How to Prepare for a Deployment to Iraq

[SteveChase]

Prepping for my upcoming deployment to Iraq.

Enjoy...

1. Sleep on a cot in the garage.

2. Replace the garage door with a curtain.

3. Six hours after you go to sleep, have your wife or girlfriend whip open the curtain, shine a flashlight in your eyes and mumble, "Sorry, wrong cot."

4. Renovate your bathroom. Hang a green plastic sheet down from the middle of your bathtub and move the showerhead down to chest level. Keep four inches of soapy cold water on the floor. Stop cleaning the toilet and pee everywhere but in the toilet itself. Leave two to three sheets of toilet paper. Or for best effect, remove it altogether. For a more realistic deployed bathroom experience, stop using your bathroom and use a neighbor's. Choose a neighbor who lives at least a quarter mile away.

5. When you take showers, wear flip-flops and keep the lights off.

6. Every time there is a thunderstorm, go sit in a wobbly rocking chair and dump dirt on your head.

7. Put lube oil in your humidifier instead of water and set it on "HIGH" for that tactical generator smell.

8. Don't watch TV except for movies in the middle of the night. Have your family vote on which movie to watch and then show a different one.

9. Leave a lawnmower running in your living room 24 hours a day for proper noise level.

10. Have the paperboy give you a haircut.

11. Once a week, blow compressed air up through your chimney making sure the wind carries the soot across and on to your neighbor's house. Laugh at him when he curses you.

12. Buy a trash compactor and only use it once a week. Store up garbage in the other side of your bathtub.

13. Wake up every night at midnight and have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on a saltine cracker.

14. Make up your family menu a week ahead of time without looking in your food cabinets or refrigerator. Then serve some kind of meat in an unidentifiable sauce poured over noodles. Do this for every meal.

15. Set your alarm clock to go off at random times during the night. When it goes off, jump out of bed and get to the shower as fast as you can. Simulate there is no hot water by running out into your yard and breaking out the garden hose.

16. Once a month, take every major appliance completely apart and put it back together again.

17. Use 18 scoops of coffee per pot and allow it to sit for five or six hours before drinking.

18. Invite at least 185 people you don't really like because of their strange hygiene habits to come and visit for a couple of months. Exchange clothes with them.

19. Have a fluorescent lamp installed on the bottom of your coffee table and lie under it to read books.

20. Raise the thresholds and lower the top sills of your front and back doors so that you either trip over the threshold or hit your head on the sill every time you pass through one of them.

21. Keep a roll of toilet paper on your night stand and bring it to the bathroom with you. And bring your gun and a flashlight.

22. Go to the bathroom when you just have to pass gas, "just in case." Every time.

23. Announce to your family that they have mail, have them report to you as you stand outside your open garage door after supper and then say, "Sorry, it's for the other Smith."

24. Wash only 15 items of laundry per week. Roll up the semi-wet clean clothes in a ball. Place them in a cloth sack in the corner of the garage where the cat pees. After a week, unroll them and without ironing or removing the mildew, proudly wear them to professional meetings and family gatherings. Pretend you don't know what you look or smell like. Enthusiastically repeat the process for another week.

25. Go to the worst crime-infested place you can find, go heavily armed, wearing a flak jacket and a Kevlar helmet. Set up shop in a tent in a vacant lot. Announce to the residents that you are there to help them.

26. Eat a single M&M every Sunday and convince yourself it's for Malaria.

27. Demand each family member be limited to 10 minutes per week for a morale phone call. Enforce this with your teenage daughter.

28. Shoot a few bullet holes in the walls of your home for proper ambiance.

29. Sandbag the floor of your car to protect from mine blasts and fragmentation.

30. While traveling down roads in your car, stop at each overpass and culvert and inspect them for remotely detonated explosives before proceeding.

31. Fire off 50 cherry bombs simultaneously in your driveway at 3:00 a.m. When startled neighbors appear, tell them all is well, you are just registering mortars. Tell them plastic will make an acceptable substitute for their shattered windows.

