Today, I woke up, and I got my rifle, then went to a bush, and did my business. I came back, grabbed an MRE, and had some breakfast. Since the teams are on 25% watch, my driver, PVT Patterson, and myself slept last night. Nothing happened. It was just quiet last night. I could hear to crickets chirrping. There was a little scare with one of those huge spiders that lives here. Those things can kill a camel. I spent the next hour inspecting my humvee, making sure my team had water, food, sufficient ammunition, M203 rounds, properly secured body armor, weapons were brass checked, things like that. Then, we got a call. Because we are so far ahead of the next friendly unit, we are to remain static for the next 24 hours, or until advised further. So the boredom begins. There are 2 things in this world that are more dangerour that anything else. 1. A horny soldier. 2. A bored soldier. Since we have no women in this platoon, the horny soldier is a given, but a bored, horny soldier That's a disaster waiting to happen. I went to talk to Lueitenant Nathan about the performance of his team the other day, when everyone heard an explosion. We all readied our weapons, and went to where we heard the explosion, to find my team laughing like school girls. They had taken a bottle of water, drank half of it, filled it with dry ice from H&S, sealed the cap, and thrown it. The pressure from the melting carbon from the dry ice, caused the bottle to explode violently. I admit, if I had seen it, I would have laughed as well. Something, anything to break the monotony. Like Bill Mahre said, "War is like catholic school. Long periods of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror." This is indeed the hardest part of being a soldier. There's nothing to do, no targets to engage, everything is going great, and it's very uncomfortable to me. Something will go wrong. I can feel it.
- Captain Jason Vine