Disclaimers remain unchanged. You might soon notice I gave Capt. Cutie a first name. Capt. Cutie is Capt. Baron to anyone who doesn't live inside my head which at the moment is well… everyone. I named him James, James Baron. Oh yeah and I named one of my made up characters after Sgt. Scream's nickname in the Portuguese version of Over There. Thank you Kika-sama for givingme their equivalents.
AMRAAM stands for Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile. This is commonly known to air crews as the "Slammer."
Brenda Mitchell wasn't a fan of dead people, especially when their vital organs were visible through bullet holes. She carried a shoe and the dismembered foot still in it and dropped it on the rest of its owner piled on top of nearly 300 million dollars worth of heroin. She slinked back to the truck hoping to end her current contribution to the war effort with the couriering of that one extremity. Lt. Hunter's dead guy had been riddled with so many bullets; his body had been transferred in pieces. When the built in timer in her wristwatch went off, the three vehicle convoy was four miles out of the kill zone on the road back to camp.
Pvt. Dumphy heard the F-15 Eagle before he could see it flying in low and right on schedule. Another minute elapsed until they saw the Eagle poop a 335 pound AMRAAM rocket and the crown of an orange explosion appear in the horizon. Dumphy never questioned the morality of blowing up a mosque when it would have been much easier to transfer the drugs. He wasn't worried about the carnage or how close he'd come to dying without making his peace with God. Frank Dumphy was worried about the goats. He scratched his head violently, and remembered Eddy at the petting zoo. He hoped the animals, which'd scurried off when they heard the Humvees creeping up on them, would be able to fend for themselves.
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For the first time in nine days, Capt. Baron scratched his head from confusion and not because of the wicked itch that had begun to dictate how he spent every minute he was awake. He read the memo scribbled on the blank portion of his requisition order for 200 boxes of 'Rid'shampoo a fifth time. 'None in stock; please be advised all non-essential supplies have a two week backlog.' He looked at the rubber stamp inside the 'issued by' box and cursed Specialist Attlee's mother.
"Non-essential my ass," he yelled managing to crumple the sheet of paper before he had to scratch his head again. He walked around his tent as much to decompress as to be able to scratch without holding back out of whatever sense of propriety he had left. He crushed a tiny brown nit between his fingers and extended the radius of his walk by three more tents. The line around the sick-call tent went around twice and everyone in it was scratching their heads. The medics inside were scratching too.
He stepped inside the officer's latrine and into one of the semi-private stalls making it a full house. He unbuckled his belt and began scratching again, methodically, head, chest armpits, pubic hair, even the backs of his legs. Two stalls away, Lt. Hunter, the unwitting epicenter of at least the crab lice epidemic, was similarly busy scratching and scratching and scratching until he had tears in his eyes and blood under his fingernails. Baron washed his hands and started back to his office with resolve. He took paper and a pencil from a drawer and sat astride a chair making himself comfortable in front of the radio. It was going to be a long morning.
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SSgt. Silas was taking in the morning sun stretched between two folding chairs in front of his tent. Hank Williams Sr. crooned about a cheating heart in his headphones and the floppy BDU hat he had strategically positioned to cover his face had thus far worked in keeping the world far enough from him so that its questions remained unasked. He sat there with a death grip on the armrests thinking fondly about the three days he'd spent in a coffin sized cage during SERE training at Camp MacKall. Compared to the dreadful itch that had pestered him for the past ten days, the cage where he first got over claustrophobia was a penthouse and waterboarding a recreational swim.
The batteries died in his CD player and he remained still listening to a Homer Simpson soliloquy in a TV set in the distance. It would have been Sunday as usual but for the four-deep convoy barreling down the main road right before the fork into the camp. Silas pulled the hat off his face and looked through the scope in his rifle. At each end of the convoy two armored Humvees and their gunners were escorting an M997 Humvee maxi ambulance and an M1038 cargo carrier both of which bore red crosses on a white background over their sand colored roofs.
Capt. Baron stepped out of his tent very close to cheering out loud. The convoy slowed down as it entered the camp perimeter and his two-way radio announced the imminent arrival once orders had been double checked. The two Humvees escorting the ambulance turned around before the motor pool in a cloud of dust that enveloped their gunners as the remaining vehicles parallel parked behind the medics' tent almost bumper to bumper. Capt. Baron and his secretary started walking in their direction as the doors opened.
