# Promotion Day (language warning)



## CyberWar (Aug 9, 2014)

Service in the National Guard isn't like in the Army. Things are much more informal here, there's a lot less of "soldafonism" - the Russian loanword in our language describing all the absurdities of military life. Makes me wonder what the English equivalent for that word would be, or whether there even is one. 

Perhaps that is why I enlisted in the Guard, and not the Army. Most people here have civilian jobs, they are "weekend soldiers", though what they might lack in professionalism, they certainly make up for in enthusiasm, something that even the professional soldiers credit us NGs for.

I myself am one of the "not-quite-professional" troops, having no civilian occupation, yet not being a career soldier either. It's a good balance between military discipline and the luxuries of civilian life, a chance to live by my ideal of a citizen-soldier, serving my fatherland as is every self-respecting man's duty, yet not devoting myself completely to martial pursuits and becoming a hired gun of the government.

My compatriots generally have few kind words to say about the government, though I suppose the same is true in every country, save maybe for those certain nations where uttering anything else than kind words about the government tends to result in the authorities kicking down your door in the middle of the night. National Guard is just the place for people like myself, who wish to serve and protect the land and the people without being deployed to some god-forsaken Third World dump to help Uncle Sam bring freedom and democracy where none is needed or wanted with the aid of foreign arms, just so that some politician of ours can bolster his standing in the eyes of the NATO officials. Foreign deployment for NGs is strictly voluntary. 

In any case, on this mildly-overcast September day, I am going to serve my country by learning to shoot an M2HB heavy machine gun for the first time.

For those readers who don't take much interest in firearms, the M2HB is about as mean as heavy machine guns ever come. It's the iconic piece that you see mounted on Humvees in Hollywood films as brave American soldiers use them to blast their way through whatever Third World hellhole they are sent to slaughter the bad guys to. It looks deadly and vicious, and those looks are justified every bit. It can demolish light buildings, chop down well-sized trees, make Swiss cheese of any vehicle lighter than a well-armored APC and most importantly, reduce any poor motherfucker unlucky or stupid enough to be within 2 clicks of it to a steaming pile of gore, body parts and crap, or paint a wall with him should he be standing next to one. In other words, M2HB is the one thing you REALLY wouldn't want to be on the receiving end of. The instructor that taught us the theory and showed us how to take it apart and put it back together told us a story about a flying donkey from personal experiences in Iraq. The Hajjis had made a habit of strapping a few dozen kilos of high explosives on some poor donkeys previously trained to seek food near the scent of diesel fumes and releasing the beasts to graze near highways frequented by NATO convoys and patrols. When a suitable target would present itself, they would remote-detonate the charge, promptly sending the unfortunate donkey to greener pastures, and, with any luck, some poor infidel bastards back home in body bags. Obviously, after having several vehicles scrapped and their crews permanently retired in this manner, NATO command would warn the men to keep a lookout for any suspicious critters and blast anything large enough to carry a bomb that strays closer than 50 metres to the convoy. So, as our heroic instructor rode on another mission to liberate the poor oppressed Iraqis from Saddam's tyranny, one such donkey just happened to approach the convoy. Even though it's hostile status couldn't be ascertained for sure, the instructor wasn't in the mood to find out and promptly put a burst into the poor thing, which resulted in a flying donkey - not very high nor very far, but flying nonetheless.

The said instructor really seemed like a fun guy to be around, having a talent of filling his instructions with humour. For example, he instructed us to use our puking fingers to pull out the action mechanism from the gun's frame, a catchy and easily memorized mnemonic. Today, he will be observing our exercise.

I have come fresh from a 24-hour watch, "fresh" obviously being a very relative term, given the situation. I'm tired, but excited - it's the first time in many years that the NGs get to train with the Brownings, and I have the honour of being among them. The Army folks get to shoot with these pieces quite a lot - but the .50 BMG rounds are expensive, and National Guard isn't on the priority list on the national defense budget, so we have to make do with our modest means, and getting to shoot a piece like this is a rare luxury.