32. Drink your milk and sodas warm.

33. Spread gravel throughout your house and yard.

34. Make your children clear their Super Soakers in a clearing barrel you placed outside the front door before they come in.

35. Make your family dig a survivability position with overhead cover in the backyard. Complain that the 4x4s are not 8 inches on center and make them rebuild it.

36. Continuously ask your spouse to allow you to go buy an M-Gator.

37. When your 5-year-old asks for a stick of gum, have him find the exact stick and flavor he wants on the Internet and print out the web page. Type up a Form 9 and staple the web page to the back. Submit the paperwork to your spouse for processing. After two weeks, give your son the gum.

38. Announce to your family that the dog is a vector for disease and shoot it. Throw the dog in a burn pit you dug in your neighbor's back yard.

39. Wait for the coldest/ hottest day of the year and announce to your family that there will be no heat/air conditioning that day so you can perform much needed maintenance on the heater/ air conditioner. Tell them you are doing this so they won't get cold/ hot.

40. Just when you think you're ready to resume a normal life, order yourself to repeat this process for another six months to simulate the next deployment you've been ordered to support.

[redbarron77]

Awesome!

[Benyen Soljax]

what my prep should have looked like for iraq:

1. sit around and watch tv

2. go to the gym

3. eat

4. check ORDN

5. sleep

[SteveChase]

The sad part is, only a few people would understand this ;-)

Those that have been or those that have some Active Duty time lol

[InyaAzz]

This is pretty accurate...sadly. Nice read.

[chevysoldier]

Just came across this. Very accurate and true...sadly.

[Likwid]

old bump but funny! sad I missed this first time around

[ReconRat]

argh... Vietnam Era...

1. Get the deepest darkest tan you've ever seen anyone have, before you go. You'll need it.

2. Go ahead and get a second degree sunburn.

3. Learn to go without drinking water for at least one 24 hour day, and if offered a single can of warm beer, take that instead of water.

4. Go without any easy water at all for around 30 days. Simultaneously, learn where the nearest 500gal water tank trailer is located, and get there early ever day for one helmet (steel pot) and one 1qt canteen full of water to use for whatever.

5. Practice signaling every helicopter you see, to come in for a landing. If one lands, jump on board and ask for ammo, food, or a ride home.

6. Get some Georgia style red mud, and rub it into your skin continuously until no one from home recognizes you without screaming.

7. Collect smoke grenades of every color possible, and keep them with you at all times. Better yet, make it two of each.

8. Practice field stripping and cleaning an antique M16 (Mattel) in the dark. Repeat.

9. Collect every weapon you can find in the neighborhood, and put them all in a big pile in the center of your front yard.

10. Eat some rice.

11. Eat some more rice.

12. Eat some rice with bugs for flavor.

13. When the moon is full, go outside and howl at the moon until the neighbors threaten to shoot and mean it. Or actually do shoot.

14. Collect P38 can openers and church keys and sell them for profit.

15. Learn the art of pooping without toilet paper.

16. Carry a shovel at all times to bury the poop so the neighbors won't find it by smelling it and follow you around and kill you.

17. Turn the heat up to 120F in the daytime, and turn it down to 40F at night.

18. Teach yourself guard duty, by putting a bag over your head so you absolutely cannot see, and stand out in the dark with razor wire in front of you, and pretend nothing is happening. Don't make a single sound, or the neighbors will shoot at you.

19. Learn to sleep regardless of any sound heard, except for random ticking/slapping sounds, at which point immediately crawl to the nearest bunker. If a barely audible dull thump is heard at great distance, immediately jump up and run to the nearest bunker. Be sure to practice diving head first into a dark bunker ahead of time. (Bring the rifle and all the ammo you own. Go ahead and clean the rifle again if you have the time.)

