The following was written on 16FEB2006:

Damn. I missed Valentine’s Day, and I have a wonderful sweetie that I wanted to spoil.

I almost forgot about Valentine’s Day while I was in the Box at Fort Polk, Louisiana. D-Day was a blurry memory in the past, and we were on D+4 or some such. Our two biological weapons detection teams at Forward Operating Base Forge needed to relocated to FOB Anvil. On the way to Anvil, we would stop in at FOB Spirit, where the other two teams from our platoon were located; those two teams, Charlie and Delta, would relocate to FOB Comfort – where D-Day had started.

The convoy out of Forge would be an integrated BIDS/FOX bunch. Our BIDS trucks were laboratories on wheels – big, bulky trucks that were easy targets. The FOX vehicles were six-wheeled, armored, amphibious monstrosities that weighed in at nearly 18 tons each, and had some decent firepower, and a powerful drive train. Having learned some lessons from D-Day, we would not dismount our vehicles unless absolutely necessary, allowing the bigger FOXs to maneuver better without worrying about running over us ‘crunchies’.

Not too far out of Forge, we stopped for a possible IED in the road, along the hard-ball that was named Route Iron. Coughenour waved me back to the truck, and once I saw what he was pointing at, I immediately saw his dilemma. The big 15kw generators we tow are too heavy for the light trailers they’re on, and two of the four bolts holding the trailer chassis to the towing bar had stripped out. The remaining two bolts might hold, but only for a little while. Since we were fairly close to Spirit, it was decided to continue on, though at a much slower pace.

I could almost hear the FOXs chomping at the bit.

We limped into FOB Spirit without too much trouble, and pulled aside. Our mechanic, SPC Gleason, tried a variety of things. The two bolts that were holding were deemed serviceable, though the plate holding them in was buckling. The other two bolts were still inside the hydraulic brakes housing, and they were promptly screwed back in to see if they would hold. That failed. Next, he tried a ratchet strap, but doing that meant the leg couldn’t come up on the trailer – and the leg had to go up, or the trailer only had a few inches of clearance to the ground. Then we used brute force to hold the trailer up, with the leg up, so Gleason could ratchet strap the plates together, and we could get it onto the vehicle’s two pintle.

The Observer/Controllers nixed it, for safety reasons. If the ratchet strap were to fail, then the trailer would plow into the road, flip, and be severely damaged – and possibly damage the truck with two personnel that was pulling the trailer.

The trailer could not simply be abandoned in a training environment like the Box, and so someone had to stay with it. The Powers That Be preferred an NCO to stay behind, because they could usually pull rank or were experienced enough with things to accomplish seemingly impossible tasks. Since the trailer belonged to my team, I was staying with my driver. They hooked up the support trailer – with camouflage nets, tents, and the like – up to the BIDS truck. My crews made sure their bags were sorted, and that neither of the other trucks had their bags. My driver Smith and I grabbed a coupled of cots out of the support trailer, too, just for good measure.

Then the convoy left without us.

Smith was operating on about three hours sleep in the last twenty-four hours. I wanted to bed him down, while I did the leg work necessary to get the trailer back up and moving. Unfortunately, he was already so tired that he couldn’t properly rest; he couldn’t even sleep.

Our Toon Daddy, SFC Poole, had managed to scrounge up a fifty-foot commo cable from somewhere, in the hopes that it could be used to remote the radio from one of the trucks, into the command tent for him and the LT. The commo cable had a splice in it, and several broken pins – and didn’t work. I’d saved it from FOB Forge just on the off-chance our common guys could fix it. SFC Poole gave it to a battalion commo section there on FOB Spirit, and in return, that battalion common section’s two NCOs made themselves available to us.

Sergeants Fogard and Fogarty worked with their crews to test and check our system, loaded us with a new security protocol program, cleaned our antennas, and did a slew of other things I’d never seen done before by any commo section. I was thrilled! I also learned a couple of maintenance tips that I would begin instituting, once I got back to garrison.

We then made a commo check with 51st Chemical Company’s command section, and got through without any trouble. We let them know that we would make regular checks with them, but would otherwise be unavailable as we took care of things.

I found the maintenance section without too much trouble, and just asked the first mechanic I saw, “Who do I talk to about fixing a busted trailer?”

The specialist, who was elbow deep in a humvee, was amiable enough and friendly enough to get me in touch with Sergeant Rime (with a hard ‘e’). I explained the situation to Sergeant Rime, and he walked over to talk a look at the situation for himself. He also had another of his mechanics take a look at it, and take the rest of the tow mechanism apart.

