I will begin my project
with a story about myself. I am SFC Matthew Hopkins. I have served in the
Virginia Army National Guard since 1988.This story took place during Desert
Storm. I was serving as a young Specialist hauling fuel and vital supplies for the
combat troops prior to the onslaught of the ground war. We spent weeks on the
road without a shower or the water to shave. This made the time we spent at our
LOG base extra special. We could sleep on a cot instead of the hood of a
vehicle and get a well-deserved shower. It also shows that old soldiers don’t
spring from the bowels of Hell. We all start off as a young dumb soldier.
The ground war had not started at the time. Our platoon
had spent countless days ferrying fuel to key points along the Iraq border.
This was in preparations for the push into enemy territory. The only water that
we carried was for drinking. I don’t think I had had an actual shower in almost
three weeks when we returned to our base. A dark green cloud of stench followed
me as I drug my gear to our squad tent. All I could think about was some much
needed sleep. I tossed my gear down on the pallet that served as my floor
without any fanfare. Military gear and clothing spilled out like a child’s Legos.
Ignoring my mess, I flopped face first onto the tight canvas cot. I would kill
one of my soldiers for that kind of behavior today. Your gear gets taken care
of before you rest. It could save your life if kept in good working order.
Unfortunately for my younger self, my squad leader had the
mentality then that I do now. He was a left over from the Vietnam War and knew
better than I did. He didn’t see the practicality of my actions. His
experiences had taught him my actions were reckless. It was his job to correct
that action. My eyes had barely closed when I felt a size 11 boot kicking my
foot. “Hoppy get your sorry ass up off that bunk and get your gear squared
away. You never know when the next run might come down the line.”
The retort I had died in my mouth before I could ever let
it go. He stood there with his hands on his hips glaring down at me. He was the
spitting image of my mother when she was pissed off at me. That was minus the
breasts and dress, of course. You didn’t argue with your mother after all. I
looked around at my buddies for some support. There was a dim hope that they
would back me up. That idea crashed and burned. Each of them avoided eye
contact with me. Somehow, they all had turned into G.I. Joe. Each man in my
squad began to clean and put away their gear hurriedly. None of them wanted to
be the next one called out. My job as the sacrificial lamb had been fulfilled.
I did the only thing any other soldier would do in my place. I grumbled
incoherently under my breath, sat up, and began to clean all my gear.
It took us almost three hours to get things right. First,
it was weapons maintenance. Weapons come before anything else in the Army. If
you have never cleaned a rifle that has survived 2 sandstorms, you are lucky. The
sand in Saudi Arabia was extra nasty. The sand wasn’t that course big stuff
most people experience at the beach. It was a fine baby powder dust. Small
particles lodged in places that I didn’t even know a rifle had. There was no
way to keep it from permeating everything. I used 2 old t-shirts and a pair of
boxers getting it all cleaned to pass inspection. Don’t judge me! Old military
boxers are better used for cleaning than wearing.
Once the equipment was prepped, it was time to take care
of personal stuff. Laundry was next on the list. We hadn’t found a 24 hour dry
cleaner. There were no washers and dryers in the desert. At least, there weren’t
any for us normal people. The only option left to us was doing it by hand. I’m
not sure who came up with the method we decided to use. All I know is that it
worked fairly well. Several of us put all of our dirty uniforms in a large
metal trash can. No, we didn’t toss a match in after. Although, that might have
been a good idea. The stench from them could have been used for chemical
warfare. We added water and some powdered
detergent. Someone had come appropriated a large metal pole, a boat paddle
would have been better. Since there were no boat available in the desert, we
used the pole to stir the clothes like an agitator in a washing machine.
Each individual took a turn stirring our cauldron of
clothes. Images of a bad take on the witches from Macbeth always runs through
my head when I think about it. Our witches were dressed in camo, smoking
cigarettes as we took turns stirring. A turn of 5 to 10 minutes was about all
anyone could handle. Wet clothes are extremely heavy and dense. We stirred,
poked, and prodded the uniforms until the water was a dark oily substance. As
soldiers bored silly do, we made a game out of it. A stop watch appeared like
magic. It became a contest to see who could stir it the longest. The water
eventually looked like a weak coffee with nuggets of creamer floating in it.
That was the signal to put everything in the rinse cycle.