M2HB is operated by a crew of three, the gunner, the loader and the spotter, so we are split up in teams of three. My partners are the Mech Bros, two brothers who work as mechanics back in the battalion's garages. Why the hell are they even here, eludes me, since normally they aren't even seen more than 50 paces away from the garage, let alone anywhere near machine guns, and I don't remember seeing them in the theory lecture a few days ago either, but apparently our superiors have deemed it necessary to reward them with this fine opportunity to blow taxpayer money from a barrel at a target for some reason, so who am I to contest it.

As it turns out, the Mech Bros are quick learners. They ask me to explain the basics, which I do, promptly inviting over the nearby instructor to correct me if I tell anything wrong, given how I'm hardly the wiser with this particular weapon. As the exercise later proves, they memorize those instructions well and our team performs flawlessly.

The first thing before firing any weapon is safety check, verifying that everything is operational and secured. M2HB is an unusual weapon in that it doesn't have a safety switch. Granted, it cannot fire accidentally if you keep your fingers where you're supposed to, i.e., off the damn trigger , but this lack of a safety can become a serious inconvenience when mounted on a vehicle - as our Iraq veteran instructor would attest, on one occasion a comrade of his almost blew some Yank's head off after bumping into the trigger on a particularly rough road, the said Yank being the gunner of the Humvee ahead. For this reason, our soldiers came up with a simple and effective solution, tying an empty shell to the weapon's grip in a string to one of the machine gun's grips and pushing it between the trigger and the firing mode selector knob, preventing any accidental depressions of the trigger. I figure the reason for such a serious design oversight is that Browning machinegun wasn't originally intended to be mounted on vehicles, but fired from static positions, which would pretty much rule out unintentional discharges, provided all safety guidelines were being followed.

The tricky part about M2HB is measuring the gap between the barrel and the lock. There's a pair of special gauges just for that in the gun's toolbox, since the distance must be re-measured every time the barrel is swapped. As we were explained, this is to prevent an exposed cartridge from bursting and blowing off our balls, a very real threat considering how the gun's frame is open on the bottom and usually operated from a seated position in a static emplacement. Obviously, a seasoned soldier with ample experience could surely tell that with eyes alone, but since we are all new to this gun, we are required to do everything by the book.

Finally we are ordered to open the ammo boxes and load our guns. I'm quietly thankful that we didn't have to load the belts ourselves - I learned what it means to load 6000 rounds of MG ammo in reusable non-disintegrating belts when I qualified for machine gunner, and those rounds were barely half the size. The .50 BMG is a massive cartridge, the bullet alone being almost the size of a man's thumb, for all means and purposes designed to fuck shit up - it would be tempting to use another round to hammer the previous one in place, though such an action could obviously result in becoming short of a few fingers (again witnessed in practice by our veteran instructor). The rest of the battalion who exercise in shooting more conventional arms look at us, chosen ones, with barely concealed jealousy.

Intimidated by the risk of having my balls and pecker blown off by a rupturing cartridge, however remote the chance, I decide to assume prone position rather than the usual seated one, also finding it more comfortable and easier to aim in after experimenting with various positions beforehand. We put on all hearing protection that we've got and await the word of command.

"Fire!"

The thunderous report of the four Browning heavy machine guns pierces the air, the blast wave of each shot passing through my body. The bang doesn't seem all that loud under those earplugs and earphones, but it would sure take a lot of time to get accustomed to without any hearing protection. I guess silent films were popular for a reason after the Great War...

My hope for a nice, well-placed burst is destroyed as my gun stops abruptly after unleashing but one shot. After consulting an instructor and examining the gun, it turns out I've forgotten to turn the firing mode selector to Full Auto. From what I've read, the single-shot mode is popular among marksmen in Afghanistan - after mounting a huge optical sight on it and being set to single-shot mode, the M2 makes a decent sniper weapon as well as machine-gun, able to lop off a man's head, arm or leg over 2 clicks away in the hands of a skilled operator.

