Gawd, Bud, y'all live like pigs

Our active duty brethren do many things well, and I think chief among them is close with and destroy the enemy. They are not so strong in the area of cleanliness, at least judging by the folks we just replaced.

I was issued a Non Tactical Vehicle (NTV) yesterday so I can get around the FOB without waiting on the bus. My NTV, a Nissan Patrol SUV (!) runs well, but it is absolutely filthy, outside and in. The exterior was caked with mud, but that washed off to reveal nice white paint. I had thought it was a tan vehicle. It has a broken headlight cover. The spare tire, which hangs on a tire carrier attached to the back door, is shredded. I can’t image how it got like that, unless someone just took a knife to it.

The inside has dried mud all over the floors. The dash and every horizontal surface has a thick layer of dust. The dashboard is broken, and has a gaping hole. The plastic surrounding the ignition is broken and missing. The ignition doesn’t work. The key won’t go in, and it will turn with anything that will file in the key slot, like a dime. Pop or something has been spilled on the seats and floor. It is littered with wrappers, sandpaper, and stencils. Looks like a homeless person lived in it.

That vehicle is reasonable representative of how the facilities we moved into were kept. Dirt and dust everywhere, and junk littered all over, inside and out. Everyone I have talked to made cleaning up the first order of business when they moved in, and every one says virtually the same thing, or a very close variant, about the active duty guys who just left; “They were pigs.”

I suppose after being here a year, and suffering through the heat of an Iraqi summer, we may lose interest in dusting. Also, it is relatively quiet here now but it hasn’t always been, and dusting seems unimportant when you’re just concerned about staying alive. Still this is the Army, and things are supposed to be kept neat and orderly.