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Posted on 11/17/2021 6:00:10 PM PST by Kathy in Alaska
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Good evening, mountainlion...funny story, but only after it was over. Thanks for sharing.
One morning I walked to the Company area from the Senior NCO Billet and the 1SG grabbed me and took me to his office and it was clear he was upset about something. He said “Your wife called last night and left a message, something about a death and she was crying so hard the Staff Duty officer couldn’t make out the whole message. We’ve alerted the MFO Commander in Norway, asking if you could make another call and we have the Red Cross standing by once the emergency is verified.” (My wife was a Sergeant at the time and still at Ft Lewis).
I was freaked out and spent the first half of the day waiting for authorization to call home and the other half trying to get Terri on the phone. I finally got through and she was in tears, crying about “I killed it!” I said calm down and tell me what happened. She said she got home from work the previous day and found a Blue Jay stuck to the grill of the Jeep. I consoled her but kept my end of the conversation cryptic as my 1SG, Commander, and Bn XO were there waiting to whisk me away on Emergency Leave. When I finished the call I told them it was a distant relative that had died in a car wreck but that I didn’t need to go home because my wife had tended to the funeral arrangements.
Good evening, radu...lots of ducks tonight, but only when I called. They stay in the unfrozen creek because it’s too cold, zero degrees now, to stay in the yard. Then they sit and retract their feet to eat.
Harvesting just about done?
Thanks, crz, for sharing your uncle’s stories...going through a typhoon would not be fun at all!
We had a soldier who was the one there is in every unit who says: “if they attack us, I will shoot up in the air, I do not want to kill anyone”. This dolt even managed to obtain information , however, from terrorist prisoners by giving them candy bars and even his straight razor knife so they could trim their beards for Allah. So I guess he became useful playing the good cop part for the commander, ironically in spite of his stunt of giving a head cutting straight razor to a war prisoner. Go figure.
However if that was not enough, he was a loud mouth too, and he kept annoying me one day with his preaching about how I should be more like him, gangster tough yet not giving a care and being lazy all the time. I got up to his face really angry because everyone was always doing all the work and he always tried to avoid helping lift missiles, and that day he had walked the other way when I recovered a helicopter that had been shot up, and I screamed to his face: “I am going to order boxing gloves and you and I will meet in the back of the house and have a little talk when I get them, and we will see if your stories of being such a tough thug are true.”
Someone heard that conversation and all of a sudden in a matter of minutes everyone was talking about how there was going to be a fight and they were all betting this piece of crp was going to get shagged by myself. To not lose face he kept taunting asking me where my gloves were at and that I was a coward, pretending to wait for them being delivered as a way to avoid fighting him. Turns out the task force commander had 2 sets of gloves and handed them to me and I threw a pair at the feet of this idiot, daring him to pick them up. He went white as a ghost and everyone started to taunt him. So he finally picked them up and we had a fight. He was stronger and younger than me, but I had much more of a fight than he did and proceeded to jump at him pummeled him a good deal. He managed to land a couple hard punches himself that got me nearly knocked out as we were in the mountains at very high altitude, but in the end he only managed to put himself in a defensive position not able to do anything but succumb to the onslaught of my repeated attacks without any initiative. He looked quite desperate. At the end we were both dancing with fists up like two drunks, him because I had shaken his brains up and me because I was gasping for the rarefied air, exhausted, with tunnel vision and gagging and puking from all the beating I had done on him.
The squad leader declared me winner of the fight and from this day on out no one ever believed this mythomaniac with his stories of being a thug back at home or being tired or sick as a way to avoid work.
It is the difficult thing in the combat zone, as you fight both the enemy, but also the demons of demoralization that can creep within the unit or within oneself. I am glad I had watched movies like Platoon or read books of the Soviet Army by Suvorov before joining, because it kind of prepared me for this eventual challenge. I was not surprised by it, I expected it and was ready. And boy did that improve the morale of the troops and my own after this fight, channeling the cynical attacks of these bad spirits into glorious moments. It was epic and it still is can be epic because a bad situation and bad actors can always be used to our advantage eventually.
