bloused and our GODDAMN boots black.”
(With that I continued into my office and slammed the door behind me. Laughter proceeded up and down the hallways. Many older vets work on my floor. The two youngsters began clapping.)
“SHUT UP AND SIT DOWN, I growled.”
(The hallway went silent and has been so for the last hour or so.)
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