A man and a woman jumped out in full desert BDUs wearing subdued rank on their flak jackets and their helmets and doctor's insignia on their sleeves. They were both captains and their name tapes both read 'Harms' over the right breast. Two second lieutenants jumped out of the truck behind them, obviously the muscle in the operation carrying an M4 and a sidearm each.
"Capt. Jerusalem Harms! I heard the latrine rumors…" Baron said with glee that nearly caused him to hug his peer. A second earlier he'd been unsure whether to be happy the end to the hellish itching had arrived or whether to clobber them for taking three days to make it out. Now he put out his hand and shook hers gladly.
"You are never living this one down Baron, it's all over battalion you are running a dog pound full of fleas," she said replacing her helmet with the floppy desert BDU hat.
"Are you still with in Civil Affairs with the 358 or does this mean you got yourself a real army job?" He asked laughing.
"Still bumming it in the Green Zone Captain."
"I don't know how the hell this happened but I'm damn glad they sent me the Ying Yang twins," he said looking at Jerusalem but shaking male Capt. Harms' hand.
"Oh God, it's déjà vu I haven't heard that nickname since you convinced me to go active, what? Five, six years ago?"
"How's Green Zone?" He asked Harms 2 as Harms 1gravitated toward a tray full of ice with water bottles in it. She popped ice cubes in her mouth and crunched them noisily.
"I was lounging by the pool in the presidential palace when your call came in. You need to visit Baron; they let you pick your own staff and the Prime Minister's got a new chef," he answered only half joking. The three captains chatted amicably for a couple of minutes until Baron could no longer resist the need to scratch.
"So, how do you want to do this?" He asked.
"How about we see the people you have on guard duty first and we'll triage everyone else once they are out of the way? Bravo Company is officially out of circulation until I declare you all bug free so let get going."
"Request permission to ask a question, Sir?" Second Lieutenant Berro asked looking at Baron.
"Granted."
"Why do you call Capt. Harms and Capt. Harms the Ying Yang twins if they are not twins, sir?" James Baron laughed. He gestured to the female Capt. Harms for permission to explain. She shrugged smiling.
"Capt. Harms is named after the capital of Israel and her brother is named after the oldest city in Palestine."
"Jericho sir?" He asked perplexed missing the geopolitical reference entirely.
"Kids today," Baron and the two Harms' said in chorus.
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The bullhorn in Capt. Jerusalem Harms' hands screeched as she adjusted the volume. She'd need it to be heard over the fervent scratching going on in the 140 heads gathered before her. Stragglers continued joining the ranks gathered before the sick call tent and inside it; Capt. Jericho Harms was busy setting up shop with the aid of their two lieutenants. Jerusalem took off a pair of non-regulation sunglasses; squirted coconut scented sunscreen into her hand and slathered the cream on her face and neck. Nordic features and alabaster skin were certainly a plus for underwear models but a pain in hundred degree weather. She climbed the bumper of the Humvee being unloaded when the last of the people seemed to arrive.
"All right, at ease everybody. Good morning. My name is Capt. Jerusalem Harms. I'm a doctor. You all have lice but the Army doesn't trust you to read shampoo instructions so I drove three hundred miles through mined roads and inclement weather to make sure you all know how comb lice out of your hair before everybody gets typhus." A hand went up in the back.
"I'll be back in three weeks for a Q&A session, please hold your queries until then," she said singling out the body attached to the inquiring hand. "Now listen up. I don't care how you got lice. I don't care what you are doing in your free time, I don't care how many times you are hitting the showers or washing your clothes, that's all for your preventive medicine specialists to figure out, but I'm here to get everyone treated. If I come back for a follow up and I find out someone didn't follow my very simple instructions and this place still looks like a zoo, I'm going to make it real fucking unpleasant. I want all the females on the right and all the males on the left."
The crowd shuffled from one side to the other trying to locate the dividing line between right and left without drawing it on the dirt. Capt. Harms jumped down from the Humvee's bumper and dragged a second privacy screen inside the medic's tent. There were four large boxes of shampoo by each station and assorted medical supplies in another two boxes behind each of the doctor's folding chairs.
