A Few Words From Not Quite The Front

[Bolty]

And now, Occhi's reply to you all - thanks for sending him word!

I will tailor a short and sassy to each, brevity being intended rather than me being short with anyone.  (Well, at 5'8" I can't be tall with anyone, can I?  Stunted my growth as a kid by drinking too much coffee --who would have believed that?? -- or so my Mother tells me.  My Dad 5-11, both my brothers are 6-0, Mom was 5-7, genetic odds are that I should be 5-11 or 6-0, right?  NOT!!  Yes, 'twas the caffeine, that's my story and I am sticking to it!!!  Hmm, I'll have another cup, thanks Bolty, very kind of you, most gracious host, I'll get back to our email shortly . . .



For wcip Angel:   I am a salty old Navy man, not in the Air Force, but I am working for the Air Force, sorta.  Life's a funny old dog, and I am paying for the sin of having a father who was in the Air Force reserve for 30 years, retired Colonel, and an Uncle who retired after 20 as a Chief Master Sergeant.  Grandpa was a Gunner's Mate, cousin a Navy radar operator, so they both got out ranked, out trumped, by the Air Force influence when "payment was due."  (Dad's three years in Army signal corps barely cracks the ice)  Thanks for your prayers, my religion is "Independent," and my spiritual journey is still a work in progress.  That said, my wife gave me her Rosary for good luck, so I keep it for good luck.  Can't hurt, right? J



For Rhydd:  Yes, I are in "the cursed Navy" though many of the sailors refer to it as the "Effin' Navy" -- I can't imagine why!  Hmm, curse like a sailor, hmmm.  I am reading some Patrick O'Brian and enjoying the pre carrier Navy through Lucky Jack Aubrey's eyes in my spare time.  To give you an idea of how salty I am . . .



How long I been in the Navy? 



"All me bloomin' life, sir!  Me mother was a mermaid and me father was King Neptune!  I was born on the crest of a wave and rocked in the cradle of the deep.  Seaweed and barnacles are me clothes, the hair on me head is hemp.  Every tooth in me head is a marlinspike, and every bone in me body's a spar.  When I spits, I spits tar!  I'se hard, I is, I am, I are . . . Sir!"  Right, back to your usually scheduled Rogue.



For Pete:  Yes, you nailed it, I am at a Joint Forces Command Center, and more, I suppose.  It is a Coalition Command Centre.  (Note the Brit English!)   We have a Brit One star who I answer to when all is said and done.  He answers up to an American 3 star, with a two star somewhere in there, not quite sure how he fits in just yet.  We have, as noted, Aussies, Frogs, Singaporese, Japanese, a Canadian or two.  I guess it is one level of complexity's increase in "mixed nuts" from a Joint thing. J  I was "Joint Qualified" once I finished my job in NATO, and I am sorta "Alliance Qualified" as well, if that is even a category, which I don't think it is. 



Sir Die_Alot:  Hi back at you, may your swash never buckle!



For Tal125:  Actually, the service coffee, love it as I do, about 30-weight is my preference, is mitigated by a very sharp young Air Force captain in my watch section.  She is a fanatic for Kona Coffee, from Hawaii, which her mom dutifully sends a box of once every few weeks.  I now and again beg a cup from her, for a "treat."  (Payback is in beer, of course, the true coin of the realm.)



Lochnar:   I did not overtly mention it here, which may have been discourteous to you all, but other than the short notice, it did not "feel" right to make some big announcement in a large forum.  Please forgive me that, I felt that in this case, discretion was the better part of valor.  I got the word out to a few, and now feel it is appropriate to indulge in my propensity for verbosity.  Bear with me.  Thanks for your warm wishes, old friend.  J



Yrrek:  Thanks for the tears, hope they were from laughter.  I will be here for a while.  Stories, if they don't happen to me, will either be culled from those who have stories happen to them, or I will make them up!  Since truth is stranger than fiction, I am hoping for a few doozies.



Bun-Bun:  Muchas Gracias, Amigo, won't be able to look you up when my daughter goes to the soloist finals in Austin in May, drat, I was hoping to buy you a beer.  So it goes.  My neighbors and a couple of good friends from work are looking after the dear missus and the roguelings, as is a cop we know, but thank you very much for the offer. J  Will look into sharing that beer sometime before Christmas, if things work out.



