He was really, pretty good. How many LTs have you had that tried to teach you how to recognize Cassiopeia? I can't believe that I'm remembering this stuff. He had just graduated from the USMA at West Point before he was assigned to my platoon, IIRC.
He was really, pretty good. How many LTs have you had that tried to teach you how to recognize Cassiopeia?
I once had a 2LT tank commander recently out of Hudson High who, looking for the night gunnery *white light* target for the .50 MG in his commander's cupola, managed to find the planet Venus in his NOD and tried to shoot it down, at which he failed.
Does that count?
I can't believe that I'm remembering this stuff. He had just graduated from the USMA at West Point before he was assigned to my platoon, IIRC.
During the 1993 Mississippi River flooding in and around St Louis, I was assigned to work with a USAF engineering Colonel who was a pretty sharp guy but had no knowledge of the Scott AFB area or facilities- between the two of us, we made a pretty decent team. Having been signed for several million dollars worth of radios that an NCO would need several lifetimes to be able to repay a statement of charges on, I had very reluctantly accepted a direct commission as a 2LT. After our initial relief effort of the Dauster Field airport at Creve Cour, MO was concluded, he headed back to Scott and I went to a nearby MO Army National Guard armory in hopes of grabbing a shower and using their phone, and maybe a meal. Since the Army Engineer School was at Ft Leonard Wood, not surprisingly the NG unit was an engineer outfit, quite busy with flood relief operations.
When I entered their 1SGTs office, I was greeted like a long-lost friend, and directed immediately to the COs office. It seems that the rising waters had taken out most of the bridges across the Mississippi resulting in a 150-mile drive to the one remaining usable, and most of the unit's platoon leaders and XO were on the other side. I was really, REALLY needed, this nice captain who was looking at me like a hungry wolf looks at a bunnyrabbit said, to handle commo for one of his platoons, and he and his first shirt would handle the other and command ops. I told him if my USAF bosses would okay it, it was fine by me, and we began burning up the DISN line to Scott, where I got a VOCG order to play castlebuilder until he got someone [anyone!] better qualified. The good news was that I had two dozen PRC-77 radios and a couple of PRC77Bs in my USAF station wagon, and had stocked up on a hundred or so batteries before I'd left. Coms was NOT a problem.
I met a nice little black NCO who'd be running his platoon while I was on the radios, and he introduced me to his crews; who seemed nicely confident and ready to go. I felt better when he told them that I wasn't *just* a USAF commo puke, but was former Army enlisted too; that seemed to end any ideas they might have had about killing and eating me.
But afterwards as we were cleaning out his armory's pop and candy bar machines, he told me I was the oldest second lieutenant he'd ever seen, and he figured I must have really fu#$ed up.
He was absolutely right.