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Nine Hours In a Box
My first online story, entitled Nine Hours In A Box (you may have guessed this from the title). I apologize in advance for any typos I don't catch, I am quite tired just now so don't expect perfection. Well, from this site, NEVER expect perfection. Maybe haphazard at best. Anyway...
NINE HOURS IN A BOX
Ah, the Navy... sailing on the open ocean, frequenting foreign ports, being trapped in a cold guard shack, forgotten for nine hours... funny, they didn't mention that one at the recruiting office.
The day started off well enough. Well, as well as it can when you have to wake up at 3:30 AM (it's true, there's a 3:30 in the morning now, too!). Woke up and got dressed, and by 4:00 I was in the armory starting to load up for a trip to Camp Fuji or a few hours on the gun range.
The people going to the range have to be on the pier, ready to go, by 5:00 AM. Unless, of couse, you're a gunner's mate, in which case you have to be there, in a vehicle and leaving the gate by 4:30, and that's after you've moved half the armory from the 7th deck down into a government van with very limited space. At 4:30, we pulled out of the Naval base and into the wonderful city of Yokosuka, Japan.
And God help us all if we'd been pulled over. In Japan, the typical citizen is not allowed to own a firearm, and here we are, driving through the middle of it at 4:30 in the morning in an unmarked white van carrying enough gear to start World War Three. Inside said van are five very cramped people, eight M14 rifles, five shotguns, two M60 machine guns, and one 9mm pistol, along with several thousand rounds of ammuntion, flashlights, tactical body armor, flares and flare guns, and a whole lot of camouflage gear. And to add insult to injury, we were speeding.
Two hours, 12 Japanese radio songs, and four toll booths later, we pulled into Camp Fuji. Camp Fuji is called Camp Fuji because it happens to be located on Mount Fuji. Mount Fuji actually gets it's name from two ancient Japanese words, "mount" which means "fucking", and "Fuji", which means "cold". Anyone who tells you different is a dirty liar.
Anyway, I'm getting off-track. We pulled in an got ready to set up at 6:30. At the end of the road leading up to the gun range, there is a railroad-style gate, one of those ones that goes up and down, with a guard shack next to it (the guard shack is henceforth referred to as "the box"). When the range is in use, there has to be a guard posted at the gate. I was the new guy (yay!) and as such was volunteered for the first watch.
My box consisted of a 6' x 6' room, with 6 things in it - a table, a bench, a phone, a small heater, a button that operated the gate, and a circuit breaker. I was given the keys and told to wait on post until I was relieved.
Now let's get something straight right away: I am a destructive, curious person. Those two attributes occasionally override my common sense. Well, that's a bit of a lie. They -frequently- override my common sense.
So I'm, sitting there on my "bench", which in this case is a bunch of wood blocks nailed together in random places. It was about 7:00 in the morning by this point, and I was already quite tired, so naturally I decided to keep myself entertained so I didn't fall asleep. First thing on my list was the table.
By pure chance, I had a pen and a red marker on my person that morning. The table had already been heartily abused by years of sailors and marines left on watch, so I felt free to dig right in. I drew, I wrote, I colored, I insulted people, I messed with other people's work, yadda yadda yadda. This kept me entertained until about 8 or so, when I realized it had gone from fun to mind-meltingly dull. The next focus of my amusement was the gate.
It went something like this: I pushed the button that said "OPEN". An alarm rang for five seconds, and then the gate opened the whole way up. I pushed the button that said "CLOSE" and an alarm rang for five seconds, and then the gte closed. Lather, rinse, and repeat. And repeat. And repeat. And repeat. Fascinating, isn't it? I must have opened it at least fifty timesbefore I grew too bored to keep doing it. My next victim was (in retrospect, I believe this to be a mistake, but sure - hindsight is always 20/20) the circuit breaker.
I noticed it on the wall at, let's say, 8:30. I had it opened up by 8:30:04. By 8:31, I had created a shower of sparks and my heater stopped working. Oops.
There was also a light on the cieling, which I had just noticed at this point. I tried turning it on. Nothing. I tried to turn my heater back on. Nothing. I picked up the phone and got no dial tone. I tried dialing anyway, just 7 random digits, and got no response. Now, in my advanced training, we were taught how to trip and reset circuit breakers because we needed it from time to time while working with missile systems. So, I went back to the source of my troubles and re-opened the circuit breaker.
