I went to the FOB laundry facility today, to do "the whites." Using the KBR bulk laundry, they are turning into the grays, so I tried hot water and lots of bleach. That seemed to help, but not as much as I was hoping for.
What do you do in a laundrymat? In the civilian ones I've gone to, like the one in Alexandria Louisiana when we were there, I saw folks watching TV (jeez; wasting time while you're wasting time), reading, playing cards or video games, eating, or just watching other people.
Today, I sat on a bench to read "The Stars and Stripes", and after a little while a young soldier came over to me and asked if I was using the table in front of me. "Nope. It's all yours." "Thanks, sir". He dragged the table off a little, I guess to get some space, and set down two brown towels. Next to them he laid his M4 rifle. I noticed it had mud on it, and briefly considered saying something about it to him.
He spread out one of the towels, and commenced to strip down his rifle, laying the parts in a neat order. He then opened up the other towel, and rolled out cleaning supplies; Q-tips, cotton patches, a couple of rags, toothbrush, wire brushes, and a tiny bottle of oil. He wiped the parts clean, dusted the crevices, and put a little oil on eveything.
I asked him how his rifle got so muddy. He said that his unit did an air assault to do a cordon and search, and they had to cross a river between the landing zone and the objective. That is, they took helicopters, flew to the area, dismounted, and encircled the objective on foot to keep anyone from getting out. They then conducted the search, and apparently rounded up one of the guys they were looking for. I said, "Well, you must have had pretty good intel." He said, unimpressed, "Well, we didn't the get the other guy we were looking for so it can't be that good."
Having noticed that he only wiped off the rifle, and didn't clean the firing pin or other of the parts that get dirty when the rifle is fired, I said "You didn't get any shots off, I guess." "No sir, we're not in a shooting war." He sounded kind of disapppointed.
But he's right; Operation Iraqi Freedom is not a shooting war.