Yep!
I was just a little tyke but I remember that was the first thing that was said to me when we landed that "other" boat!
"Get some Brasso, son, and polish up that brass! Then let the animals out two by two!"
It was early 1954. I was teaching a mean course called “The Unarmed Defense of the American Soldier” in what later became known as Jungle Training School out in the boonies several clicks across the canal from Gatun Dam, near Pina Village at the mouth of the Chagres in Panama.
I was tough in those days. Had just read From Here to Eternity and was living it there.
I had to go over to Ft. Davis (It may have been Ft. Gulick: It was a long time ago.) for something or the other. A fellow there told me I should hang around for the parade in an hour, that the last active mounted unit (not “for show “ as the one’s at West Point and Arlington) was retiring its colors, being deactivated. It had been stationed up north somewhere, near David.
I went out to the parade field. There were only a few people there.
There was a small band leading the parade. The daily morning rain had stopped and there was heavy steam on the field as the sun slowly came out. All of us voluntarily stood at attention as the old Ward Bond looking Chief Master Sergeant with his tri-cornered hat and stripes from his shoulders to elbows swung a long bullwhip over the heads of the mules pulling the caisson. It sounded like a shotgun. He yelled, “Hyah, ye sons of bitches!”
As they passed the reviewing stand he spit a big wad of tobacco and snapped a perfect salute to the few honchos on the stand.
They passed and then circled back to the center of the field. Their CO and a couple of NCOs came forward and slowly rolled their unit guidon, encased it, and gave it to the fort commander, while the band played a lively, but very low version of As the Caissons Go Rolling Along.”
Newly arrived from Korea Maj. Gen. Lionel C. McGarr then slowly read the retiring unit's long history, in places like Fort Blss and the Indian Wars, the Argonne, and Belleau Wood.
I slowly glanced around the field. Even the old salts had tears streaming down their cheeks.
I witnessed a beautiful piece of history that day.
A few months later I got hit by a sobering grenade in a Cold War "operation" you never heard of in another far away place.
ofMagog
Retired, United States Regular Army