Point Missed

A friend of mine at work came to my office to discuss the post I provided on Monday (here). It talked about the long, hard slog that is road marching and how it is similar to novel writing. He said I really missed an opportunity with the picture. He's in marketing and is a weapons nut and thought I should have found a "sexier" picture than the one I uploaded.

That was kinda my point.

Sure I could have used this image of Rangers fast roping from an MH-53 and talked about how quickly we slid down, and how much it hurt the ankles particularly when you landed on your buddy who was stuck in the coils at the bottom:

Or this one of Rangers inserting on the sides of a Little Bird and described how much dust and grit gets into your eyes even when . . .  especially when you're wearing your eye protection or God forbid you do it at night and have to wear NODs and eye protection together:

Or even this one of an air field seizure and described how the first time I did it half of our stick landed on top of a bunch of parked planes and bounced off of em creating dents along the sides:

All of these are far sexier images of things we did. But that wasn't the point. One of the worst things we did each week were those damn road marches. And look at that fellow in the picture. He is having absolutely no fun (see here again). He looks tired and overwhelmed and fatigued. He has a SAW machine gun that looks  heavy and he's walking on sand, where each step you feel like you sink backward as you propel forward. Just sucks. That's novel writing.

So, thanks Joe, but go back and re-read and consider that poor road marching sucker again.