Monday, March 19, 2007

March and Rain

I was out of sorts last night, and was in my cot before 2200, though I didn't really go to sleep for perhaps an hour. During a few of my many brief awakenings, I heard rain. Hard rain.

Doug, the ODA that liasons with us, walked in about 0900, and told us our pits were flooded. And how! When we got out there, we had swimming pools. Sergeant Liddy had the brilliant idea of us bailing out the pits. Fortunately, a pump truck was here, and it was able to drain most of the pits. We still have deep "pockets" that we started bailing out.

The sergeant had been working on one area that held more than a large bathtub for some time, when I heard some of the squad laughing. I walked over. The sergeant hadn't been tossing his containers of water very far out of the pit, and most of the water he'd emptied was now flowing right back into the same area, just like a fountain. Sergeant Liddy was not happy. In fact, he ordered one soldier to keep bailing.

(Said soldier refused, and is now on extra duty.)

Later, as we walked into the hut to retrieve some gear, the sergeant said, "Shirley, don't ever tell me you're not going to do something."

"Well, sergeant, I came to a conclusion a long time ago: it don't have to make sense, it just has to be a legal order." I think that was a little subtle for him, though.

We worked for quite a while. Of course, rain began to fall about the time we finished.

The new ODA has decided they're going to move almost exclusively at night. I guess we'll see how well that turns out.

I told Green a few days ago that I gave us two weeks before Sergeant Liddy called our E7, and asked for him to send trans to pick up up. I realized something today, though: when I gave that prediction, I was dramatically overestimating the good sergeant's intelligence. Doh!

3 comments:

Matt G said...

Question: When it looks like rain, why not cover the pits with tarps?

HollyB said...

Or dig a proper drain ditch with the right "angle" to send the flow away from the pit?
Or are these logical suggestions against Army policy?

J.R.Shirley said...

Ditch...maybe. As far as covering the pit with tarps, there's no way. The only way that would work is to have an enormous tarp, plus some type of pole network...unlikely.


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