Army Living Requires a Frame Of Reference

You remind me of a small German town - Kwitcherbitchen!

Published on October 21, 2004 By greywar In Current Events

I have come to the conclusion that most senior Army personnel don’t care to much about improving the barracks living conditions because they know that no matter how great they are the soldiers won’t appreciate them because they have no frame of reference. I have been in the Army for a while, not long enough for a career but long enough. When I joined the Army I was immediately given a solid frame of reference for the rest of my time as an enlisted man and as an NCO.

I entered Basic training along with my wife (of two weeks) Xtine at Ft. Jackson, South Carolina in late June. After some initial processing time and a horrifying stint in a “Fitness Company” (more on this in another blog) I moved on with my newly formed platoon into Basic Training proper.

Our first stop was Tank Hill. We had to live here temporarily as our assigned billets had not yet been cleared by the outgoing Basic Trainees. These barracks (photo not of Tank Hill but the same style barracks) were still standing from World War 2. Whitewashed wooden walls with 40 bunks to a building. Each of us got a bunk made from welded steel pipe with a grey prison mattress on it and a footlocker. We had no air conditioning in the barracks and for most of us it was our first time wearing full BDU’s and doing training. For a week we lived like this sweating every moment of the day and night and struggling to meet the demands of our Drill Sergeants.

We knew that this place sucked compared to where we were supposed to be and we even heard story’s of the “Starship” barracks that had 8 man rooms! Such luxury was almost unimaginable after only a week of the DS’s tender ministrations. They had already succeeded in stripping away the vast majority of our civilian standards and expectations through non-stop activity and cruddy living conditions.

Consequently when we did make the big move to our barracks we were overjoyed. Nice clean 60 man bays (same bunks), tiled showers (open bay), and honest to goodness wall lockers! Heavenly.

Ever since then my standard of living in the Army has increased everywhere I have been. Even in Korea the barracks room I shared with EvilPidge was spacious, comfortable, and had both AC and heating. While I once helped the One-Eyed Nord scrape the mold off of his room’s (more like a one man oubliette) cinder block walls at least the room was his alone!

Since those early days Army barracks have leapt forward (Ft. Gordon). Most now come with modern furniture (not a lot), a refrigerator, a full bathroom (shared by 2 normally), and a microwave. Despite this new soldiers constantly complain about their rooms. Why? Because they have nothing to compare it to! Basic Training nowadays puts nearly all of it soldiers in 8 man rooms or even less! This has led Army leadership to pay a lot less heed to soldiers complaints. It is not unjustified that they ignore them like this as many of our barracks rooms are a lot better than college dorms. It is just that our young and inexperienced folks don’t know it!

This theory actually applies to a great many things in life Army or otherwise. Take today for example. Our platoon didn’t have it’s normal job to do (for reasons I can’t discuss) and so we did our PT during the time we normally work in the morning, had a break to take a shower and eat, came back to work and did a few hours of maintenance and cleaning, and then left 2 hours before we normally do. Great day huh? Nope, not for most of our whiners. They bitched and moaned all day! They simply were unable to place this event in the larger context. Most of them were not in the unit when we were on Mission Cycle last time and so they don’t know that even our “normal” days now are cakewalks compared to the 12-14 retardathons we engaged in 2 years ago. Of course if you try and explain this you just walk into the “When I was your age I walked 10 miles to school up hill both ways!” Thusly most of senior folks just ignore the whining. ME? I tend to trot out the phrase “It could be a lot worse!” About 10 times a day. Whenever someone actually asks me how it could be worse I explain. Sometimes it helps other times it doesn’t. Another day another 50 cents.

Comments (Page 1)

Texas Wahine

on Oct 21, 2004

Right on, greywar.

I am extremely satisfied with my family's standard of living. My husband is only a SPC, but when you consider the benefits beyond base pay such as free housing (worth $1,200/mo around here), health care, tax free purchases, free utilities, BAS, COLA, etc., it's like he's making between 40 and 50K a year. Can't complain about that. Our house is big . . . huge living room, 3 bedrooms, 2 and half bathrooms, laundry room, tons of storage closets, dining room, garage, fenced backyard, complimentary appliances . . . nothing to complain about there. When my husband's not deployed, he usually comes home for an hour for breakfast AND lunch, and gets holidays off. Thursdays are "family day," and he comes home as early as 2 pm on those days. We have all kinds of family support available to us . . . free counseling, career and computer training at ACS, free parenting classes . . . the list goes on and on.

We are really new to the Army, so I still remember what it's like on the "outside," and I am thrilled with our living conditions in the Army. My husband works hard and makes a lot of sacrifices in order to earn these benefits, and I appreciate him so much for that. Sure I'm lonely and disgruntled and worried about my husband's safety and well-being, but as you say, it could be worse.

