Don't take the small things for granted.

Journal Entry Thu 27 Jan 2011
Well, I hit two major milestones during this deployment: 1) I went an entire night without having to get up to go to the bathroom, and 2) I had my first morning constitutional since arriving in Afghanistan. Now, to the average reader those two things may seem insignificant when taken out of context, but in this environment, in combat, those two things are very important.
Let’s take the first milestone for instance. I live in a tent with nine other guys. It’s not bad living and it’s actually pretty comfortable. That is to say that we have heat and comfortable beds to sleep on. Keep in mind that these are strictly sleeping quarters. Our bathrooms consist of two sets of trailers. One set of (3) trailers comes equipped with six toilets and three sinks each. The other set of (3) trailers contain eight shower stalls and three sinks each. These trailers are located several yards away from the sleeping tents across a bed of river rocks. If you’re lucky like I am, your tent is only thirty yards away it’s not too bad; if you’re further than that, it sucks. Now, about the river rocks…these aren’t nice little river rocks that you line your flower bed with, these river rocks are really small boulders. This brings me back to the issue of getting up in the night to go to the bathroom; I’ll get come back to the river rocks in a bit. I work 17-18 hour days, so I value every minute of sleep I can get. The last thing I want to do is get up three hours into some much needed sleep so that I can go to the bathroom. Of course, I have no choice, although, one of my tent mates did offer the idea of using a “thunder bottle.” Thunder bottles have extra large openings and are typically used to store water in extremely cold temperatures. Some people use them as urinals so that they don’t have to get up in the middle of the night. Needless to say, we banned the use of “thunder bottles” in OUR tent.
So, thunder bottle aside, the only option of relieving your bladder is to make the trek to the trailers. First of all, it’s freezing outside at night. Temps have been in the 20’s here in the early morning hours, cold enough that even a short jaunt to the toilet requires at least a pair of sweats. Secondly, there’s the small boulders I mentioned earlier. Now, you can sacrifice safety for speed and go with flip flops or you can risk pissing yourself in the time it takes to don tennis shoes for the trip to the head. I for one have been tempting fate and going with the second option. I found that doing the “pee-pee” dance for a few seconds buys you enough time to put your shoes on. Besides, if you do go in your pants a little bit, it’ll be dry by morning. The alternative is risking your life, tripping over the small boulders in your shower shoes, and hurting yourself or your ego.
This brings me to the second milestone, having a bowel movement first thing in the morning. Remember the trailers I was talking about? That’s the only place on this camp with real toilets. If you are anywhere else on the camp your only option is a port-a-jon. For my more affluent readers who have never seen a port-a-jon, let me take a moment to describe this modern marvel. A port-a-jon is about the size of the old telephone booths we had before the age of cell phones. When you walk into one you are facing a toilet which is essentially a large plastic base with a hole cut into it. To your left is a urinal and to the right is the toilet paper dispenser. The smell is intolerable, which makes sense considering the plastic bin that you have to sit on is full of a couple days worth of human waste. With that picture in mind, imagine that the nice toilets are too far to walk to and you are forced to use a port-a-jon. Once you walk in and shut the door, you are now the star of your own magic show. You have to set your weapon in the corner, remove your jacket, spin around carefully, drop your trousers, sit down slowly…wait, now you discover that there’s no toilet paper. Now, you have to get dressed, grab your weapon, find a port-a-jon with toilet paper and start the whole process again. Once you’re seated and answering natures call you have the pleasure of enjoying the smell of everyone else’s waste for the next few minutes.
So now you know why such little things can be considered significant milestones. And just think, the Marines operating out in the villages are living much more Spartan.