My father was drafted in that year, and he ended the war as a captain training pilots at Fort Benning. He told me a story about military justice as administered by NCOs in his days with the 44th Infantry Division at Fort Lewis.
Back when my father was a buck sergeant, things were disappearing from the barracks. After a few weeks, they caught the soldier who was stealing and took him to the company commander. The captain took one look at the man and said, “This man doesn’t look like a thief to me!”
The company first sergeant and other NCOs took the soldier back to the barracks, positioned him at the top of the stairs and threw him down the stairs. Then they marched him back to the top and threw him down the stairs again. This went on until the man was black and blue, and his uniform covered with blood.
Then the first sergeant took him back to the company commander, who looked at the miscreant and said, “Now this man looks like a thief!”
Only a few hurdles this morning, and then things smoothed out til checks were run. Did my prelim reports last night to find potential problems...fixed them early, and the fixes held today.
At ROTC summer camp at Indiantown Gap, PA, our Drill Instructor was an E-7 veteran of two tours in Vietnam. He had credited the Army with saving him because he thought that without military discipline, he would have ended up in prison. He loved talking about his experiences in Nam, to include explaining how much fun it was to garotte some pajama-clad VC he had encountered on patrol. “That little c***sucker sure squirmed,” he laughed. In addition to the standard, by-the-book Army training, he gave us his own private course on VC tactics.
On our field training exercise before graduating, we were up against an armored cavalry unit that had just come back from Nam. For our first assignment, our platoon had to get off helicopters at a landing zone, march a few miles, sneak up on their encampment and take it. The armored cav squad had a sniper waiting in a tree to slow us down and warn the encampment that we were approaching. But we moved with such stealth and speed that we got to the encampment before they could deploy the sniper. We caught the squad eating lunch, so it was a short fight. Later, we got word that we had pissed off the cav lieutenant colonel who was running the exercise. Our DI seemed awfully proud of that.
That night we were supposed to go on a night march and trigger an ambush. Because of an eye injury I had sustained earlier that day, I was not with the platoon but behind the scenes with the cav light colonel who was running their side of the exercise. He was not a nice guy – in fact, he was one of the most vicious officers I encountered in my entire Army experience – and he got nastier as the night wore on. He became more and more agitated because of reports that our unit had not come by to trigger his ambush.
I wanted to say, “My platoon went through your ambush with such stealth and speed that your men didn’t even notice us. They probably thought it was the wind. If this had been Nam, we would have snuck up behind your people and garrotted the whole lot of them.” Of course, I kept my mouth shut.
The captain running the ambush assumed it had been called off and told his men to pack it in for the night. The colonel was absolutely livid and screamed at the captain over the radio to get his men back on line, and then my platoon was forced to march through the ambush zone again to trigger it.
The next night we had to deploy a defensive perimeter and prepare for an attack by the cav. Our DI had taught us a VC tactic where they would send a small patrol to attack an American unit, withdraw, attack again, withdraw, each time pulling the Americans closer to a full blown defensive perimeter which would open up on them. Our cadet CO of the evening decided to pull this trick on the armored cav. We got their squad right up to the edge of where we would have opened up on them and blown them away when a cavalryman screamed, “Abort! Abort! It’s a VC trick!” He must have had a flashback. They withdrew, the attack never came, and I knew that somewhere, some poor captain was getting reamed by that light colonel.
The next morning we set off to take a hill. Normally this would not have been a big deal with our platoon pitted against a squad, but the light colonel was so steamed that he told us that instead of attacking a squad, our departure would be held up until he could reinforce that hill with an entire platoon. If we didn’t take the hill we would march twenty miles back to our barracks instead of riding in trucks. But we moved with such stealth and speed that we took the hill before he could reinforce it. His people never knew what hit them.
