BLACKFIVE: Ask an Infantryman: WHAT DO YOU CALL IT, YOU KNOW, THOSE BIG BUCKETS OF BURNING...

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Ask an Infantryman: WHAT DO YOU CALL IT, YOU KNOW, THOSE BIG BUCKETS OF BURNING...

Posted By Uber Pig

Infantrymen, particularly the enlisted or former enlisted kind, I have a question for you. No, this one isn't cribbed from Dear Abby. It comes from me. See, I was talking to my brother last night, after he came back from a mission in one of the crappiest parts of the crappiest part of Iraq, and he mentioned they have to burn their human waste. He asked if I ever had to do that. Thankfully no, I told him. But I remember that scene in that one Oliver Stone movie, "Platoon," vividly.

"What do you call that detail?" I asked.

Continued below the fold -- not family or work safe.

"I dunno," he said. "I think the infantry guys just call it "The shit burning detail." Apparently as Civil Affairs, he spends most of his day outside the FOB, and manages to avoid doing it.

And so my question to you: If you've ever had this shit burning detail, what did you call it? Did you call it "The shit burning detail?" Or did you call it something else? And what did you call the buckets of shit? Because there's more than just shit in there. I can attest to that. When I was guarding prisoners down in Guantanamo back in 1995-6, my idea of fun was to finish up a meal at the D-Fac, then take a nice big duker in the porta-johns. After that I'd jerk off thinking about Winona Ryder, smoke a cigarette, open the door, and slink back into my job as one of the more brittle cogs in Uncle Sugar's Big Green Machine. Plus, if I'm correct, they add gasoline to make it burn quicker.

So anyways. Yeah. I'm just glad I never was on a shit burning detail. But if there is no good name for the detail at present, or specifically for one of those big, burning buckets of shit, I think we should come up with one, then vote on it. For example: "Pelosi." As in, "Private Uber Pig, you're on Pelosi detail."

Of course, I'm not wedded to Pelosi as a name for the shit burning detail, that's why I'm soliciting advice from you, the enlisted or former enlisted who have been on it. Frankly, calling it "Pelosi" might be too political. And so perhaps it would be smarter that whoever we pick be someone specifically anti-military, rather than simply a garden variety anti-Bush Democrat. Noam Chomsky, Tom Hayden, Jane Fonda, Medea Benjamin, or perhaps Jay Grodner come to mind. Ah, but who is Jay Grodner, you ask? Find out here.

Please provide your suggestions in the comments below, and in a week or so we'll put the best of them up for a vote on The One.

-- Uber Pig, Out