Iraq Memo: How to Prepare for Deployment

DEPATRMENT OF THE ARMY

BRAVO COMPANY 549TH FORWARD SUPPORT BATTALION

101ST AIRBORNE DIVISION (AIR ASSAULT)

MOSUL, IRAQ


AFZB-KX-L-BCO

MEMORANDUM FOR RECORD

SUBJECT: HOW TO PREPARE FOR DEPLOYMENT TO IRAQ.


1. The following are suggestions on how to better prepare yourself and your soldiers for deployment to Iraq.

-Sleep on a cot in your garage.

-Replace the garage door with a curtain.

-Six hours after you go to sleep, have your wife or girlfriend whip open the curtain, shine a

flashlight in your eyes and mumble, “sorry wrong cot.”

-Renovate your bathroom. Hang a green plastic sheet down from the middle of your bathtub and

move the showerhead down to chest level. Keep four inches of soapy cold water on the floor.

-Stop cleaning the toilet, and pee everywhere but in the toilet itself. Leave only two or three

sheets of toilet paper in the bathroom. For best effect, remove it altogether. Then don’t flush your

paper down the toilet because it’ll clog it. Place all your used paper in a plastic bag, and then

leave it open. For a more realistic deployed bathroom experience, stop using your bathroom and

use a neighbor’s. Choose a neighbor who lives at least a quarter mile away.

-When you shower, wear flip flops and keep the lights off.

-Every time there is a thunderstorm, go sit on a wobbly rocking chair and dump dirt on your head,

down your shirt and down your pants.

-Put lube oil in your humidifier instead of water and set it on ‘high’ for that tactical generator

smell.

-Don’t watch TV except for movies in the middle of the night. Have your family vote on which

movie, and then show a different one.

-Leave a lawnmower running in the middle of your living room 24 hours a day for proper

noise level.

-Have the paperboy give you a haircut.

-Once a week, blow compressed air up your chimney making sure the wind carries the soot across

and on your neighbor’s house. Laugh at him when he curses you.

-Buy a trash compactor and only use it once a week. Store up all the garbage on the other side of

your bathtub.

-Wake up every night at midnight and have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on a saltine cracker.

-Make up your family menu a week ahead of time without looking in your food cabinets or

refrigerator. Then serve some kind of meat in an unidentifiable sauce poured over noodles. Do

this for every meal.

-Set your alarm clock to go of at random times during the night. When it goes off, jump out of

bed and get to the shower as fast as you can. Simulate there is no hot water by running out into

your yard and drenching yourself with your garden hose.

-Once a month, take every major appliance completely apart and put it back together again.

-Use 18 scoops of coffee per pot and allow it to sit for six hours before drinking.

-Invite at least 185 people you don’t really like because of their strange hygiene habits to come

and visit for a couple of months. Exchange clothes with them.

-Have a fluorescent lamp installed on the bottom of your coffee table and lie under it to read

books.

-Raise the thresholds and lower the top sills of your front and back doors so that you either trip

over the threshold or hit your head on the sill every time you pass though one of them.

-Keep a roll of toilet paper on your nightstand and bring it to the bathroom with you. Also bring

a gun, flashlight, and a Kevlar helmet.

-Go to the bathroom every time you pass gas, “just in case”……Every Time.

-Announce to your family that they have mail, have them report to you as you stand outside your

open garage door and then say, “Sorry, it’s for the other Clintons.”

-Wash only 15 items of laundry per week. Roll up the semi-wet clean clothes in a ball. Place

them in a cloth sack in the corner of the garage where the cat pees. After a week, unroll them and

without ironing or removing the mildew, proudly wear them to professional meetings and family

gatherings. Pretend you don’t know what you smell or look like. Repeat this process for another

week.

-Go to the worst crime-infested place you can find, heavily armed, wearing a flak jacket and

Kevlar helmet. Set up camp in a tent in a vacant lot. Announce to the residents- “its OK, I’m here

to help you!”

-Eat a single M&M everyday and convince yourself it’s for malaria.

-Demand each family member be limited to 10 minutes per week for a morale phone call. Enforce

this with your teenage daughter. (Cut the antenna off cordless phones for best static effect)

-Shoot a few bullet holes in the walls of your home for proper ambiance.

-Sandbag the floor of your car to protect from mine blasts, exploding devices, and fragmentation.

-While traveling down roads in your car, stop at each overpass and culvert and inspect them for

remotely detonated explosives before proceeding.

-Fire off 50 cherry bombs simultaneously in your driveway at 3:00am. When startled neighbors

appear, tell them all is well, and you are just registering mortars. Tell them plastic will make an

acceptable substitute for their shattered windows.

-Drink your sodas and milk warm. Only drink N/A Beer, and make sure it’s a brand you’ve never

heard of before.

-Spread gravel throughout your house and yard.

-Make sure your children clear their squirt guns in the ‘clearing barrel’ you placed outside the

front door before you let them inside.

-Make your family dig a survivability position with overhead cover in the backyard. Complain the

4x4’s are not 8 inches off center and make them rebuild it.

-When your five-year-old asks for a stick of gum, have him find the exact stick and flavor he

wants on the internet and print the web page. Type up a Form 9 and staple the web page to the

back. Submit the paperwork to your spouse for processing. After three months, give your son the

gum.

-Announce to your family that the dog is a vector for disease and shoot it. Throw the dog in a

burn pit you dug in your neighbor’s back yard.

-Wait for the hottest day of the year and announce to your family that there will be no air

conditioning that day, so you can perform much needed maintenance on the air conditioner. Tell

them you are doing this so they won’t get hot.

-Wait for the coldest day of the year, and repeat the same process on the heating unit.

-Leave your home for all major holidays; tell your kids “daddy has to work”.

-Just when you think all this is done, and you’re going back to a normal life, order yourself to

repeat this ALL these steps for another 6 months to simulate the next deployment you’ve been

ordered to support.

2. POC for this MEMORANDUM is the undersigned at 1-800-F**K-IRAQ


Uncle Sam

USA

//Original Signed//