20. Collect cans of peaches, and find a place to bury them where you hope no one else will ever find them.

21. Get a bayonet and practice using it for absolutely everything. Especially heating it with a zippo to scorch leeches off. Learn to eat with the same bayonet. (Especially opening and eating the cans of peaches.)

22. Get a second bayonet and tape it upside down on your field harness, and learn to draw it with your arms pinned to your sides. Get a friend to help, don't stab him. Don't stab yourself either.

23. Get several rolls of black duct tape and tape everything in sight so it won't make any noise. Jump up and down frequently to see if you make any noise.

24. Grab up socks, green dye, and kool aid whenever you see them. Keep some, and trade the rest for even more cans of peaches.

25. And finally, find a water buffalo, and figure out just how fast they can get up out of the water and chase you.

Disclaimer: I was not in Vietnam. I was in Okinawa, Taiwan, Philippines, and Thailand.

[Fonzie]

#24, 25, & 38 had me ROLLIN'!!

[chevysoldier]

<list>

Disclaimer: I was not in Vietnam. I was in Okinawa, Taiwan, Philippines, and Thailand.

Those were pretty good too. Only done a couple of ones on that list.

[Gump]

wat time is it?

[chevysoldier]

Drink some Gump. :cheers:

[redbarron77]

argh... Vietnam Era...

...

8. Practice field stripping and cleaning an antique M16 (Mattel) in the dark. Repeat.

9. Collect every weapon you can find in the neighborhood, and put them all in a big pile in the center of your front yard.

...

12. Eat some rice with bugs for flavor.

13. When the moon is full, go outside and howl at the moon until the neighbors threaten to shoot and mean it. Or actually do shoot.

...

I can do #8, living in TX, so #9 is a requirement, 12 happened while I was in GA in the Army, 13....well, that is just a fun evening, ain't it?

[SteveChase]

I still laugh when I go down this list.

[SteveChase]

Screw Starting a New Thread...here's a couple pics before I head home on leave. I'll get more up when I get home.

[speedytriple]

Hope all is well and you stay safe. Make it home soon to go out and enjoy a ride.

[SteveChase]

Thanks. If all goes as planned I'll be in town this weekend or first of the week. It's just a visit before I have to come back, but I plan on getting some miles in. I'm craving some Coshocton, Hocking, Lancaster Roads!!!!

[blackgsxr1000]

I dont think I could prepare myself for Iraq anymore since there isn't shit going on there anymore, I couldent sit on a fob for a year and stare at the wall of a tent, good luck with that.

[that dude]

Thanks fr your service soldier, those pics look awesome

[SteveChase]

I dont think I could prepare myself for Iraq anymore since there isn't shit going on there anymore, I couldent sit on a fob for a year and stare at the wall of a tent, good luck with that.

Depends on your mission. My team is out quite a bit. Now after September, who knows. It's much different now than it was for those that were here a few years ago. Sooooo I understand where you're coming from.

[blackgsxr1000]

My old unit get back in a few weeks and they said they were lucky to go out once a month when they were on qrf. Good luck though

[chevysoldier]

Good pix man. Brings back good and bad memories. dust storms being one of the bad memories. I found sand in places I didn't even know I had.

[chevysoldier]

My old unit get back in a few weeks and they said they were lucky to go out once a month when they were on qrf. Good luck though

I was there in '05. Recovery section/M88 specialist. I was out practically every day or every other day. I have heard Iraq is slowing down and Afghanistan is picking up.

[SteveChase]

yeah, It's slowed down. IED's are the big issue. My convoy got hit about a month ago, but thankfully nobody was hurt. I'm a Public Affairs asset, so I go out with multiple units. That's where I have the luck of being able to get out. I was down in Salmon Pak not long ago with some units along the Tigris.

We get mortared on a regular basis, but the majority don't make it over the wall. It will be interesting after September. The big focus now is the drawdown.

I'll get some more pics up when I get to a commercial network. I'll see you in the states in about 48 hours.

[CattaniAFJ]

Thanks for all you do man. Cool pics too!