I was walking home from work at the Salt Palace Convention Center when the tones of "I Ran" by A Flock of Seagulls emanated from my pocket. I answered and my squad leader Sgt. Henley's voice queried, "When are you going to arrive for AT?"
"ASAP? Maybe an hour including travel time?"
"You were supposed to report to the drill hall last night, White."
"I didn't get the letter Sarn't. I'll call my dad and we'll head down ASAP."
"Move."
"Out."
That's really how the conversation went.
So, after a very hurried packing and assembling of my uniforms and sundry gear I had stashed at my apartment, my father and I set out to get our soldier on. Now, as has been mentioned before, my father was in the motor pool as a mechanic so he was no where near my chain of command, so no nepotism, got it?
Later that night we were at the Salt Lake International airport, in our civilian clothes. There was a problem with our flight so we had to stay the night in the terminal(!)
The company commander and first sergeant slept in a hotel room and invited the youngest private to join them. The rest of us were left to our own devices because the USO office was closed and none of us were authorized to leave. This made us reasonably unhappy.
Boyz II Men was there at the airport that night and several of my buddies went to see them. This was 2005 by the way. The first concert I ever went to was Boyz II Men back in '94. My buddies returned angry and crestfallen. They were told they would have to pay $50.00 for autographs, even though they were soldiers. Fuck Boyz II Men.
Our armorer, Specialist Leigh, was the first to sleep. He managed to get comfortable laying down on some chairs and covered himself with newspapers like a hobo. He had earned the nickname "Hobo Leigh" some years before, and I never did learn the story of how he earned the nickname.
No way was I going to be able to sleep on one of those airport chairs. I lay myself down on the floor and used my gym bag as a pillow. I couldn't sleep. In fact, most of us were awake the whole night. We sort of just wandered around aimlessly half-awake. We were the walking dead and we were in some sort of nightmarish limbo.
After the dawn of the new day began and regular customers began to trickle in, I wonder how we must have looked, we somnambulist soldiers.
The pilot made an announcement honoring us for flying with his crew that day and it made me feel pretty good but I was not alert enough to fully appreciate it. The most exciting thing was my game of "Spot the Air Marshall" with my battle-buddy Smitty. We also listened to stories from the veterans about serving in the first and second waves of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
That day was the first time I slept on an airplane. I still have the airport blankets. We touched down in Raleigh, NC on our way to Camp Lejeune to learn how the Marine Corps combat engineers did things. They called in "Operation Joint Essayons".
