Lance Uppercutt Wants To Fight The War

WarBlog 5
7 January 2007

Before I left for this deployment my girlfriend, current Miss USA Tara Conner, was quite upset with my impending absence. She kept saying things like, "Do you have to go?" and, "When you leave, who will I hang out with? Miss Teen USA? What are we going to do? Drink like crazy and partake in sexy hi-jinks? I can't do that without you." I guess we know how that turned out, but what really upset me is when she would constantly say how she was worried for me and how she was going to miss me. It made me feel like I was terminal. The looming deployment was more like a quickly declining white cell count as the cancer of war metastasized into my life. OK, probably a little melodramatic, but I there are times when I feel like the war has become some sort of ailment that is doing its' best to shorten my life.

We all get pretty worn out over here, so in our free time we play poker, drink, or play sports. We've been playing a lot of basketball which is hilarious on quite a few levels for me. First, despite the fairly racially-enlightened atmosphere of the military, the one black guy always gets picked first. He's a decent athlete so he's alright, but the kid wrestled his whole life so you know he didn't play on the basketball team (both being winter season sports). He's also the guy that everyone assumes would make a good running back when we play football despite the fact that there are at least five people faster than him. What's that book about? Oh, it's just a scathing attack on stereotypes, but you probably didn't notice since you were too busy judging it by its' cover. Whatevs, I'm probably just jealous. I'm sure I'll get picked ahead of him if we have a hockey game or a swim meet. The second thing that makes me giggle about basketball is that no one has a jump shot. Not a single one of us. Because of this the lane is a jungle of sweaty, out-of-shape, middle-aged men and home to more hacks than a… (okay, right here I was going to make a joke about either the writers of some crappy sitcom or the staff of an awful magazine like Stuff or Maxim, but then I glanced up at my previous couple of lines and decided to leave well enough alone). One time Mike was attempting to power through the paint when he stepped on the foot of one of the defenders. I watched as he rolled his ankle pretty good, and the resulting sprain took him out of commission for almost a month. I guess I could consider my military career a sprained ankle: it hurt a lot at first and lasts longer than expected.

Mike isn't the only casualty of this trip. There's this guy in the squadron who is almost universally despised, but despite my penchant for hating people, I had no opinion on him prior to getting out here. After speaking with him at length I discovered that no one had given him a fair shake. He isn't a jerk like everyone says; he's actually just the worst human being alive. He's conceited, lazy, boring, irritating, and his workout shirts are all sleeveless. It's amazing how he (along with many others in the military) has the uncanny ability to look you in the eye while he's screwing you in the ass. I guess the Air Force employs a lot of contortionists. He once tried to pull out the hairs from my mustache instead of saying hello. I would have punched him but I really don't feel like becoming a hero to everyone I work with. A hero to the hordes of Victoria Secret models who were never before able to know the meaning of the word love? That's another story. Anyways, he had been showing up to work looking worse than Britney's hoo-ha (Did you see that thing? Was there a C-section scar in that picture somewhere? Gross!) for a couple of weeks and finally decided to see the doctor. It turns out that he has dysentery. Dysentery! I thought you only got that shit playing Oregon Trail on the Commodore 64. Bury me by Chimney Rock, paw. He must have contracted it after his attempt to ford the river resulted in his Conestoga wagon being washed away. Just pay the damn Indian guide next time, jeez. So everyone was abuzz with the talk of this strange disease striking this poor asshole. When I found out about it I promptly asked, "So you can catch dysentery from karma?" Anyways, since he's been burning the candle at both ends they sent him to a hospital in Germany where I'm assuming they have better plumbing to handle all his, ahem, needs. On the plus side, he's a thousand miles away. High Five! Some would probably say that this deployment is dysentery: it's so much crap that it makes you nauseous. (And the award for Most Disgusting Metaphor of the Year goes to…)

I used to fly with this pilot whose wife was also out here flying with our squadron. I liked him because for the most part he was a super-laid back aircraft commander (AC) and easy to get along with. He didn't make us wear our helmets into the combat zone and hardly ever checked to see if I put my seat armor in. That armor stuff is about as comfortable as a prostate exam from Edward Scissorhands, so you can understand why I'd want to forgo using it. I figure that if some Hadji gets a bullet from his AK-47 to track all the way up to hit my plane as it scoots along at 350 mph and then that round magically finds its way through 12 layers of metal to make it to my ass, then it's just not my day. I've always wanted a Purple Heart. I hear they can get you free drinks, and chicks dig scars. Problem is that one day this guy's wife was flying north of Baghdad and somebody decided to shoot a missile and a buttload gunfire her way. I didn't think anything of it the next day during combat entry as we discussed the seat armor. The third pilot on the crew, a 6 foot 9 giant, tells me and the AC that since the armor would put him so high in his seat that he wouldn't be in a safe position to fly and that he wouldn't use it due to his height. I said I wouldn't be using the armor due to my length. I chuckled at my dick joke, but the AC turned around and raged on me about how unsafe flying into combat is and how we all needed to be more serious because people were down there actively thinking of ways to kill us, his wife included. I never thought how war probably affects those sending loved ones into combat more than it affects us—you can't protect someone forever. I would say something about how war can be a lot like heartache, but I doubt that I'll ever actually know or care what that is like.

