The PTSD Monster Part 2: Shitters n' Sandbags

A port-a-john. There were a few out there in Kuwait. At first there was shit-paper, then you had to provide your own. Napkins and wet wipes from MRE's. You made sure to hold onto those when you came across them. Those, and the little bottle of Tabasco sauce. You would want to get to the port-a-john shortly after it was clean. Everything all washed down and a new roll of shit-paper. There were only two drawbacks of being one of the first to use the "Officers' Quarters".
LOL! I liked calling the port-a-johns that because the brass was so full of shit. Not all of them, just enough to make you no longer question why officers are portrayed as douchebags and assholes in movies. Yeah, drawback numero uno 1) Everything was still wet. Clean or not, a wet port-a-john, you don't really want to touch anything. 2)The "Blue Water". The ammonia solution they add to the port-a-john once it's been cleaned, its vapors, really sting the brown-eye.

What's worse; when the port-a-john cleaning guy is running late, the port-a-john is full, or when the port-a-john is overfilled with a mountain of shit rising out of it? The answer: all three. You open the door to the Temple of Golgothan and the first words out of your mouth are "Aww shit." If there's more than one port-a-john, you tend to look for the lesser of the evils.
It was hot in those things. I don't remember it being an unbearable heat, just hot and stink. You had to put down your weapon and take off your gear all in this closet-sized poop shack. You don't want anything you have to touch with your hands to come in contact with anything questionable. The situation was made more difficult if you were one of the lucky few to end up in one with a urinal. I would hang my Kevlar on the front sight and barrel of my rifle.  Basically, once you're in there you want to try to keep everything off the ground. Sometimes it worked sometimes it didn't. Just as long as you didn't drop anything besides a deuce down the hole. An image came to mind of the little kid on Schindler's List that hid in the outhouse shitter. A dire situation it was, to be up to his neck in human waste, along with other children, yet that not be the worse thing that could happen. That little kid and the one from Slumdog Millionaire. If it was dark you had to have a flashlight to see what you're doing. Why do I remember someone saying they dropped their flashlight into the hole? I'm sure it's happened, more than once.
A clean port-a-john was a vacation spot. You went in there and separated yourself from the world for a little while; read some letters, "entertain" yourself with porn magazine. And come out feeling refreshed. LOL, I remember walking a distance to another set of shitters (I'm just gonna call 'em shitters from now on, OK?!) that were less frequented by the masses.
We would be out and about doing our thing and you would suddenly smell the odor so wretched that you had to stop what you're doing for a moment. It was the shitter guy, cleanin' shitters. You always knew what the smell was after the first time smelling it, but you would still ask when you smelled it. The stench had a tendency to catch you completely off guard. "That job must suck (rimshot)," people would say, "but I hear the money's pretty good." You go in with that big hose and all the crap out (literally), scrub everything down, rinse it out with clean water, add the "blue water" to the waste tank, add some shit-paper, and you're done. I can't say that there is no way in hell I'd do that job. Things are tough, sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do to make ends meet. If the money was that good I think I'd give it a go, I doubt that you would have the same competition as most other 9 to 5's.

Evening, sun's dipping down behind the horizon. It's after evening chow and you're on your way back from the shitter. The hot desert is cooling down. Most of the "games" are done for the day. This one I'll never forget; "Fill up the sandbags and put them on the vehicles to protect driver and passenger." That was a good game. The counterpart to that one is; "Now that you've finished, we realize the sandbags are too heavy and will slow the vehicles down, so just let's just take a few of those sandbags and throw them in the back of the trucks, the other 90% you can just dump them out, back into the hole you just dug, and save the sandbags in case we need to fill them later." No more games. The top dogs are heading into their tents, so no need to put the guys to mindless work just so that they are not seen just hanging out, "shooting the shit", or "smoking and joking". Chill with the guys for a minute, passing time firing rounds at fecal matter, and inhaling carcinogen-laced tobacco products whilst exchanging humorous banter, before going to hit the rack. Roll out your mat, keep it from rolling back up, lay out you sleeping back on top. You can go with or without the outer part of the sleeping bag. It gets pretty toasty in those things. Strip down (not completely, genius), and crash the hell out. If you gotta pee during the night put on the boots, find some out of the way spot that doesn't have someone laid out there, and do your business. More bullshit to shovel when the sun comes up.