Today is November 11, which in the United States is celebrated as Veteran’s Day.

For those of us who served, I suggest recreating your schedule for a typical Monday when you were in.

Here’s mine –

0530 – PT. Since it is November, you will be wearing your cold weather workout clothes, complete with jacket and leather gloves. Since I was in Military Intelligence, no matter how warm it is, you will wear that full kit for warm up, calisthenics, and cardio. Even though the jacket has a zipper, you will not be allowed unzip it just a tad to regulate your body temperature. If it’s cold enough that you are grateful for the heavy sweatpants and jacket, your commander will want to show how tough they are by having you strip down to shorts and tee shirt. And always remember this – the uniform won’t fit in some small way that will become more and more annoying as your workout progresses. Your workout will be interrupted by the flag raising ceremony because your leadership apparently doesn’t own a watch and the schedule your post follows EVERY SODDING DAY.

0600 – Reveille and flag raising. For those of you on this detail, you will be decked out in either your best utility uniform or your Class A dress uniform. You will have reported at 05:00 for the detail so that you could be inspected by leadership and run through the ceremony a couple of times. The playing of the bugle will almost certainly be prerecorded, but interestingly, the cannon will not. You’ll have that cannon shot if you have a really cool, bachelor Commanding General, who has no issues with waking up all of the families of your post’s senior leadership. They all tend to live in the really nice houses close to the flag pole and cannon.

0630 to 0800 – Personal maintenance, barracks cleanup, and breakfast. If you live off-post, you will likely go to the gym for a shower and then grab a bite to eat before going to work. If you live in the barracks, you’re supposed to get your room and common areas cleaned up after getting a shower and dressing for the day, then go to the chow hall for what is usually a pretty good breakfast. If you live in on-post family housing, you get to go home, compete with your family for use of the bathroom, scarf down whatever food you can grab before driving the kids to school, and then head to work.

0800 – Accountability Formation. Leadership, who just saw you a couple of hours ago, will count noses, probably do a uniform inspection, and give out any announcements for the week. If somebody’s getting promoted, this is a good time to do it.

0830 to 1130 – Motorpool and Vehicle Maintenance – To know how this works, go out to your driveway, drag out the owner’s manual for your car, and use it to check every fluid, blinker, fuse, and all of the paint for anything that’s broken since the last time you drove it. Leaders, who hated doing this crap when they were younger, will prowl around making sure you don’t skip a step or do anything from memory. If you’re lucky, the dude or dudette who hands out tools will be at work and feeling cooperative, because there is only one left-handed, counter-threaded winter tire air checker in the entire battalion and you will need it every week. You’ll finish up in about 30 to 60 minutes, no matter how meticulous you are or how slow you go to show you’re not just filling out the paperwork. If your leadership is sane, the rest of the morning will be a good chance to catch up on paperwork, get in some personal development, or do some training with your troops. If they’re Military Intelligence insane, you’ll spend the next two and a half hours cleaning the wash rack, sweeping the parking lot, and using a plumb line to make sure that all of the trucks and tracks are lined up like the toy soldiers their mommy didn’t buy them when they were children.

1100 to 1300 – Lunch. You’ll either hit up the Burger King or the chow hall for a quick bite, then find something to do away from work for a bit. Anyone foolish to try to eat their lunch in the same area as their leadership works is likely to be handy when they need a body. These drooling idiots will likely be held up later as example of ‘motivated’ and ‘dedicated to the mission’ because they weren’t smart enough to not e there when the lieutenant or platoon sergeant needed somebody to hose out portapotties or some other nonsense.

1300 – Formation, either at the company area or back in the motor pool. Location will depend on whether your commander really wanted to be a truck driver when she grew up, or if she actually wants you to do the job you were hired to do. This will be quick, because they just want to make sure nobody ran off to join the circus in the 90 minutes since you last saw them.

1315 to 1600 – If you’re lucky, all that paperwork, development, and training you missed out on while you were sweeping red clay (there’s always red clay) off of the motorpool asphalt will get worked on. If you’re not lucky, one of your folks found a small dark spot on an engine that’s older than his grandfather, and you and he will be down at the motorpool trying to get it ‘fixed’. If you’re really lucky, you’ll be assisted by a grizzled mechanic whose philosophy is that all equipment is either broken, fixed, or f***ed. They’ll help you clean it up, make sure it’s not impacting operation of the vehicle, then sign off on the paperwork until next week. You’ll have a ‘word’ with the private who caused all this when his attention to detail that found the ‘leak’ for the 4th week in a row, then head back to the office.

If you get that done in time, you can try your luck at going to the personnel or finance offices to try to fix the issue you’ve been trying to get fixed since Moses went to OCS. These offices are only open from 1318 to 1327 on Mondays, but maybe you’ll get lucky. Might as well try. No matter what, you’ll go and stand in line with the rest of the damned as they wait for a private with with 3 kids, perfectly starched uniform, a patrol cap 3 sizes too big to fit over her hair, and fake nails 3 inches long chats with her friends on the phone and gives you the evil eye when she notices your existence. Any interruption to this by you looking directly at her or, heaven forfend, voicing your desire to get something taken care of will induce a confrontation between you and the 300 pound Master Sergeant she ‘works’ for. He will either be 300 pounds of muscle due to his ability to go to the gym for 4 hours every day while everyone else works for a living, or will be 300 pounds of worn out chewing gum due to the mini fridge full of snack cakes and Mexican cokes he has in his office. Either way, you will be locked up at parade rest while he berates you and calls your First Sergeant to berate her for your offense.

1600 – ‘Final’ Formation – If you’re on flag detail, you reported back at 1500 for another inspection and run through the ceremony. The rest of you will be back in ranks to count noses, give out final announcements, and render respect as the bugle plays and the flag is brought down and folded. If you’re still working, you’ll stop and render a salute when the bugle plays. If you’re a pig eyed sack of donkey waste, you’ll break the land speed record dashing inside at the first notes to avoid having to stand up straight for 30 seconds.

If your leadership has any shred of humanity in them, they’ll dismiss you for the day after this, assuming that the work for the day is done. If they’re related to their grandmother more than once, you’ll be told to stay in the area while they go inside to work. Get comfy. You’re going to be here a while. Maybe they’re overworked and need company. Maybe their home life is awful and don’t want to go home right yet, and if they can’t leave, you can’t leave. No matter the reason, you’re there until they’re darn good and ready for you to go home.

When you’re released, either by a loving and caring commander at 1600 or by a dolt who made you wait around while he finished his TPS reports, be careful as you return to your abode. There are MP’s about, and they smell blood. Going 15 in a 15 zone can get you pulled over. Basic counting and all that aren’t taught to these folks, so make it easy and drive at least 3 miles under the speed limit. For safety, stop at all stop signs and red lights for a full five count so they don’t have any excuse to pull you over and berate you for putting the lives of everyone on the road in danger. Failure to do so will cause you to have to speak with your leadership in a couple of weeks when the ticket filters down from higher in the chain of command.

Once you get home, make sure you can hear your phone when somebody inevitably calls you. Maybe the lieutenant needs to get some information from you, or perhaps somebody’s in trouble and needs help. Most likely, it’s because somebody who works for you did something stupid, and now you have to go back to work, hopefully not the hospital or jail, and deal with it. This includes holidays, vacations, weekends, and when you should be getting a good night’s sleep.

2300 – Taps. Theoretically, you should have been home and ready to get some rest several hours ago. However, be prepared to be walking out to your car, still in uniform, under a full moon when you hear the call that used to mean “Go to bed, now” .

But go to sleep you must, for tomorrow is another day, and it begins right early at that.