Cleared for Deployment

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I've finally got my date for deployment to Afghanistan. Obviously, I can't publicize it, but its a few weeks out.

Unfortunately, during my SRP medical process a biopsy revealed that I had skin cancer on my head that needed to be removed and cleared before I could be deployed. So, I don't get to deploy with the main body of my Brigade. On Tuesday, I had my last procedure to remove the cancer and I've been cleared. I've been trying to get deployed since 2004, when I found out my Brigade was on orders to return to Iraq a year after we returned from the first deployment. I've already got all my additional issue gear and other stuff complete. It's just a matter now of waiting for my bird!

Ever wonder how Soldiers prepare for deployments or need tips for someone you know that may be deploying? Here ya go:

1. Sleep on a cot in the garage.

2. Replace the garage door with a curtain.

3. Six hours after you go to sleep, have your wife or girlfriend whip open the curtain, shine a flashlight in your eyes and mumble, “Sorry, wrong cot.”

4. Renovate your bathroom. Hang a green plastic sheet down from the middle of your bathtub and move the showerhead down to chest level. Keep four inches of soapy cold water on the floor. Stop cleaning the toilet and pee everywhere but in the toilet itself. Leave two to three sheets of toilet paper. Or for best effect, remove it altogether. For a more realistic deployed bathroom experience, stop using your bathroom and use a neighbor's. Choose a neighbor who lives at least a quarter mile away.

5. When you take showers, wear flip-flops and keep the lights off.

6. Every time there is a thunderstorm, go sit in a wobbly rocking chair and dump dirt on your head.

7. Put lube oil in your humidifier instead of water and set it on “HIGH” for that tactical generator smell.

8. Don't watch TV except for movies in the middle of the night. Have your family vote on which movie to watch and then show a different one.

9. Leave a lawnmower running in your living room 24 hours a day for proper noise level.

10. Have the paperboy give you a haircut.

11. Once a week, blow compressed air up through your chimney making sure the wind carries the soot across and on to your neighbor's house. Laugh at him when he curses you.

12. Buy a trash compactor and only use it once a week. Store up garbage in the other side of your bathtub.

13. Wake up every night at midnight and have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on a saltine cracker.

14. Make up your family menu a week ahead of time without looking in your food cabinets or refrigerator. Then serve some kind of meat in an unidentifiable sauce poured over noodles. Do this for every meal.

15. Set your alarm clock to go off at random times during the night. When it goes off, jump out of bed and get to the shower as fast as you can. Simulate there is no hot water by running out into your yard and breaking out the garden hose.

16. Once a month, take every major appliance completely apart and put it back together again.

17. Use 18 scoops of coffee per pot and allow it to sit for five or six hours before drinking.

18. Invite at least 185 people you don't really like because of their strange hygiene habits to come and visit for a couple of months. Exchange clothes with them.

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19. Have a fluorescent lamp installed on the bottom of your coffee table and lie under it to read books.

20. Raise the thresholds and lower the top sills of your front and back doors so that you either trip over the threshold or hit your head on the sill every time you pass through one of them.

21. Keep a roll of toilet paper on your night stand and bring it to the bathroom with you. And bring your gun and a flashlight.

22. Go to the bathroom when you just have to pass gas, “just in case.” Every time.

23. Announce to your family that they have mail, have them report to you as you stand outside your open garage door after supper and then say, “Sorry, it's for the other Smith.”

24. Wash only 15 items of laundry per week. Roll up the semi-wet clean clothes in a ball. Place them in a cloth sack in the corner of the garage where the cat pees. After a week, unroll them and without ironing or removing the mildew, proudly wear them to professional meetings and family gatherings. Pretend you don't know what you look or smell like. Enthusiastically repeat the process for another week.

25. Go to the worst crime-infested place you can find, go heavily armed, wearing a flak jacket and a Kevlar helmet. Set up shop in a tent in a vacant lot. Announce to the residents that you are there to help them.

