People You Meet Along the Way...
Lieutenant Hartney was a true southern gentleman. He spoke with a soft, long vowel, aristocratic, old south voice. He graduated from VMI and came to us from a basic training company, where as a commander he apparently had a hard time with his NCOs. He was distrustful of anything we told him at first, it took some work to gain his confidence. After extensive searching, however, we found his sense of humor. He became one of my very favorite platoon leaders.
I was a squad leader in the transportation company of the 7th S&T Battalion. My squad had 10 trucks and supposed to have 20 drivers but that usually ran about 12-15. When we went to the field, the other squad leader and I would set up one of our 2 1/2 ton trucks to use as a command post...we slept on the troop seats and carried unauthorized rations and "comfort items" for those times when it just wasn't convienent or palatable to eat what Sam provided. We had set up a 1 1/4 ton trailer for the LT to use for his mobile command post. The trailer didn't have troop seats to use as a bunk, but if you took the tail rack off of the end of the trailer and slid it sideways between the side racks at the front of the trailer it provided a rather nice bunk. On our first field exercise with LT Hartney, we told him how to set up the trailer and although we offered to assist, he assured us he could manage to figure out how that would work.
After the first night out, we asked him how he slept. He said he was sore and sleepy, he hadn't slept well at all. Something was poking his back all night...and his head was lower than his feet which was not a comfortable way to sleep. Stick, the other squad leader, and I went into the trailer to investigate. The tailpiece is part of a rack that runs around the trailer, kind of looks like a fence built on top of the metal sides of the trailer. The tail piece has three metal pieces to which the boards are attached. at each end the metal pieces lock into the ends of the side pieces. The middle metal piece provides support and spacing for the wooden pieces. He had slid the tail piece in between the slats of the side racks as instructed...with the middle piece on the top...so he slept with that metal bar under the middle of his back all night. We turned it over and solved his back problem...then we put his air mattress and sleeping bag back on the rack with the head on the higher side...we didn't say anything to him, but we shared many a chuckle between ourselves.
At the end of that first field exercise, we went "admin". Meaning everyone went into camper mode...no more tactical...no guards and patrols and ambushes and all that...we were to rest up, eat well, and get some well earned sleep before we convoyed the trucks back to Fort Ord the next day. Going "admin" was one of our favorite things in the woods. I opened my clandestine footlocker and fished out a can of tamales and topped it off with a can of chili, dumped them into my mess kit pan and started heating it up over Stick's Coleman campstove. The LT hopped into the trailer to give some last minute instructions about the road march the next day...as he was getting ready to leave he paused at the stove and asked what I was cooking. When I told him, he said he had always heard of "hot tamales" but had never experienced them. I explained that out of a can wasn't a very authentic example...that they were not really that hot...and I would be happy to share with him. We split the pan and he was impressed...allowed as how if this was this good out of the can, he would have to find a good mexican restaurant and get the real mccoy.
The next morning we were heating water for shaving on the stove and the LT showed up to warm his water...the stove was in the front of the cargo bed...Stick and both of our drivers were up there, too. I was nearer the tailgate, having already shaved and eaten, I was about to start making noises like a sergeant when Stick and the two drivers bowled me over as they stampeded out of the truck...before I could protest their bad manners, the cause of their exit wafted up around my nose. I looked back at the Lieutenant, sitting there in his own vapors with the most shocked look on his face...he said, "I never would have imagined myself capable of such a thing!" Confirming the notion that officers consider their excrement non-odiferous. The four of us collapsed in laughter and shortly he overcame the shock and evacuated the truck, too...and after a few minutes of anger and then confusion, he finally cracked up himself. Not only did he did learn a new "capability"...he gave us a new slogan in the platoon...and he found his sense of humor. He developed into one of the very best platoon leaders I ever knew.