Even the ones in your own unit
I noticed, on my way in to work Saturday, something that shit on my morale. This isn't the type of shitting on my morale that I need in order to complete my tasks (which I plan on blogging about later), but instead the kind that makes me feel a little queasy.
On the way in to work, we have to travel a road that leads to an airfield. This is the airfield that troops get flown out of on their way to Iraq. There are some fences along the route, and when the deployments first started, someone had the idea of hanging bed sheets as signs along these fences to let soldiers know they were supported. "Jeremiah Come Home Safe" "Welcome Back SSG Somebody" Things like that.
There was one up in support of our forward element as well. "God Bless [The Unit I Belong To]" A nice gesture by someone's dependent (wife), most likely.
But on Saturday, it had been torn down.
Now, by torn down, I don't mean it was gone. That wouldn't have gotten this much out of me. It's gone, someone took it down, could've been that spouse. No, this was [b]torn[b] down. In tatters. Lying on the ground near the fence. Pieces of the sign still hanging up.
This vandalism is the kind of shitting on a unit that hurts. For other units looking at us, we may not appear to have unit cohesion/pride/unity. But we do, it's just our own special brand. The thought that someone in the unit would feel so poorly about the unit that they would vandalize a sign of support for our troops WHO ARE IN IRAQ RIGHT NOW, SUBJECT TO MORTAR FIRE (see Talisein's blog).
(This is an assumption that it was someone in the unit, but none of the other signs were touched.)