The pain hell is physical therapy for frozen shoulder. When we got to about the 90% mark in the third month, my physical terrorist changed tactics. He pulled my arm up behind my back like a bully or mugger. I thought I knew what a 9 on the pain scale was before that. I was wrong. I discovered whole new realms of pain, from “Mommy make the bad man stop!” to “I can’t breathe!” to “Please just let me die.”
The hot hell is walking off the back of the C17 and into the jet exhaust, carrying your kit plus 120 pounds of gear, onto the black asphalt that’s been soaking up the sun all day, into 143 degree heat and not a cloud in the sky. (Baghdad, July 2003)
The cold hell is patrolling all night in 40 below snow. (Trivia - that’s the same in F and C.) With two, three-round magazines. Taped over. In the ammo pouches, which were also taped over. Stupid Lieutenant wouldn’t release the parkas because “we might get them dirty”. Stupid terrorists got themselves caught at the base of the hill that we were halfway up. (West Berlin, January 1991)
The bitter hell is being PNG’d1 from your base, away from your team, after complaining about the base commander actively ignoring2 (as in locking down the gates to prevent us from going out to help while he and his XO listened to the fighting on the radio while laughing3) an attack on an American convoy on the MSR just outside the base, and being sent as a spare body on convoys for three months where the other NCOs have been told to ignore you, even though you’re senior to all of them. And then watching three good NCOs get railroaded by a corrupt, incompetent, incomprehensible4, abusive5 asshole6 of a Lieutenant. (northern Iraq, Aug-Nov 2004)
Persona Non Grata
UCMJ Article 92 section 3, dereliction of duty
UCMJ Article 133, conduct unbecoming an officer
Nigerian born and raised, then moved to Moscow, then moved to Paris, then moved to the USA and somehow got a commission as a counterintelligence officer despite not actually being a citizen. His accent was so thick and English so bad that we had no idea what the moron was saying most of the time.
Soliciting sex from a married female subordinate, then punishing her after she refused. Chaining a detainee to a fence, torturing him for a couple hours, then leaving him there to die and never reporting it.
When he found out the three NCOs were writing up a report about his abuses to give to the company commander (who, incidentally, believed all enlisted were scum), he proactively accused them of making racist remarks about him to get them sent home early for courts martial. I got home before he did, wrote it all up, gave sworn testimony to the trial court, and got all three released from confinement and immediate honorable discharges “for the good of the service”, including all future pay and allowances owed.
