Wednesday, January 21, 2015

I recently began volunteering with women's veterans organization called Women Veteran Social Justice. This is caused me to do a lot of thinking about my time in the military for obvious reasons. For whatever reason, I was thinking yesterday about when I was in basic and we had our 20 mile road march coming back from the field and they kept promising us a delicious breakfast we got back. We go back to the company area we all had to put her gear down to include our rucksacks and all of the contents and our weapons which could not be put away until after everything is been cleaned. While everyone else got to go eat there and delicious army breakfast, I was the lucky individual selected to guard all of the gear while everyone ate and then went upstairs and shower and change clothes. I remembered seem like forever before someone came to relieve me. We had been out in the field all week with no bath and no way to take a bath except out of our canteen cups so suffice to say I was fairly filthy in fact I was the filthiest I've ever been in my entire life before or since.I feel absolutely disgusting and if that wasn't enough while we were out in the field my cousin Mary came to visit if you get what I mean :-)The upside was that when everyone got back and I got relieved I was able to go on and escorted by myself as an individual free from anyone staring down my neck to go eat and then go upstairs and take a leisurely shower and change what everyone else was downstairs cleaning their weapons. Just cause me to remember that it's the little things that make moments the best been able during basic training to go up to the squad bay by yourself when no one else in there, get your stuff out go into the shower take a shower all by yourself in your own time without anyone rushing you were telling you what to do, without anyone standing in your way is pretty much priceless. Generally speaking moments of solitude like that don't mean much in our day-to-day lives but when I was in basic training been able to have a moment to myself or approximately 60 moments strong that direct myself was a real treasure.