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Sora no Woto 02: The 1121st DRMO Unit

January 14th, 2010

Already Sergeant Major Rio is showing superior intelligence. Good call is good.

So far I am pretty surprised at how this has turned out so far. While granted there are those who blast it as a joke on military life, I think they have first off never seen an Air Force Composite Unit and second even the members of the 1121st know that they are the black sheep unit of the whole army. Also since this is an all volunteer force for the sake of recruitment once in the field decorum gets much more relaxed unless it is for a formal ceremony or inspection. Not even those uptight Marines are above goofing around during work. For me at least they seem to come off less as Army and more like Air Force given how they pack all their snivel gear for a short patrol of an abandoned school. Also since the Air Force seems to have a disproportionate number of good looking people compared to the other branches, I think the analogy is pretty good. I also started read the summary of mishaps that goes through the message system since I got a better grasp of how to do my job. Suffice to say military life can be fun, and it can be funny.

I probably would be more harsh had I not had to train with other branches and met some interesting units in various states of cohesion. Seeing as I have seen some strange units in action, I don’t have the inclination to be hostile since they know that they are dumping ground and don’t operate under complete ignorance of this fact. While there is a degree of moe-fication at work here they act like how I sometimes wish the actual military operated. Case in point when Noel could not get up before first call I actually applauded Kureha for dragging her out of her rack. Were they in a fuss and feathers unit Noel would have just been left there and she would have been written up in a heart beat or they would have just fucked with her while she dozed off and you can bet that prank would be posted in youtube and the pictures put up on facebook. In my experience people not getting up is a common enough occurrence and most active garrisons will tolerate it to a degree unless the person makes a nasty habit of it or doesn’t bother to call the lead NCO. Even then it appears that this army is already in sharp decline from a war footing as they make clear that most of the population died and having large schools are practically unheard of. It seems that education for certain subjects is not taught publicly and that music is only taught on a military level. Under normal circumstances having child soldiers would be controversial but it seems that with most of the population dead and in light of how Kureha and Kanata are orphaned the Army seems to be willing to take in kids with no where to go and ship them off to crap billets.

Even if the cast appear to be K-On whether they intended to or not they got some of the archetypes you might see at a typical unit right. To be sure Felicia comes off as more of an OCS officer than an academy grad as she isn’t flashing her rank every chance she gets. It’s not so much that officers always clean but it’s nice when they clean their own weapon or clean their own berthing areas instead of grabbing a bunch of enlisted to do it for them. Again it’s more the exception than the rule but its a nice fantasy nonetheless. Kureha reminds me of plenty of Private Majors (E-3s who get egotistical when put in charge of E-2s) who can wreak interesting havoc if left to their own devices, the funniest thing is Private Majors have a habit of exaggerating what a unit typically does (all of a sudden specialized units become Special Forces…) and Kureha created quite a story regarding the elite 1121st. I have to say they did pull off a Kawamori class troll with the mecha, though I guess I should have seen it coming since it was Kureha talking about it. I have to give them credit though for being honest that they are the yard bird unit where other units dump off old equipment in lieu of driving all the way to a DRMO (basically a military junk yard though I hear some of the stuff gets sold to less well equipped armies and military surplus stores) and filling out a 1348. In every service there seems to be one type of unit that becomes the dumping ground for the local units usually the reserve unit that is a little more gung-ho than the rest.

While I could give Kureha crap for being a bad shot I actually witnessed cops with holographic sights take hours to zero their weapons, and I also ate a lot of humble pie when during a night fire where only 11/30 of my rounds hit a man sized target at 50 meters (you only need 7/30 to qualify). I got Sharpshooter for the combat course but when it got dark I could not see worth a damn through those iron sights, I guess it was to hammer home how lucky we are to have NVGs in quantity even if they hurt your eyes after awhile. Also I’ll cut Kureha some slack for using a full sized rifle that is bigger than she is after seeing one of those tiny little Air Force gals try to shoot her M-16, she made it in the end though. As for the rats…I have yet to see any one panic from rats, but spiders seem to freak servicemen out, supposedly it’s why the Army makes special mention of camel spiders (it’s chasing you to get in your shadow, not because it wants to eat you…or at least that is what they tell us) and scorpions so that people don’t freak out when one is chasing them or crawling on them. Oddly enough Kanata reminds me of those kids who sign up who have never been outside of their home state and as such are amazed at some of the things I consider mundane, I suppose it’s pretty much the same with first time deployments since most of those places aren’t highly attractive tourist destinations.

While we did get some background, they did hint much more about the setting which is pretty interesting without being too depressing. As mentioned before it seems that in this post war period both sides seem to have fought until their strength was all but spent. War seems to be the last thing on their minds as the draft is gone but they are still taking in kids as a sort of uniformed welfare to cut costs. I wonder if 1121st is actually made up of all orphans since I don’t see parents being too willing to let their kids go off to some far away post. Certainly it would lend more credibility to the setting with the state being nearly bankrupt with a deteriorating army that barely keeps its units supplied. The lack of education suggests that they did scrape the bottom of the man-power barrel as education took a nose dive with elective course like music gone the way of the dodo. The advent of lost technology is probably most indicative of all as they have gone from shiny MBTs to bolt action rifles. All in all i don’t mind the vacillation between moe anime tropes and the interesting setting they seem to be competently building up. I did like how Rio took the smart approach to teaching Kanata and was delighted at how she got Kureha all pumped up and ready to go, only to throw her under the bus on ghostbuster patrol. Reminds me of the time we had to do OPFOR for an exercise when one of the E-4s had an ego trip and was being pretty vocal about it. The Chief egged him on only to later make him the driver for all the vehicles entering the ECP for the exercise. Suffice to say the E-4 found out how effective those positions work and how thorough a search can be…

All in all it ever so gently reminds me of past experiences whether directly or indirectly, so it’s a nice series to relax to at the end of my military day.

Last note on how like everyone else the military has it’s share of people with NICE IDEAs here for your reading pleasure is one of the mishaps that occurred during December, it’s unclassified and verbatim, though I’ll spare you the ALL CAPS format.

In this week’s “Confession is Good for the Soul” Department, we hear from an Air Force E-4 who had whipped up a batch of rice krispies treats for himself. He gobbled a few. “I followed the directions,” he notes, “and nowhere did it say to grease the pan or to not leave the treats in the fridge overnight.” This disclaimer, you perceive, is in preparation for the events of the following day, when our hero was again struck with a hankering for more of goodies after work. He initially opted for the tool of choice, a plastic spatula, which promptly broke, due to the rice krispy treat having been transformed into something more like rice krispy pavers. The airman’s next implement was a butcher knife, and soon he was treating himself to a major gash in his wrist. Two hours late her left the emergency room with five stitches. He missed two days of work and was on light duty for the next three weeks. Yum.