That situation taught me that no matter how detached and lackadaisical I am about this whole situation, tensions can run high for others. I found this especially true in the days leading up to Christmas when two pilots in my squadron were pre-flighting a jet before a day of flying. One of the pilots had a radio navigation aid tuned to a local station that was playing Christmas music. The other pilot, a humorless twatwaffle working behind him on the flight deck, told him to turn the shit off or he would cut his throat. The first guy countered with, "You don't have the stones." A 'whose dick is bigger?' contest ensued with the twatwaffle bitching how he would cut the other, and the other repeating how the he didn't have the stones. I don't think the first pilot even flinched when the angry guy had the knife to his throat. He still repeated, "You don't have the stones." We're only two months in and guys are trying to kill each other, I don't know how those army guys survive a year and a half in the desert. I guess when you compare our short stint to their near life-sentences in the sandbox you could liken this deployment to a slit throat: it's painful and draining, but at least it's pretty quick.

It's not all getting shot at or having your life threatened out here. Being in Turkey we have the ability to wander into the little village outside the gate to buy whatever shitty wares the Turks are peddling. "You want hookah? I sell you hookah. You need watch? Real Mr. Rolex, bling bling. You need rug? You need new suit? Come see my cousin. Come on, ahbee. My kid, he need the money. My wife, she need the money. My girlfriend, she need the money. Joke, joke. You like?" A couple of the guys I work with have developed a friendship of sorts with some of the locals and have agreed on multiple occasions to field a team against them in soccer. I finally got a chance to go see one of these matches on a cold Tuesday night at their village soccer field. At about one third regulation length and width, quarters get tight. Add to that the 30 foot high (in play) chain link fence and netted top and you can see why we call it the Thunderdome. The field has a few lights but is mostly lit by the headlights of cars ringing the exterior of the fence. On your left kids climb the fence to shake it as a distraction to the American players; on your right a guy jumps around and bangs on a 50-gallon drum. This surreal shit seems more like the setting for an underground fight to the death than a soccer match. I swear to God I think I saw Blanca fight Zangief here before (What the hell was Blanca anyway? A Brazilian green gorilla with a shock of bright red hair that could zap you with an electric field? Come on.). The problem was that our team was short one player; we needed a keeper. Despite my spectator status I was corralled into service. Remind me to burn that draft card. I had on jeans, a snowboarding jacket, my devastatingly good looks, and my 6 year old blue skate shoes with no grip that Lisa hates. This wouldn't have been a problem except the playing surface was cement with an ultra-thin layer of Astroturf that in their great Turkish wisdom they covered with a light dusting of sand—no wonder these guys can't figure out how to industrialize their country. Or how to cook something that doesn't look like's already been digested. Or showers. Between the slipping and my overall non-athleticism I had less game than a 30 year old computer programmer who lives with his mom. By the match's end I had bruises, scrapes, and an 11-9 loss at the hands of the Turks. As we were walking out one of the Turkish spectators yelled out, "My grandma play better than you!" I yelled back, "I can't believe she had time to play any soccer in between all the dick-sucking she taught you." "You are the one who sucks!" "Yeah, well at least my house has electricity!" The Turks looked down in a sullen silence. What started out as a light-hearted exchange mutated into a nasty insult that left the locals angry and speechless. Sometimes this war is like xenophobia: it's just plain ugly.

In spite of the busy schedule out here, I still find a way to get about an hour of TV watching in per day (10% of Daily Recommended Allowance). All we have is AFN, the American Forces Network, an excruciatingly painful 'morale raiser'. There are eight channels, and at any given time two of them are showing The View, Doctor Phil, or Oprah. It's so much estrogen I'm starting to grow bitch tits. I shit you not, I once saw Stargate playing on three different channels simultaneously. Ridiculous. Unfortunately their unique programming schedule is not the worst part of this debacle; that honor goes to the AFN commercials. You see, AFN gets some sort of discount on the shows it buys as long as it doesn't air the commercials that come with it. Not even for the Super Bowl. So you might get lucky and catch a football game that helps you forget you're stuck overseas for about 5 minutes before you're snapped back to reality when a commercial reminding you to wear your reflective vest comes on. Seriously, they actually let the military pump its' propaganda into our rooms in commercial-form. There's the X-files rip-off that informs you how to look for a military clause in your lease. There's the Terry Tate: Office Linebacker rip-off who tells you to work harder on Operational Security (OPSEC) or the pain train's coming. There is the Minority Report rip-off. There are the pigeons who talk about change of address cards for your move. The driving tips with Squeakers the Hamster. The OPSEC Cat. The list goes on. Worse than ripping off ideas real advertisers and movie-makers had in the nineties is the fact that they use whatever songs they please. I actually wrote an e-mail to the program director and pointed out that plagiarism and copyright infringement aren't cool in a hope to get regular commercials on the air, but was told that they get permission from everyone they borrow from. Right, I'm sure Green Day, Nirvana, and Rage Against the Machine signed off on having their songs broadcast on the mouthpiece of the Evil Empire. Whatevs. Anyways, a bunch of us were watching television together when something miraculous happened. AFN forgot to switch to its own commercials during a break. We got a full minute and a half of pure, unadulterated capitalistic commercialism. It was glorious. By the time the Guinness guys came on screen to yell "Brilliant!" our stunned silence had turned to outright cheers. We had all seen the advertisement countless times before but we laughed our asses off just the same. When it was over we looked around and realized how pathetic we really were. This was actually the highlight of our day. Just then I couldn't figure out when I had last had a good time. I missed real life more than I ever expected. That's when I realized that for me this deployment, above all else, is actually a lot like a broken rib: it only hurts when you laugh.