People you meet along the way...
Mannie and I worked together at two places...EUCOM in Stuttgart and FT Lost in the Woods, MO. We were in a group of VIP drivers at EUCOM that had to go to a series of special driving courses set up by the Air Force and one by the German Police. It was kind of like a "Dukes of Hazard" course for sedan drivers...and we got PAID for that stuff.
A tough as nails New Yorker complete with accent and strutt...one of my favorites. He was a good NCO and a solid soldier...but just a tad too enthusiastic on ocassion. For instance:
In Missouri we were at the Truck Driver school, I was the team leader of our instructor team and Mannie showed up fresh from his dream tour in Alaska..He had zillions of stories about huntin and fishin and bears. I digress...On this particular day, I was frustrated with a student who could not remember to place chock blocks under the wheels of the trucks when he parked. This has always been an Army policy but was especially important considering the quality of the vehicles we had to work with...they could roll away on their own and had proven it many times. Especially when the student doesn't put down the chock blocks and forgets to set the parking brake (happened at least three or four times in a 5 week cycle). I picked up a grenade sized rock and handed to the student and told him it was his personal chock rock. Every time he was moving it would be in his hand and every time he stopped, he would place it in front of his left foot...until he learned to chock his truck every time. Every time I caught him unchocked, it would cost him 25 pushups.
As a training method, it seemed to work pretty well and was adopted by several other instructors...who btw thought it was hilarious. But there is such a thing as too much of a good thing.
I was sitting in the 5th Module classroom discussing some business with the Mod Chief, Rich, when I saw a student walk by with a much larger than grenade sized rock...you know the rule, if you don't say something the first time, you have created a new standard. Grenade sized was funny, slowpitch softball sized was funnier. Mannie and Mike, another instuctor on our team had become embroiled in a silent competition to see who could have the student with the biggest chock rock. The contest ended a couple days later when one of Mannie's students came by me struggling with a volleyball sized rock. Student was maybe 120 lbs in full uniform...if that rock didn't weigh in over 60 lbs there ain't a cow in Texas. I called a short team meeting where we all agreed to abandon the chock rock program.
Walking across the motor pool one icy cold morning, Mannie hit a patch of ice and went from strutt to a flailing mass of arms and legs, seemingly suspended in air while all his appendages whirled in wild gyrations. I made a grab to try to steady him before he fell but he shrugged off my hand yelling, "Lemme alone!! I'm break dancin'!!!"
Working on the field training exercise portion of the training, one event gave me fits. We were supposed to teach battle drills for a chemical attack on a moving convoy. We had tear gas grenades, two actually, but if the convoy was fifteen to twenty trucks long, then only a few of the drivers were actually affected by the gas...the rest would hold their breath and blast through the cloud in seconds and mask up later. Not doctrine...practical but not doctrine. Mannie and a couple other instructors called me on the radio and told me I had to get over to the ambush site...they were going to debut their new plan to spread the gas aroung. I got there just as the lead element of the convoy came around the treeline. Mannie was hiding behind a clump of bushes and came out just as the lead truck passed...he threw a tear gas grenade into the back of the truck...it popped...the cloud started spreading and the lead truck acting as our gas distributor, trundled along trailing a thick cloud of tear gas the other trucks had no choice but to drive through. Halfway down the convoy Mike threw another one into another truck and in short order we had a thoroughly contaminated training area. Funny part was that some of the students had been told by preceding classes to hold their breath and drive through the cloud...it only lasted a second or two...boy, they were sorry. I guess I should have brought my gas mask with me, I probably would have enjoyed it a lot more.
We both got orders back to Germany within a few months of each other and were going to get together over there. When I got there and got settled, I went to look him up and found out that the week he arrived he had a bad fall and had to go back to the States of surgery and his orders were cancelled. I heard he went back to MO to finish out his twenty...kind of lost touch. Definately one of my favorites.