I asked the guy how the system works, and he explained that there was a hydraulic fluid reservoir behind the tow ring. Whenever the truck towing the trailer would use its brakes, the two ring would run up into the two pintle, and that would put pressure on the hydraulic fluid reservoir and its diaghram; from there, oil would be pushed out to the brakes, and pressure applied.

Sergeant Rime’s specialist worked the trailer as best he could, but his options were limited. He made a suggestion that I bit off on, and we rolled from there. Sergeant Rime had a new welding device he’d been wanting to try, and this was the perfect opportunity for him to make a couple of quick bead welds. The bead welds would hold until we could make it to the next FOB, or the rear, where the mechanics there could break the welds, sand them down, and either do a good weld job (taking several hours) or find a way to fix the stripped out portions of the tow ring.

They used a couple of bolts and some washers as raw material, and made some really crappy-looking welds – but they would probably hold. Mission accomplished – inside of a few hours, at that – we called 51st Chem Co’s command and explained our success.

Their command waffled several times, but finally decided to come pick us up that night. I agreed only because Smith was confident he could drive despite his sleep deprivation. He’s a solid and dependable man, and when he gives his word, I accept it.

We drove the truck around the FOB at a very slow rate, just to make sure the weld would hold that long, and then we went to chow. While we were in the chow line, helping ourselves to hamburgers and hotdogs, and marveling at the good food, one of the civilian food handlers made an announcement about there being plenty of Valentine’s Day candy for all the Soldiers.

Valentine’s Day! February the 14th! Doh! It had come, and gone, and I still didn’t know what day of the week it was. Tuesday? Thursday? I hadn’t a clue, but I felt bad at not remembering my sweetie, sooner.

Smith and I enjoyed the meal, and then sat back to wait on the FOXs from 51st to come and get us. We sat in the humvee, with the trailer already hooked up, and chatted amiably for awhile. Smith was like a sponge, when it came to professional matters, soaking up information about how divisions worked, staff jobs, and other things that those of his rank rarely were even aware of.

He coughed, and had been coughing all day. After a bit, I just ordered him to visit the medics there. He was wary, but I ordered him to go, anyway, having already touched base with the medics earlier to make sure it was all right.

Unlike active-duty Army personnel, Reserve and Guard personnel tend to have diverse professional backgrounds. It’s a good conversation-opener to ask, “What do you do in the Real World?” Some are students, professional welders, plumbers, tax collectors, and more. Most of those in support roles do almost the same job in the professional work, as they do for the military. In this case, the medic I’d sent Smith to was a professional Emergency Medical Technician, and his boss was an Emergency Room doctor. I knew Smith was in good hands.

He returned, impressed with how well he had been treated. If he had gone to an active-duty aid station, they would have taken his blood pressure, heart rate, and temperature – and then likely prescribed several medications. The Guard guys, though, checked his lymph nodes for swelling, listened to his lungs for bronchitis and pneumonia, and generally made him feel like a real human being that needed genuine medical attention – and not like a scumbag that was faking a fucking cough.

Damn, but I hate Army medics.

They’d given Smith some cough drops to take while he was awake, and some Robitussin to take before going to sleep, and that was all they could do. It was enough, though, to treat him like a decent person, and check on him like he was such.

We continued talking, and waiting for 51st‘s FOXs to show up. When they arrived, we linked up, and I got an instant good-vibe from the convoy commander, a Staff Sergeant Miller. Sergeant Miller waited long enough to refill his platoon’s combat lifesaver bags from the aid station, and then we were off.

Smith and I noticed almost immediately that the brakes were shot on the trailer. It dawned on me that the mechanics had left the hydraulic mechanism installed when they had welded the beads, probably super-heating or vaporizing chunks of the rubber and oil in the system. We slowed down, and let Sergeant Miller know what was going on. He replied that it wasn’t a problem, and quickly brought his FOXs under slower control.

We limped on to FOB Comfort without any problems, and reported to the first sergeant, there. Things got situated, we explained the status of the trailer, and then we headed towards our bunks – almost the same bunks we had awoken in, on D-Day.

Smith was out cold, fast.

I went outside, to look at the stars, and say aloud, “Happy Valentine’s Day, Laura. May your stars be just as bright…” for bright they were -- the whole of the Milky Way stretched out before me in the darkness, with no moon in sight.