People You Meet Along the Way...once or twice
An M109 is a self propelled Howitzer that is almost as big as a tank. In fact, many folks unfamiliar with military equipment would call it a tank...it travels on tracks (kind of like a bulldozer) , has a turret and a big gun barrel sticking out of it...sure...it looks like a tank. Except that the sides are flat, the armor is thinner, and it isn't a tank...it is a howitzer that can move around without being towed. In our cavalry squadron in Bad Kissingen, we had a howitzer battery attached to us, loving referred to as "HowBattery". They parked their vehicles right next to the "Davy Crockett" section, across the street from our fuel pumps. If you sit in a 3/4 ton utility truck facing the side of an M109 from...say...twenty feet away...your whole windshield would be full of howitzer, you wouldn't see anything else.
I told you that so I could tell you this. The driver of our platoon sergeant's 3/4 ton got in it after fueling up, did a U-turn, they don't turn real sharp, he had to three-point it. At the point at which he was ready to drive forward again, he was about twenty feet from one of the M109s and he drove forward right into it. He told the investigator, "I didn't see it there."
In my year at Bad Kissingen, I met a lot of people. I'd bet I must have known or known of, about 200-250 people. In the 25 years I spent in the Army after leaving Bad Kissingen, I only ran into two people from there later on. I ran into my platoon sergeant at Patch Barracks in 1979, and in a freezing cold shower room at the transit barracks in Fort Dix in 1967, I ran into this 3/4 ton driver. What's my point? Well, some of the guys I knew there were extremely good friends...at the time...and some were very interesting...and some were funny, talented, tough, or cool. Some of them owed me money ! But the only peer I meet again is this...M109 hater.
Why is it that over the years, the folks that I most often ran into were the folks I least wanted to see again? But some of these guys deserve a mention, even if they don't rate a dedicated article.
Like the mechanic who tested an electric wire for juice by sparking it against the 400+ gallon gasoline tank on an M88 (I know, purists, they didn't get diesel 88's until later), it took us hours to put out the fire. You should have seen all those GIs trying to stop the burning gasoline from flowing down the hill into the storm drain.
Or the LT who, when he found that the PTO shaft on my truck was twisted around a tree stump in the last lager site, meaning that my truck could not pump fuel, insisted on fueling both of the squadron's M88s by transferring the gas from my tanker to their 88' s in five gallon cans. About 140 trips.
Or any of the tank commanders who crossed street car or railroad tracks with their antennaes in the air...sometimes with fatal results.
Or the soldier who I spotted standing in a mud puddle up to his boot tops at the border camp at Wohlbach. I asked one of the sergeants why he was standing in the mud. The sergeant told me that the soldier had tested the depth of a mud hole by driving his M114 scout track into it. I didn't see the problem until the sergeant explained that the soldier was standing on the top of the track until they got an M88 up there to pull him out.
Then there was the new driver who called me on the fourth day of what should have been a two day trip from KAD (Kaiserlautern Army Depot) to McGraw Kaserne in Munich. He was lost. I asked him where he was...he said he was in the middle of the biggest dang city he ever saw but he couldn't find Munich anywhere. I was almost afraid to ask the name of the big city where he found himself...it was Munchen. (FYI...if ya didn't know...Munchen is what the Germans call Munich...why WE don't call it that I'll never know)
Or the Marine Captain, new to EUCOM who vowed to learn a new word in German every day. She came to work and bragged about learning the name of her street today...Einbahnstrasse...(That is "One Way Street" in English)...well...there will be more about this particular gem later.
And finally, for now, the unit Arms Room custodian who was the shakiest man in Vietnam. He checked each rifle in every rack every night by pulling the trigger. He claimed it was easier than opening each rack to remove the rifle, clear the breach (the proper method) and replacing each rifle. The Arms Room ceiling had five repaired holes in it...that make ya shake?