It suddenly dawned on me that I was in Japan (I tend to forget those silly details). In Japan, things are typically written not in English, but in Kanji. I was looking at a big red button, a small yellow button, and two switches, all of which were labelled in Kanji. Now, the only Kanji I can read is "Yokosuka", and that's just because I see it several times a day. So these were worthless to me.
I knew I couldn't read it. I knew I had a working radio. I knew I could have called for help and blamed it on a freak accident. Common sense would dictate calling my supervisor and reporting the problem. On the other hand, if common sense had anything to say in the matter, I wouldn't have blown the power in the first place. Last time, my destructive attitude overruled by common sense. Now, it was curiosity's turn to take charge.
Two buttons. One big and red, one small and yellow. Two switches, identical, but one higher than the other. When we came in in the morning, the heater hadn't worked. Chief opened up the breaker and threw the upper switch, and the heater started to work, so one would assume that putting it back down would re-kill the power to the breaker. Now, I wasn't about to go pushing random buttons in a circuit breaker with the power still energized (common sense may have taken a back seat, but it wasn't destroyed entirely), so I threw the upper switch. I switched it back on, and nothing happened. Ok, it was going to be a little more complex than that. That was cool, I had nothing but free time. I turned it back off, and pushed the red button. Turned it back on, and got nothing. I tried it again, this time pushing the small yellow button. Nothing. I tried it with the other switch, and still got no response. Now, ratehr than explain exactly what I did for the next several minutes, suffice to say that I threw all sense of caution into the proverbial garbage can and tried every combination I could think of, energized or not. At some point, I think I even threw a rock at it out of spite. Still nothing. Feeling defeated, I sat back down on my old bench and decided to play with my gate while thinking of a solution that didn't involve me calling Chief. That's when it struck my brain like a damned lightning bolt.
The gate.
The damn GATE.
I jumped to the desk and hit the "OPEN" button. No response. I'd killed it, too.
The next five minutes of my life didn't really seem to exist in a normal fashion. I stared at the gate. The gate was my only purpose at the time, my only reason for even being there for hours on end, and I'd managed to break it in the first two hours.
Now, I tried logic (yeah, NOW I thought of it). This is the military, I thought to myself. They have to have some sort of a backjup plan in case of a power outage. A sort of "when all else fails" plan. I put my coat on, went out of my lovely box and tried to open the gate manually. It went a grand total of two feet in the air and stopped. I tried again, and again it went a mere two feet. Now, by this point, I had risked cold, electrocution, and a court-martial for destruction of government property just to get this damn gate working. I wasn't about to be stopped by a stubborn powerless motor. I resorted to what I refer to as "Plan X".
I got a rock. A big one.
The gate itself is a ten foot long metal pole, connecting to a motor on one side, with another foot of pipe sticking out the other side of the motor that I was using as a handle. I opened the gate to it's customary two feet, got my rock, and slammed it down hard on the handle with as much force as I could muster up. Yeah, that moved the stubborn little bitch.
I hoisted up the gate manually the rest o the way until it stood fully erect, pointing straight up into the air, and locked it open. I then retired to my box, happy that I had outsmarted the inanimate piece of metal piping. It was 9:15.
-TO BE CONTINUED WHEN I'M NOT SO DAMN LAZY-
Hey hey, it's me again. *turns up radio* Ok, time to continue this thing, people are starting to complain.
Now, this is when my day started to slow down (as exciting as the first few hours were). Between 9:15 and 11:30, absolutely nothing happened. One car drove through the gate, some range patrol car. That was it. All of it. I sort of hung around in my cool ass box, drawing on the desk and wishing I had some power. At 11:30, the van I came here in drove down to my box and dropped off one of those ready-made lunches. My lunch was a gourmet Jimmy Dean 4" sandwich, turkey on white with a packet of mayo and mustard. Oddly, the mayo tasted absolutely NOTHING like mayo. I have no idea what it was even today. The mustard tasted vaguely like mustard, though, so I didn't complain. Much.
