Crying on a 737

I get on the plane to DC and sit in the aisle seat of the exit row. The man sitting next to me is choking back tears, and turns to the man sitting behind him and says, "God, I feel like I'm a woman on PMS."

I don't think much of it. A few minutes later he turns to me and introduces himself. He's going home after a conference. He tells me about how he's divorced and his daughter has a soccer game tomorrow. But he also explains why he's so emotional.

At the airport bar waiting to board, he and his co-worker (the man behind us) met a retired Lieutenant Colonel in the Marine Corps who was involved with peace keeping missions in Somalia. If that doesn't sound familiar, he was involved in the real-life Black Hawk Down in 1993, where 18 soldiers lost their lives. As he tells me all this, he starts to choke up again.

"It's just so hard to deal with. The last thing he said to us before we left was, 'We lost 18 good men that day."

The rest of the flight he's drinking Jack and Cokes. I don't really have a way to respond. He doesn't realize that he's talking to someone in the military (I need a haircut soon to make me less incognito), but at the same time I don't want to mention it to him, because he would instantly praise me for my service. All 53 days of it so far.

I haven't been in combat, I haven't led troops, and I haven't sacrificed anything. Yet. And I would feel too guilty being given so much praise from a man who is obviously grateful for the men and women in uniform.

So I stay quiet.

And I listen to him talk about how he's the coach of his daughter's soccer team, even though he hasn't been around to coach for a while. The kind of stuff that down the road I may have to give up to do my job.

Gunnery

When you fire a tank, you have to be sure you're not directly behind the main gun. As countless sergeants will tell you, when the recoil pushes the breach back, you better know where your elbows and knees are, or else you might get them shattered.

But that said, shooting at wooden pop up targets is pretty thrilling. Downrange are plywood cutouts designed to look like troops or personnel carriers (PCs) or tanks. Some of them move, but most are stationary. And with a little heating tape put on, they have a heat signature that thermal sights can pick up.

And voila.

The hardest part of firing is not pulling the trigger or getting a bead on the target, but remembering the fire command you (as a tank commander or TC) are supposed to call out. Something along the lines of "Gunner Sabot Tank Driver Move out" ... which tells the crew what ammo to use, who's acquiring the target, and what the target is.

After getting a range, verifying the hostility of the target, and the loader's "up" (signifying that if the breach would recoil, it won't hit him) the round goes "on the way" and hopefully splinters some wood far away.

After all this, sitting in the shack up by range control getting counseled on how we performed, the building shook with every shot ... even when the tanks were over a mile down range.

This is what I signed up for. Now if only they let us run over a few cars ...