By the time the exercise ended, I saw two very different reactions.
Our DI said, “I would give my left nut to take you guys into combat.”
The lieutenant colonel was in a fog, muttering, “Somewhere in that unit, there’s an evil mind.”
Hey there, Kathy.
There’s unfrozen water anywhere in Anchorage right now????? Color me shocked!! It’s so c-c-c-c-cold up there these days.
Poor ducks. At least they get good meals at your house to help them keep their body heat fired up.
Harvesting is over, at least here. There are still a few fields scattered around that aren’t done yet. BUT, they aren’t close to us!
They still need to come back here to bush hog the fields and there’s no telling when they’ll do that.
One sees all kinds of things as duty officer, patrolling the battalion area in the middle of the night. One duty I was required to perform was to check the locks of various buildings to make sure there hadn’t been a break-in.
As I approached this particular “temporary” wooden building of World War II vintage, I noticed a skunk with her kits foraging on the lawn by the entrance. When I approached, the mother skunk went into her dance to warn that she was ready to spray. She stood her ground, and I could not get to the door to check it. After a while, I gave up, returned to battalion headquarters and wrote in the log:
“Could not check building. Was repelled by skunk commandos who had it locked down tight.”
Sounds like it wasn’t too bad a day over all. Fixes held and checks are out. I imagine you’re ready for an early bedtime tonight!
BTW Kathy..he met Bull Halsey and talked with him several times. Not one sailor blamed Halsey for the weather incidents as far as he knew.
He was in the CIC in the Missouri whatever that was. Watched the surrender while aboard the MO.
Four what it is worth. He went in around 1920. Kicked around for about 15 years, got called up around 1940, served until about 1946, got out, got called in for the Korean War, then said to hell with it, might as well stay in until he retired in 1960. About 30 some years in.
Our signal battalion had a command post exercise along with Group HQ, and we went off to the evergreen woods of Fort Lewis for a few days. Problems were to be sent down from Group for us to react to.
Because nothing was going on, I as the Battalion S-1 decided to go on a solo hike through the woods down to the Nisqually River. Our S-3 went hunting, and our XO went fishing. When I got back, I found that a problem had been sent down while I was out in the woods in dereliction of duty. I was worried and asked my SP4 clerk, “What happened?”
“Aw, nothin’, LT,” he said. “We just applied the solution and sent it back up to Group.”
I learned just how unimportant an officer could be.
That night the CO sent me off to the PX for a beer run, the S-3 roasted his grouse, and the XO roasted his trout. While everyone else was eating at a field mess tent run by Group, we sat down in our tent for a feast.
Life sure is tough in the field!
There was something called a Health and Welfare Inspection that consisted of lining the troops up outside the barracks while MPs went through the ranks and the building with drug-sniffing dogs. Prior to sending in the dogs, the troops were told that if they turned in contraband, it would be confiscated, but there would be no repercussions. If the dogs found something, however, there would be criminal charges.
We had a kid from San Francisco, who upon hearing this information, pulled several bags of marijuana out of his left pocket and tossed them on the ground. He pulled several more bags of weed from his right pocket. He pulled more grass from his left rear pocket. He pulled more from his right rear pocket. He opened his left shirt pocket and deposited more marijuana on the ground. He opened his right shirt pocket and deposited yet more bags of weed.
As adjutant, I was standing next to the battalion CO while all this was going on. He had a wicked sense of humor, and a glance at him told me he was on the verge of laughing.
The kid un-bloused his left boot and tossed some more bags of grass on the ground. He un-bloused his right boot and tossed yet more bags on the ground.
I could see that the CO was about to lose it.
Then the kid opened his shirt and tossed bag after bag of marijuana onto the ground, making a pile that was rising to the height of his knees.
Seeing that the CO was about to break up, I tapped him on the arm and motioned him to the side of the building out of sight of the troops. About halfway down the path, he began laughing so hard he bent over double. Tears were rolling down his eyes. I couldn’t help it, and I began to laugh uncontrollably.