11:30 to 3:30. Nothing. Less than nothing. No cars, no traffic, nothing. I amused myself by standing outside and kicking rocks into a big hole. Then, at 3:30, my relief came!! I was starting to doubt that she even existed! I threw the keys at her and bailed the fuck out and ran up to the range where everyone else was.
My day finally picked up a bit from here. First thing I got to shoot was an M60 machine gun, which was not at all a bad experience. I was in a group of 5 people, I was the last to shoot. They gave us each ten rounds to fire at this little target. They did a quick brief on how the hell to fire and load it (in that order), and let us loose to use up our ammo. The first four guys all did exactly the same thing, they'd aim carefully, fire about 3 bullets, stop, reaim, and do it again. Sounded a little like this.
*BAM* *BAM* *BAM*
(stop)
*BAM* *BAM* *BAM*
(stop)
*BAM* *BAM*
(stop)
*BAM* *BAM*
(next person)
Until that fifth person got on it (me!). I had a lot of built up anger by this point. Also, with a machine gun, accuracy doesn't matter because you can't qualify with it by shooting a certain score. So, I basically just opene dup on the damn target.
*BAM* *BAM* *BAM* *BAM* *BAM* *BAM* *BAM* *BAM* *BAM* *BAM*
(stop)
I felt a little better.
After that I went over to the M14 range. Yes, the US Navy still uses the M14, unlike every other branch that carries M16A1 or A2s. Not that I have a problem with that, I personally prefer the M14 as it's more powerful, has a better range, and is more accurate. I'd never fired one before until now but I still managed to qualify as a sharpshooter with the damn thing (not legally, as we were only shooting to qualify and not for ribbons, etc., but had we been, my score was enough for a SS ribbon). So I was reasonably happy with that (although shooting from the kneeling position does bad things to my left knee).
And then we were done, as it was 4:00. The people in the bus behind us (the guys who were just there to shoot) packed up and left, and we started cleaning up. My first job was to go up to the top of the hill and take down the flag that showed there was a live fire going on. They told me to get the flag and I was cool with it, as it meant I didn't have to do any actual work. Then I looked at the hill it was on. I swear, it's got to be almost as tall as Mount Fuji. Fuji Jr. or some damn thing. Took me ten minutes to get to the top and I was running pretty hard (plus, it was SLICK - like trying to run on a combination of mud and wet grass. Probably because, well, that's what it was). I eventaully dragged the damn thing down, though. By the time I got back down the hill (this time I went at a casual walk rather than a sprint) the rest of the stuff was piled into the van and ready to go. I got in the back and we drove down to pick up my relief (funny how they do that, first watch is 9 hours, second watch is 30 minutes).
When we got there, she came out of her box complaining that the gate didn't work (I put on a conveniently shocked face). After several failed attempts to get the circuit breaker going again, Chief called down to the HQ building and told them something was wrong, and they'd need to open it by remote. They said Sure, fine., and we waited. And waited. For ten minutes. Chief called them again with teh same story. Sure, fine, hold on. Ten minutes later it was still down. I went over to the gate, grabbed the long part that formed the gate itself, and pulled it down manually until it stuck straight out horizontal. Chief called the HQ again and said Nevermind, we got it fixed... Five minutes later we were gone and laughing at them. But the day was far from over. Very far.
First of all, our driver didn't know how to get back on his own and was following directions. That was ok, but the directions were apparently written by someone on crack. They made no sense. Random parts were missing, like a turn or a landmark or something. After driving around lost for half an hour in some city I couldn't pronounce even if I could read the words on the sign, we found the highway again. You'd think from here it'd be simple. However, there was one minor problem.
Ok, actually two that combined into a big one. First off, there was construction 90% of the trip so our highway with four lanes was temporarily a two-lane. Plus, it was rush hour and apparently every Japanese guy in the country was somewhere between us and Yokosuka on that highway.
The trip took two hours to get there and five hours to get back. All I'd had to drink the entire day from when I woke up till then was a 5 oz. can of apple juice that came with my deluxe gourmet lunch, so I had a nice rasping throat by the time we got back on top of everything else. We made it back and were unloaded by about 10:00 that night. I went back and took a long shower (to HELL with water conservation!!) and went to sleep.
That pretty much sums it up. I'll add in things if I remember more later.
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Hey! It's my "rock" picture again! Damn, they love this thing...
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