(Note : The previous Deadly Charisma are located here : 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9
Well here I am again. Not as fucked this time around though. Seems that I am now in Iraq in SFC Vince Calangelo's company. I arrived at around 3 a.m. local time and was quickly shown to a cot set-up in one of Saddam's old aircraft hangars. Even before my bags were all upstairs I heard someone bounding up to th second floor in the dark. There he was Vince Calangelo, big as life and twice as hairy.
We had a pretty good reunion and he spent a few hours catching me up and bringing me up to speed on the deal here. I won't go into any details of the conversation (operational security and simple prudence dictates that I do not) but I thoroughly enjoyed it. Despite being the same Calangelo he has in fact mellowed a great deal with age (thats a good thing folks).
Over the next few days I spent some time in his office after my shift ended and we regaled his new troopies with "war" stories. They are good kids but they haven't been to many places or done many things yet. Additionally his new company consists of mainly of soldiers who are not part of the MI corps so it was a bit easier to verbally dazzle them than it would be for MI types.
During this storm of storytelling I found that I have indeed forgotten many if not most of the stories I have accumulated in the Army (from active memory not passive) and also that I have forgotten what a shocking lack of perspective most people have. These kids just couldn't beleive that other places around the globe could be as poor, desperate, or as cruel as he and I described. I assured them that they are and Vince was able to back that up with even better stories to illustrate the point.
After such a fulfilling bout of verbiage I found myself feeling a bit guilty that I had never told Vince that I was writing this series online. With much trepidation I printed it out and gave it to him to read. Today I will be giving him the Url to Joe User (although I am sure that his wife will do more reading here than he will (he can't sit still for long enough to read 206 articles methinks)). Nonetheless there it is. Calangelo is loosed upon the unsuspecting blogosphere. Duck and cover folks.