After fixing the problem and being called an idiot just for good measure, I try again, sending a burst in the direction of the target - a minivan-sized square of plywood 500 metres away. One of the Mech Bros feeds the belt into the gun as I fire, while the other observes the direction my tracers are flying and corrects my aim accordingly. I have to remember to fire in longer bursts, so that at least two tracer rounds are expended in each for better correction. I figure that's one advantage that multi-barreled MGs like the fabled M134 Minigun have over ordinary machine guns - the incessant stream of tracers make aiming very easy, although with such rate of fire, there's little point to even aim at all besides pointing the six spinning barrels in the general direction of the enemy. 

After I've fired off my 100 rounds with decent accuracy, we switch roles, and now I'm the loader. That means I also have to swap the barrel between reloads.

The "HB" in M2HB stands for "heavy barrel", and indeed, it is both physically heavy and heavy-duty. Made thick and sturdy, this barrel can absorb a lot of wear and punishment, but it's bulk also means it cools slowly - up to 40 minutes unless assisted by snow, water or piss, whichever is more convenient at the moment. Since it isn't winter, it hasn't rained for some time, and none of us would consider such indencecy as to urinate on a weapon's barrel during anything but the most pressing combat circumstances, we have to make do with air cooling.

Fresh after use, the barrel is obviously sizzling-hot - so hot, in fact, that you can easily light a smoke from it. Even with sturdy leather gloves and another pair of thick winter gloves beneath them, it's still barely possible to touch the barrel for long enough to unscrew it and put it on two boards set aside to keep the cooling barrels out of dirt. To make replacement more comfortable and safe, we are instructed to test the barrel's heat by spitting on it - if the spit bounces off with a pop rather than sticking to it and sizzling, the barrel is too hot to safely touch even with gloves.

Heeding this instruction, I successfuly manage to replace the barrel without burning my hands and uttering only a modest amount of profanities. Then it's gauging the gaps again, and we swap roles, me now taking the post of spotter.

Usually the spotter would have binoculars, but since the target is large and obvious, we can make do with naked eye. I direct the fire of Mech Bros, who have by now proven themselves to be quite decent shots for beginners, though their lack of experience with MGs in general is showing. Finally when they are done, we sit down to await further orders. That's when the Sarge comes to me.

"Here's a little gift for you," he says, handing me another box of rounds, "Courtesy of the battalion commander." I am overjoyed.

Folks in the battalion are amused by my childlike enthusiasm when it comes to all things machine-gun. I just love that thunderous roar, the jackhammer-esque kick in the shoulder, the blaze of the muzzle-flash, the sound of empty shells clanking to the ground all around, streams of tracers illuminating the sky as they ricochet from the ground, the idea that I'm dishing out 80% of my squad's firepower that would give any enemy a serious pause, trying out a Minigun is a major life (wet)dream for me, and the idea that I'll be any sniper's or grenadier's favourite target in a real battle does little to dishearten me. So evidently I almost do a backflip from joy when I'm granted the honour to fire double the officially-planned amount of rounds.

On this second go, my aim's a little worse than before, since the gun's massive recoil had dug the tripod into sand pretty deep, and it's convenient arrangement was disrupted as we reset it. But it matters little, and I savour every slug sent flying in the direction of the target.

"You should feel proud of yourself," the Sarge tells me afterwards, "Very few guys in the National Guard who haven't served in the Army before have fired as many rounds from the Browning as you!"

We then proceed to examine the target. Predictably, it's fucked up almost beyond recognition, having more finger-sized holes in it than Swiss cheese. The ground along the way is riddled with streaks left by bullets that missed their mark, and one man is fortunate to find the hardened core of a bullet, it's copper jacket being completely peeled away. Considering the number of rounds expended, there aren't that many hits, but given how each of them could rip a man open or punch through a car's engine block, it's still more than enough to get the job done - were this a real minivan with real enemies inside, we could now take a hose and wash what's left of them out without even having to use a mop.

---

The exercise is finally over, and the battalion assembles at the staging area for address by the battalion commander. Our batcom is a stocky, blue-eyed man in his late forties, Major by rank and very friendly with the men, for which they affectionately call him Batya - Russian for "father", "old man", which is also a pun on his job as battalion commander. Whenever I'm on duty in the battalion, Batya always makes a friendly quip on my enthusiasm for machine guns when he first sees me.

