Army Life

By Soldier R,
Traveling Soldier Correspondent Reporting from Germany
March 09, 2010

Right now I work on a desk as a dispatcher/paper pusher. I answer phones, do paper work and work radios. The highlight of my job is that I get to listen to music. I do get three days off every six, but I haven't gone anywhere interesting due to money being a rare commodity around here.

I will talk about two of the most interesting things that happened to me lately.

Friday when I woke up for work, my supervisor called me and asked if I wanted the night off.

Well, what would you have said?

I knew there had to be a catch, but as I was asking what it was, he told me. I had to report in civilian clothes to post headquarters ready to work.

Now civilian clothes sounds awesome at first, but usually means there's something you'll have to do that would normally mess up your uniform.

Not so in this case, but it did take all day. We drove around in two TMP vehicles putting up poster board signs with pictures of the Commander, CSM and Deputy Commander (who is a civilian).

This whole ordeal got interesting when I realized that there were three of us from my detatchment (two specialists and a staff sergeant, also in civilian clothes) working the hammer and nails for one sign at each building and it was taking a CSM and a MSG to tell us where to put it and whether or not it was crooked.

The first two or three buildings included a couple civilians who maintained the keys, so all together for one sign in one building each, it took seven people to do a job that, in my opinion, would normally only take one or two people.

I also found it ironic and kind of funny that the CSM was complaining about working with females (a female herself) and telling me and my friend that if we work closely with military when we get out that the military will always view us as, "... ate the fuck up."

The irony is that without the two civilians to which she was reffering, we wouldn't have been able to gain access to at least three of those buildings and therefore would have failed.

It was also ironic because though their only job for the day was key control, hers was even less than that.

Actually, I'm not sure what her job was except to tell us whether a sign with her picture on it was crooked or not. Something anybody with a level set of eyes could do.

The second event happened just this morning.

It was pretty funny.

My Operations Sergeant, a very quiet and laid back Sergeant First Class, was standing with myself, my first line supervisor and our Provost Sergeant inside the gym. I was explaining to him what we had done on Saturday, putting up signs, and I pointed to one that we had put inside that gym.

He made a comment about them being useless, stupid and how the General probably didn't even see any of them.

Not half a second later, all four of us noticed the CSM walk by, mostly because my NCO gave her the greeting of the day.

She had ear muffs on, so she probably didn't hear his comment, but I still shook his hand and said, "Perfect timing, sir. Perfect timing."

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