I said through my laughter, “He lost a lot of money today.”
The CO was barely able to say through his laughter, “How much of him was human, and how much was grass?”
😁😁😁😁
True Story: I do not remember if I have ever told this story on FR:
Year: 1965
A submarine conducting ‘war games’ far off of the coast of Norfolk, Virginia.
Our job was to ‘penetrate’ the ‘enemy’ and get to the coast.
While transiting from East to West there was a P2V anti-submarine aircraft sighted. We immediately went into emergency dive.
While diving, the stern planes jammed in full dive. Our greatest down angle was @ 45 degrees. Almost a total disaster.
There was a man onboard who I shall name, “Junior.” Junior was on the ‘sticks’ in the Maneuvering room. Junior was always in a bad mood, never spoke much and when he did it was always with some negative comment about someone or something. No one liked him for his constant negativity, bad humor, etc. In two years of serving aboard with him I had never seen him smile or laugh. But on this day, he, without orders or directions from anyone, threw the ‘sticks’ to emergency back full which threw a couple of fireballs all over the Maneuvering room. However, his action made the boat stop the dreaded down angle and we popped right back up on the surface. After the near disaster had calmed everyone’s nerves I went back to the Maneuvering room, walked right up to Junior and said to him, “Junior, I want to personally thank you for saving the boat.” I had hoped that my sincere words would soften him and say something like, “That’s OK, man.” Not junior. He stayed in his normal mode and said, “Well, I didn’t want to ( expletive deleted ) die, man.
Junior, wherever you are, I haven’t and will never forget you, brother and still love you no matter your sour temperament! ;-)
I was a first lieutenant when I was teamed with another first lieutenant to teach a class on military justice. These things can be frightfully dull, but the Army likes to use skits in training, so the two of us worked on a series of ideas that would get the class involved. We decided to start off with my getting shot by my SP4 clerk. Then we would take him through the entire procedure from arrest to general court-martial.
My clerk went to the Fort Lewis Players and procured a blank pistol for the verisimilitude. We placed him in the back of the room, and then I began, “Gentlemen, today’s five hour block of instruction is on the Uniform Code of Military Justice.” My SP4 jumped up, aimed the pistol at me and screamed, “Die, lifer!” He fired several shots and I hit the ground.
From the corner of my eye, I could see utter pandemonium. The senior NCOs in the room, witnessing the end of their military careers, mobbed my SP4.
“Grab him!”
“Get the gun!”
The company first sergeant screamed, “Break his finger! Break his finger!”
Most of the students did the proper thing by hitting the deck. One private, a young man from the tough Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood in Brooklyn, tried to open the window, failed, attempted to use his elbow to break the plexiglass, failed, and then tried to rip up the astroturf rug to hide under it.
My teaching partner calmed everyone down and said, “Gentlemen, you have just witnessed a murder!”
The soldier from Bedford-Stuyvesant had tears rolling down his eyes. Pointing his finger at my teaching partner, he screamed, “I didn’t see nothin’, man! I didn’t see nothin’!”
That was the correct response for Bedford-Stuyvesant.
I had a tough time keeping a straight face while on the ground. My partner stood over me and chanted, “My father can beat your father at dominoes,” which was as close to Catholic Latin as that Colorado Presbyterian would ever get. I stood up and saw a whole room in shock.
The people from the Fort Lewis G-3 shop, who were there to inspect the class, said it was the best military justice class they had ever witnessed. But they were among the first to hit the deck.
Dad said when he was in boot camp they had an exercise one day where you cut natural vegetation to camo yourself.
A guy from NY walks over and asks “what do you think?” Dad looks at all the poison ivy the guy had draped all over himself and said “I think you’re in trouble!”
The guy spent the rest of that boot camp in sick bay slathering calamine on himself.
What a fun stream! I have no stories but will enjoy reading the other stories.
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