As always, Batya concludes exercises with an address, detailing his opinion on the exercise, on what went well and what could use some improvement. It is also a chance to dispense awards and promotions.

I know I have been recommended for promotion this year, but don't expect it to come sooner than winter. So great is my surprise when I hear my name called out as the order of promotion is read out.

"Guardsman J. S., step forward!"

"Aye!"

I leave the ranks of my fellow guardsmen, approach the batcom and snap a salute.

"Major-sir, Guardsman J. S. reporting for duty!"

"It is Senior Guardsman now! Congratulations!" he shakes my hand after returning the salute and hands me the patch containing my first stripe, known among guardsmen and soldiers as "spaghetti".

"Thank you, sir!" I salute again. Then I turn about with my hand still raised in salute.

"Honour to serve Latvia!" I exclaim towards my battle-brothers as the protocol requires and return to my place.

This day really has been like Christmas, birthday and a date with a happy ending all in one. The fact that I've gotten to fuck shit up with one of the biggest, meanest gun's I've ever dreamt of shooting, that I've gotten to do it twice as much as the others, and now a promotion! No wonder Batya sanctioned an extra box of rounds especially for me, though there's obviously a practical concern as well - being a machine gunner, I needed the practice more than others anyway. 

On a second thought, the green patch of fabric with a single black stripe on it resting in my hand brings tears to my eyes, even though I don't make a habit of ever crying or showing much other emotion. All my life I've been the black sheep of my family, a fuck-up doing nothing but fucking up one thing after another. Enlisting is probably the only decent and useful thing I've done in my life, and this little patch with a black stripe, this "spaghetti" pretty much sums up my lifetime achievements.

It isn't much, but it is the first indisputable proof that I can achieve something good and useful after all, an encouragement coming at a much-needed time. It's a reason to believe that I can do something better than spend my free time drinking and feeling sorry for myself. It's a reason to redouble my efforts and strive to become the finest damn Senior Guardsman in the whole bloody National Guard of Latvia for whatever it's worth, and hopefuly be deemed worthy for another promotion some day.

In any case, this really is my day. This is my Promotion Day.


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## Olly Buckle (Aug 29, 2014)

Service in the *Latvian* National Guard isn't like in the Army. Things are less formal here, there's a lot less of "soldafonism" - the Russian loanword in our language describing all the absurdities of military life.

I suggest you establish 'where' as soon s possible, another way would be to make it 'the Russian loanword to Latvian'
'Much more', and then a negative seems awkward.

'I myself am one of the "not-quite-professional" troops,'
'I am'; 'I myself' is tautology.

'My compatriots generally have few kind words to say about the government, though I suppose the same is true in every country, save maybe for those certain nations where uttering anything else than kind words about the government tends to result in the authorities kicking down your door in the middle of the night.'
This runs on a bit, with some cofusionof ideas, try;
My compatriots generally have few kind words to say about the government, I suppose the same is true in most countries, except where uttering anything but kind words about the government results in the authorities kicking down your door in the middle of the night.

If you lose 'qualifying words', like 'tends to', it makes a statement stronger, without loss of significant meaning; compare;
it usually makes a statement much stronger, without too much loss of deeply significant meaning.

"National Guard is just the place for people like myself, who wish to serve and protect the land and the people without being deployed to some god-forsaken Third World dump to help Uncle Sam bring freedom and democracy where none is needed or wanted with the aid of foreign arms, just so that some politician of ours can bolster his standing in the eyes of the NATO officials. Foreign deployment for NGs is strictly voluntary."

You definitly suffer from  the run-ons, that is a long sentence. Try separating the ideas.

 National Guard is just the place for people like me who merely wish to serve and protect the land and the people. Being deployed to some god-forsaken Third World dump to help Uncle Sam bring freedom and democracy where none is needed or wanted is not for me. Importing foreign arms, just so that some politician can bolster his standing in the eyes of the NATO officials seems futile. Foreign deployment for NGs is strictly voluntary. 

