Right now, I work in a rather small, very confined, space that contains more computers than people and that frequently contains more people than places to plant ourselves.  The building is brown, in a dozen shades ranging from mocha colored to plywood, and comprised of both actual plywood and tin siding.  We have one window and, due to the ‘sensitive’ nature of the material with which we are working, it has been covered with cardboard.  Not surprisingly, the cardboard in question is also brown.  In fact, the only things in the room of actual color are the computer screens themselves and the coffee mugs containing the gasoline necessary to make us Army folk function.

Immediately next door to us is our signal shop; the people who deal with computers, the internet, our phones, basically everything we need to function.  I say ‘next door,’ but in truth the only thing really separating our shop from theirs is yet another piece of reasonably flimsy plywood that’s been nailed in place.  We hear everything they discuss and they hear everything we discuss.  The partition isn’t there to grant either shop privacy, it’s merely there to keep us out of one another’s way. 

My own ‘office space’ contains two entire sections besides just the Brigade’s logisticians- the medical handlers, who process, report, and push forward every single casualty we have; and the personnel administration section, who process every piece of paper ever generated on every Soldier in our Brigade.  In short, my space contains a LOT of people for a space this size.  Little refuge from the perpetual barrage of bullshit and shenanigans can be found anywhere on this posting, as virtually every space here is designed in a fashion that hands you the same results.

Our sleep ‘tent,’ a metal and fabric structure that is supposedly permanent but routinely sounds like it’s going to fall down at any minute (it’s stormed a lot since we got here) is currently housing about 150 to 200 women.  While that’s a good deal better than the 250 to 300 housed in each of the male sleeping quarters, it already feels like too much estrogen in one space and that number is liable to grow.  We have four shower trailers on the post, three for guys and one for the girls.  Each contains 20 showers, all of which open into a wide space that contains perpetually fogged over mirrors and one or two wooden benches.  Neither dressing nor undressing in private is an option and, even if it was, you wouldn’t want to stay in the trailer long enough to do so.  Condensation gathers so thoroughly on the ceiling that, long before you’ve gotten into the shower, you feel like you should be applying shampoo. 

Sinks are located in a different ‘connex’ of sorts, a small metal container that’s about 8 feet tall and 10 feet long, and is utilized by those of both genders.  I’ll admit, this concept was new to me during this exercise.  Typically the sinks are co-located with the showers and any contact outside of work between opposite genders is so strongly frowned upon it may as well be formally forbidden.  Brushing my teeth between two strange men that were both shaving their faces (or their heads) was a little bizarre the first time.  I dealt with it the same way I deal with most awkward or uncomfortable situations- I made jokes, in this case about the giant June bug in my sink that I nearly spit mouth wash on.  Poor little guy, bugs that big have to count as actual animals at some point, don’t they?  As for the toilets, I suppose you could take refuge there if you really wished to, but it’s unlikely it’d be an enjoyable experience- none of them flush.

Anyway, when your existence affords for so little privacy, it’s inevitable that people will start to drive one another bonkers eventually.  From the ones that are eating, constantly, to the ones that are dipping, constantly, to the ones that come back smelling like cigarette smoke, the ones that talk too much, the ones that grump about everything, the hyper active ones that demand changes perpetually, the ones that boss everyone around, the ones that say nothing, the ones that make fun of everyone out of boredom, the ones that try to do everything, the ones that actively do nothing… phew… you name a ‘quirk’ or personality trait, and after a long enough time period, it WILL get on your nerves.  This is when the military propensity to be polite before we’re honest is actually remarkably useful- it keeps most of us from saying what we actually think or feel about everyone around us, thereby keeping full-scale arguments or all-out wars to a relative minimum.  Nonetheless, human ticks make it apparent when someone’s buttons have been pushed and, a solid percentage of the time, you know exactly what’s happened to push them.  Hiding your annoyance with someone under a veneer of polished manners really only works for so long before the entire world snaps.

The funny thing about this process, though, is that it goes in tell-tale and definable stages that can be monitored rather easily as they progress.

The first stage is when the group is first gathered.  It’s a new place, a new space, a new mission, and everyone’s secretly a little excited.  We get to play cowboys and Indians for a little while which, though we gripe about it, is at least a little bit fun for most of us.  The second stage starts around the time the newness of the region wears off and we come to the stark realization that we have no privacy and no escape from one another or the game we’re playing.  You’re polite to one another because everyone wants the event to end peaceably, but the irritation is palpable in the room at least a fraction of the time.  That’s the stage my shop is in right now.  Actively annoying one another, albeit making conversation to pass the time and hide our frustrations.  Stressed out, tired, and suffering from mood fluctuations that make menopausal women look sane, we’re doing everything we can to both assist and engage one another while actively trying to keep our distance.  It’s a talented activity that few outside the Army routinely master. 

