Aim High and Get a Real Shower in Iraq!

Damn Air Force and their "standards of living"!

Published on March 19, 2005 By greywar In Current Events

(Note : This is total whining on my part. I am a pussy.)

We have two shower facilities in walking distance of our hangar. The closest is about 2 minutes away from the hangar and is sponsored and maintained by out unit and thusly the Army. It has no toilet facility for males (yes the chicks have real flushing toilets of course), shower stalls built for hobbitts, one water heat (only partially functional), and one light bulb for all 6 shower stalls. Oh yes it also smells like shit because it was not installed with an "S" bend in the drainage pipe so sewer gases constantly back up. Stay Army hooah.

The other facility is about a 5 minute walk through and entry control point and across a mudfield but it is the one I go to 90% of the time now. This Taj Mahal of showerdom is sponsored and maintained through the Air Force whose living trailers (yes they have individual trailers while we live in a hangars in 8-12 man bays) surround it. There are 10 shower stalls (all full height), benches to put your stuff on while you shower, 4 water heaters (big industrial models whch get so hot you can burn yourself if you don't mix in cold water), colocated with real porcelain flushing toilets (with actual toilet paper!), and of course they are brightly lit.

If you were to show a short video clip of each of these shower facilities to incoming recruits I dare say the Army recruit pool would virtually disappear. I wonder how much we saved on our "blue light special" shower shack? 10%? 20%? I can say definatively we were robbed no matter what the discount.

A shower goes a long, long, looooong ways towards reforming your attitude about life. You can march a soldier all week, give him cruddy food, and make him shit in a hole the whole time but as long as there is a nice hot shower at the end of it they will bounce most of the way back to normalcy in a single day. Put a half-ass camel-wash station at the end though and the life will just continue to seep out of him. Fortunately we pogues here in the hanga have life pretty damn easy and don't have much to complain about. Just seems silly for the Army to allow the Air Force to upstage it on such a simple issue. The Air Force "gets it" on this sort of thing very consistantly and the Army just couldn't give a shit.

Hell I am just glad that our showers are not as "shitty" as Wanderers were.

Comments

Bloggin' Airman

on Mar 19, 2005

Yeah man, the Air Force DOES insist on pretty decent facilities for it's troops whenever possible. I have never figured out why the USAF emphasizes the importance of comfortable quarters / lodging and decent food for each individual while the rest of the services do not. In my unit, I've seen transfer after transfer from other branches say, "Damn! These rooms are better than the officers quarters in the Army / Navy / Marines / etc.".

It's important man. You've gotta treat the troops well when you're going to ask them to do crappy work all day, from dusk to dawn. I've been bummed out about my activation for weeks until just a couple of days ago when somebody from my unit sent me a link for a virtual tour of the place they're going to put us up in while we're stateside. It's a freaking, modern efficiency apartment, all to myself, all the bells and whistles!!! I've gotta tell ya, it brought my spirits WAY up.

Take care, man, and thanks for bloggin' and reading my website. I'm adding your link soon.

www.airmanblog.com - Bloggin' Airman

greywar

on Mar 19, 2005

www.airmanblog.com - Bloggin' Airman

I will be adding yours as well... and welcome t

evilPidge

on Mar 22, 2005

You can march a soldier all week, give him cruddy food, and make him shit in a hole

Just for frame of refrence, when was the last time you marched for a day? and when was the last time you shit in a hole?

I'm going no where near your cruddy feet, because i know it doesnt take marching or being in the field to make them cruddy.

keep up the good work. Air Assault! [

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