It had to be in the fall of 1976, as best as I can figure. The training brigades had all closed down and the instructors had all been reassigned to units in the newly re-activated 7th Infantry Division. Fort Ord was changing its appearance. The WWII barracks that had once covered all the hillsides between Seaside and Marina were being replaced by the dormitory looking buildings of the modern all volunteer Army. I wound up in the 7th S&T Battalion, in the truck company, most of the driving course instructors were there, too. Lots of new things were happening. And a lot of old things were rearing their heads. If you aren't infantry in an infantry division, you are simply there to cater to the needs of those who are infantry. In my case, I became a squad leader in B Company, in a platoon of 2 1/2 ton trucks which served to deliver goods and supplies to the grunt units, and to serve as "ODhounds" (as opposed to "GRAYhounds") to deliver the grunts themselves to where they needed to be. So it was a job with a real mission and we stayed busy trying to keep our trucks fit to do their jobs...not an easy chore considering many of our trucks were veterans of Vietnam...having come home via rebuild plant in Taiwan. In the midst of all this real work, the 7th Infantry was working hard at training themselves to be a red hot fighting machine...so all members got to spend lots of time in the woods. In B Company that just meant we launched our trucks on their daily missions from the woods instead of the motor pool. And it also meant that after all the trucks were gone for the day, the sergeants got to sit in the fox holes, which they had to dig, and repel the aggressor force, and do all the other fieldy things they had been doing all their careers while the folks who needed the training, the new guys who were off driving the trucks, missed out.

Told you all that so I could tell you this. The S&T Battalion, the Maintenance Battalion, and a few others all fell under the command of the Support Brigade. The sergeant major of which was a very dark, short, bald, Panamanian with gold teeth any modern day rapper would envy. He felt that the junior NCOs in the brigade were not up to snuff. After several visits to various field sites and work places, he determined that HE needed to train the NCOs in the brigade in the correct way things should be done. He announced that there would be a "Train the Trainer" FTX (field training exercise...why not FTE? NOBODY knows.). He was personally going to set up, plan, execute and conduct all the training. It would be a one-man-show to demonstrate his remarkable leadership skills and to attempt to hand them down to us. I can't tell you how much we didn't look forward to this. The operational manager of a military truck company is called the "Truckmaster", "Truck" for short. This FTX was scheduled for a Friday through Sunday time frame. On Thursday we were going through our Pre-Combat Inspections (in this case, Pre-pretend-Combat Inspection) and I overheard our platoon sergeant asking Truck about transport arrangements. Truck told him that no one had co-ordinated trucks but we should have a full squad ready, just in case. This was the first inkling of the ulcer to come. About 1600 (that's 4:00pm for you Air...oh nevermind) Truck got a frantic call from the Battalion S-3 (training and operations directorate) tasking us with the transport of all the troops and equipment and have the trucks in front of Brigade storage at 0400 blah blah blah. Truck just pointed to Whisky Sours, my platoon sergeant, and smiled.

We loaded up on the trucks at about 0900, after having arrived in the motor pool at 0500. The ride to the field site was pleasant enough, nice fall day in the Monterey Bay area, the ride was what you would expect for the "greenhound" (again, as opposed to the "grayhound"), jerky and bumpy, but not rainy, snowy, or 120 degree-y. It took about 45 minutes to an hour to get to the site. The trucks pulled up side by side, carefully lined up precisely under the guidance of the sergeant major. They were shut down, safety straps lowered, tailgates dropped, and troops exiting always maintaining three points of contact...precisely by the book. Precise was one of the Brigade sergeant major's favorite words. In his heavily accented english he would hiss the "s" before the "LY".

We were formed up into squad sized elements, I got with Paul, one of my buddies from another platoon. We were given just fifteen minutes to claim our place for our puptents and report back for details. Paul and I headed for the tree line, as did many others, but were stopped by the shrill police whistle the sergeant major wore around his neck for this occasion. He screeched and yelled and chewed and cussed and out of all that we slowly began to understand that he was not expecting "tactical" placement of the tentage, we were to set up in the clearing in PRECISE formation, all the pups lined up and dressed...like they did it in the forties...when no one was shooting at them. So we quickly complied, dragging our duffle bags to the clearing and claiming our spot. Paul and I were not picked for any details on the first go round so we were able to put up our pup (each soldier is issued half of a pup tent, you have to "buddy up" with someone in order to have shelter. One thing I did learn on this FTX that stuck with me for a long time...never pick a tent mate who is a lot bigger than you. Paul was 6'4or5" and at least 250lbs. I was 6'0" and over 220...and there ain't THAT much room in one of those tents. Any way, we had to "strike" it and "pitch" it a couple of times because it had to be PRECISELY aligned side to side and front to rear. We finally got it on the third...or fourth...try. Then I got picked to help pitch the mess tent. The mess tent is the second bigges tent most units have. It is a split level affair designed to cook and serve meals in. It takes about a dozen stout fellas to do it quickly and right without the extra supervision by the sergeant major. We had about 6 or 7 guys and I was the biggest one of the bunch and we just weren't very PRECISE.

In the middle of the third attempt to get the &*$# mess tent pitched, two things happened almost simutaneously. I heard some yelling start up on the other side of the clearing where the field latrines were being dug and I heard an old familiar zinging buzz of a high speed bullet flying around looking for a home. I really pissed off the other guys on the mess tent detail, I dropped my rope and yelled "incoming!" Most of the junior NCOs in the Battalion were younger than me, I chose to start all over again in 1974, so most of them were too young to have been in Vietnam. They wondered what "incoming" meant and why was Daddy digging a foxhole with his elbows and knees (some skills never leave you). But when the next round came in lower and trimmed a nearby tree, they got it and got down.

The word went out to secure all equipment and load back on the trucks ASAP. We did a "bug out" that any sergeant major would have been proud of. As we sat in the truck, we heard an officer from range control (the organization that controls the ranges...and the training areas) pull up in a range control jeep yelling for whoever was in charge. When introduced to the sergeant major, he began to get ugly on the Panamanian whiz kid, the gist of which was the fact that this and many other training areas are hunting areas on the weekends and this particular day was the beginning of the season and WHO the hell coordinated or actually didn't coordinate this goat rope...it went on like that, including an explanation of what was involved in establishing a cease fire after the hunters had the go ahead. If you are at all familiar with the military system, you know that sergeants major DO NOT take ass chewing, especially in public in front of his troops, from anyone less than, oh...say a colonel or higher. No doubt sometime down the road this particular range control captain paid for this chewing...but on that particular opening day of hunting season when we all were sitting low in the trucks, it was PRECISELY what we all needed to hear. Heeheeeheeee.