Baghdad diet n.— «What exactly is Rudy’s Baghdad Diet? You’ve got to live in Baghdad: this is important because the heat there pretty much kills your appetite. No fried foods: stick to fish, salads, and vegetables 90 minutes...
thumping n.— «Then a soldier would conduct the equivalent of what the oil industry calls “thumping.” Within the area rigged with sensors, a soldier would shoot a rifle at a small metal plate on the ground, causing...
fobbit n.— «Administrative specialists who never leave the fob are known, with some condescension, as fobbits. Like every soldier here, a fobbit could be killed at any time by a random rocket or mortar round. But on most days the greatest...
catch a tramp v. phr.— «Colt—the same day this soldier went missing I was there on that same road—and it all looked so peaceful to me (as one should expect on a trip to the north)—we saw soldiers trying to catch a tramp (is that English?)...
birth control glasses n.pl.— «Right now they’re both wearing Army-issue brown heavy plastic frames, which the soldiers call BCGs, birth control glasses, because they’re so ugly no woman would want to make a baby with a soldier wearing a...
turtle n.— «In soldier parlance, they are “turtles”—a Vietnam-era nickname derived from their supposedly slow arrival in theater—or “FNGs,” a slightly more colorful reference to their “[expletive] New...