By Master Sergeant Bob Haskell, National Guard Bureau
Two Dannys made their presence known during the last half of July.
Hurricane Danny trashed parts of Alabama, and more than 275 Guard folks from that state were called out to help.
The other Danny, First Lieutenant Dan Allen, the 1st Platoon leader in Charlie Company, 3rd Battalion, 116th Infantry, provided leadership and comic relief for the Virginia Army Guard.
He and 153 other troops with the Leesburg-based unit recently trained at Fort A.P. Hill, Virginia, and Fort Benning, Georgia, preparing for their nine month deployment to Bosnia in support of Joint Guard.
At 30, Allen is an 11-year Guard veteran who possesses a biting, but unoffensive, wit. He also has a knack for finding the lighter side to the serious business of soldiering.
Taking a page from David Letterman, here are Allen's Top 10 reasons: You know you're undergoing high profile infantry training when:
10. Some of the road signs were missing, and all the lieutenants got lost.
9. You threw a hand grenade and you weren't sitting at a computer.
8. To conserve ammo, MREs were used against the enemy.
7. There were three colonels for every private.
6. You wondered why, if the new gas masks were so great, you couldn't use them for pillows like you had the old ones.
5. The new M16-A2 rifles looked like they were made by Mattel.
4. Mosquitoes were commonly mistaken for the state bird.
3. Your Physical Training Card looked like the Dead Sea Scrolls.
2. You spotted so many ground hogs that you expected six years of winter.
1. Your gear was inventoried so many times, your duffel bag developed stretch marks