Ok, so there's this female who works at the compound here.
She's been having sex with various soldiers.
She's single, and junior enlisted, so as long as she's not banging a superior and as long as she doesnt get pregnant, her superiors are letting it slide. Granted, she is currently having sex with someone two ranks higher than her, so TECHNICALLY thats a total violation of a WHOLE BUNCH OF RULES, but that doesnt matter, because her bosses wouldnt want to have to do paperwork, I guess.
Now, I usually get people a ride home, so they don't get raped and murdered. This one asks for a ride. I can't give her a ride, because I'm a male superior, so I cant be alone with her, because NO WAY IN FUCK am I letting ANY HINT OF GOSSIP or stupidity stick to me. FUCK THAT. Since I am higher ranking than her, and seriously married, even allegations would be a royal pain in the ass. I'm doing my best to be about a mile from this person at all times. My life is conplicated enough without more stupidity.
She cant walk home alone, cause she'll get raped. Ok, she might not, but KAF has a population of thirty thousand, mostly transient, few people know each other, lots of dark areas, lots of people from different countries. Basically, while you are here, these are the bad things that can happen to you, in order of likelyhood: Death by Traffic Accident, Death by Fire because your roommate fucked up the power cords, Rape, Death by Negligent Discharge because your "buddy" cleaned his weapon and shot you, Death by Suicide. So, at night people tend to walk in pairs and women get escorted. Now, as many me get raped as women, so escorting women doesnt exactly make sense, and more than half the rapes are acquantance rape (I guess "friend rape" isn't a word?), so walking with someone you know might be a mistake also, but it doesn't have to make sense. We also wear neon colored reflective belts because of the traffic thing. I don't have a solution for the negligent discharge issue. OK, I carry a tournequit at all times, but that's only a partial solution. For suicide the army "Solution" is that if a soldier has a problem, they take his weapon for a couple weeks, manadate councelling, and humiliate him. Interesting approach, but not sure how effective it is, really.
Anyways, back to this annoying woman.
I can't have a woman walk home with her, because how would they get back without being raped and murdered? So I have to have TWO PEOPLE escord this idiot to her room each night, so noone gets accused of having sex and so noone gets raped. MIND YOU SHE HAS A GUN. If you have a gun and someone tried to rape you, SHOOT THEM. FML. All because a) this woman is too stupid to keep her vagina in her pants and b) because we don't want her to get raped and murdered. FML. THIS is the kind of stupid shit I deal with every day.
Somewhere around 9 out of 10 soldiers who drink drink because of this shit. Not because of their buddies getting turned to hamburger, but because of stupid, pointless, annoying drivel. Because of being cooped up with people who cannot do a job, who cannot be professional, who cannot even decently stay out of the way for you to do your job.
A whole year of this shit, interspersed with random rocket attacks and lots and lots of stupidity.
Oy.
In the army, there are three categories of soldiers: junior enlisted, non-commissioned officers and officers. Fraternizing (that’s army-talk for “having sex”) between these groups is strictly prohibited, and generally results in someone losing rank and pay. Sex in the army can get you in a LOT of trouble. And don’t even get me started on how bad it would be if someone wound up pregnant. Then we immediately evac them back to the states, so we lose a soldier, and we take the other persons rank, so we lose a leader, and the unit as a whole suffers a big loss on trust, professionalism, pride, competence.
ReplyDeleteSo this person isn’t just fucking a few people, she’s fucking the system, and all of us, by proxy.
I was thinking: a difference of a rank is about the same as a difference in age of maybe 8 or 9 years. So, Banging someone two ranks higher than you is sort of like banging you around 17 years older than you. Except, if one of you is an NCO and the other is enlisted, its as if one of you was under 18. So, for example, the sergeant major here who is married to an e-4, thats kind of like..... 9-4=5 *8.5 = a 42.5 year old age difference between a girl who is under 18 and her over sixty year old husband. Yep. I think that conversion rate is about perfect for summing up the difference, and why it creeps us out so much.
ReplyDeleteI do not mean this to be in any way less than warm and sympathetic, but allow me to point something out: Soldiers frequently do not tell the people back home stuff, because they don't want to upset them. At first glance it might be just combat, so they don't worry, but it is also things like this, because we worry the people back home will not understand. I'm lucky I have a wife who understands more than most, and I have found it rewarding to make certain that she understands as well as possible, so I just tell her everything. But, if you see HOW MANY responses this post has gotten so far, you'll see how many soldiers might be tempted to just not mention stuff. And not mentioning a few things leads to not mentioning lots of things, which leads to an ever windening gap of experience, where you are living different lives, and becoming different people. Just a thought.
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