Stage three is when the thin veil of chipper politeness fades into a sour mood and all parties involved stop giving a shit.  You no longer care if you offend those around you, nor do you care if you hurt their feelings.  But then, they don’t much care if they irritate you, either.  At some point during this stage people will start snapping at each other and, all too frequently, actual verbal fights may take place.  Never physical, as the punishment for actually harming someone else in uniform is reasonably severe enough that it typically prevents us from coming to blows.  Irrational yelling, frequently for no diagnosable reason at all, is not unheard of, however.  In time, or with intervention from someone of a lower rank (the higher the rank, the louder the yelling a good percentage of the time), the yelling will subside and people will find themselves acting civilly and contributing to the work force again.  Then you’ll hit stage four, when something strange happens.

I liken it to Stockholm Syndrome.  That weird and inexplicable moment when the ‘suck’ of the situation becomes so obvious and so acute that, out of desperation, you find yourself attaching to, and bonding with, one another in an attempt to make the suck seem less sucky.  I suppose it’s a perfect depiction of the age old saying that ‘misery loves company’ or ‘nobody suffers alone,’ because truly, you are all miserable, and as such, you are perfect company for all the other miserable souls around you.  By the time you leave, you will have spent so much time bonding over your misery, you will have forgotten you were ever irritated with one another, ever at each other’s throats, or ever wishing that any of your battle buddies would disappear.  Your desperation to alleviate your misery through shared experience will actually convince you that your misery wasn’t miserable at all and that you were, in fact, having fun with the crazies you were stuck with.  This tendency for the human brain to remember only what has happened in the immediate past is precisely how the Army convinces us to stay for any length of time.

At the end of the day, the lack of privacy, the general unattractive nature of our work environment, and the overall insanity that accompanies our work is all over ridden by the sense of familiarity and unity that comes out of working environments such as these.  When you’ve driven each other to the point of near homicide, it’s nearly impossible to be anything but yourself with them.  Even if you tried they would (and in my experience, they do) see right through your efforts.  Your ‘battle buddies’ will know something is wrong with you before you’ve even said ‘hello.’  For better or worse, it’s always better to be stuck in the suck with your family then to be stuck in the suck alone.

This was originally written about three days into my most recent JRTC rotation...

I don’t know what kind of kid you were, but I was the type that played outside.  Capture the flag, kick the can, ding-dong ditch, cowboys and Indians, cops and robbers- you name it, if it involved playing outside and pretending the real world didn’t exist, I probably did it.  We were so involved in our Ninja Turtle fantasies as children that we constructed cardboard ‘shells’ to make them more believable.  Being in the Army is, in this sense, a lot like being a kid perpetually.

Much like the games of my youth, I spend a sizeable portion of my existence (particularly when in the midst of training exercises) pretending I’m doing something I’m not or pretending I’m being something I’m not.  I’m an Officer handling logistics for an infantry brigade combat team deployed somewhere in Afghanistan on the border of Pakistan.  While I AM an Officer in the Army and I DO handle a lot of logistics, and number crunching, I’ve never seen Afghanistan and I never will.  The location involved, and therefore the urgency associated with most of our missions, is a fantasy concocted by intelligence and operations Officers in a desperate attempt to prepare Soldiers everywhere for what they will face if they do end up in places like Afghanistan.

That’s the biggest difference between the games of my youth and the games of my adulthood- the games of my youth were nothing more than that, easily paused or discarded in favor of things such as dinner, bedtime, or a hug from my mom.  The games of my adulthood, though technically games, have an endstate upon which lives depend- adequate preparation for war.  At the end of the day, no matter how you analyze the role play we’re undertaking, it is all designed to prepare a unit for battle.  Thus, we don’t bring sticks to play in the park, we bring semi-automatic rifles.  We don’t climb into refrigerator boxes and pretend to roll away, we climb into Humvees wearing body armor and helmets, fitted with turrets manned by gunners.

The child in me tends to love what I do.  It’s like playing cops and robbers all the time, but with the ability to take it seriously.  No one tells you to come in for dinner.  No one tells you to go to bed.  No one tells you to stop playing until the game is so sufficiently over that you don’t really want to play anymore.  Not only are you given permission to tune out the outside world, entirely, you’re actually expected to do so.  You can disappear and, sometimes for months on end, we do just that- gone, vanished into a world of Army play that people outside of uniform only understand after watching their own children play for hours on the playground.

The part of me that likes being an adult will be quite content when this chapter of my life is over.  Kick the can is fun… but not for weeks on end.  And unlike childhood games, these ones can take over and destroy your being.  There’s very little that is enjoyable about finding yourself entirely disconnected from the real world because you’ve spent a rather large chunk of your life actively living outside of it.  Like automatons designed to inhabit a living version of World of Warcraft, events like this one frequently make me wonder just how much we actually DO have in common with the real world.  When was the last time a normal human being moved their life to the woods in the middle of Louisiana, cut-off from everything including cell phone service, and proceeded to participate in a giant game of cowboys and Indians?  Replete with goats, Middle Eastern style buildings, and bad guys that shoot back? 

The next time you think you’re having a bad day, remember it could always be worse: you could be waking up next to 200 other people in a tent that sounds barely stable enough to stave off the impending thunderstorm and find yourself forced to wander through barbed wire just to get to your office.  If you DO ever find yourself in this position, you will find that remembering you’re still in America really makes you feel no better about your life.