Great article.

greywar

on Oct 21, 2004

Glad you liked it:)

pseudosoldier

on Oct 21, 2004

Wahine - I think it's easier for those who have a handle on what it's like to live on the outside. SGT Cochise got in the Army around the same time as I did, but he's about a bajillion years older than I am. He had worked at a lot of shitty jobs on the outside, and while he's not thrilled with the one he has now, he knows better than to bitch about it because (in his opinion) it's the same shit you'd get as if you were in a "real job."
I've never had complaints about my living quarters. My college dorm room was in fact not as nice as the barracks that our unit occupies. When we moved on post, it was a step up from where we were living before. When we had that sweet, sweet TDY to Germany, the soldiers there *apologized* for their barracks... those rooms were 3 times the size of the ones here, and we got to occupy them solely. Sure, greywar had that shower issue ("I'm in ze shower!" slap,slap,slap), but those were at least as nice as ours... no frame of reference, indeed.
On the other hand, I'm one of the chronic whiners, so take what I have to say with a grain of salt.

lifehappens

on Oct 21, 2004

I'm one of the whiners.....I admit it. But not fjor the reasons you think.

I was spoiled. I joined the Army, had my private room at DLI (nicer than some apartments) and then after almost 3 years in joyful, ignorant bliss, I PCSed to Fort Hood. Gone were the days of carpet and nice paint and a private parking space as an E-3, welcome to a shock as I'm hit by the "real Army" Suddenly I am in a room with cockroaches the size of my foot, broken windows and no electricity....no light excet what leaked in through the hall.....Then it's off to 5 out of 6 months in the field...living in an ambulance for 2 or 3 weeks at a time.......then Bosnia....tents with little or no heat/A/C (we did get SEA-Huts eventually)......

And the reason I complained? While I was freezing/sweating to death in various miserable locals with full battle rattle 24/7, my dear sweet husband got to "go to the field" for 4 or 5 days and then work at an embasy.....in civilian clothes. THAT was what made it seem so hard to bear.....makes me realize I should have stayed MI! Maybe I shouldn't pick on him too much....but even in Iraq his bedroom is larger than my entire house.....He just lucks out more than I did.......

Texas Wahine

on Oct 21, 2004

pseudosoldier:

Wahine - I think it's easier for those who have a handle on what it's like to live on the outside.

I agree . . . I think people who have never had to try to make a living on the "outside" or who have been in for a very, very long time often don't recognize the true value of many of the benefits. I've heard that the housing here is some of the better housing in the Army (this is our first duty station, so it's all I know), so if my husband stays in we're probably looking at a step down in that department when we PCS. Of course, if it's really bad we can always move off post.

I don't know much about the single barracks, but even the shed my husband lives in now on his deployment is not all that bad. He has air conditioning and a single bed and a fair amount of space. The place he where he was stationed before (don't know if I should say where) had a complimentary mini fridge in it. Of course, I also think it has to do with the type of person someone is. Some people will never be happy with anything.

On the other hand, I'm one of the chronic whiners, so take what I have to say with a grain of salt.

nahhh . . .

Nadeon

on Oct 21, 2004

Good points greywar. Having retired after too many years in uniform last year I've had the experience, (trauma?), of living in everything from a shelter half houtch to 5 star hotel rooms (TDY to St. Pete, FL..don't ask) and everything in between. My last years as a Recruiter and MEPS Guidance Counselor for the Army convinced me that we as parents don't always do our sons and daughters a favor by giving them everything their hearts desire for whatever reason (guilt, a sense of wanting them to have what we didn't, choose your psychosis).
Most kids we enlisted considered it extreme privation to have to share even an 8 man room. I will say that I do understand that sometimes it is difficult to not have a personal space to retreat to for some needed down time or to entertain privately. You get the feeling you're under observation most of your waking hours.
However maybe the problem lies in a different arena. I think sometimes the marketing and advertising folks don't show the realities of service life. Hollywood misses the mark as well, even in the old John Wayne and Gary Cooper classic war films. You're in combat you sleep in a hole with your buddies, that's a given to almost any age group. But in training and peace time it ain't that way. Coming home after a watch or work day doesn't mean putting your feet up, popping a cold one, or raiding the fridge. Most times it means eating at a Dining Facility (mess hall) with a few hundred other guys, or nuking some civilian MRE if it's after hours. Going to your room means putting up with whatever roomies you've been dealt (imagine being sick as hell and on quarters and having to put up with a roomie that thinks he's an amateur DJ). When Sergeant Recruiter tells little Johnny how cool it is rumbling around in an Abrams, he somehow fails to tell him how he might be breaking track well into the wee hours or freezing his backside off sleeping in the back of that metal monster.
But of course you can't blame him. He doesn't want to scare Johnny away. We always need lots of Johnnies.
It's more that society has moved on. We don't live in an agricultural or early industrial society anymore. We don't have civilian jobs or schools or group activities that require any privation. Scouting is probably as close as you can get, but even that isn't as popular or as rigorous as it used to be. Heck even camping isn't primitive anymore. Remember when you "needed" to know first aid for snake bites and how to set fractures when you went out camping. Now you can call 911 on your cell phone and get a dust off wherever you are thanks to GPS.
Maybe it is a lack of frame of reference. But it's hard to have that frame of reference when the only place left to get it is in uniform. That's why they give you stripes and put you in charge.

Nad

greywar

on Oct 21, 2004

Nadeon gets the Insightful...