The rinse cycle consisted of a second garbage can filled
with the cleanest water we could find. Most people wouldn’t use the water we had
to even water their gardens. It smelled funny and was processed from a military
water purification plant. Despite it being ‘purified,’ we were still warned to
not drink it. That water was only for bathing and cleaning. Only bottled water
was fit for consumption. You have to love the military way of doing things. Our
‘purified’ H2O was stored in a 5000 gallon tanker. The tanker was kept on site
by the shower. There was no way we were using the drinking water for cleaning. The
good stuff was worth its weight in gold.
We dumped several 5 gallon cans of the water into the
fresh can. Each soldier took time about pulling a piece of the clothing from the
dirty water. That garment was then dunked into our cleaner batch of liquid. The
preferred method required pushing to the bottom of the can repeatedly. Once the
soldier felt that it was rinsed to a semi-clean state, two soldiers took ahold
of it from different ends. Twisting it like crazy was the best method for
ringing the water out of it. It is the same method used by teenagers to ring
out a wet towel at the pool. After the water had stopped dripping from the pretzelized
uniform, they were hung on a clothes line. The line was constructed from 550
cord. It stretched between the large squad tents we used. The sun died everything
in less than an hour. That was to be expected when temperature was 100+ most
days.
Satisfied that all the maintenance on all forms of gear had
been done, it was time to take care of some much needed down time. There was
nothing else that our Squad Leader could complain about. We all laughed and
joked as we headed back into the tent for a long long sleep. Staff Sergeant
Wiggins, my squad leader, was able to find that one thing that we had missed. The
man had no compassion for poor tired troops. “You boys need to get you a shower
before you lay down. It smells like someone let a herd of pigs loose in here.”
Being the young dumb aggravated smart ass I was at the
time, I had to open my mouth. “Come on Ralph, we haven’t showered in three
weeks. What is a few more hours? Besides, if you got out of the tent every once
and while and sweated a bit you wouldn’t notice it as much”
That sealed my fate. Never call the Senior Sergeant in
your tent a lazy bastard. Definitely, don’t use his first name when you are
insulting him in that fashion.
“Really Specialist,” he said with a smirk. “Since you
feel that way you can be the last to take a shower then. In the meantime, you
are going to make sure the showers are filled and warm for the others first.”
Open mouth, insert whole leg! It is an art form. Few can master
the retort that will land you in trouble like I did. The gasps and snickers
that went through the tent testified to my skills.
I started to make another comment, but thought better of
it. He could have done far worse. I wasn’t certain if anyone had been assigned
shit burning duty. My younger self didn’t want any part of that. Taking care of
the showers was like hitting the lottery in comparison. Filling a water tank
and lighting a heater was much more desirable than setting human excrement on
fire. None of us liked standing over that mess. It was made worse by the fact
that an individual was required to stir the flaming mass with a stick until it
all burned off. Anyone that has been stuck on that detail can tell you, it is
not worth whatever you did.
Slowly, I walked the 50 or so yards to the shower. Like
any young soldier, I kicked rocks and called down the curses of the gods upon
the head of my squad leader. A lightning strike was too good for him. Boils and
pestilence would have been a fitting punishment as far as I was concerned. My
mind was focused on the horrors that would be inflicted to him, not the job at
hand. Like an automaton, I filled all of the necessary tanks. This was a pain
when considering how the shower was constructed. It was a wooden frame with pallets for the
floor. The sides were made from thin plywood and an old canvas tent tied around
it. A metal welded tank rested on the top of structure. It was filled with
water and gravity fed water to the 6 shower heads below. The person on this
detail had to climb up a ladder nailed to the side repeated to complete all the
tasks for hot showers.
There were no electric water heaters in the desert, at
least not for us normal soldiers. We had to use submersion heaters. That is an
archaic device. It was basically a gas fuel tank and exhaust pipe that set down
in the water to heat it. There was a chamber at the bottom of the device where
the fuel burned to heat the water. A person would start a small trickle of
fuel, preferably a slow drip. This gathered in the bottom of the sealed chamber.
There wasn’t a simple button to push for ignition. It was ignited by tossing a
match in as the gas dripped slowly in. It wasn’t normally that dangerous to
light.
