About every decade or so, the National Guard sends its troops to the desert for war games, and it was now our turn. The whole battalion took charter buses to a secluded portion of Greenville airport. All of us where armed with all kinds of weapons… M16A2 Assault rifles, and all sorts of knives, bayonets, and even machetes. When we arrived, about half a brigade of troops where already there, and a great green line of soldiers formed up in massive formations, ready to board either the 747, or two 737s’. It was an awesome site to see so many in uniform in one place like that.

The weather there was hot and really humid. On top of it all, my sinuses where acting up, or so I thought… It later turned out to be a full- fledged flu. I crammed into the 747, and made sure to get myself a window seat (my favorite seat to fly in). I slowly became more feverish as the flight progressed, and by the time we landed in some secluded, shut down airfield, I was sick as hell. From there we took a bus ride to the base, and arrived at the base around 4 in the morning. I could hardly stand up by this point, but I did anyway, as collapsing probably would have made it more difficult for me in the long run. We where eventually crammed into a room, where our fearless leader… General Dumas, stood, holding a flag of South Carolina in one hand, and a flag bearing our unit crest in the other. This guy looked, talked, and acted like Ross Perot. He gave the expected "We are going to kick ass" kind of speech. Everyone was tired, and no one cared what this prick had to say. We where quickly assigned our area to bunk in. It turns out that our areas where not barracks, but long shed like structures roughly about 10 meters wide and 40 meters long, with only a roof in case it ever rained there I suppose. We passed by the High ranking officer’s air-conditioned trailers, to our area. The one thing that really annoyed me about this situation, was that it was located 300 meters away from the closest bathrooms. It was always very dusty there, and a permanent haze of cigarette smoke plagued the site. In addition, at night, giant floodlights glared down on all of us, so that it felt like we where sleeping in a football stadium. The whole area was aptly named "The dust bowl".  We where given uncomfortable cots and told to deal with it. To be honest, it was more comfortable to sleep in the dirt once we where on manuevers, and "in the box."

We got maybe 3 hours sleep before we woke up to the blazing sun, which had cleared the nearby mountains by 7am, and was almost in mid sky. We immediately set to work on our Bradley’s’ (Infantry carrying tanks). It did not take long for me to develop heat exhaustion in combination with my flu, while working on the Bradley. It was hard to walk in that state, and I must admit that the environment seemed surreal those first few days. One of the more humorous things that happened was the fact that the army let ice cream trucks into the motor pool, where they sold ice cream at greatly inflated prices, and where always bought out by overheated soldiers.  I am sure those ice cream sellers can retire after just selling ice cream to us.  Each Bradley was tasked to have a load large crates full of equipment, loaded into it.  Most of the day was being spent doing 15 minute maintenance checks, but most of our day is wasted just hanging out inside the Bradleys.  Its not bad hanging out inside the Bradleys other than the boredom, but its not a good idea to be directly in the sun.  Its amazing how fast the sun will suck the energy out of you, and overheat you if your directly in it.  It is also very hot, and sometimes very windy...  Although wind is better than nothing, it is a hot wind, and throws dust everywhere.  There are so many dust devils all over the place.  These are not small ones either, these things look like small tornadoes and shoot dust hundreds of feet in the air.  Most of them average about 20 meters in diameter.

My Bradley crew consisted of the Platoon leader, 1^st Lt. Frost as the Bradley commander (BC), the gunner, Sgt. Hollis, and a back up gunner, Sgt. Frasier, since Frost would have to occasionally jump out of the Bradley to lead the dismounted Infantry in attacking the objective. And finally myself, as the driver. As it turned out, Frasier mostly took up space during the whole of NTC. The crew next to us, was a very motivated crew who used to make up the core of the old self- starting soldiers. Among them was the driver Dutch, their BC SSgt. Rains, and their gunner Murphy. Murphy was a Phillip- Morris poster boy, and made sure to bring 4 cartons of Marlboros’. Unfortunately, Murphy and Dutch where trying to quit. This group was effectively the 3^rd in command. The 2^nd Bradley in Command was our platoon sergeant, SFC Arnold, A squat man, that was the spitting image of Gary Coleman, and a Napoleon complex a mile long. His gunner was an amiable, but rather abused southern boy named Green. I liked him, despite his born again Christian zeal and preaching, and felt generally bad that Arnold gave him all the shitty details he could think of. Arnold’s driver was a dopey, gold toothed kid, who stood around with, what to me, looked like a drunken grin, and laughed like Scooby doo. He was part of the good old boy clique that was discussed previously, and annoyed the shit out of me by merely existing. He wasn’t a bad kid I suppose, I guess I disliked what he was a part of more.

While we where in the dust bowl, the gas attack alarm went off, so we dropped what we where doing and suited up in our NBC uniform. The NBC suit consists of a charcoal lined suit, large rubber over boots, and almost arm length rubber gloves. The suit as a whole adds about 20 degrees of heat since the whole damn thing isn’t meant to breathe. The temperature was already 110 degrees as it was, so the heat was excessive. After nearly an hour, Murphy and Dutch figured out how to rig the gas mask so they would be able to smoke. It was quite a sight to see smoke fill up the eye pieces of the mask, then again, that is what made those two entertaining to watch. When I came out of the suit, the charcoal liner had burst, and I was covered from head to foot with soot. I get out of the suit as quickly as possible, and stomped off to the showers 300 hundred meters away, black as midnight, and for a moment a star, as everyone laughed at took pictures. I was a good sport about it though, as it is must have looked very silly.

