So the next phase was a "Train-the-Trainer" FTX, where all the senior NCOs in the Brigade went to the woods to learn some skills and be ready to take them back to their soldiers and train them on those skills. There was a gap in the senior NCO corps of some ten years or more when the forces of society caused the Army to stop training certain skills in basic training because...well...too icky. Because of my break in service (I was out from '71 to '74) and the catch up period after it, I was about 10 years older than most of the senior NCOs in the Brigade, except for a couple of the Sergeants Major. So I had been in basic training before it was politically incorrect to teach things like bayonet fighting, hand to hand combat, sneaky stuff and use of silent weapons. But suddenly, all these folks who had never done any of that stuff were in a position where they were required to teach it to their subs. I thought I could coast through it, but noooooo. Once it got out that I had some experience in these things, I was pressed into service as an instructor. Some of the training areas we used were the very same sites I was taught at in basic training, twenty years before. We had to tromp around in the weeds and clear out some brush and chase out the scorpions, spiders, foxes and other critters who had taken up residence in the bunkers and foxholes (heheheee). So we did the drills, the bayonet assault course, the live fire assault course and, my favorite, the night infiltration course with the M60s firing tracers over our heads as we crawled through the barbed wire and around the demo pits.

The one area I didn't have any expertise in was rappelling. In fact, due to recent revelations on the confidence course, I not only didn't have expertise, I didn't want to have anything to do with it. But, you know...sometimes you gotta do things ya hate. We spent all day learning how to make "Swiss Seats", work in the caribeener (SP?) and how the brake works and then up the fifty foot tower to put it all to work. After a couple of trips down the wall side of the tower, we had to go off the open side, it had a pipe about three feet below the lip of the platform that was supposed to simulate the helicopter skid, which we would be experiencing the next day. I got down the wall okay, but the open side was rough. I didn't freeze, but I had a hard time making my body behave. You have to back off the platform and plant both feet on the pipe. Then you have to lower yourself down, keeping your feet in place, until your butt is level with the pipe and hopefully your legs are straight and you form the "L" position. I could do that on the wall side okay, but for some reason when I was on the pipe my butt didn't want to get too far from my shoes, and I just didn't get the "L"...more like a "W". The tower instructor told me that if I did that on the helicopter, I would be in big trouble. Once on the tower there is only one way down, so I slid down the rope.

The next day we were led to a nice semi-marshy clearing and lined up in four lines, one on each corner. A Huey came in over the trees and settled into the clearing. The plan was to take four up at a time. We were told that the bird was gonna hover at 50 feet and there would be a belay on each rope ( that's a guy on the ground who holds the end of the rope and by tricky maneuvering can stop you if you screw up). The ropes they strung up were about 200 ft long, they doubled them so the rope hanging off the chopper was 100 feet long. Most of the rest of the day those ropes were about 5 to 10 feet off the ground when the Huey was hovering and there weren't anybody on belay. The Maintenance Battalion Sergeant Major was ahead of my Sergeant Major, who was ahead of me, and my First Sergeant was behind me. As we got closer to the front of our line, the Maintenance Battalion CSM was getting more and more vocal about being too old for this crap, not gonna break MY neck proving I ain't a kid anymore...etc. I must say as a psy-ops technique, it had an affect. When his turn came up, he sat in the door, rose up to the hover, did a pretty fair "L", then when the crew chief gave the sign, they all four popped off the skid at the same time. This is kind of important, it keeps the chopper balanced and avoids rocking the ship, and you have to pop with enough slack in your rope so you don't swing back into the skid and bust your melon. The Sergeant Major slid down the rope in an almost horizontal position, he never applied the brake at all ( you feed the rope through the carabeener and are supposed to slide a bit at a time,left hand at about eye level on the rope so you don't get your fingers fed into the carabeener, and your right hand held below and behind you. You slide your right hand as far down the rope as you can reach, grip it tight and slide down the rope to your hand. When your right hand hits your hip, you stop...hence "brake"). He came off the end of the rope about six feet off the ground and hit the sandy marsh with a sickening thump, bounce about a foot in the air and settled into a mushy pile. Showing no concern, emotion, excitement or fear, my Sergeant Major turned to me and the First Sergeant and said, "Let's go get some coffee". We turned and walked through the woods to the mess tent. I don't drink coffee but I felt they needed the company.

Turned out that the Sergeant Major had the wind knocked out of him but aside from a head to toe bruise, he was fine. He even said he wanted to do it again (I immediately diagnosed brain damage but not being a medic, no one listened). And the powers that be caught up with us at the mess tent so we all had to go back to the clearing and get "qualified".

At the end of the Light Fighter course, they had a neat graduation ceremony. They set the podium up at the base of a cliff out on Sandstone Ridge and as they called out the names of the graduates, they would rappel down the cliff face and receive their certificate. I never got mine. I came down on an emergency levee for Fort Leonard Wood, they needed truck school instructors worse than the Division needed Light Fighters, I guess. So I had to leave before I completed all the events. I wished that the emergency had popped up before the 25 mile forced march...or the rappelling.