That day, was much different. My own desire to daydream
and focus on my own misery became my undoing. That combined with someone trying
to be proactive created all the factors needed for a disaster. The only way the
heater became dangerous was if you allowed too much fuel to gather in the
chamber. I was not focusing. I failed to notice that someone had already filled
the chamber with fuel. That was a mistake I would pay for. The fuel began to
drip into the chamber. Certainly I was still cursing as I struck the match and
tossed it in.
Every god I had called upon was chuckling at me then. I’m
certain they were even taking bets on the outcome. My world erupted in a flash
of light and a roar. Luckily for me, the heater didn’t explode. However, a
giant fireball shot out. Flames, heat and light engulfed me. There was a moment
where I was weightless suspended above it all. The next moment I was flying off
the top of the shower. A rope holding the canvas around the structure may have
saved me from serious harm. Somehow my leg became entangled in it. My
smoldering self stopped only inches from the ground. I dangled like a worm
wigging on a hook while parts of the canvas and plywood started to burn.
Sometimes it is good to have your buddies close by in a
disaster. There are other times when you wish you were alone. This was one of
those instances where it was a mixed blessing. My buddies came running out of
the tent. The noise and my screaming probably had something to do with their curiosity.
Several of them rushed over to try and help me. Others rushed to grab cameras
and take pictures of my dilemma. Facebook wasn’t even a thought then. People
had to have pictures to share the moment. I’m sure I would have laughed and
took picture too, if it had been someone else dangling there. A person with
their eyebrows and mustached burnt off screaming for help can be rather
amusing.
One of the guys pulled out a pocket knife and cut me
loose. I had only a moment to view the destruction wrought by my actions.
Someone screamed, “Put that Damned fire out!”
Being a man of action, and feeling responsible for the
fire, I sprang into action. The closest fire extinguisher was in the motor pool.
I sprinted there, grabbing a fire extinguisher from the first vehicle. Some of
you smarter people are already asking, “Why?” It was the heat of the moment.
Putting out the fire was all I had on my mind. I wasn’t a trained firefighter,
after all.
I had the pin out and ready to go as I arrived
back on site. The canvas was mostly gone. Several pieces of wood were charred.
There was no time to waste. I let loose with a cloud of chemicals. I sprayed
back and forth like a madman. One extinguisher was not enough. Someone handed
me a second one to finish the job. A cloud of fumes and smoke arouse into the
air while I stepped back to catch my breath.
This is where the rest of you go, “Aha!” I was proud of
my quick thinking when a booming voice came across my shoulder. It caused my
satisfied grin to fade “Quick thinking Hoppy. You know you could have used the
water from the tanker.”
My Platoon Sergeant stood towering over me. Sergeant
First Class Glenn Day was a mountain of a man. He was another one of those
Vietnam Veterans who had the presence that demanded respect. His smile made me
feel so small and stupid. My heroics were lost in that moment. It was that look
that a parent gives a child when they have done something wrong that they are
proud of.
Slowly, I turned following his gaze. There sat the 5000
gallon water tanker just a few feet away. Water trickled out of the end of the
hose. The hose lay where I had tossed it after filling the water tank. The hose
was just inches from the shower. It was one of those moments when you just want
to do that palm slap to your own head. All I could do was hang my head and
stare sheepishly and the sand blowing across. Someone snickered. That caused
someone to laugh. That laugh caused others to start laughing. Before long we
were all laughing. The mirth was one of those long heart felt sessions soldiers
have. They come after something serious as just happened, and everyone made it
out alive.
Everyone started to wander off as the laughter died down.
Things are only interesting for so long. I was standing there looking at the
carnage I had created. My Platoon Sergeant placed one of those big paws of his
on my shoulder. There was some humor still in his voice as he spoke to me. “You
know you have to rebuild it, don’t ya.”
“Roger that Sergeant,” I replied. There was no joy in
Muddville that day.
He chuckled again, “First go get checked out. You look
like a sun burnt hairless rat right now.”
It took a few minutes for them to pronounce me fit for
duty. That was after all of the laughter died down. The laughter had started
when an individual showed me what I looked like with my eyebrows and most of my
mustache burned away. What are friends for, if not to laugh at your misery? My
friends kept up the laughter as I rebuilt the showers the next few days. Soldiers
from all the platoons sat about shouting advice and laughing with each misstep
I had during the reconstruction. I think I called them every name I could
imagine during that period. I couldn’t stay mad at them. I understand I was
their moment of entertainment during a time of extreme stress.
