I went to Twentynine Palms in the summer of 1977 with the 7th Infantry Division. We were part of a huge exercise that was supposed to teach us a lot about living and fighting in the desert. The Marines were our aggressors (that means that they were our simulated enemy). The Marine/Navy aviation were bad guys, Air Force was on our side. There wound up being more than 25000 troops involved in this little desert war. Before I tell you how the Colorado National Guard played a huge role in keeping spirits up in the desert, I need to tell you a few things about operating in Twentynine Palms.
The base itself is rather small, but beyond the contonement area (Marine-speak for main post) lies a huge chunk of the Mojave Desert and there is nothing in it but empty. Lots of room for tanks and stuff to run around shooting and playing war. It is a hot place...not too far from Death Valley and so far from water or any living thing. We sat through class after class about what can happen because of the heat and the critters and not being smart. And yet, the Marines (whose base it IS) lose an average of one Marine a month to heat related injuries. Usually because they go out jogging ! Without water and/or shade, you are good for an hour or so before you fry. And even after all the classes, briefings, warnings and such, we lost soldiers to the heat because they didn't bring water along on their mission, or they thought they could walk away from a broken vehicle and get help, or they just thought they would get a tan. One lieutenant was killed, along with his driver, while leading a convoy across the dry lake bed down there. It got so dusty the drivers weren't able to see. He stopped...the ten loaded tanker semi tucks behind him didn't. One of our drivers had to be medivaced because he was playing with a rattlesnake. "It was just a baby...I didn't know babies could bite!" Another was collecting scorpions in a C-ration box...souvenirs? They ganged up on him and he got a helicopter ride, too.
Message is...Twentynine Palms is not a friendly place to humans. I guess mostly because humans just don't believe the desert is so bad. A whole squad of Marines had to be medivaced because they sealed themselves up in one of those funny looking amphibious personnel carriers and tried to make a fast end run around the Army grunts. They opened the track after a twentyfive mile speed dash to find the whole squad prostate...and it is THEIR base.
Told you all that to set the mood for this. Our only source of water was a processing unit about ten miles away (this is where the Colorado National Guard comes in). We had to send a truck daily to fill up the platoons five gallon water cans...enough to fill the bed of a cargo five ton. I would send a truck out early in the morning and they would be back just after noon. I assumed the lines were long and the service slow. Until the day that all my drivers were on other missions and I had to make the water run myself.
The water processing point consisted of a series of large water vats, picture black plastic above ground swimming pools in a suburban back yard. Water is pumped from vat to vat, filtered and amended along the way. The process usually took four or five vats...there was a additional vat set up away from the others, near the holding tanks. As I got closer I could see alot of activity around the vat that was off to the side. Because, it turned out, the extra vat was the "office" where you requested, and signed for, your water. The person in charge of water issue was a rather striking Specialist 4, I could tell that because she wore her hat with it's insignia of rank. And a very small bikini. She had a field desk set up on the edge of the water vat where business was conducted, while she floated in the vat giving directions. There were half a dozen female soldiers and probably twice as many male soldiers running the water plant...there wasn't enough cloth between them all to make one set of fatigues. The water run took me a total of two hours (and I admit I did dawdle a bit myself). I was grateful to Colorado for producing people with that kind of iniative and cleverness...and for providing a measure of morale boost for my soldiers...and mostly for setting up a separate tank to float in !