GET IT WHILE IT’S HOT
While in the Navy, my least favorite question was, “So, what do you do on the Enterprise?”. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to vent on the topic, it’s just that there’s honestly no normal, everyday, civilian equivalent in terms of which to describe the experience. I worked in the engineering spaces, which equates vaguely to “somewhere under the hood of the car”. It was hot, noisy, hot, smelly, hot, dirty, and hot.
Did I mention the hot part?
The closest I could get was in one letter home to my girl, with something along the lines of, “You’re in Arizona, it’s August, you have no air conditioning. You run upstairs, look at a couple dozen thermometers & write down the readings. You run downstairs & do the same. Repeat twice an hour for four hours, remembering to add in the smells of hot metal, hot oil, and the reek of your own foul sweat.”
For his part, LT Smash does a much better job of describing life in the Iraqi sandbox, and even the most pampered civilian will come away feeling amused, educated, and, most of all, grateful that it’s not their job. Go read.
posted by Harvey at 9:44:14 PM permalink HOME
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