Ask any infantryman in the Army about the National Training Center at Fort Irwin California, and he will probably tell you something along the lines of “that place is Lucifer’s own asshole”. Having been there a total of four times myself, three of those times in the summer months where the average daily temperature is 105 degrees, I’d have to agree, that place is fucking bullshit.

I’m sure there are worse places, honestly the Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Polk isn’t half as bad as those pussies in leg infantry units claim it is but it still sucks, and the Yakima Training Center is where units go to bury whatever motivation they have left. That being said, NTC is without a doubt one miserable place. It’s great for mechanized training, or getting troops like those at JBLM used to the inhospitable deserts that we seem to be fighting most of our wars in, but that’s it’s only outstanding virtue. The home station unit that provides Op-For is great, but holy fuck some of those dudes must have cacti stuck up their poop shoots.

During my last rotation there, I was a Assistant Gunner (AG) in a weapons squad under a smart ass Staff Sausage named Smoke. It wasn’t my preferred role, I fucking hated not being in a normal line squad. I always found myself in some shitty position in platoons; Radio Op, Vehicle Commander, AG, Coffee Bitch, etc. I enjoyed nearly every second I had as a Grenadier and Team Leader, regardless of how much it sucked because at least I was with the boys in a normal position that allowed me to be a grunt.

Being an AG in Smoke’s squad wasn’t a bad gig. He’s a cool motherfucker, that I’m still friends with. The other AG looked like Roger from American Dad, but he was a cool dude and his gunner was my roommate and a damn good friend. My gunner was a fat fuck that was packing on the weight, no matter how much we offered to help him work out and lose weight, he just kept on inhaling whatever was slightly edible in front of him. I personally hated the dude, for a variety of reasons that included his outright disrespectful reaction to me at another training event, but that was neither here nor there. Regardless, I was still proud to be in Weps, because we made it a habit of shamming out when need be and always had coffee in the truck for those especially long nights.

One night, as we were getting ready to bed down, I was fucking around in my ruck mounted to the side of the truck while Smoke was up on top doing God knows what. As I’m buckling up my ruck, I hear him say something to me, but the wind was so fucking violent that I couldn’t make out exactly what he said. So, me being completely fucking ignorant to what Smoke was doing, I move over towards him. Almost instantly, I feel water on my face. I looked up at the sky, and din’t see a single cloud in the sky. Looking back toward Smoke, I realized he had his meaty chud in his hand and was shaking it like a polaroid picture. He busted up laughing and yelled something along the lines of “I told you not to come over here because I was taking a piss!”. Too late. Homeboy tinkled all over my face. I was absolutely furious, while Smoke laughed his ass off on top of the Stryker with his pants down.

There was nothing I could do besides wipe my face off with about a dozen wet wipes and pour a bunch of water on my head, but I would never wash away the shame. You reach a new low when another man gives you a golden shower, one that might be almost as low as when someone catches you rubbing one out on an OP, though I wouldn’t know. For months after that, I wouldn’t approach anyone with their back to me for fear of getting whizzed on again.

Moral of the story: there isn’t one. Don’t get pissed on. The End.