The first time I heard of the Roubidoux, I thought it was a Missouri-ism for something like, "Ruby do...or sometimes she don't".

Many a Saturday morning I would saddle my horse and ride down to the Roubidoux;  it was a peaceful, relaxing ride.  In many places the creek is the western boundary of Leonard Wood and just on the other side is a wilderness area, a beautiful patch of woods and hills that goes on for miles.   I have wonderful memories of that ride and those woods...but whenever I think of the Roubidoux, it isn't peaceful thoughts I remember...it is the photo that hung behind our Battalion Commander's desk, a picture of the colonel shaking hands with some big shot,  the picture I stared at as the colonel did his best to impress me with his vocabulary, his volume, and how red his bald head could become when he was upset.

The Roubidoux Creek winds through central Missouri.  It is a magnet for trout hunters from around the region, but by the time it wanders down through the western reaches of Fort Leondard Wood it isn't really much of a waterway.  Dry season leaves a trickle connecting one pond to another...in places so narrow you can step across it without getting your feet wet.  But the Roubidoux can display an attitude on occasion, and will become very full of itself in a heavy rain, roaring along at a lively clip, connecting all those ponds and flushing out any "stagnance" that may have gathered in them, then taking days to settle back to its meager self, leaving marshy ponds scattered along its winding bed.  The varied personalities of the Roubidoux have caused more than one person some surprising difficulties. 

There are a number of different gravel roads laced through the woods on the western and southern areas of Leonard Wood.  Many of them are used by the Army's truck driving school.  Some of those routes utilize some of the wider sand and rock banks of the Roubidoux as break areas, a place where the students have room to park the trucks and stretch their legs.  A whole convoy, and sometimes two or three convoys, can fit in some of those break areas.   But when the creek is running high, it boils over those banks and covers them with three-to-six feet of water in a hurry.  If you are in charge of one of those convoys, you gotta pay attention to the weather and the water.  The drivers' school's staunchest rule was, "Do Not Drive In the Roubidoux...or any of its cousins in the area".

One afternoon one of the instructors in my team decided to scoot across one of those side ponds, shortcutting from the end of the convoy to the front of it.  Halfway across the pond he realized that this was one of those days when the water was closer to the six-foot mark than the three-foot mark.  He was driving what the Army called a CUCV, a Chevy Blazer with a diesel engine, painted green (a shade called "O D Green"...supposed to mean "Olive Drab Green but most of the force of young drivers believe it to mean "Over Dirt Green").  Normally those Blazers would handle a little pond crossing without much problem...if you can keep moving and keep the air intake above water.  But this particular pond bottom was that river rock and sand that gave little or no traction;  and try as he might, the instructor couldn't keep enough forward momentum to make it across. 

I stood by the lead vehicle of the convoy and watched as the Blazer slowly lost headway.  The wheels were still churning, throwing water, rocks, and sand in rooster-tails front and rear, but it finally came to a stop.  But then, instead of using his head, the instructor used his right foot.  Trying to power out was a big mistake;  we yelled and waved our arms and tried to make the instructyor get off the accelerator - to no avail.  The little Blazer slowly settled lower and lower in the pond.  Somewhere in my blog history I wrote about the after-affects of this little disaster so I won't belabor it here, but rescuing the Blazer took the rest of the afternoon.  By the time we got it onto dry land, the Blazer had four almost-flat tires (all that churning in the pond had broken the bead on all the tires and there were river rocks and sand inside all four of them), a seriously bent bumper, and a broken windshield.

Another day I got a call on the radio to meet another of my instructors at the Roubidoux near a favorite fishing spot on one of our routes.  When I got there, the instructor was standing in ankle-deep water waving to me.  I thought that was strange but Missouri is full of strange things so I drove up to the edge of the water, got out about ten yards from where he was standing, and then asked him where his Blazer was.  "I 'm standing on it..." was his forlorn reply.  Another afternoon spent rescuing a drowning Blazer...another evening in the Colonel's office getting my rectum re-sized.

In the Army drivers' manual, in the section on Off-Road Driving, it tells you to get out and walk across any unfamiliar body of water you intend on fording.  Neither of those instructors followed that advice and wound up in the drink.  As it happens, their boss did the exact same thing.

Three or four of us (senior instructors and team leaders) were exploring a patch of forest in M-151s ( what the world calls "Jeeps").  In decent weather I prefer the M-151 to the Blazer;  they are more fun and they will go about anywhere.  We were looking for a new trail for training jeep drivers.  We pulled up at one of those side ponds.  It completely blocked the trail but was only a few yards across.  I looked at the water, it was as clear as  bathtub water; I could see every rock and pebble and every grain of sand on the bottom.  We discussed it and I said I would go first, slowly, and we would just see how deep it could be.  It could be four feet deep...and it was, immediately.  My jeep dropped its nose into the pond and kept dropping - right up to my feet.  The water was almost to the windshield;  the back of the jeep was pointed to the sky.  I couldn't back out so one of the other instructors took off for the motor pool to get a chain to pull me out.

It took about an hour for him to get back.  We hooked up the chain and he pulled me right back out, slick as can be.  I  breathed a sigh of relief, thinking I had really dodged a bullet that time.  When the other guy was putting the chain back in his jeep he said, "Oh, by the way...the colonel was in the shop when I picked up the chain...he said you should just drop by and see him when we get you OUT OF THE *(&$$#@ WATER!!" 

You can count on it.