OK so with my leave coming up just right around the corner, I figured I would talk about a phenominon of paranoia that seems to go around right before people get ready to head home on leave. Its something that I always laughed about, and even though I know its wrong, slightly played on peoples fear during this time! I know, Im a horrible person, but I guess Karma is a bitch and has come to stake its claim on me.
Basically heres the deal. Right before people are about to go on leave they try everything they possibly can to get out of heading outside the wire. The reason for this is due to a variation of short timers paranoia. They are worried that something might happen right before they are getting ready to head home. For this reason people tend to snake out of patrols and missions that take place in the last few days before they are to turn in their weapons and go on leave.
The thing is this is not a totally unfounded idea. See there is a perfect example of this fear being manifested in to reality in an incident that I was involved with many months ago earlier in this deployment. This was back when I was in my old squad and during the time when we still had the one bad area I used to talk about a lot. I'll make this a quick story, but you can follow this link to read about it more. We were on this mission to provide security for some engineers as they did some work. I was the TC (truck commander) for a vechicle with my automatic rifleman as a driver and a grenadier from the other team in my squad as the gunner of the truck. Anyways, the gunner was to be going on leave in like 2 days and this was his last mission to do. He had the paranoia that something was going to happen, and sure as shit it did. We had someone hop out of an alleyway and throw a gernade at our truck. Fortunately it did not go off for some reason, but it just solidified the reasons behind peoples paranoia.
Well like I said in the past few months when my friends would be getting ready to go on leave and would be experiencing the paranoia I would play on their fears and give them a hard time about everything. The content of our humor is not normal so I will not go in to the details. (those of you deployed now or in the past know what Im talking about!!) Anyways, I used to take pleasure in seeing them suffer in agony. I think there is a clinical disease for this, but whatever. :)
Well like I said, Karma has come back with avengence! Now as my time approaches, I still must say I'm really not worried. Definately not like some people have been. But the thing I realized is this, the last 10 days of Ramadan, which are the potentially the worst 10 days to be in Iraq as a US Soldier just so happen to be the last 10 days I have left before I go on leave!!! Hahaha, how awesome!?!? So yeah, now I've got the worry warts. Not a lot, but enough for me to be like damn, this sucks, what luck. Guess there really is a force that balances out the good and evil in this universe!
Friday, September 28, 2007
Paranoia...
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
7 comments:
I'm new to your blog and I'm trying to go back and read everything. You're good at it this.....keep it up!
Enjoy your time at home.
Not an unfounded parinoia for sure. What you posted I've read time and time again in milblogs. Whenever the "short time syndrome" hits, you just want to become kind of invisible. I wish I was a good enough writer to write about the patterns I've seen emerge of how our troops are affected by the different stages of deployment, but hey, nobody can tell about it better than the folks with their boots on the ground. Most of the people I know are Veterans of Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, or active military, so I hear quite a bit. Thanks to the blogs, we have unprecedented real time understanding, ( as much as possible without being there ). My thanks to all you milbloggers for taking the time to give us some insight.
You're in my thoughts and prayers to make it to your leave without incident and to have a safe trip home. Enjoy your time off - you've more than earned it! Can you give us a Charlie update before you go? Is he going with you? Thanks for what you're doing over there!
Hey Eighty...I am offering a long Catholic set of prayers called a novena for you and all those stuck there during this EXTRA open season on the good guys. Typically, the prayers of protection and grace last nine days, but I am sure I can add on an extra day no prob...lol...take it easy and keep your mind in the middle. Lots of prayers being sent your way... Hope
Added prayers from the Midwest. And a good karma blessing as well. Enjoy your leave! Thanks for writing, we need to read about the hard work performed by the men and women of our deployed services.
Cathy B
Trackbacked by The Thunder Run - Web Reconnaissance for 10/01/2007
A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention, updated throughout the day...so check back often.
Great post. I remember the short timer mentality and we used to give the guys a lot of crap when they started acting paranoid before missions. Not because we are sadists but because we needed something to focus on rather than the next IED.
Post a Comment