There is a Reason We Invented Crutches

In the annals of the American Army, a few things will never change. If you went back 240 years to Bunker Hill you would see different uniforms, longer hair, somewhat less effective weapons, and... you know... us fighting the British while enjoying a daily ration of rum or something. But if you listened to the conversations the Soldiers were having, there would be an older guy there telling the younger guys about how it was tougher back in his day when they were "a-fightin' the Injuns" and how their current experience was in no way harder, or really even on the same page, as fighting "back in their day."


There are parallels to real life. My dad never tried to tell us about how he walked to school in seven feet of snow every day, uphill both ways, with burlap sacks on for clothes. But I am sure it was implied in his sololiquies disguised as life advice; if I was being honest I would admit that my brothers and I tuned out most of his "advice" from ages 5-13 because there was no way it applied to us, so maybe I am not the person to ask.

If you squint, you should be able to make out my dad's elementary school - somewhere to the left of the frozen bodies of children

But the fact remains: either in a way to say "it could be worse" or in an effort to show you how tough they are, people love to relate their how their own experiences make this current experience pale in comparison. Does it make them tougher? Maybe. I imagine it makes them think they appear tougher, which then increases their stature, but then to maintain that level of toughness the stories have to get more far-fetched... so maybe it is a self-licking ice cream cone of sorts. Parents know this, and at the same time pick and choose their times to point out how much tougher they had it; they realize that unless they temper their stories, and try every now and then to act like what their children are doing is actually difficult, they will just engender hatred from them as they insist on making their kids' experiences just as difficult as their own. Clearly, in their convoluted attempt at building "character" they can lose currency quickly. And unless they choose to fund their "scary story" bank account with bounced checks and jellybeans, this is counterproductive.


Back to the Army.


I have spent scant time in uniform compared to most Soldiers, and have very few experiences where I can relate deprivation on the scale of the guy who tells me all the time about how he woke up in Korea covered in snow or had to hire a team of huskies in Alaska to bring much-needed medical supplies to a trapped village of Inuits and one sneakily hot girl who has no place in an Inuit village. What's more, the experiences that I do have (Scout Leaders' School, Pre-Ranger, Officer Basic Course, to name a few) are all school-house experiences, which are designed to insert artificial stress into situations to see how you will react. So I try to avoid telling people about how I fell asleep on patrol or had to sleep in the mud. What's more, I am a desk jockey. My war stories revolve around acute bouts of carpal-tunnel syndrome or that time my desktop froze for five whole minutes when I was making some critical changes to that excel spreadsheet. So when people gather around the coffee urn in the morning and swap stories, I shut up.

This one hits close to home...

But what I can't handle is when people make themselves suffer needlessly because they think they have to. One of the only lessons you can draw from Ranger School, a grueling 63-day gauntlet of high-stress and next-to-no sleep or food, is that not eating and not sleeping sucks. Seriously. Learning how to patrol or learning how to set up a perfect ambush take a back seat to learning how to deal with intense sleep deprivation and hunger pains like never experienced before. But the one lesson you draw from Ranger School is that when you are tired, you make bad decisions. So, you know, don't be tired. Get 5-6 hours of sleep a night. Work out when you can, take a break for meals, and remember that you going to bed will not be the end of the Army as we know it.


Sadly, people seem to forget this. When did it become standard procedure to prove your manliness out in the field by sleeping 2 hours every other day? All that shows is you can't plan. The Army has "priorities of work," a multi-leveled approach which breaks down what you need to do when you set in a fighting position. Security and maintenance are primary, but they do include "eat" and "initiate rest plan." So they Army acknowledges that you do need sleep, and unless they start giving out greenies in the MREs I have to think they will continue acknowledging the same. [And if there is anyone reading this who is in any way connected to producing MREs, please begin including greenies. Or blueies. Or any other amphetamine. Seriously.] I have had my share of horrible field problems that were designed to deny sleep, but I never got so tired I couldn't make a rational decision, and if I did I told my second-in-command that I needed to take a knee. Did he think less of me for it? Probably not, but who cares. I was better when I woke up and was quickly able to reverse any decisions made by other, likewise sleep-deprived people. But I have mentioned a few times before how people here just don't get enough sleep or don't like to admit that they need sleep. It is literally endemic.


We make bad decisions when we don't get enough sleep. We try very hard to focus on one task and in doing so get so tunnel-visioned that we forget why we were focusing so intently on that task. And we are more irritable and much more uncomfortable. Admitting you need to sleep more is not weakness, yet we say it is. And since the Army has been built on the machismo of "been there, done that, and it was much harder" no one will every admit that going to bed at 3 am just because you wanted to make sure you were up for semi-important events makes you far less effective the next day, especially when you show up for work guzzling a Monster and trailing an IV of coffee. Until they do we will remain baffled when people cannot accomplish simple tasks and blame it on poor leadership, poor training, or under-performing subordinates - essentially everything BUT "you know, I need a few Z's."


So, really, maybe walking to school in daily blizzards was an overstatement. Try walking to school without sleeping the night before. Both, it would seem, pose the same inherent problems.