On this Veteran's Day, I thought I'd give a shout out to my neighbor and friend currently serving in Afghanistan. Mark Martin of New Hope was deployed in August and is blogging during his tour. Today Martin describes "Hooch Living" and settling into his palatial 5'10" X 9'7" room:
Today was a great day in the life of the deployment cycle. You see...there are several different layers of suck that a soldier goes through when he is deployed, and most of those layers are aligned with the different locations that he has to stay in before he gets to his final deployment location. I have spent a month at Ft. Polk, a month at Gasinci in Croatia, two days in Romania, two days in Germany, two days in Kabul, and two days in Camp Marmal before I finally got to Camp Spann. Once I actually got to Spann, my billeting was not available, so I had to wait while I spent the nights in a transient tent with a mattress like a collapsible refrigerator box. So....after 7 weeks of living out of a duffel bag, I finally got my permanent (more or less) quarters. WoOt! wOoT!
So....for those of you who are not familiar with US Army lingo, a "Hooch" is a soldier's living area. Normally, if the soldier actually has his own room or his own can (like I did in Iraq) we rarely call it a "hooch". When the accomodations are spacious enough and nice enough it warrants a different word. This is why I always referred to my accomodations in Iraq as my "can". It was a metal trailer divided into 3 rooms, thus the slang "Can". But this time....I have a "hooch". I know....it's moderately complicated, but bear with me.
There are some finer points to "hooch" management that one would not normally consider when embarking on a plan to arrange a normal room. Other than the obvious space limitations of the room itself (my hooch is 5'10" X 9'7"), one has to take into consideration the requirement of specific furniture (and I use the term "furniture" lightly). Another consideration is that one is compelled to combine the tenets of concepts such as living room and bedroom in one's decorating choices. As you can see from the pictures here, those choices actually define the soldier with more accuracy than any pyschologist's personality typing exercise. Of course, this is a work in progress...I haven't had a chance to actually decorate the space yet (since I am still waiting on my tote from the conex), but you get the idea. Suffice it to say that I am ecstatic about not being a vagabond who lives out of a duffel bag anymore. I have officially arrived!
Cross-posted at 270 Days in Afghanistan. Comments welcome.
