Private First Class Cecelia Glass here is a clerk –an “Administrative Specialist”–, which is called a "71-Lima" in the year 2003, when this story takes place.
A “71-Lima” is the alpha-numeric code given for “M.O.S”, or “Military Occupational Specialty”– your official job in the Army. Cecelia Glass has been to all the most recent “71 Lima” schools and so she is in a position to know more about the latest administrative software than Staff-Sergeant Ransom, who actually outranks her. It is common for a younger soldier to have “the latest” updates to training, so they may be in the position to train older soldiers on new upgrades, which is what is happening here.
Every MOS (pronounced by just saying the letters out loud: “Emm-Oh-Ess”; no one ever calls it “moss”) has an alpha-numeric code assigned to it. Infantry is “11B” or “Eleven Bravo”, Engineers are “12B” or “Twelve Bravo”, crewmembers on an M1 tank are called "19K" or "Nineteen Kilo". Every job has an alphanumeric code to it, from cooks to drivers to intelligence, military police, mechanics... you name it.
What's it like to be in the Army for real, and get deployed to a place like the Iraq War? In BOHICA Blues, I turn my actual experiences into a slice of absurdist humor and walk you through this period of history from one person's perspective.
Using the classic TV show "M*A*S*H" as a guide, I created BOHICA Blues in 2013 to tell the story of what a deployment was like, with the absurdities of military life and war for all to see. It starts with the initial mobilization news, and goes on from there. BOHICA Blues isn't as "salty" as a lot of veteran humor; it doesn't have F-bombs, gore, or nudity: it could hypothetically appear on regular broadcast television.
Hopefully you can enjoy this and invite others to see what the Iraq War was like from someone who went there and is willing to share the experience with a laugh.
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