Today our platoon was heartily engaged in a vital mission of futility. Having recently received a newly minted Lieutenant Colonel (LTC) as our Battalion Commander (BC), we have embarked on a hell-bent-for-leather plot to deceive him. Allow me to elucidate.
Our new BC is by all accounts a hell of a guy and one the best Military Intelligence/Aviation officers of our time. His accomplishments have been stellar, his assignments rewarding, and his promotions swift. He has addressed his new battalion on several occasions and comported himself as an officer, gentleman, and intelligence expert. These are not things I say about a member of the Corps of Commisioned Officers lightly but in the limited exposure I have had to LTC Godsend he has impressed me as no other BC before has ever done in nearly 14 years of service. This guy is the real deal and the total package. Fate thumbs her nose at me by sending him to my unit so late in my career.
By contrast our new Platoon Sergeant (PSG) has not left a similar impression on us. I will refrain from detailing SFC Spadde's many foibles (must.... contain urge.... to rant...) and simply leave him as a mixed bag of good and bad. Apparently SFC Spadde has decided that the best way to deal with this new straight shooter of a LTC is to lie to him.
We are actively deceiving this officer in two major fashions. Firstly is the matter of our work building a Secure Compartmentalized Information Facility (SCIF). Note: If you know what one of these are then great, if not then I hide behind national security as an excuse to not explain what it is or what it is for. Our SCIF is old and was never intended to house the sort of work that we do. The furniture is old and decrepit, the roof leaks on our expensive electronics, and there is simply not enough rooms in to be an efficient workspace for our platoon of somewhere over 70 people. In short it is screamingly obviously to anyone with 2 or 3 firing synapses that we need a new facility sometime soon. We are limping along now but eventually we would fail. All this being said SFC Spadde seems to think that we have to make this seem worse than it really is by camming lots of old, broken, shitty, unnecessary furniture so that the place appears to twice as cramped and crappy as it was before. We have been engaged in this bit of farce for almost 4 weeks now without regard for how this hampers our prepartion for the upcoming Mission. (Mission interference is a sin so grave in my book that I would prescribe death by fulguration to perpetrators)
Here is the kicker, the LTC has already hade his decision to grant us a new building without ever seeing it!. He knew before he ever came here how woeful a condition our working area was in and furthermore had already arranged for funding! Nonetheless our web of lies continues to grow....
Our second area of aggresive mendacity is the disposition of our platoon manpower. We will be evacuating the SCIF area of all soldiers when the LTC comes to tour it to try and create the illusion that we are overtasked and undermanned. This (it is hoped) will prompt the LTC to pen some order keeping us from pulling any of the non-Mission duties that may occur during the Mission timeframe. While this may be a worthy goal using deceitful methods to obtain it from a man of qulity such as the LTC sullies the platoon's honor and reputation. Fie I say!
You the gentle reader may be wondering what any of this has to do with Zen or muscle propelled grass trimming equipment. I am getting to it I promise. (Patience is a virtue I say) Reader : Well so is conciseness! Me: Get thee behind me Satan!
Anyway.... As I mentioned in the opening paragraph of this screed our platoon had a mission to fulfill today. That mission was to mow the entirety of the grass covered areas in our SCIF. Since I had a bit of frustration to work out already I volunteered to be the firt up on this detail. This gave me the opportunity to sweat out some stress and to manifest what SGT Stein once referred to as "my indomitable will to mow".
Mowing grass is one of my faorite things. I am unsure as to the exact reasons why... It could be that much like surgery mowing is a subtle mix of destruction and creation, wounding and healing, exciting choas and the serenity of order. You start with a wild tangle of growth through which you cut brutal swaths, maiming all plant life obstructing your mechanical wrath. You end up with a smooth gree surface, ordered with clean lines, and area that begs to be played upon. Perhaps also it is an extension of my childhood when my father would only allwo me to mow the lawn on the rarest of occasions and then only to his exacting standards.
Whatever the reason, mowing places me in a trance-like state where only I and the lawn exist. The well meaning members of my platoon tried to break this state by constantly offering to "give me a break" but I resisted as long as the swelterign Texas heat would allow. I had a good hour and a half to two hours of perfect Zen-mowing before I succomed to the flames of this Texas hell and relinquished my instrument of plant decapititation to SPC Egregious. Despite the events that followed me throught the rest for the day I had the perfection of those few hours to keep me steady. It was just enough.