Boring is Good

Between Friday at 1600 and Saturday at 0800, I got to stand duty as Area Officer of the Day (AOOD) here at Courthouse Bay. The AOOD represents the Commanding Officer in his absence, ensures the security and good order and discipline of the school, and handles emergencies and problems that come up overnight. The AOOD has two assistants--a Duty NCO, and a Duty Driver. Both times that I have stood AOOD, my DNCO has been a Sergeant that has stood duty before. The Duty Driver is typically a Pvt or PFC that has not stood duty before. The Duty Driver has a van checked out and can drive anywhere on base (i.e. the base hospital) if the need should arise.

Officers that stand duty are expected to roll right into work the next day, so I prefer to stand duty on Friday or Saturday to give myself some time to recover. The post is a sleeping post, so we are not required to be awake the entire night, as long as rounds are completed. The "rounds" are two tours of the area before midnight and two tours after midnight, checking on specific buildings and locations. We also stop in the barracks to check on the Junior Marines standing duty there.

Bored yet? Yeah, me, too, but boring is good. It means that I'm not dealing with Marines that fall in the shower and split their heads open, Marines that get drunk and get into serious trouble in the civilian world, Marines that pull fire extinguishers out of the wall and spray them everywhere...you get the picture.

The fire extinguisher incident actually happened earlier this week, while someone else from my class was on duty. As punishment, the whole company ended up standing firewatch at the barracks, meaning that for the past few days, they've had six Marines walking up and down the walkways outside the barracks for two hours at a time. It's not exactly a fun post to stand, particularly because it's been in the high 20s/low 30s at night recently. At some point at TBS, I remember being told that the best time to talk to a Marine is when he's on post in the middle of the night, so during one of my rounds last night I stopped to talk to some of them.

They were understandably unhappy about standing firewatch, especially because they weren't even from the same class as the knucklehead that pulled the fire extinguishers out. They were in good spirits, though, mostly because I caught them right as they were finishing their shift, and getting ready to head back inside to their warm beds.

The most exciting thing I did all night long was take the bolt cutters over to the barracks and let a Marine cut the lock off his wall locker. Given the potential alternatives, I'll take it.