"I didn't know you couldn't do that." The joys of being a butter bar.

So there I was...a 2LT deployed to Bosnia-Herzegovina in the Posavina Corridor, jsut south of the Sava River. This was back in the day when you'd actually be a 2LT in a unit for quite a while. We lived in GP mediums and used pot-bellied stoves for heat, which if you're young...runs off of diesel fuel that runs from a 5-gallon can. As a brand new LT, one of my glorious and soul enriching jobs was to be on fire watch at night. So, when the steel drum of hell-flame went cold, I went outside and changed out the fuel can (I'd seen this done numerous times by other people...not that hard of a task). What I failed to realize is that there is a carbuerator which governs the flow of diesel (or MOGAS if it's set properly...that's a different story) and that thing has to be CLOSED when you swap out the cans. Otherwise, the fuel builds up in the metal canister of death and fumes waft up and out of it. I came back in the tent, everyone blissfully unaware of the impending explosion, and lit a piece of the Stars and Stripes and waited for it to catch properly. Once I had a small conflagration going (the only light in the tent in the dead of a Bosnian winter at 0200-ish), I opend the port on the top of my soon-to-be life changing experience device and dropped the flaming roll of doom into the stove. As it slowly descended as if in slow motion, I saw swirling inside the stove and thought to myself...'Well...that's strange," and then the explosion engulfed my face like a python grabbing onto monkey. This sudden shock and ear splitting roar, sent me (with my eyebrows and hair on fire) back onto the bunk of one of our interpreters; a large man who was easily startled. As he sprung to life, he began beating me on the head screaming something in Croatian, which I believe was, "There's a flaming American on my crotch!!" After the flames on my nugget were extinguished, the aid station rubbed some white cream on my face and then took pictures to hang throughout the Battalion area. My only saving grace, was that earlier the same day, another 2LT had also set himself on fire with a pot-bellied stove...but he was wearing an easter bunny costume when he did it.

The best 2LT I had was my PL. He came to me in private and said, "I don't know what the **** I am doing. So I need you to teach me."

I never in my life imagined that a butter bar would say this. Now he is about to make CPT and I recently asked him about that. He said his ROTC NCO told him that after commissioning that if he wanted to succeed, he would do just that.

We had a new fellow who was quite capable, but had the misfortune once of thinking on his feet and missing. It seems he was training as a night-shift Battle Captain and I dropped by to inquire about Significant events in the area of operations. I was informed that enemy activity was "down fifty percent."

"Down fifty percent from what," I inquired. The now legendary reply:

"Fifty percent.... down from... one hundred percent."

If I had smoke grenades I would have thrown all of them.

Needless to say, this exchange quickly became the challenge and response. It is common whenever one of our Soldiers sees the word percent to ask "up twenty percent from what," to which a chorus will immediately reply "up 20% from 100%."