26. Eat a single M&M every Sunday and convince yourself it's for Malaria.

27. Demand each family member be limited to 10 minutes per week for a morale phone call. Enforce this with your teenage daughter.

28. Shoot a few bullet holes in the walls of your home for proper ambiance.

29. Sandbag the floor of your car to protect from mine blasts and fragmentation.

30. While traveling down roads in your car, stop at each overpass and culvert and inspect them for remotely detonated explosives before proceeding.

31. Fire off 50 cherry bombs simultaneously in your driveway at 3:00 a.m. When startled neighbors appear, tell them all is well, you are just registering mortars. Tell them plastic will make an acceptable substitute for their shattered windows.

32. Drink your milk and sodas warm.

33. Spread gravel throughout your house and yard.

34. Make your children clear their Super Soakers in a clearing barrel you placed outside the front door before they come in.

35. Make your family dig a survivability position with overhead cover in the backyard. Complain that the 4x4s are not 8 inches on center and make them rebuild it.

36. Continuously ask your spouse to allow you to go buy an M-Gator.

37. When your 5-year-old asks for a stick of gum, have him find the exact stick and flavor he wants on the Internet and print out the web page. Type up a Form 9 and staple the web page to the back. Submit the paperwork to your spouse for processing. After two weeks, give your son the gum.

38. Announce to your family that the dog is a vector for disease and shoot it. Throw the dog in a burn pit you dug in your neighbor's back yard.

39. Wait for the coldest/ hottest day of the year and announce to your family that there will be no heat/air conditioning that day so you can perform much needed maintenance on the heater/ air conditioner. Tell them you are doing this so they won't get cold/ hot.

40. Just when you think you're ready to resume a normal life, order yourself to repeat this process for another six months to simulate the next deployment you've been ordered to support

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Glad to hear the cancer could be taken care of and that you can join your unit. Be safe!

Every time you get the mail, randomly throw every third piece in the garbage.

I thought things had improved.

Good luck and good hunting, we will be keeping watch back home, the best way we know how.

My favorite:

37. When your 5-year-old asks for a stick of gum, have him find the exact stick and flavor he wants on the Internet and print out the web page. Type up a Form 9 and staple the web page to the back. Submit the paperwork to your spouse for processing. After two weeks, give your son the gum.

Good luck, CJ; “happy hunting” and stay safe!

OMG, may all our thots and prayers hold you in His hands. Nothing I can say will ever approach or convey how much I have enjoyed knowing you, a really true soldier of God. Thank you as you go forward fulfilling your destiny.
June

That’s hilarious and brings back memories. God speed CJ.

Good luck CJ! Thanks for the laughs and I wanted you to know that I printed this out so that my wife could show it to her Dad. He was in the Army in the ’50s and was a Tank Commander.

CJ my friend be good and be safe! If I could I would go with you! But they would not approve of my tactics! However my prayers are with you! I have a nephew who is also going for the second time to Afghanistan! Remember two things 1. Don’t step in anything you can’t wipe off your feet! 2. Don’t shake hands with anyone with dripping hands coming out of a latrine!
Return safely and come home complete! We need you!

Godspeed and safe return, my friend.

This once long time ago Sergeant salutes you CJ, and all brethren service men and women. God and angels keep thee safe and bring you back home to us.

We who stay are loyal to the Constitutional charge we vowed, will fight and do what we can to keep this nation free from the enemies within who want to transform America into a sociologist extremist perversion of the constitution into a Mein Kamf tyranny by the far-left.

Stay safe and thank you. Remember that many more know what you and your family are about to go through than the media would lead you to believe. My son and nephew leave in a matter of days to begin our extended family’s sixth and seventh tours in the WOT, and it never, ever gets easier.

CJ, Things have changed considerablly since 2003. You get to have curry flavored noodles. No more sand bags on the floor of the vehicle. Well, maybe important things have not changed, but you senior enlisted guys are tough and have to set an example for those young soldiers like my son! Keep your head down because the helments likely will not stop a.30 cal round!

