I had taken the blog on the road to Afghanistan or maybe Iraq to write about the troops.
NOT the career guys, but the young lieutenants paying off a ROTC scholarship or the skinny kid down the street that was delivering your paper a few years earlier and was trying to get a GI bill to go to school with.
Basically O-2 and below and E-5 and below.
I did seriously consider it to the extent of where I discussed it and got the go ahead from my employer with notice.
I looked at the financial costs and figured it was barely doable if I could scrape by and live on short rations etc.
What actually made me bag it was the privates, corporals and Sp/4s that said they would love to see me but it would drive the officers stark staring bonkers trying to figure out who the hell I was. Was I some kind of spy looking at what they were doing to report them to higher ups? What if I posted a picture and there was trash inside the perimeter?
The guys told me what would probably happen is a bunch of idiots looking out for their careers would likely be having them paint rocks white and lay out neat little paths and the usual stupid crap they do to try and impress the higher ups.
I'm going to digress a little bit here but Norman Schwartzkoff said in an interview that he would have loved to visit the guys but knew commanders would do stuff like that.
Of course back in the day the platoon Piccolo served in would have quietly stolen some white paint and done that just to watch the officers at Battalion $hit themselves because they heard what Schwartzkoff said, too.
It would have the BnCO frothing at the mouth ordering someone to "Bury those rocks! Get them out of sight!!"
Anyway it's kind of sad but the reason I didn't go is because I didn't want to create a hardship for the very people I wanted to write about.
Writing this makes me feel like an 'Almost joined'.
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