I also got rid of 'our' politician, I don't think you are really a supporter of people like that 

An interesting piece, with a window into a different world. separating ideas and shortening sentences, plus losing those 'qualifying' words, would tighten it up  considerably, but I am filled with admiration for the general quality of your English.


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## CyberWar (Aug 29, 2014)

Thanks for the advice. 

The errors you pointed out lead me to think they are the product of the specifics of my native language, i.e., me trying to write in English as I would write in Latvian. Latvian language tends to have very long extended sentences especially in prosaic literature, a single sentence occupying half a page in a book in extreme examples.

I suppose my English writing style will improve with more practice.


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## hvysmker (Sep 16, 2014)

Practice makes perfect. My best internet friend is a Serbian schoolteacher.  She teaches English.

We have written to each other every day for five or six years and I've seen her written language improve greatly. It's almos' as gooder as me.  I was surprised, though, the first time we talked together on Skype.  I had to shake my head how bad her spoken language was.  Now we often use Skype and she's improved.

I joined the US Army Reserves, like your National Guard, in the mid-fifties.  Like your's it wasn't very military.  We had a two-hour session of playing soldier every week and a two week "summer camp".  At our  base camp in my home town we had one, count them, ONE, civilian wrecker,  auto size, for our Tank Retriever Company. Nothing more, such as weapons or vehicles.

The  results at those  camps was  laughable. Nobody, no real soldier, took us  seriously.  We were issued old equipment and ignored for two weeks.  Night was partying time.  Many of us took the summer camp as  our vacation from work, or a chance to get away from the wives.  It was one drunken  orgy split by a few hours sleep and training films.

After that stint ended, I joined the regular army and found it much different.  No more lying on my butt with a  can of  beer in hand.

Charlie


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## Olly Buckle (Sep 17, 2014)

> Latvian language tends to have very long extended sentences especially in prosaic literature, a single sentence occupying half a page in a book in extreme examples.



These things change,  even in my own lifetime sentences have got shorter and simpler on the whole. Reading books of the ninteenth century they get a long rolling style, I am thinking of popular writers like Dickens, Collins, or,  bit earlier, Scott.
 Get back to Pepys in the seventeenth century and you can find sentences that took up a page and  half with clauses, sub clauses and long, bracketed asides. I wonder if it will continue, or  if we will return to great rolling orations.


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## CyberWar (Sep 17, 2014)

Your experience seems quite different from mine then. While we are somewhat informal in our personal interactions in contrast to the professional military, rest assured, our training and discipline is quite adequate, especially for a non-professional force. Depending on the schedule, we may have as much as a week of exercises every month, though usually it is limited to 2-3 days, and there's certainly no drinking or slacking off on those. More extensive training courses are available to those interested and with the time to spare. Members of the NG have served in international foreign operations (Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan) with distinction. Asides from military training, we also do security and traffic control in large public events and disaster relief when the need arises. In a war, we would be fighting alongside the professional army and as guerillas. The professionals would handle the offensive operations and high-intensity combat because of their better gear and training, while we would be securing the rear, running supplies and doing other second-line combat duties, also carrying out sabotage and diversion against the enemy.

---

The National Guard here is quite different in that it isn't a reserve force, but an entire service branch of it's own, a paramilitary force of citizen volunteers, who would fight as guerillas and second-line troops in a war. Compare to the Swedish or Swiss military that practices periodic training, the difference being that enlistment in the NG is strictly voluntary.

NG of Latvia actually started off as a paramilitary police force in 1992 to protect the citizens of the new-formed Latvian state from the lawlesness and anarchy that followed the collapse of USSR. Citizens with military experience and simple patriots who wanted to do their part formed a self-defense force to serve as an interim police force, given how the nascent Latvian state did not yet have a military or dedicated police force. This improvised police force would eventually become the National Guard of Latvia. At first, they were indeed little more than patriotic citizens with only pistols, hunting shotguns, rifles and an occasional AK-47, but with government support it would soon evolve into a formidable paramilitary force.

