Lensman Corps Cleans Out The Augean Stables

The blockage in the sump was so bad it seemed Biblical

This is possibly the least likely story from my military duty anybody is going to believe. It’s even stranger than all the ones I have written about so far. I don’t mind if you think I am full of crap. Nobody could possibly believe that I would actually get away with such a thing and if I did nobody would believe I did even if I did document it with photos and testimony of eyewitnesses. I think today even if you found soldiers who had served with me, they’d tell you “Even I can’t believe it and I was there.”

Nevertheless, it is a true story. A true story about a uniform that was not regulation and yet I managed to wear it for quite some time. I would guess on-and-off for two years or so. Looking back and despite remembering every detail, I can’t believe it myself. You’d have to know just how pissed off I was some days to go to the trouble of implementing such a diabolical plan.

If I need some dopesmoking blackmarketeering socialists on middle-class welfare to defend the nation, I’ll give the Army a call. If it’s going to be a serious battle with real bullets, call in a Lensman. You know when you see that uniform the enemy is about to get his ass kicked.

I would not be telling the truth about my military service if I did not mention I was wearing a non-regulation custom designed uniform in khakis for two years that made me look like a visitor from another world when I had it on. I loved it. It was uniquely my own. As a soldier who was treated arbitrarily and different from all the other troops without explanation, it was only fair that I squeezed through a few regulations to don a special uniform of my own that appeared to be space fleet standard issue. It was the Arcane Lensman Corps faster-than-light cryostasis boiler suit. I intend to don it again someday or some variation of it when I start my podcast for real. I’d never been issued a uniform in Civil Defense and I decided someday after I got out, it would look like my customized khaki emsemble.

If you’re thinking you can already tell that this story is complete hogwash (“nobody wears a custom uniform in the U.S. Army”), I gotta explain how I managed to get away with it so long despite it being a pretty serious infraction of regulations. I wore the “suit” from 1983 to mid-1985 and took it off my last year at Fort Riley, shortly after I won the Ironman. I started to wear it regularly after my bullsh*t Field Grade for “eating in the mess hall on separate rations” bust and I think I was basically daring them to chapter me out. I was already undergoing heavy discipline every day so lots of them figured it wasn’t worth the paperwork, I was getting ready to transfer Stateside and make it their problem.

This story is about the day I took it out back and burned it in a bucket behind the barracks. It was a good day in the Army.

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