Ready

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Ready

“We will never be totally ready--so guess that means

that we are as ready as we will ever be.”

--Neal Shusterman.

Troy was from Tenino,

                        a tiny whistlestop rural town

                        in Washington, but close enough

to several military bases to feel/hear the shaking

from heavy ordinance, & often see choppers,

                                                        fighter jets, &

                                                        bombers

                         in the cloudy gray skies.

His father owned Thompson Garage,

                         & one day if he could,

                                    he would return there to

                                                    take his place alongside

his older brother, so that the old man

could                                           finally retire.            They were

            a family of hunters, which was the perfect

            segue into his military career. 

Today Troy is a weapons specialist trainer

            for the Infantry at JBLM.

He was the all-American poster boy

for those homegrown patriots

that quietly joined the armed services

in order to ready this country’s Military

                      to honor our obligations

                      in the Middle East,

                      Africa, & the

                      NATO countries, strapping

unsung soldiers that hoped to actively counterpoint

             the media attention on all the 

             fucking street thugs & illiterate

             gang-bangers who were being

             recruited on-line for Jihad;

and in his strong young heart

he believed that if there ever was 

            Peace in the Middle East, 

                       in his lifetime, then he would

train men to fight in the mountains & jungles

of South America, or the desolation within the

Korean peninsula.

In his spare time, he kept polishing

his own marksman skills, so

                               that perhaps one day he could join

                      one of the outstanding Sniper Squads;

could wear a rad Ghillie suit for concealment.   He was already

                                                   rated expert with the M24 SWS,

                                    with its light Kevlar, graphite, & fiberglass

                stock, its 100X scope, two-foot barrel & its detachable

bipod--able to hit a shirt button at a thousand yards.

Personally, his preferred sidearm was still the M1911 .45 ACP,

a bit bulky, but with twice the stopping power

of the standard issue 9 mm pop guns.        Sure, he could

          handle an M4 carbine just fine, but his

          220 pound, 6’3” muscular frame loved

                             to carry the M26 MASS 12 gauge shotgun,

outfitted with a clip; much sweeter than the old 500 MILL pumps.

He dearly loved to pull Outpost Duty, where

                          he could use the M249 SAW with the STANG

                          magazine, with three M320 hand-held grenade

launchers leaning up on the sand bags, armed with the old standby

M67 fragmentation grenades--& when he could manage it

he would keep a M3 MAAWS anti-tank recoilless rifle as a back-up. 

He felt confidant that single-handedly

he could hold off fifty Islamic commandos.    Secretly, he was more

                       than anxious to put his boots on the ground

                       in Iraq or Syria--he had already

filled out the paperwork requesting volunteer non-combat

               within the elite squads of weapons trainers

               who were already there in the shit.   Damn it,

this Raghead Rebellion needed to have every swinging

Islamic dick beheaded, then chopped up into camel meat

sandwiches that could be freeze-wrapped & sent to their

training camps. 

He proudly stood with, & was ready to lead

tens of thousands of others, all eager

                             to test their training,

                             to do their duty,

                             to preserve Democracy,

                             & kick some raghead butt:

                             

OOH-RAH,

Hoo-ah,

Fuck yeah!

Glenn Buttkus

Posted over on dVerse Poets Poetics

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