In those days, it was pretty much the Wild East out here. The Russian military was gradually pulling out, corrupt officers and soldiers selling off everything they couldn't or didn't want to take along, so just about any random idiot with the means could buy military-grade weapons and munitions, no questions asked. Murders, kidnappings, extortion and armed robbery were part of daily life, and pretty much every businessman would pay "protection money" to one gang or another, while violent turf wars were often fought between gangs in the streets of cities. Consequently, the Guard would often have to use methods bordering on criminality themselves to instill fear and respect in these gangs.

Back then, you could get away with a lot more than you could ever get away with today. Things like "human rights" and "police brutality" were something that happened in the civilized West, not here, the guardsmen being free to do just about anything with the lawbreakers as long as they arrived in the police station alive, and even that could be optional at times. Back then, the authorities wouldn't pussy-foot around criminals but give them a taste of their own medicine. An older collegue of mine who was among those first guardsmen told me an incident from his youth in the car park of our very battalion. Some guy was caught stealing fuel from the trucks parked there. After promptly roughing him up, the guardsmen called the police (which was really there to do the paperwork, National Guard doing much of the street work). The cops were, as usual, in no hurry, so they took their captive to the shooting range, tied him to a post, put a metal cup on his head and shot at him with blanks from their AK-47s. Oblivious to the rounds being blank, the unfortunate thief soiled his pants in terror, so when the police arrived, they sternly refused to put him in their car in this state and told the guardsmen they could do whatever they wanted with the thief. They contended themselves with letting the thief off after another profilactic beating. Such and even more rough treatment of criminals was commonplace, establishing National Guard as an authority not to be trifled with. Back then, the guardsmen had few legal repercussions to fear over use of excessive force or detainee abuse, so very often the mere presence of a National Guard unit in town was enough to encourage criminals to keep their activities down.

While the guardsmen here still did manage to drink, party and do all kinds of crazy stuff much like your youth companions, often with tragic accidents involving weapons, they did get the job done and drastically reduced crime rates.

As the state police developed their respective capabilities and took over the police functions from the Guard, the National Guard would take on a more military twist. It would become an independent service branch for volunteers wishing to master military skills and protect their homeland without joining the professional army.


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## hvysmker (Sep 18, 2014)

Yes, Quite different. But, remember, mine was fifty years ago. I have no idea what's going on now. I do know that some US units have served in Iraq. I don't know if they're in Afghanistan or not.

When I was in, anyone could join.  During Vietnam, no Reserve or National Guard units went over, so it was a favorite out for the wealthy and influencial, to avoid conscription in the regular army.   During that period, it was hard for common people to join. I think anyone can join at the moment.

Charlie


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## CyberWar (Sep 18, 2014)

Back when we still had conscription, joining the Guard was also a way to avoid it. Alternatively, you could enter university and only have to serve a reduced term after graduation or attend ROTC while studying. The conscripted military had a serious problem with "dedovschina", abuse of junior recruits by senior conscripts inherited from the Soviet military, and it was also deemed ineffective and expensive to maintain, so we fully switched to professional military in 2006.

Personally I think limited conscription should have been retained, like they did in Estonia, or better yet, the Swedish model of mandatory periodic training adopted. I think that every self-respecting able-bodied man should know at least the basics of military skills so that he can defend his country, family and himself in times of need, and military service would also teach young men at least some discipline and respect towards their seniors, something that today's youth seems to sadly lack.

With the recent events in Ukraine, however, we can't complain about shortage of volunteers though. The professional army is having trouble keeping their numbers up, since the wages are inadequate and most folks fit for service therefore prefer civilian jobs, while being in the National Guard allows one to learn military skills and keep their civilian occupation.

---

To my knowledge, US National Guard units are deployed in foreign operations, though I can't say about Afghanistan with certainty. Here in Latvia, we have a cooperation program with the Michigan National Guard, particularly their Air branch. They routinely partake in joint exercises with us.


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## Whosthatboy305 (Sep 19, 2014)

All takes time


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