Journal Entry: "Late Night Earning My Wax Merit Badge"

It’s about 1 AM, I’m in the middle of a CQ shift, and writing has been particularly difficult the past 2 days due to activity. Today was M.L.K. Day for most of America. For Delta company, it was “clean all your shit day” as we continued our recovery from our 3 –day FTX. Today, I really started to notice a dynamic solidifying between the truly motivated and the rest of the soldiers. The gung-ho is wearing off somewhat as we settle into a routine and it became readily apparent who was going to work to make everything happen, who was going just do what they were told to do, and which soldiers (lazy sons-of-bitches) were going to actively avoid doing anything at all. I am consistently amazed at the lengths some will go to avoid the less-pleasant aspects of life, like work. Some of these guys use more energy and time finding ways out of doing a task than would have been expended just doing it. The fact that we’ll have hell to pay when the cadre comes in tomorrow and that their resultant disappointment will translate into a longer period of control over us seems lost in the short-term mentality of procrastination and pain avoidance. Instead of coming down for my CQ shift to add another coat of wax to the first floor, it turns out I instead inherited a chain of excuses for why it wasn’t done during each prior shift. This means that, once again, if the few dedicated soldiers don’t find their way around the minor obstacles and accomplish the task, we’ll all pay. And it ain’t like basic training – here they make you pay.

The FTX was a lot of fun aside from the bitter cold and lack of sleep. Just before we left the campsite to head back to the barracks, the DS’s “smoked” us in the ankle-deep red clay mud pit in front of our campsite in a tradition knows as “sugar cookie”, thus ensuring that every piece of our equipment required a thorough cleaning when we got back. We spent all of today doing just that. I put four coats of polish on my boots to get them back to normal!

I’ve been missing my wife and family more than usual today. I know I’ve got a few months left of being a sub-human soldier-in-training before most of my human rights are restored, but I am so ready for this shit to be over so I can at least talk to my wife and family when I want to. This would be so much easier if I knew I was going home for a while after this was done, but knowing that I turning right around and sent to Afghanistan for a year makes the heartache and homesickness more profound.