The other day I had Staff Duty. For those of you who are not in the military I will explain. Staff Duty is sort of like being the office secretary/janitor all day and all night for 24 hours straight. For all intents and purposes you are the Commanders eyes and ears, representative, and all around dogsbody.

            Now that we have that out of the way…

            This particular evening MSG Stubby came over and told me that I needed to be over at Darnall Hospital (Ft. Hood’s major medical facility) at 1900 to pick up someone coming back from Iraq. Since I was enghaged in a few other duties at the time my dim-bulb brain didn’t even stop to consider why this soldier would be coming back from Iraq or why I was to be at the hospital.

            Once on my way to Darnall, I had time to realize that this guy was obviously a MEDEVAC case. In all the time I have been in the Army this was a first for me. It led me to some interesting question. Firstly, what happened to this guy that he had to come back? Secondly, why the fuck was no one from his unit going to be there to meet him? (I am actually a member of his unit’s sister battalion, we are part of the same Brigade so we share Staff Duty requirements).

            After arriving at Darnall I was told that the MEDEVAC flight was delayed and I could wait in the next door lobby where they had laid out some coffe and such for the “unit casualty sponsors”. My thought? “Fuck.” I didn’t know this guy or how he had been injured and now I was the “unit casualty sponsor”? I certainly didn’t mind being over there for him but I knew damn well that if the roles were reversed I would want someone I actually knew to be there.

            An hour passes and 1900 rolls around (I am compulsively early for most things), and the lounge has filled up with very nervous women and children who are also awaiting their injured and wounded husbands to come in from Iraq on this same flight. I talk to a few of them and there are a few other “unit casualty sponsor”’s in attendance as well. Most of these are mid-grade NCO’s (I am a junior NCO) and there was one second lieutenant as well. Let me repeat that for the military folks, there was one fucking second lieutenant as well. Not another commisioned officer to be had. 15 soldiers injured or wounded in a war zone and they are greeted by one specimen of the most junior, wet behind the ears, college officers ever minted! All that said the LT was a genuinely nice guy. I asked him about the dearth of brass in the lounge’s AO. His response (after some hesitancy and prevaricative ass-covering for his brother officers)? “Well, for the first couple of these flights the commanders of every soldiers unit was always here. But now the TV cameras don’t show up so I guess less of them think it is important.”

            Let me explain further about the nature of these flights. Some of the soldiers on them are in fact terminal. They are simply being brought home to die with their family beside them. There was one such soldier on this flight, his wife, children (2), and mother in attendance dressed as though they were to attend church. The kids were both too young to understand what was going on but they caught the mood of their mother and grandmother and raised not even the slightest peep during our wait. The wife of this man actually was walking around talking to the other wives in the room and offering up her support to them! (I don’t think I would hold up as well, I can only assume she had quite a bit of foreknowledge here) In fact during my entire stay there no one said a negative word whatsoever.

            At around 1910 a hispanic woman comes in and sits down in front of me. She chats a bit with the wife sitting next to her and eventually she gives me an appraising look. “Excuse me, are you from (unit name)?” I tell her that I am from that unit’s sister battalion and she introduces herself as the spouse of the Sergeant I am here to pick up. We exchange some small talk about kids and find some common ground (regarding autism in children). I ask her if she knows what the extent of her husbands wounds are? She gives a bit of a laugh and says not to worry because he simply injured his leg in a non-combat incident that made it impossible for him to recover in country. I was very relieved at this (having already found out about the soldier who would die here) and asked if she needed anything. She said she would appreciate it if I hung around just in case it was more than she had been told. No problem. (I had found out that for out-patient care cases they would be released to their “unit casualty sponsor” or to family)

            Well several delays later at around midnight the flight finally unloaded and the casualties were assessed. I got our SGT’s bags and lugged them out to his wife’s car. By the time I came back inside all the families had either taken their soldiers away or had gone into the inpatient wards for the serious or terminal cases. The SGT and his wife were hobbling out of the hospital and I squared away a few admin detail questions I knew I would be asked later.

            In all this time not one more officer showed up. In point of fact the LT who was there was not from the terminal soldiers unit. His 1SG was there and seemed to know the family very well. This leaves me to ask the following : How the fuck did the Officer class become so disconnected from reality? Even for our SGT who was not a serious casualty…our podunk fucking support unit doesn’t exactly have a ton of soldiers MEDEVAC’d every day, week, or year for that matter. Where the fuck was this man’s chain of command? Where were the fucking losers who couldn’t be bothered to rouse their dead-REMF ases out of bed to greet a guy who had been washing his ass with sand while they sucked up a fat fucking paycheck for jerking their worthless rear-echelon cocks?

            If any of you worthless scum sucking sperm-dumpsters read this feel free to flagellate yourselves into unconsciousness. I recommend a razor strap covered in glass chunks you malignant fuckchops.