I sit there dead tired, as tired as I have ever been, ever been that tired that you began to wonder if you were really alive and maybe you are dead and you are dreaming? Or are you dead and you reside now in hell? So there I hunched tired my eyes feeling like sand paper every time I blinked, the smell of the earth embraced me as I gazed at the world from the edge of the earth. I was sitting in a trench staring at the world through the scope of my rifle. This is the last day of my living hell, the ninth day with 2 hours sleep in total on an ISCC course which is a leadership course in the military. I am tired and mean, I would blow your brains out piss on your dead body, light a cigarette and walk away as nothing had happened. The sun breaks the sky painting the sky in a light pink pastel colour. I have seen a good many sunrises in my day in the forces and they are all so beautiful each one makes you smile inside and be glad you are alive. The fact that I am bone tired does not numb me to that feeling. In the distance a bird makes a hesitant shrill call that echoes in the morning stillness. I chance a quick glance around and I see other figures hunched over in their trenches in various stages of alertness. We all look like zombies and in fact I would imagine we smelled like them also. Nine days of filth cake us as we did not have time to wash up except the dreaded morning shave in cold water using your helmet as a wash basin. Camouflage paint is in grained into our skin at this point as well as fly repellent is our after shave. The fly repellent we used was showing up as a blister agent when a drop was put on paper used to test for chemical warfare agents (we did happily smear that shit all over our bodies let me tell you) the stuff was so strong it would corrode the plastic on a compass.

Anyway after one bird had thrilled in the silence of the morning it erupted in a cresting swell of noise as all birds joined in. then the sergeants descended on us like obscene vultures of agony. They started harassing us in the early morning trying to make us go beyond the point of stress into the point of no return. After 9 days of walking hell some of them accidentally *cough* ahem got a elbow in the face as we had a couple of muscle spasms, well eventually they got the picture and fucked off and left us alone so we could enjoy the spreading blanket of warmth the sun bought us. Huddling in a trench all night is not fun because it was fucking freezing when it rained a couple of hours ago. We were all brother because we shared the same misery for the last eight weeks coming to an end after a nine day final exercise. We were all brothers wrought by the same faith in fact you could say we became The Brotherhood Of War. Do not know why these images popped in my head but they did just thought I would share them with you, talk to you later.


Who are we?……IFANTRY!….what do we do?.......KILL!……..How far?........ALL THE WAY!…….hoohah……HOOHA!.......holy fuck corporal (insert my last name here) I just got a fucking woody you guys are fucking motivated now I think we will force march all the way back to base with full battle gear…………..let the brain washing and swearing begin after we heard that one, and no shit we actually had to do this too.

one more note, In the morning times they would come and inspect our rooms. If they did not find something wrong they would get inventive. Case in point dust bunnies, the would magically grow in our room overnight to give the staff something to yell at us about. So being the type of person I am i went to the store on one of our rare Saturdays off and bought a cute little stuffed pink rabbit. The next day when the came to mu room for inspection the rabbit was in place dangling from a hanger in my closet.

"Holy fuck what is that corporal!"
"That is the dust bunny sergeant!"
"What?"
"I snared the evil little bastard sergeant!"

Now the man was not without a good sense of humour and he DID laugh and showed his appreciation for my joke by making me do push up until my arms felt like they were going to fall off. He did take the rabbit with him and put it in his room. I know so because after the course was over he showed me, also he got me very drunk at the party we had after. Seems he like my sense of humour. talk to you later.