E True Hollywood Stories - Infantry Guys: What They're Really Like

Infantry (n.) - soldiers or military units that fight on foot, in modern times typically with rifles, machine guns, grenades, mortars, etc., as weapons & a branch of an army composed of such soldiers.

Mission of the Infantry - To close within the enemy by means of fire and maneuver, to defeat or capture him, or to repel his assault by fire, close combat and counter attack.

That being said... I know that most peoples perceptions of the Infantry tend to be the guys that are just in the shit, day in and day out. Always putting their lives in danger. Hard tough men doing the dirtiest of dirty work. Those who willing place themselves at the gates of hell and kick the door in and rush in. Well, in some ways you would be correct. But for the most part we are just everyday normal guys, that just happen to choose a job that isnt sitting at a desk. A job that puts us face to face with our enemies, ready to kill, and only the greater of whom survives. But on an average, day to day life, you wouldnt really notice the differnce in us. Until, that is, you spend more than 5 mins with a group of us.... then we seem to be in a world of our own.

To get to where I can explain this, let me just talk a little about my day. We went out, typical market stuff. Nothing crazy, nothing exciting. Pretty dull. We ended up getting a very good amount of down time throughout the day for us to just chill and get out of the heat and relax. It was very nice for once not being worked to death in 110+ temperatures. I ended up getting a good amount of time to get online which was good because I've decided to go back through my email account and try to respond to most of the emails I have from yall readers! :) This has turned to be a greater task than I anticipated. On top of all that, we even ended up getting all 3 meals (breakfast, lunch and dinner) while we were out there. Wow, must of been a cold day for Lucifer!

So yeah, once again towards the end of the evening, the last minute word came down that the engineers needed some security while they finished emplacing the barriers that we did a couple nights ago, and then do a little cleanup. Great... another night of being up all night just sitting there, doing nothing. And for the record my butt was already incredibly sore from the LAST time we went out and didn't really have much chance to recouperate. Anyways, we had to drive to go pick them up, and then escort them out to the site to do their thing.

Ok, heres where the Infantry guy thing comes into play. First off, consider our situation. We are a bunch of males, many of which are straight out of high school. We now live together, work together and pretty much spend 24/7 with each other. And to make matters worse, you coup us up inside a Humvee for 10's of hours at a time. Its going to get crazy.

We started to pass time by playing a game that we came up with. Basically there were 4 of us in the truch that were playing, and it was a name that tune kind of game. We would start with one person. One guy would think of a song, and sing a part of the chorus or verse as best he can, and that person has to guess the Artist and Song Name. Each correct answer was worth 1/2 a point. Now the other 2 guys, if either of them knew it, immediately they could claim a steal. Basically the first one to claim a steal got the first shot at it, if either a) the 1st guy guessed wrong or b) they had no answer. For a steal, if the origionally person got the Artist name, but not the Song Name, you could still steal that 1/2 point. The funny part was that we didn't start with any of these rules and through heated debates (arguments??) this stuff was hashed out. In the end, my buddy ended up winning, but that was no suprise. Music is his passion. Me an another guy from the other team in our squad tied, and my rifleman on my team came in with a whopping 3 1/2 points! haha! It was a good time and probably helped pass almost 2 hours.

Well after we got bored of the music game, we were just sitting there, trying to fight the sleepiness, and dont remeber who started it, but we started ask "Would you rather..." type of question. Like would you rather be deaf or blind... love and loose or never love at all. That kind of thing. Well, like any topic being discussed by a group of boasterous young Infantry guys, the topics turned.... lets just say crazy. I wish I could tell you what some of the questions asked were because they were quite hilarious and we were laughing our asses off! The only thing is, and this gives you an idea of how bad it got, I have a line that I wont cross with my blog. I know I cuss alot and talk about some mature things, but I just wont cross the line into what we talked about that night. You'll just have to come up with your own conclusions. Anyways, we ended up asking each other these questions for hours, and it totally kept us awake, having a good time. We even started asking other guys in the platoon the next day and played it some more that day too!!

Once all the engineer stuff was done, we dropped them back off and we headed for somewhere to sleep. We got to kind of sleep in, and ended up getting about 5 hours of sleep. Not too bad. Fortunately the next day was pretty much a repeat of the day before, so we had a lot of time to pretty much relax and sleep.

That night, on our last stop before we headed home, I dont know where it came from, but a couple guys decided to do a little wresteling. This is something we haven't seen much here, but back at Ft Bragg, it was an almost daily experience. Although here in Iraq it has been more of the group fighting, where lets say, my squad will decided to gang up on a person or even a whole other squad and we'll all just go at it for a bit, trying to choke each other out or get the other guys to tap. I know this sounds brutal, but its all in good fun, and SOOO much fun! So these guys decided to go at it, and it was a pretty good showing. The one guy was like 6 inches taller and had about 50 pounds on the other, so he ended up winning, but it was a good watch. Well that got everyone the "taste for blood" and we needed to see more. What better subjects than the 2 new guys we got. Its a tradition that when new guys come in, that they go at it, to see who is the grappelling extrodinare. They didn't want to, but after a few, well chosen words, they agreed to it. I almost forgot what watching new guys wrestle was like. They dont really know what they are doing, and its pretty damn funny. Everyone was egging them on, but it wasn't really a great match to watch. After that was over, a couple more guys went at it, and they had the technique and violence of actions so that was a much better display. We were happy, for blood had been drawn a couple times, and our alpha male agressiveness had a chance to come out.

We ended up heading back in after getting everyones stuff returned and dusted off. It was a long time out, and it was so nice to be able to be back in my bed again. Most everyone passed out, but not me. I didnt end up going to bed for a few hours later, but it gave me some good alone, personal time. Something that, after that patrol, I realized I need a little bit more of! :)