Its June of 2016 and I’ve arrived at Daniel Inouye International airport. All I can think of is getting to our hotel, dumping all this luggage and going to the beach to catch some sun, swim and eat some spam and poke.
In order for the Army to reimburse me for my hotel stay and house hunting, my orders tell me to report to the duty desk at the airport or the costs will be completely out of pocket. Damn Army.
I read my orders closely, “Report to the duty desk located between Gates F and G upon arrival and sign in.” FNG – The Fucking New Guy, glad to see the Army still has a sense of humor. Well this is gonna suck. They take my information and because of my rank tell me I’m good to go and that my first hit time is accountability formation on Monday morning at 0630. So much for a vacation.
Regardless, we’re excited to be here and make the most of our tour. Little did I know then that I was going to see very little of the island and instead spend more of my time overseas. No matter what the Army does to me, it doesn’t matter cause I’m living in Hawaii.
We get to the hotel, check out the beach, drive around the island, eat and get some rest. I go to post to recon where I need to be for Monday’s accountability formation and time it so I can figure out what time to leave Waikiki in the morning. Traffic is apparently a bitch.
Before I know it, my weekend is over and I’m reporting to formation. I’m a SOF guy, so lets just say – morning accountability formation’s not my thing. We might do a formation once a week or for a special occasion once in a blue moon – but half the time is a text in the morning saying, “I’m alive. See you at 0900ish…” Hell, half the time we aren’t even in uniform. You show up in some semblance of a PT Uniform that’s agreed upon by your team and basically never change unless you have to go to a meeting or something.
Not today. We’re in full Army PT uniform, shaved and standing by for Physical Training and our Inprocessing schedule for the week. While I’m bullshitting around with Soldiers, the First Sergeant arrives and starts yelling from the front to “Form it up”. We get in line and are then called to the position of “Attention” and “Parade Rest”.
The First Sergeant looks at his watch and says, “Shut your mouths and Standby. The flag comes up in 17 seconds.”
“Bullshit…” I think to myself as I sneak a peek at my watch to see how accurate he is. At 17 seconds exactly the cannon goes off, Reville begins playing and the flag is raised.
Well I’ll be damned. He was dead on. “Welcome back to the Army”. I think to myself.