February 1991
I'm a little baby soldier in Saudi Arabia (205 GenEvac Hospital RAMC - King Khalid International Airport, Riyadh) and have been on shift since about 1130am, working, sitting chilling in the sun, working some more, sitting chiling in the ... you get the picture.

My shift finishes at midnight so I've decided that, given that it's now 10pm, I'm going to nip down to the rest area and have a shower.

Operating with the expectation of immortality, I'd taken a gamble (damn! this should have gone into that QOTW. Ho hum.) that we weren't going to be getting SCUD-whipped at that time, especially given that most of our whippings happened between 1am and 4am.

Go into the changing area, put down my small-metal-gun, get into the buff and get my shower gear out from my sports bag (medics - cleanliness = godliness) to nip into the shower with.

Happily lathering myself away in this large (i.e., 20+ person) shower in which I'm the only one there when the attack alarm sounds (and yes, it does sound like the one at the start of Two Tribes by FGTH).

"Bollocks", thinketh I, and nip out of the shower to put on my respirator (gas mask). Realising what a warm and generally pleasant shower I'd been having, go straight back into the shower and, respirator on, continue to shower for another 10 minutes.

Where's the public element, you ask?

Unbeknowns to me, the changing area - in the basement of the building we'd set the hospital up in - was a shelter for the microbiology team (only two chaps - thankfully), one of whom took a picture of me in respirator stepping out of the shower which I'm led to believe had for a while a place on a noticeboard in a hospital in Birmingham.

/facepalms
(Eds Meds Mathskillz=1,Socialskillz=0, Fri 29 May 2009, 8:17, 1 reply)

I know you lot
We got invited to a barbeque you lot had in Mulheim at EndEx after, I think, MaxiMash '89 - one of your QA's told me that if "I laugh anymore, I'll fart"
(nobbyd is wanking furiously to industrial grade porn on, Sun 31 May 2009, 6:15, closed)