Kasreyn:  Hail, been too long, not a reservist, just an old salty fart.  It comes with the gray hair. J  Glad to see you are still among the quick.



Gnollguy:  I Laughed Out Loud on the three great lies of the MRE, thanks for that, and it is so true!  Sent some home for the kids to try, my wife asked, in an email "Are they supposed to be so Heavy?"  Yep, I assured her, they are aimed to be fuel for a man carrying around an 80 pound rucksack in either cold or heat.



Brucegod:  I trust you are familiar with military acronyms?  Such as "BOHICA?"  Bend Over Here It Comes Again!  Well, even I can learn not to bend over too often . . .



Artega:  Thanks for the wishes, and I will be happy to grab all the luck I can get my hands on.  A few days back, folks up in Iraq were mortaring one of the airfields our planes use up there.  I figure it won't take long for some clever young lad down here to watch and learn of that on Al Jazirah, and come up with the brilliant idea of trying that on down here.  I hope not, but I'd lay odds on someone at least trying it.  We have bunkers here for a good reason, though the relations between us and the folks here in Qatar seem pretty cordial.  Even so, someone figured out a while back that the possibility of that sort of attack was still greater than zero, so we have a few pre cooked plans for dealing with it, which in my case means making haste to that concrete bunker and taking step two from there.  Yes, a mortar outranges a Beretta 9mm.



Lord Olf:  Dankeschon, and likewise to you, mein freund.  Got my hands on a bottle of Warsteiner yesterday, "das Deutsches bier schmekt sehr gut!" J  Oh crap, is it "der bier?"



TaMeOlta:   I have not yet figured out which clever fellow has a line out to "the real internet" but when I do, I will barter beer for access.  Just a matter of making enough friends and meeting the right folks . . .



Walkiry:   My age is the same as the caliber in Wild Bill Hickock's revolvers: 44.  So, am I older or younger than you thought?  Like wine, perhaps I improve with age?  What, sez Griselda back there in the peanut gallery, back hair is an improvement?  Well, anyway, my grandpa used to say that "you are only as old as the women you feel . . ."



Archon:  As per above, not in the Air Force, working for them.  We have Army guys assigned here too, Marines, other Navy guys (our top meteorologist is a Navy Chief Petty Officer, for example) and contractors who do a variety of stuff.  The civil engineering it took to turn this wasteland into a base is truly impressive.  (A couple of IT geniuses as well, I suspect.)  Suspiciously absent?  Let's say that Elric's old caution about "if you post as much as Occhi or Elric you must be a spammer" rings true at times. J hehe  Wasn't it Stalin who said "Quantity has a quality all its own?"  Hmm, not necessarily the endorsement we would all seek, old Joe, all things considered.



Obi:  Yes Indeed, a Fuh Ken AV8er I are, and I be, but supporting and not AV8ing on this trip.  Booo Hissssss!



Kandrathe: you take care of the Zergs, with my sincerest blessings, there are some pretty good folks over here taking care of that other bit: it comes with the badge. J  It can't all be parties, banquets, balls, and congressional investigations, now can it?  Now and again, some one has to blow something up . . . or so it seems these days.



Roland:  Thanks, old friend, for the cold one, in word and in spirit.  Please have as many to whoever's health is worthy of noting whenever the mood and money combine to make an occasion.  On Mother's Day, I got a bonus, there was a can of Guinness available, (Mother's Milk, I call it) so I had a serving of Mother's Milk on Mother's Day.  Lucky me!



WhyBish:  We can at some point in the future discuss the "why" and "Why now" bit on this mess and this war, it's still a bit of a puzzle to me on some levels, thanks for understanding.  At present, it's a matter of, as Hector before Troy's walls when he saw Achilles a comin': "A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do!"  Am missing the Brad Pitt version of the Illiad, I guess, will have to catch it on DVD when I get home.  I have been blessed with a lot of years of peace and flying, time to pay the piper.  As for the Emeralds, hmmm, they'd go great with my eyes. . . J  Take care your self, and let us know how your efforts to become a Kiwi-American are coming.



