Lance Uppercutt Wants To Fight The War

WarBlog 3
25 November 2006

On Thanksgiving it's hard to be thankful for anything when you're thousands of miles from home and bored out of your mind. I guess it's better than being thankful for a bunch of Pilgrims destroying an entire indigenous people. At least they were nice enough to let those Indians in on their little secret: smallpox blankets keep you thirty percent warmer than regular blankets. Wait, warmer? I think I meant to say deader. Smallpox blankets keep you thirty percent deader than regular blankets. The Air Force shot me up with smallpox about a year ago. I'm not thankful for that. When I got smallpox from the government all I wanted to do was itch it, but I knew I couldn't or it would spread. I guess that last sentence could have been a metaphor that taught me a lesson, but the pock mark was gross, so I don't think I would have touched it anyway. It left a scar. At certain points in my life, mostly when I'd been drinking, I thought I could get a tattoo. I figured that the only two things that had been significant in my 25 years were Christianity and being in the military, so I could get a tattoo about one of those. I guess I could have gotten Jesus riding a ballistic missile and throwing sharpened crucifixes at terrorists. Two birds, that. I'm not thankful I considered getting a tattoo, but at least I never pulled that trigger. I figure the smallpox scar is good enough. I just found out that we're going to be getting anthrax shots again. Not carefully measured doses of death metal, but actual doses of anthrax the biological weapon, which might honestly be less painful. I'm not thankful for anthrax or death metal.

Yesterday, for the second time in as many nights, we were circling just north of Baghdad waiting to land at an airfield that was under attack. I'm not thankful that we continue to land at places that are being swept for unexploded ordnance. While we were holding we started running low on gas and my night vision goggles were getting heavy. I could be thankful for strong neck muscles if I had them, but I don't. Despite our immediate insurgent and fuel-related problems, my mind was focused on the approaching Turkey Day and the gratitude I would be required to either think about or verbalize for anyone who would ask (and they did). I'm not thankful for work acquaintances who feel the need to talk to me during an otherwise delightfully miserable holiday dinner. Anyways, while circling the carnage, the only thing I could really come up with was my mustache.

Somewhere there is an unending list of things that the military does wrong, but mustaches aren't on it. However, as expected, they get it right in a half-assed sort of way. I'm not thankful that 'military intelligence' is an oxymoron. You see, you can have a mustache, but it cannot go further than the edge of your lips. That little rule, and the complete absurdity of the mustache in general, has mostly restricted facial hair to the enlisted force. However, many officers—myself included—have started mustaches while we are deployed since back home they are almost universally shunned and over here they are looked upon slightly more affectionately. Mine is a little patchy and misshapen, and it's coming in a little too red for comfort (I don't want GingerKids afterall), but I'm happy to have it nonetheless. My real complaint is that we aren't allowed to have full-on beards. God made me an unequivocal weapon of annihilation, so shouldn't I ride wings of fire into war with my beard flying in the wind? When I look at my tattoo I know that's how Jesus would do it. And I'm thankful for that.