The information age, and the military...

Two things have come about recently, and both had the same impact on me. I am so glad the internet wasn't a big thing when I was in the Army. Sure, we had the internet. I regularly shopped and socialized online from my Army-issued laptop (that was before they blocked sites like victoriassecret.com, delias.com, and AOL chat on government computers), and a couple people in my barracks had internet in their rooms, but it wasn't the ubiquitous thing that it is today, and I think that made life a lot simpler. It's hard enough to be a lower-enlisted soldier, being micromanaged at every step, constantly watched, and all that, without adding an electronic paper trail to everything you ever do, on duty or off.

The first thing that's caught my attention is an off duty thing. A few months ago, a Facebook page called "Overly Sensitive Military Wives" sprung up. It's run by a couple of female soldiers, and was set up as a response to the wives who were getting all crazy over a page called "Knockers For The Troops" (and you can imagine what that one was). Well, I actually didn't know about KFTT when I found OSMW, but I learned of that part later. Even so, I found OSMW to be an ingenious concept. These girls were saying the stuff people had been giving me shit over saying for years, and they had thousands of fans listening to them! This was amazing! You mean I'm not the only one who hates those "Army Wife: Toughest Job In The Army" bumper stickers, and I'm not the only one who was a little bit shocked by the way people dress in the commissary, or the way some wives behave in general and think is acceptable? Can't be! It was as if the creators of OSMW had taken a field trip through my mind, picked out the stuff that makes people hate me, and GOT AWAY WITH SAYING IT!!! You cannot imagine how much this concept thrilled me.

Of course, for all the thousands of people who apparently have seen it my way all this time, because they are fans of OSMW, there are just as many who hate it, and a lot has sprung up in backlash. OK, fine. Defend your right to wear pajamas to the PX, or to wear pieces of your husband's uniform, or to say being an Army wife is a job in the Army (seriously, I'm gonna need to see an MOS code on that...), the toughest one, even. Fine. Free speech. I get it. Hell, I'm a veteran. I helped keep your right to say this garbage, just as much as my own right to disagree with it. I'm ok with that. However, one thing has caught my attention in particular. People act like this is a new thing. They're saying that they can't believe people are talking about each other this way, and all that. That shocks me. Haven't these women ever been to a coffee? If they haven't, what is it they think goes on at one? OSMW has nothing on the NCO wives' coffees and cocktail hours I've been to over the years. Sure, the subject matter varies slightly (I would not bring up the Army Wife bumper stickers at a coffee) but there's always been copious amounts of trash talking in the military community. I think everybody knows this. It's merely the electronic paper trail that is making people uncomfortable now.

Another thing surfaced just today, and this one involved Airmen. It was some AIT class that took a screwed up photo (as lower-enlisted personnel often do) that involved some guy playing dead in a transfer case (the kind of casket they bring troops home in), with chains on him, and then the rest of the class standing around him, with lettering edited in that says "It sucks to be you." OK, so it sounds really bad, and obviously there's some inside joke here, one that there's no way any of us are ever going to be let in on now, but I think the fact that this photo has gone viral, and is receiving national attention, and is now being investigated by a General, is taking what I affectionately refer to as "lower-enlisted fuckery" too far.

Let's get one thing straight. This was in the schoolhouse. The transfer case was part of training materials. These troops do not participate in the transfer of remains from overseas, and probably never will (their MOS does not regularly do that). There were no dead troops anywhere near, because they were NOWHERE NEAR Dover. These are not the guys who lost the pieces of soldiers' remains, or dumped ashes in a landfill. These are trainees, playing a joke, with their own lab equipment.

You know, if you saw the picture of me and my classmates with dummy M-16's (remember when weapons were full sized?) by the sump tank in our soils and materials lab, with the phrase "Dirty deeds, done dirt cheap." scrawled across the top, you probably would think it looked screwed up, too... and it does. It was our joke, though, lower-enlisted fuckery. We weren't allowed to say the word "dirt" in the soils and materials lab, and the team who said it the most had to clean the disgusting sump tank at the back of the lab... and well, we all like AC/DC, so we sang "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap" while cleaning the sump tank, and well... we had some dummy M-16's, and thought it was funny for our friends to stand guard with them. See how STUPID this is? I guarantee the picture of the dude chained up in a transfer case was every bit that idiotic... and no more malicious. Again, I'm SO glad there was no electronic paper trail when I was a soldier. I, along with most of my friends, would have been completely screwed.


I guess there are two morals to this story. First of all, troops, that thing they say in basic about it being all about perception is as true as it ever was. The difference is that now, you can't hide from it as much. About the only place you will have any privacy, or freedom from scrutiny from higher-higher, is behind the locked door of the latrine, and even that is questionable. Second, I think higher needs to remember that this stuff has always gone on, whether they've seen it or not, and really think about what, if anything, was harmed by whatever the thing in question was, before staging large scale investigations into the same variety of lower-enlisted idiocy that has always existed.