Terminal Lance #209 “All Your Base: 29 Palms”

Being stationed in Hawaii, I could never help myself from feeling sorry for those poor souls serving their sentence contract in the badlands of Southern California. The mojave desert isn’t a pleasant place, which should be obvious considering it contains such foreboding areas as “Death Valley” and “Range 400.” Twentynine Palms is arguably the shittiest place to call home in the Marine Corps, though honestly Marines will bitch about just about anywhere.

Really though, if you find that your permanent duty station is located in this hot locale, you probably have a right to bitch. Not only is it as hot as the United States gets, it’s isolated as fuck. By “as fuck,” I mean it’s at least 2-3 hours from anywhere worth going. If you’re a boot and don’t have a car, Taco Bell and ‘The Zone” will likely be your only solace. There is the noteworthy mention of it being the closest base to Las Vegas however, which may provide some respite from the monotony with its plethora of hookers and air conditioning.

No matter how you look at it though, Twentynine Palms just plain sucks. The negatives far outweigh anything positive about it; and unless you’re a boot lieutenant you probably don’t get a hard-on every time someone mentions the spacious training areas or multiple ranges for all sorts of explosive weaponry. For the average grunt, the mention of these ranges isn’t something we look forward to–no one actually enjoys running around in 100 lbs of gear in 110 degree weather–despite popular belief amongst officers. Having spent two full Mojave Viper’s (back in my day we called it CAX) at this shithole of a space in the desert, I can safely say there’s few places I’d consider it worse to be.

The worst part? Those Marines stationed there get sent to such shitty deserts on the other side of the planet for months, facing hardships beyond imagination… only to come home to another shitty desert.

In other news, I haven’t mentioned in a while but I do still have a book that you should all buy if you haven’t. Sales directly support the site, in addition to motivating the shit out of me. So buy my book.