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Episode 7: The Army
Jan. 16, 2005 11:00 p.m. (Baghdad Time)
Al Asad, Iraq
By LCpl Sincioco
Revised on March 29, 2008
"hua" (The Army's version of ooh-rah.)
When we were in Camp Victory, Kuwait, and we were in line for Hardee's (a.k.a. Carl's Jr.), an Army guy who was probably in his late 30s or early 40s came and approached us. He shook our hands and said, "I sure feel a lot safer that you guys [Marines] are here now." I shook his hand and didn't quite know what to say. I looked at Mummey and he looked at me. We both looked at the Army guy trying to figure out if he was just pulling our legs. Then he said, "I used to be in the Marine Corps, I was a corporal when I left." Ah, it was then that we realized he was not kidding.
It's in the Uniform, Stupid!
I felt kind of bad. There I was thinking how heinous the Army's uniform was compared to the cool looking digital cammies the Marine Corps has. And I thought to myself, "No wonder the Iraqis want to shoot them first. They are just doing the world a favor to get rid of those damn ugly uniforms." Actually, the Army has taken the Marine Corps' digital cammies idea and has a new and improved version of it in production. So the Army may have the last laugh in the end.
Now I don't know if you folks back home know, but the Marine Corps digital cammies are a wonder of technology; or so I would like to think. For one, they are wrinkle-free. Old-timer Marines prided themselves in the amount of ungodly-insane time they used to spend pressing their uniforms. The poor souls! They lament back at those times as if the new-generation of Marines, like myself, would miss it. It was an exercise of patience and discipline best left in the history books of the Marine Corps. Now let me describe our new digital cammies.
Wear a wrinkled pair of cammies and your body heat will straighten it back to its original pressed-self in about 30 minutes or so. It is stain resistant. I've had blood, ink, ketchup, and mustard, spilled on my cammies. They all washed off! The exterior is also fire-retardant. Someone used a cigarette and tried to burn his cammies. The inside of his cammies burnt, the outside remained pristine. They can also apply insect repellents on these cammies so they repel insects for about 6 months, even after regular washes!
Our digital cammies may be the most advance piece of field-technology the Marine Corps has gotten in recent decades. And yet, most people do not know it. So next time you see a Marine in his cammies, now you know, not only does he look cool, he feels it too. And best of all, he knows it!
An Electrical Spark
I never really got the whole story as to why the Marine Corps and the Army do not get along, but personally, I have nothing against the Army. When we first moved in to the transient tents, there was a small platoon of Army staying. I did not see any Marines mingling with them. They kept to themselves, and we, Marines, kept to ourselves. Until an Army guy pulled out his laptop and I saw him plug it in the outlet. My initial thought was, "Power! There are power outlets in this tent!"
I immediately thought of recharging my PDA (my Pocket PC). I had been using it to draft my Episode 1 of the Chronicles of Sin while we were on a plane bound for Frankfurt, Germany. It was running out of battery and I needed a way to recharge it. "Desperate times, calls for desperate measures," right? So, I approached the Army folks while they were in the middle of watching a movie.
"Whose laptop is this?" I asked.
"Mine," says an Army guy right in front of it.
"Would you mind if I plug in my PDA to your USB port so I could recharge my battery?" I asked.
"Sure, I guess," he said.
"Thank you, sir," I replied kindly.
I did not know how to read the insignia on his collar, so I simply called him "Sir." I plugged in my PDA to his laptop and noticed they were watching a movie on DVD which I recently saw in the States.
"Are you guys watching National Treasures?" I asked.
"Yeah," says one Army guy.
"Wow, that's crazy, they are still showing that in movie theaters in the States," I said.
"Yeah, well the ‘haji' can cram three of these movies on one DVD for just $3 bucks," another Army guy said.
Although I have no desire to own bootleg copies of movies, I was nonetheless curious as to where they got it.
"Where do you guys buy them?" I asked.
"At the ‘haji' stores around the base, you'll see them," one of them said.
PFC Costa (U.S. Army)
I spent practically the rest of the day at the Army side of the tent. Sure, sure, say what you want, I was merely tactically acquiring information as far as how the power outlets work, the voltage differences from U.S. devices, etc. This information would later prove useful to us when we went shopping for power and outlet converters.
I got back to my side of the tent momentarily to ask my fellow Marines regarding the rank structure of the Army. I got my pen and paper ready to draw insignia and rank equivalents to the Marine Corps. Sadly, my fellow Lance Corporals and Corporals did not know. So, despite some hesitation on my part, I went ahead and approached PFC Costa.
PFC Costa, is actually an E-3 equivalent of the Marine Corps. He and I were the same rank. As it turned out, he was a wireman for the Army.
"A wireman with wings?" I asked.
"It's pretty cool, isn't it?" he replied.
"Why would a wireman need to jump off an airplane? To deliver some badly needed tactical fiber?" I asked, jokingly.
"Nah, it's just a perk in my job," he said.
"Wow-zers," I replied.
PFC Costa and I talked for a long while. I even got one of his corporals to draw the Army insignia and rank structure on my notebook. We are supposed to know the other service's rank structure, but we never got tested in boot camp so I never committed it to memory. I've never interacted with an Army guy before, so I figured it was as good of a time as any to learn.
