FEMALE ON THE FLOOR: Rewind

Sergeant Dumbacher and Specialist Austin had one thing in common. They were both disgusted with the fact that they had ended up at 536th Engineer Battalion (Combat) (Heavy). They called the others “Rocks” and made fun of them behind their backs. They were deliciously wicked about it when they were together. It was their bond. It was better than playing Barbie Dolls with drama!

Victoria Dumbacher hailed from Cincinnati, Ohio. She was a single parent with a beautiful fifteen year old daughter, back stateside. The daughter favored the mother quite a bit in that she was blonde, blue-eyed, and built like an in-shape Twiggy. The thing was; Sergeant D wasn’t in that great of shape. She fell out of runs occasionally, if the night before had been particularly rough. Delta De-tox had its effect on her for sure.

Austin overdosed on coffee, loved PT, avoided leadership, and was addicted to at least a three-mile-run each morning.

Sergeant D didn’t seek leadership, she just led. The NCO in charge of Commo, she led young male troops with an iron fist. She didn’t put up with much from anyone, including her NCOIC. She was so good at her job; the E-7 above her became merely a figure-head of sorts. Vicky was the brains behind the operation and her troops never failed to give her the respect she demanded. Their rooms were tight, their gear ready and she demanded they enroll in classes or correspondence. Since she was commo, she had no problem with the field. She still laughed about the officer who’d been on the bridge when they’d strung wire, preparing for the invasion. After the fireworks had started, a light was shot out on the bridge causing a huge explosive sound nearby a junior officer who hollered out, “I’ve been hit!” Sergeant D told the story over and over and laughed harder each time about the LT who wasn’t hit at all but scared by the light.

Austin hated the field. The times she was forced to go, she carried everything with her. Eventually the bag was too heavy, her chemical mask kept riding down her hips and she used her precious water at night to bathe. She never missed flossing. She had plenty of cigarettes, gum, instant coffee packs, a jar of Lipton Tea, Rolaids, bug juice, Benadryl and baby wipes. Extra changes of BDU's, underwear, socks, PT clothes and t-shirts for sure. She liked to change those twice a day. She thought “light discipline” meant they wouldn’t be getting in trouble much, until someone clued her in that it meant light would be kept at a bare, bare minimum—to her it meant not only doing without a flashlight with which to do her nightly toiletry, it also meant the light from a cigarette.

Yes, the field was a miserable place, the company of Engineers totally beneath them and they enjoyed all of it beside the pool or out on the beach, usually next to a couple of Engineers, soaking up the sun, eating Chinese food out at Rodman Naval Base, laughing that their pork was probably made out of cotamundi meat, which as it turned out months later, it was.

Making fun of everything was the order of the day. Always. The hard-boiled blonde, the brunette with her curling iron and the “Rocks” had all shared a war together, the barracks party to celebrate PML Charley, and a son or a daughter or a lover or wife or husband back home.

They gave each other what was left over. They worked, and played and planned time. They knew the best and the worst of each other. They knew who could hit targets with an M-16 and who couldn’t. They knew who’d been dumped, who was cheating, who fell out of runs, who the cheesers were and who needed extra points to raise their GT score to the acceptable level. They loved and they fought for and against each other. And they lived as soldiers, without a sense of permanence.

In the military, good or bad, nothing is permanent. The things and the faces become history, memoir, names on papers or in posts, figures of yesteryear; commo wires spliced and split one last time. Without further knowledge even that it was the last time. No further knowledge of how things went for the beautiful fifteen year old daughter or the lover or wife or husband back home. Or the little boy from Texas who ran around in his mother’s BDU's and combat boots nearly twice his size.