A little something called Nocturnal Emissions. I never had it, but there was one guy in the old battalion that had it, and nobody wanted to do arctic training with him, because part of it involves ways to keep alive in extreme temperatures someone who is dangerously hyperthermic, by having skin to skin contact inside a sleeping bag with them… more contact, the higher the body heat transfer. No fucking way anyone was going to do that with him, if he got cold, he would just have to die, him living is too high a cost to pay if someone coincidentally gets spudged on.
What was the old saying for sleeping in your bags around other guys: “Nut to Nut, or Butt to Butt, but never Nut to But.”
I remember they put me and my roommate on guard in the middle of winter, still quite new up there, and was guarding AMMO in the middle of this dark as fuck forest surrounded by barb wire rolled on the ground, and nothingness after that save snow, trees, mountains and the stars, and the green Northern Lights. Nobody was going to steal that crap, but had to guard it anyway.
We had been given an axe to chop wood if we ran out of the wood supply, and my roommate decided we needed more and more wood, cause he was from Florida and signed up for Iraq, but ended up in Alaska instead, and was dying from the cold, so I would go out and chop frozen branches.
Well, after a few days, our axe broke, metal head wouldn’t stay on, in the middle of the night. He refused to cut wood, as he didn’t want to leave the fire, afraid he would freeze to death, and I had no other means of getting wood, so I went back to the burn barrel (away from the ammo) and threw the handle in, and started to cry a little bit, knowing how fucked we were. The tears froze to my face, and hurt a lot.
After the fire died to the point of not being effective, sat down on the ammo, oblivious, and didn’t notice he walked off, and really wouldn’t care if he just went AWOL. I looked over and saw him rummaging through the ice barrels (was support to be water barrels) and humvee fuel we were told not to touch, and decided wallowing in my own despair was more important, so went back to staring at the ground and freezing.
A minute later, out of the corner of my eye, I see this hugh mushroom cloud, like a nuke, go off at the burn barrel, as my roommate ran away with the back of his vortex on fire.
Funny part is, I was too cold to bother, just shrugged my shoulders and accepted the fact he was onfire and screaming.
We stayed warm from that point on, but the humvees mysteriously lost a lot of fuel. Battalion Supply got custed out.
Place was always fucking cold. I like reading Jack London short stories of surviving up there, but sure the hell didn’t enjoy the experience.