PFC Costa was actually happy I approached him. He seemed to know an awful lot about the Marine Corps.
"I was in the Marines ROTC while I was in high school," he said.
"Really?" I replied.
"Yeah, I was supposed to join the Marine Corps."
"What happened?"
"Well, the Army recruiter got me first."
"That's too bad," I said.
PFC Costa reminded me a little of myself when I was his age. His mind was running so fast that he does not realize his speech was also accelerated. His eyes and face was full of life and expression when he spoke. I don't even think he realized it. I thought to myself, "He would have made an excellent DSID operator!"
"I want to be a photographer," he said proudly.
"Photography? Hmm, that's something I could get into," I said modestly.
"Well, it's not so much photography as in cinematography," he explained.
"Ah, gotcha."
There's your next generation Steven Spielberg, I thought. Maybe he'll write a sequel to "Saving Private Ryan", except it will be entitled, "Saving LCpl Sincioco."
I asked him about the Army's boot camp and their MOS school. I was led to believe by fellow Marines that the Army's boot camp and MOS school are woven together. He told me that was not so. "It's only the infantry that is like that," he said. He attended 8 weeks of boot camp then we went to his MOS school and jump school.
A Promised Kept
I showed him some video clips of the Marine Corps' boot camp. He was surprised by it.
"They talk to you like that?" he asked me.
"All the time," I said. "It's boot camp," I justified.
"Wow, that's crazy. They only talk to us like that when we get in trouble," he said.
"We get in plenty of trouble in boot camp," I joked.
He is the first Army person I've ever shown those video clips to. All the other times I've shown it were to fellow Marines whose eyes would turn wide open as the videos vividly recalls for them their boot camp experiences; East or West Coast. Then the begging, whining and bribing would begin as they try to get a copy of the videos. I've turned down every single one of them, regardless of rank as I made a promise to my drill instructor that these videos will not end up in CNN.
Name that Service
I asked PFC Costa what names they call the Marines.
"You know what you guys are known to us," he said.
"No really, I don't. Tell me," I asked again.
"Jarhead, that's one," he told me.
"Yeah, everyone knows that," I said.
"How about M A R I N E? Do you know what that stands for?" he asked.
I thought about it for a moment, and it did not occur to me that MARINE is an acronym in the Army. So I gave up.
"No, I don't, what does it stand for?"
"Marines' Ass Ride In Navy Equipment," he said slowly.
"Wow, that's something, I haven't heard of," I said.
We were having such a great time talking to each other that it would seem no matter what he said about the Marine Corps, which he admits he likes, nothing seemed to offend me. And I haven't been really taught anything mean to say about the Army, so I really had nothing to shoot back at him with—much to his surprise.
The Army of One
I hung around with the Army platoon for as much as possible before they had to leave at the end of the day. I'm going to be working with Marines for the rest of the time I will be here in Al Asad, so I knew it was a rare opportunity.
Everyone from the sergeant, down to the PFC was real nice to me. They talked to me like I'm a person, not a Lance Corporal—there's a big distinction between the two; until you've been in the Marine Corps, I'm not sure you'll know what I mean.
In my platoon, the Lance Corporals and below do not really talk too much to the Corporals or higher, unless we have to. Our NCOs and higher have a tendency to make a joke or mockery of everything, so we figured, the less we talk to them the better. I guess you can say they are on a power trip, or since they have the rank, that's the closest they'll ever get to being a drill instructor. And we are their amusement—sometimes, much to our dismay.
When I saw PFC Costa's platoon and how they interacted with one another, I saw a something I truly have not seen before. For that brief moment while they were watching National Treasure, the ranks blurred. In that instant of time they were all just buddies—like a family, almost.
So when the Marines say that the Army is undisciplined and they lack respect for their NCOs, I wonder if they meant what I saw. PFC Costa explained that anyone higher than a sergeant is simply referred to as "Sarge." "For simplicity's sake," he added, "we get treated better, otherwise, who would want to re-enlist?"
Such is the Way of the Corps
I was once told that the turnover rate for first-term Marines (meaning, those in their first 4 years), is about 75%. In other words, 75% of Marines do not re-enlist after they've served their 4 years. That's too bad because that 75% could have improved the system but they left instead. Those remaining 25% become the NCOs and Staff NCOs that expects the new Marines to conform to the existing system that the 75% didn't like. It's a vicious cycle that makes the Marine Corps very slow in adapting new ways of thinking.
Maybe the boredom or the sands of Iraq are getting to me. With too much time at hand, I've had plenty of time to think and write. This is one of those, "No one is right or wrong, it is simply a matter of perception." The psychology between the Marine Corps and the Army are so vastly different, it's like night is to day.
And speaking of the day, I'm sure you've got yours ahead of you. Now, just remember, no matter how stressful your work is or how insane your deadline is, someone always has more work and a deadlier line of work than you. As it was written, "God does not give you any more work than you can handle."
So, be thankful for the work you have and do...always.
—LCpl Sincioco
United States Marine Corps,
8th Comm BN, Support Co., Data Platoon
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