Florida

I had just turned 21 a few days before. In the beginning of April, 1997, I was sent from my Air Force base in New Mexico to Florida for two weeks, to a strange little Army National Guard base called Camp Blanding. It was about as far from anywhere as you can get in Florida. I was there to take part in a huge joint-service exercise, with people from the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines. It was Central Command's big yearly thing, and they wanted it to go smoothly -- imagine being confined to base in the middle of spring break in FLORIDA! We were housed in 40-bed, concrete, unheated open-bay barracks, and the temperature seemed like the 30s and 40s all the time. I heard a rumor while I was there that a movie starring Demi Moore was going to be filmed there. It turns out that the rumor was correct! The movie: G.I. Jane.    (Continue...)