Eventually, the war games began, and to no surprise, most of our equipment failed because of the old age and ragged nature of our equipment. While I was driving, it was always funny to hear Frost in the turret "Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! This god damned piece of shit radio! It won’t send! Mother Fuckin’ piece of shit!" One time, the whole transmission tore itself to pieces, and stranded us in the middle of the desert for 48 hours. Frost hitched a ride with another Bradley, and Hollis, Frasier and I where left on our own, with a dwindling supply of water. The temperature during the day rose to 120 degrees during the day, and almost boiled the water we had stored. This is when I learned that if you drink hot water on a hot day, it makes you gag. Eventually we saw a truck carrying water and ice heading our way. We began flagging it down, but it was intent to pass us by. At that point we became desperate, and ambushed the truck. I stood in front of the truck and yelled at the driver, while Hollis and Frasier lept in the back and grabbed the water and ice. The driver of the truck was plenty displeased, and told us that he was going to report us. I yelled out my name to him, and told him to fuck off. I knew that if he told the brass, they wouldn’t do anything about it, because it was their fault that they left us stranded for 2 days with no supplies, even when the mandated that every soldier to drink lots of water.

Our Bradley eventually got towed to a maintenance point, where it was overhauled for 4 days. Frasier and I had the dull duty of staying in the rear and watching over the busted up Bradley. When we returned to the unit, we found out one of our missions was scrapped because of the Battalions 75% mechanical failure rate. Higher up was really pissed off, but they should have expected it from the 2^nd hand, over-worn equipment. We set up our position 50 meters away from Rains’ Bradley, and when they lowered their ramp to come out and question us, a giant cloud of cigarette smoke billowed out from the vehicle. So much for Rains and Dutch’s attempt at quitting smoking… As usual, Murphy corrupted them all. 2 days later he ran out of cigarettes, and became very jumpy. Even the very professional Sgt. Rains, nerves where beginning to fray from the lack of nicotine. After 4 days of no smoking and short tempers, Murphy found a guy selling Newports at the fueling depot. He bought a few cases at an very high rate, and complained about how nasty they where everytime he smoked one, but he smoked them all none the less, and this time was more careful about letting his crew-mates bum one or two. I guess if you got to have one, then you got to have one.

Our active duty opponents cheated constantly, and would often, not have placed the sensors which made this war game possible, on their vehicles. So when we shot our lasers at them, nothing would happen. I guess it didn’t matter too much, since our laser stopped working, seconds into the fight, causing Frost to lose it again "What the fuck! Now the fucking MILES won’t work? What the hell is this!?! Piece of fucking shit! Great… The god damned radio is out again!" I could hear him pounding the hell out of the radio from my remote location in the driver’s compartment. Then he would yell at me "I want you to drive up to their location, get out, and start throwing rocks at them… After all, that’s all they are fucking giving us!" I often felt bad for Frost, since he was platoon leader, he had to siphon down the orders to us from the Captain. What made that screwy, is that no one above company level knew what was really going on. This usually gave us a false sense of mobilization when we would actually be waiting around, doing nothing, or training for the wrong thing.

                            There where times though, where I could admire the desert.  I hate the heat a great deal, but it seemed that a part of my soul was native to the desert.  The skys where so blue, and the wind in my face made me feel free.  There where times when I was on a ridge, that I felt like I need only will myself to grow wings, fly away, and live here... Never needing to eat or drink again.  Let me stress the heat though.  It isnt like you can find any shade in the desert, and the only shade we could find where in the Bradleys'.  When we would stop for a while, we would lower the trim vein on the front, and lay plywood over it, to create a shaded area under the Bradley.  Staying cool was the priority.

Near the end of NTC, after all the engagements where done, all of which we lost, we began our environmentally friendly task of walking the desert, picking up any trash we found, which was very little. It was a horrendous task, which belonged to the dismounted infantry. The dismounts came up two people short due to injuries, so Arnold gave the detail to the people he liked the least… Green and I. As I expected, it was an infamous cluster fuck I came to expect from the guard. The whole thing was run by the Command sergeant major, who in his zeal, forgot to arrange for us to have enough water. The detail would last all day, and the water ran out in 2 hours. It was extremely hot, hotter than usual, and many men where passing out from the heat. The request went to the sergeant major to get more water, but he refused, and said "They are just being pussies." No body liked the Sergeant major. One of the sergeants I knew who was a police officer in the real world, made a special mental note to get a real good look at the Sergeant majors car when we got back. I hope he did.

The last days, we quickly turned in our equipment, and collected our things, ready to board the awaiting busses. On our way out, we went back into the large room, which we came in originally, and there stood General Dumas. Thank god he had no speech for us, but instead passed out little coins, which had our battalion crest on it. That coin quickly made its way to my junk drawer when I got home.

We got on the bus and headed toward the abandoned airfield again, and when we where about to board they put us in an abandoned hanger and told us that we would have to spend an extra night there, because the plane was too hot to fuel. Everyone had made plans to have people pick them up, and no way to contact them. The entire Battalion became very angry and the Company commanders, whose livelihood depended upon the men, became very nervous. Eventually, the captains came around, and convinced the airforce to let us land at another city and refuel.

It took us 4 hours to take off once on the plane. Our pilot was what looked like a TWA reject, whom we saw was having a lot of mixed drinks being served to him. On the good side, he floored it all the way to our refuel point. On the bad side, he wasn’t good at the landing bit, and we where tossed out of our seats on that landing. We got in Greenville at about 5am, and got to our armory, where our tired out rides where waiting for us, at about 7am. I was the first off the bus, ran straight off, and into my sisters car, and told her to gun it before they called a formation, or kept us there for a dumb reason. I got home an hour later, to find that my family came in and cleaned my apartment, and even bought me new sheets and a comforter… How nice of them. I got out of uniform, took a shower, and sat on the bed to see what it felt like. I woke up 14 hours later.