Out of all the places the military can send you for a few years, the islands of Hawaii are

hardly the least desirable, unless you just hate the sun, beautiful sandy beaches, and

rainbows.

Even if you have the absolute worst job, anyone who spent their years serving on a base like

29 palms, my not, polk, drum, and so on, they're going to roll their eyes if they hear

you complain about anything. Oh, yeah,

Hawaii must have been real tough, sure. Granted, I will always say that the jungles I had to spend

days or even weeks at a time in during my field ops were downright awful. They are hot,

wet, and an absolute death trap in the middle of the night.

Hawaii is beautiful if you're standing on a beach, but we spent half our time crawling onto the beaches

at 3 a.m. after finning several hundred meters through the water in full gear. Wet, sandy

camis, chafe your inner thighs real bad. And a waterlogged rucksack weighs

a hell of a lot more, not to mention having to clean all that rust and mud constantly out of your

rifles. We envy the guys who spent their time working in air-condition offices and said they

loved going to the beach on the weekends.

My recon platoon was honestly kind of sick of it by the time our training was over.

Speaking of doing all this training at night, it's really no secret that nighttime is when the

weird stuff starts happening. Hawaii, especially the island of Oahu, has long been a major hub for American military bases.

As such, all manner of service personnel, Army, Air Force, Navy, Marines, Coast Guard, are always awake around the clock, whether in field training out in remote areas or sitting night watch in

completely empty buildings.

So who better to be the witness to strange and terrifying things that go bump in the night

when everyone else is asleep?

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