MEAT:  If you pictured me in politics, you are sorta right: at the execution end of American international politics.   Been at it off and on since puttering about off the gun line in Beirut back in 83/84.  War, and all of those things short of war, like "police actions" and "nation building" and "Peace Keeping" and "Peace Enforcement" and "that thing we are still doing in Bosnia" and "winning hearts and minds with M1A1 Tanks and Cobra's shooting rockets" are all political acts, which include varying degrees of  force and threat of force.  So is an oil embargo, only there the force is economic force rather than brute force.  Of course, there is no doubt that a GBU-12 is Brute Force from on high.



Gimlisam:  Not any braver than anyone else I know, thanks for your kind words anyway.  The Marines and soldiers up in Iraq I am in awe of.  Those guys are incredibly disciplined and professional.  Most folks have no idea just how much restraint they, and us on the Air side, use every day.  It's weird, seeing how much destructive power, conventional, I can see available in one day's flying.  If "we" let loose with every bomb that was loaded on board in one day, Fallujah, for example, would not so much be a town as an urban renewal project.  I am glad "we" the Coalition, aren't making the rubble bounce, though: someone lives there, whether we like them all or not.  As above, it all comes with the badge. 



To everyone:  Thank you all so much for your warm thoughts and for reaching out across the fiber optic ether to send me some positive karma.  It touches me, right here in the Rogue With a Heart's cardiac unit.  On to "what does it mean to be sent to where it is hot" (no, not Act IV, I am in no mood to talk to Izual again!):  it sometimes means getting sick as a dog.



I have finally discovered what made me sick as a dog in Fort Bliss, where I got to learn how to use the new gas masks and to requalify with a pistol, and sick again here just after I showed up.  It was that bloody Anthrax shot series that I have been ducking for about 6 years.  Some folks it does not bother much, but I guess my first dose, which came with a bunch of other shots, and the next two, each fourteen days apart, hit my immune system in a soft spot.  Gawd, I felt like something dropped from a tall camel's behind onto hot pavement.  I had my third one Friday, and I am just now not coughing up green phlegm.  "Moo Moo Moo, Moo, MOOOO!"  I'm a cow!  I think I will avoid red meat for a bit so as not to compound things and possibly synthesize a Rogue strain of Mad Cow disease in my blood stream.  (That was an attempt at epidemic humor.)



It is hard to get news coverage of anything beyond pictures of blurry naked prisoners; Senators, pundits, and Congressmen foaming at the mouth for the cameras; hate and discontent over the 2004 election; sports (the Spurs looked awful the other night versus the Lakers, we got it on AFRTS tape delay); and the occasional natural disaster like the wildfires in CA or the bomb in Chechnya.  I hit the NY-Times on line to at least catch up a bit when I can.  What I miss is electro news, such as WoW and such.  Too bad, I will catch up when I get back.   Yes, slash dot is also blocked.  SA is blocked.  RBD is blocked . . .



This weekend, funnily enough, the Rec center is hosting a HALO "Capture the flag" team game on the XBOX set up they built last month.  Last week, it was a weight lifting contest.  (not my line, Ahnold).  Not having XBOX skillz of any sort, I will probably demure, as I won't be an asset to any team except as chum to walk point.  Rather, I am working on my ping pong game, every few days, trying to get back into tournament condition.  Used to play competitively when I lived in Taiwan, as a teenager, I wonder if I can get back up to standard.  The prize is in beer, so I have a goal!   The following week, a 10K run in honor of the Indy 500.  (Hmmm, chances I sit that one out: pretty good: 100+, even if it is a dry heat, is not my kind of running weather.)  It's a reach, but the Morale and Welfare gang do their best to keep folk's spirits up.



I have rambled on long enough, y'all be good now, y'here, and "come on, come on down, to sweet Virginia, yeah- yeah, where ya got to scrape that sh** right off yer shoes!"

(A bonus point, redeemable in coffee beans, to anyone who can name the song, group and album that lyric comes from WITHOUT using your google-fu!)  Knowing correct side of the vinyl LP scores two bonus points.



Occhi

-Bolty