The Army is fussy about who operates what. Almost every piece of equipment requires a license. A license requires training and certification. Stoves, heaters, trucks, power generators, about the only piece of equipment that doesn't require a license, or even a lot of training, is a weapon. Anyone can carry a rifle. Go Figure. The licenses have to be local, too. A soldier used to have a form called the DA 348 which listed all the equipment he was qualified to operate and the training and updates received to stay current on that equipment. So if you were qualified to drive a jeep, had the training and the license in your last duty station, you still couldn't drive a jeep at your new duty station unless you had a license from the new unit...even if it was on the same base. Like I said, the Army is serious about being qualified to operate its equipment. Here's why:
We were REFORGER-ing in Bavaria. I had platoons and squads spread all over the place in support of it. One of my squads was pulling food out of a supply point and delivering it to different field sites. An unusal job for us because we were a fuel tanker company and had to borrow a cargo trailer to do the mission...7 of them, in fact.
One of the crews on this mission was made up of a rather weak-spirited but capable E4 and a headstrong rookie PV2. They were at the loading dock in Nurnberg waiting to get loaded. The RT operator had been pulled off to do something else and they had to just wait on him. An RT (Rough Terrain Fork Lift) is a medium sized front-end loader with forks instead of a bucket. They come in handy for loading in rough terrain.
The Army has procedures, too. One of them is that drivers will supervise the loading of their trucks...but not do the loading themselves. They are responsible to see that the load is properly lashed and secured, too...but not do it. Creating an usual situation on ocassion where a Private may supervise a Specialist who outranks him in the proper tie-down requirements. Well...heck...the driver was TRAINED on it...it's on his 348.
So there they sat, bored and waiting. The headstrong Private said, "I used to run a forklift at the warehouse I worked in...bet I could figure out how to work that one. Despite warnings and admonitions, headstrong got up and mounted the RT. He figured out how to start it, began playing with the controls, and soon felt confident enough that he drove it into the warehouse and came out a few minutes later with two pallets stacked on the forks and headed for the trailer. The first stack went on with no problems. On second trip he drove the RT off the side of the trailer. He was not buckled in, but he was lucky...the RT landed on its side and stayed put. He wasn't thrown out.
On the floor in the cab of the RT, there is an access panel, it is made of heavy guage steel and is about a foot or so square. There is a sticker on the underside of the panel that warns you not to operate the RT unless this panel is secured in the closed position. That's because the panel is heavy and when you are bouncing around...Rough Terrain...the panel might flap around. This one was not secured and Private Headstrong didn't read the warning and so didn't secure the panel. In the jumble and rumble of the short flight from trailer to ground, the panel managed to slam shut on Headstrong's foot.
Private Headstrong was a hard charging young zealot with designs to be master of everything before he was thirty. He took special care of his appearance because as anyone who has spent five minutes in the Army knows, a spitshine covers a multitude of sins. So instead of his issued " 'Cruit Boots", Headstrong had purchased the more expensive and better looking Corcoran Jump Boots. The Corcorans are the preferred boot of lifers everywhere, I have gone through several pair of them myself over the years. They are a little taller than issue boots. And they have a seam that traverses the front of the boot creating a semi-hard toe that holds a shine real good. It was right along that seam that the panel cut Headstrong's Cocoran in half.
The weak spirited Specialist who didn't have the stones to keep the kid out of the RT suddenly came up with the moxie to throw him into a truck and rush him over to the Nurnberg Army Hospital. When I arrived later that evening to visit my errant troopie, he was bravely showing off his X-rays. A cleaner cut couldn't have been achieved with a guillotine. I stood there thinking about how I would have liked to have been there when it happened...look up "Poetic Justice". But George, his platoon sergeant, (who had beat me to Nurnberg) had been at the loading dock when they uprighted the RT. I shared my thoughts on poetic justice with him and he laughed...he said I had missed the best part.
When the RT operator showed up, naturally PO'ed, he was abusing all the drivers in the world for their stupidity and lack of discipline, etc, etc. While he was ranting, he opened the access panel in the cab to check something and said, "What the hell is this?" as he came out of the cab holding the toe of the boot. Then he fainted dead away and some of the stupid, undisciplined drivers had to catch him as he fell off the RT...probably saved his life...for what it was worth. George picked up the toe of the boot and looked inside to see all five of Headstrong's toes, neatly lined up in their sock.