May God be with you,will put you on our church prayer list.

CJ,
Best of luck, take care of your troops, and keep your head down. Drop us a line every now and then if you can to let us know what the REAL story is over there.

CJ, our love and prayers are going with you SR,
when you get ready to use the toilet paper put your gun in the other hand before ,all the time.

CJ:

When you get where your going make sure all your guys sign up with “Soldiers Angels ” And people across the country will send you CARE packages.

One of the motorcycle groups i ride with sends stuff over every month to a Staff Sargent who passes it out to the guys in his outfit who have no one at home. If you have a certain need, or want a specific item you can ask and most people will shop for that. Since i became a diabetic i walk down the aisles and pick out stuff i want to eat but can’t and ship that…A couple of my guys are actually gaining weight…lol….

W.

Welcome

CJ,

Keep safe and return back soon! We’ll keep the beacon lit back here!!! Let us know if we can assist in making your list above any easier?

Best wishes from a former Aussie Digger.

@CJ:
Here’s something to keep you busy for a few while waiting for your new tour on the beach
http://www.soft-vision.com/warriors ( Warriors: These Are My Credentials )

Drop your addy here once you know it..

Eagle ll , WOW,

CJ:

I’d suggest you stay safe, but if you really wanted to do that, you’d have joined the air force.

My tip would be to take a few bottles of tabasco. I always kept a few in my deployment bag. As you well know, Army food has but one flavor.

So, Godspeed and happy hunting. You’ll have a big FA welcome when you get back.
Btw: Is the M-Gator street legal?

cubiclecommando, hi, I like the idea of tabasco, and it has many other use too,
of course you can add it to your food,for taste, maybe shoot a bit of some of it to ennemy most tendered parts,
yes there too, up and above. but don’t bring it in the bathroom
bye

Thanks, everyone, for the well wishes! I’m glad that I’ll finally be back “in the fight” and doing bad things to bad people that want to do bad things to good people! I like the idea of knowing I snuffed the life out of the guilty who prefer snuffing life from the innocent! I’m aware that’s not the politically correct thing to say, but I’ve never been accused of being very PC at all. My only regret is not being able to unload a full clip into the body prior to its sudden collapse to the ground. The enemy falls so quickly!!

Anyway, I ALWAYS bring a few “comfort items” with me on every deployment: Green tobasco, Adobo seasoning, and Tootsie Rolls!

CJ, I bet you have the recipy, and we will need it as the OBAMI CAMPAIN advance,
so just send it to us along the the time, with the exact ingredients.
GOD BLESS YOU AND YOUR COMPANIONSBRAVEST YOU ALL ARE
AND GOD BE WITH YOUR LOVES ONE ALSO,
I know those big letters are hard to read, but just this time

CJ, here september 6 2011, how are you making out with the tabasco and green pepper hot and spicy,
we think of you and all the ones with you,
keep safe

@ilovebeeswarzone: We have none here. Miss my green tobasco!

@CJ:
I don’t find that offensive, but I’m sure some less than Conservative types might.
Look at it this way, by not expending the entire magazine you are saving the taxpayers money thru being efficient!
I pray for your safe return and of all our soldiers.

CJ, I think you can order some from the ANGELS, that is a blog specially for the soldiers who need something specific, how about a small pocket spray bottle to go with it,
I have seen that blog before, I’m sure some of your guys know of it,
bye stay safe,

Eagle ll, wow again, in september 8th 2011something’s wrong, in there,
this is suppose to be like this following;

you guys should be in AMERICA IN PERIL, HELPING TO SEND THE HATERS OUT THERE,
FOR 2012, OUR WARRIORS ARE NEEDED HERE, TO
CLOSE THE BORDERS ALSO, AND TO REPLACE THE LAWYERS
IN THE DEMOCRAPIST WH