We’ll skip ahead a little now in my Army time. This next story happens after I’ve gotten to my unit and a short time after we deployed to Iraq. So a little background: my Army occupation (MOS) was a 25N. Basically in layman’s terms I’m an Army computer nerd. We brought in computer and phone networks in the middle of Iraq using a satellite trailer and my truck to push the phone and network services out.

My first unit was a Brigade Special Troops Battalion (BSTB - the military loves it’s acronyms). We were made up of a catch all few companies to fill holes the brigade needed - intelligence, signal (the computer nerds like me), MPs, cooks, engineers, etc. With that many categories of troops the brigade commander didn’t always know what each one needed. In our case, the commander thought once our network was in place we were essentially mission complete. She didn’t realize that we had to monitor the network, fix any outages, fill generators, add phones/computers in, etc. In her mind we were excess at that point. So a less than platoon sized element (roughly 20 people) could be tasked out to cover half of the gate guard shifts at the 2 entrance gates we had. Nevermind we had sections with more personnel disposable that could fill guard shifts.

My section Sergeant though was a no-nonsense type of NCO. When we were in the right we had his full support. He also had a low tolerance for BS. While he couldn’t go against the brigade commander’s orders, he had his ways of getting things handled. Our section couldn’t operate with only 2 people on shift, after all.