2nd Lieutenant Berro placed a battered boom box on the table and a CD case next to it. Jerusalem popped open the case and slipped a mix CD into the properly marked opening on the player. On the other side of the screen Jericho Harms struggled with the drain hose on a portable swamp cooler already running connected to a generator in the truck. Jerusalem climbed back on the bumper with a ream of paper under and a bag of pencils under one arm. She did a headcount and jotted the numbers down on a clipboard. Several feet further back, as Harms' attention changed to paperwork, Lt. Hunter joined the 177 scratching monkeys under his command hoping his last scratching session lasted long enough to get seen. Harms divided the forms into stacks and put the bag of pencils on the floor. She brought the bullhorn to her mouth.
"Everyone will fill out one of the forms being passed around. You will need one to be seen. You need to know your name, your social security number and how to put a checkmark next to all the symptoms you are experiencing at the moment. Females line up in front of my table, males stay where you are. The first twenty people to be seen will kindly give up their down time to see Lt. Glass and go over furniture and uniform sanitation procedures." Harms turned around and walked inside the tent.
"I better not see anybody trying to move back in line to avoid duty," she yelled without looking back, effectively thwarting the shuffling that her announcement had caused. Already experiencing the relief of treatment from his tent, Capt. Baron laughed.
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"Next," Harms said hanging her jacket on the back of her chair. 'Ziggy Stardust' was blaring from the CD player's speakers in lieu of a more private consultation area. The inside of the tent had finally begun to cool down when Pfc. Esmeralda del Rio stepped inside. She'd been keeping count of the people being treated. She was unlucky customer number twenty.
"Good morning ma'am," Esmeralda said placing her finished form on the captain's table.
"Good morning Pfc. Del Rio," Harms said consulting the paper. "What brings you into my little shop of horrors today?"
"Same as everybody else ma'am. I have crabs. I itch everywhere." Harms took two boxes of shampoo from the tower stacked on her table. She checked off boxes on the 'office use' portion of the diagnosis forms and signed the bottom.
"Undress to your underwear please."
"You need to see the bugs ma'am?" Del Rio asked.
"Affirmative private. In the off-chance you can't make the distinction between homing pigeons and a louse, I have to visually determine you in fact crawling with lice before treatment can be administered."
"Aren't you afraid of catching something ma'am?" Esmeralda dropped her pants.
"Lice can't jump soldier," Harms offered putting on blue latex gloves. She parted Del Rio's hair, checked the proper box on her workup sheet and motioned for the latter to raise her arms. She checked more boxes and stepped back. "You can get dressed now."
"That's it?"
"I can draw some blood with a really big syringe if you think it'll help," Jerusalem joked handing Pfc. Del Rio two boxes of 'Rid.'
"No ma'am," she said pocketing the shampoo.
"You apply that to dry hair. You can use the same shampoo for head and pubic lice so one box is for right now and the other is for follow-up in ten days okay? Body lice only live in your clothes so you should be okay after the uniforms and the bedding gets sanitized and all the couches gets sprayed."
"Is that what we'll be doing with Lt. Glass ma'am?" Esmeralda asked buttoning up her jacket. A new song started playing.
"Maybe not soldier," Capt. Harms said taking off her gloves. "I've been told you are the best mechanic around."
"Yes ma'am?" Pfc. Del Rio said visibly pleased by the compliment.
"I got an M2 burner in my truck. I can't get the heater tank drained. You done any work on them?"
"Yes ma'am."
"Do you think you can take a look at it private?"
"Yes ma'am."
"Hey Butterbar," Harms yelled to her second lieutenant lifting a flap over the window "Del Rio here is gonna show you how to fix that burner. Pay attention."
Authors note: It's not 100 percentclear whether pediculosis pubis can be transmitted through exposure to icky toilet seats. Pubic lice cannot jump, fly or survive more than 24 hours without a warm body to feed from which makes this method of transmission unlikely considering the relative cleanliness of American toilet seats. For the sake of argument I'll assume that you can indeed catch crabs from a toilet seat and it's not just a lame excuse for cheating boyfriends/girlfriends to explain the creepy crawlies to their unwitting partners. In an unrelated side note, Capt. Jerusalem Harms inspiration was Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition's model Jessica van DerSteen. I just love the way Hubby will buy and conserve an entire subscription for that one issue. I love my X chromosome.