Spc Nobody Special

on Oct 21, 2004

I love where I live, but then, I refuse to live on post anymore if I can help it..........

Ft. Ord wasn't bad, and I absolutely loved the barracks at Huachuca, but......

Most now come with modern furniture (not a lot),

not my room at essayons in korea, we had five to a room when we got there, but it was a two person room. When I finally got my own "room," it was the smaller half of an nco "suite" that was too shitty for the ncos to have anymore. 6ft. by 7ft, and we had shitloads of furniture, all mandatory (they wanted to ensure we had everything we needed)

To fit a bed in there, I put a bookshelf and nighttable in the closet, leaving my with only another bookshelf, nightstand, bed, lamp, gargantuan radiator, a 6 drawer dresser, and an alcoholic roomate who'd piss on everything when he was drunk. The other half of the furniture I'd thrown outside the front of the building, where it all gradually wandered away to the nightly drunken orgies at the other end of the barracks. And before you go boohoo, poor baby, yeah, the furniture was cool, except there was litterally about 6 sq feet of standing space in the room.(little less than 3 by 2)

It was small enough that to iron your bdus, you had to open the closet, and iron half in the closet, half out to fit an ironing board in the room. And that's not counting the indoor rain, the two and a half foot square hole in the ceiling from where DPW fixed the indoor rain (and only 3 months after monsoon season ended, good job guys,) or the rats that would occasionally drop from said hole. I know that there's always someone that has worse living quarters in the military. (Say the barracks/hootch just below us that used to flood 4 inches during the monsoons.) But that place sucked enough for me. If that makes me a whiny bitch, well...........I'll be your huckleberry..........

mophead

on Oct 22, 2004

greywar,

the fact is we work with a bunch of whiny and lazy bitches. shit, more than half of the SPCs live off post receiving BAH and BAS. I remember being jealous of the SGTs when they started moving out of the barracks. Now they get to live wherever they want, they've been working less than ever and they still complain. Some get extra money for knowing a phrase or two in a foreign language. Most of these soldiers have never been in a field exercise with heat, rain, snow. They get to work in a climate controlled environment for fuck sake. Again, a question of reference. They'll never be satisfied. I say fuck 'em till they bleed. I'm tired of these slugs.

dharmagrl

on Oct 22, 2004

It's not a bad life. It is, as is everything, what you make it.

Yes, military housing leaves some to be desired, but you know what? We're not paying rent, or a mortgage. We also don't have to pay for the repair work, the water, power or heating, the trash collection or the recycling service.

Yes, the hours can be long, and yes there are rules that you have to follow and regs that you have to obey....but you're going to get that with any job.

I'd take a military life over a civilian life, anyday.

oleteach

on Oct 22, 2004

Nice post, greywar. Thanks for the descriptions of what life was like when you first joined. You did share some of that with me back then. I watched a movie the other night, "Full Metal Jacket" which showed a very tough version of the life of a Marine in Basic Training. It was awful! I just hope it wasn't that bad for you. Anyway, you made it.

chiprj

on Oct 23, 2004

I remember the 60 man bays at FT Jackson! Woo-Hoo! Toe the line, privates! Toe the line! BHWAHAHAHAHAHA!

I also remember referring to my barracks and room at Humphreys as Cell Block 1226, second level, cell 17! The room was as small as a prison cell, probably smaller, but I was happy because it was mine. It was all mine. I had a 1 ft X 3 ft section of dance floor in the middle of all the mandatory furniture. Really made things comfy when I invited my girlfriend (she's my wife now) back to my room for the first time. We went to her place ever after. The best part about that room was that the room directly beneath mine was left empty at all times for when the BDE CDR came down to visit. He'd stay in the NCO barracks, along with the BDE

and BDE CSM. I'd come home from night flights with all my battle rattle on and make special efforts to 'drop' all my gear on the floor when I got in! And I actually liked that COL! I just didn't like 'the man' living in my house!

At SUSLAK, I lived in a barracks owned by the Navy. Rooms were tiny, but again, it was all mine. In fact, the barracks was all mine. I got named 'hooch chief' shortly after I got there. Eight rooms, eight guys, mostly NCOs. We had a large bathroom, full (if small) kitchen, lounge with a big screen TV and surround sound DVD/stereo sound system. We could get ADSL and commercial phone lines. It was a great place to live. And yet, people still complained all the time!

greywar

on Oct 23, 2004

the fact is we work with a bunch of whiny and lazy bitches.

while the above diatribe was indeed rantaliscious I would urge you to register a user name...

SSG Geezer

on Oct 23, 2004

I can verify that it was a true MOPhead who has been to the field who wrote that GW, I also told him to get a log on and watch JU take over his life.
Chip, the SLAK barracks was OK but no ventilation. I moved out with another SSG and had a sweet apt up in Itaewon 2-dong.

chiprj

on Oct 23, 2004

Chip, the SLAK barracks was OK but no ventilation. I moved out with another SSG and had a sweet apt up in Itaewon 2-dong.

I was in Lower Hooch. It was a pretty good place to live. Some of the other hooches (mail hooch, whore hooch) were not so good.

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