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Website is forming. Styles and colors are pleasing, but must find better background pictures. Suppose I will write another blog post once site goes live.

National Guard in-processing was less formal than I expected. The Guardsmen have an air of general happiness that I have never seen in the active Army. I walked into that building under a try-one-year contract, fully expecting to skate the bare minimum and leave it all behind come next April. I signed on as a 15T, a helicopter mechanic, and through some technical confusion was told I could not have that MOS because of school length and contract length. So I was content to be shunted somewhere that no one would really care what I did, until my year ended.

The military has a strange way of things. Once you are caught, you might cut away the fishing line, but the hook remains buried inside you. Tanking, when we were actually tanking, was the best job in the world. I loved every second of being in the field, even when it was cold and wet and I only got four hours of sleep a day. I loved the driver’s hole, buried on all sides by four feet of steel, completely separate from the rest of the crew while I got to hear them joke and argue over the intercom. The driver’s hole is dark aside from the periscopes and computer. Once we rolled out and hit the field, my body disappeared into the tank. When you have the throttle, when you’re the one driving, the tank is your body. You feel the road wheels press into track as the rocks and wadis pass underneath. You feel the full weight of the tank when you speed or slow, especially when you have to swoop into a ditch with enough speet to climb the far side. If a tank enters a ditch too clowly, it cannot climb out.

There is a thrilling delicacy to driving an Abrams. It is heavy, massive, and the engine takes 1-2 seconds to respond to the throttle. Every move must be timed in advance of that delay, but when you do it well, there is no other feeling like it. The Abrams is a beast. When you feel it like your own, body, you are the beast. If the commander is the head of the dragon, and the gunner its fire, the loader its beating heart, then the driver its wings.

But 2 weeks of tanking are simply not worth the other 50 weeks of the year.

I missed the tanks even before I left the Army. I knew I would, and it never stopped, but missing the thrill of something does not mean I regret leaving it. Today, as I walked into the National Guard in-processing building, I was content with that sorrow because it meant I did not have to endure the nonsense of the other 50 weeks.

But my unit processing was unclear, and so I was sent to meet with the Aviation SGM anyway.

He did not speak a great deal, because he didn’t have to. He listened to my situation, and when he asked, “Have you completely decided against extending after your year?” that old hook in my chest gave another tug. On the projector behind us spread the recruiting brief, with everything the National Guard could offer me. Competitions. Schools. Airborne. Air Assault. Sapper. Sniper. Pathfinder. Mountain Warfare.

Ranger. Q-Course.

No 19K’s in the COARNG, my recruiter told me three months ago. But plenty of 15T’s start off turning wrenches before they learn to fly.

The Abrams and the Black Hawk helicopter have the same engine. Turbine, manufactured by Honeywell, with a fuel injector system so efficient that the exhaust is basically purified air. On an Abrams, the exhaust smells like wheat flour. The injector system is a fat metal cylinder attached to the engine block with three red hoses, and one of the seals at the top requires a metal piece the size and shape of a common keyring, called the “wedding ring.” By doctrine, it must be replaced every six months, and as the SGM’s words hang in the air, there is nothing I want to do more than reach for the Abrams wedding ring now hanging around my neck.

“I’m not sure one way or the other, Sergeant Major.” Even as I say it, I can feel the slide of conversation. The hook in me is threading itself with another fishing line, and I float in the water, relaxed, as it reels me in.

“We need bodies in aviation. And no one can say who does or doesn’t come to my unit except me.”

All it takes from me is a nod. A paper is put in my hand with the drill schedule, and in another moment it is joined by the patch of Aviation Command. Green shield, black pegasus at the center. Above it, nine stars ribboned across an arrowhead.

The nerves in my hand light up on contact, and I cannot put it in my pocket. As I leave, as I process through DEERS and IPPS-A and square away my DD93, the patches stay in my hand the entire time. Silly, yes, especially for someone who walked into the building thinking she’d served all the time she wanted to. I look at it, and I look at all the things I didn’t have time for on active duty. The schools, working out at my own pace on my own time, dropping packets for everything that Wolfpack simply could not give me. It’s an intoxicating high, seeing the possibilities spread in front of you like a buffet.

The next ACFT is in October. Because I assumed I would skate by, I haven’t worked out since December. It was never a joy in the Army, never pleasurable, because my fitness was always for someone else. Always someone looking over my shoulder, COVID, platoons who hid in the woods for PT and then demanded we make up the difference in our off time.

They don’t organize PT here. For the first time in years, my fitness belongs to myself. That’s the test, I suppose. Not whether I can pass — the ACFT standards are easy — but whether I can find pleasure in my fitness. If that comes to pass, all else falls into place. The 141 GT score will make sure of that.