In preparation for writing this article, I google mapped Sierra Vista and it's environs. I was amazed at how poorly I remembered how the road was laid out until I looked at the sattelite image, then I could see that the Charleston Road from Sierra Vista to Tombstone has been redone in the last forty years. Big shock. Looking at the satellite photos, I could see the old road winding like a sidewinder on steroids... Tom was a big guy from LA. Really big. He married a go-go dancer and b...
Just a couple of months after hearing the story about the shootout in Cochise County, I was on my way from Phoenix to Tucson. It was Sunday afternoon, I had spent a couple of days in Phoenix with MamaCharlie and intended to layover in Tucson with a couple of my buddies, then drive down to Ft Huachuca early Monday, in time for work call. I was clicking along about 85 mph, a speed and RPM that seemed to please my little GTO...only about 10 miles over the speed limit. I had just gotten onto t...
Fort Huachuca was a pretty isolated place in the middle sixties. Three drive-in restaurants...one drive-in theater...one dancin' and drinkin' honky tonk...one Sambo's out on the edge of town...and a daytime only radio station. There were two laundromats and there must have been other stores and town stuff, but I never used anything else. The daytime radio station played a mix of pop and country and for news it read the Tucson morning paper and the police blotter for the county...which ...
Have a happy Labor Day weekend, JU...and for all those who labor so hard to give us this great life we have...THANKS.
In 1967 the Army was phasing out the old M37 3/4 ton truck but hadn't gotten a "permanent" replacement, yet. So they bought a bunch of Jeep Gladiators, put really uncomfortable seats and a silly looking cargo box on them and called them an M755...or something like that. As a tactical vehicle, it was not great but then neither was the old M37. I was an instructor at the truck driving school and was tagged as the primary instructor on this unwieldy piece of ...this new vehicle. I was respon...
This is an article written by MamaCharlie: Often lately I hear the statement, "Your child doesn't need you to be his friend, he needs you to be his parent." I assume that I am supposed to agree unquestioningly, thinking, "Of course!" But I don't. This one isn't true. A friend is a good thing. A real friend encourages you to do right, is on your side, cares about you, and would never let you down. We are not talking about the kids on the street, now. We are referring to loyalty, faithfu...
LT Marcus was by far my favorite Platoon Leader. He came to the Support Platoon from a line company where, as a tank platoon leader, he amassed more letters of reprimand than any other lieutenant in the battalion. His appearance was so like Calvin (of Calvin and Hobbs) that I had my very talented #2 son draw up a Calvin looking cartoon with Calvin's pants torn out in the rear and his bitten cheek exposed. He loved it, framed it, hung in on his office door. We took him with us on REFOR...
In the middle sixties, a bus ride from Ft Huachuca to Tucson cost about 8-10 dollars and took almost five hours. From the dorms at the U of A to the main gate of Huachuca is only 71 miles (a trip I am intimately familiar with, having courted MamaCharlie when she lived in Arizona Hall and I lived in the barracks at Huachuca). But the bus doesn't go to the dorms...it doesn't even go to Tucson...when you board the bus at Huachuca you go to Nogales (making numerous stops along the way), then he...
The Army owns a lot of stuff. Every unit has literally millions of dollars worth of equipment, funiture, appliances, bedding, cooking utensils, tools...on and on. Each unit's stuff is accounted for in the unit's Property Book. The Commander signs for everything, the Property Book Officer manages it all. Every piece of equipment is loaned out to the users on a "hand receipt". A platoon sergeant, for example, when he is newly arrived, will hold a platoon inventory where every single item t...
When I first got the the 14th Cav, he was the senior guy in the room I was assigned to. There were four of us in an eight man room. The old PFC, a younger PFC who was recently transferred in from the 11th ACR because they were going back to the States and for some reason he couldn't go. He was a short timer. The fourth man in the room was the only black man in the platoon and I didn't see him very much...he was tasked out to work with some other group. For the first month or so, the old ...
My first encounter with a real First Sergeant came after and exhausting 10 day journey that started at Fort Dix and went through Brooklyn Army Terminal, Bremerhaven Port, Frankfurt Bahnhof , Fulda processing point and ended in the hallway outside the Headquarter Troop Orderly Room, 2/14th Cav in Bad Kissingen, Germany. I had been told to wait in the hallway and someone would come out and retrieve me. I waited for some time, trying to stay awake and trying real hard not to listen to the buil...
The tragic bridge collapse will no doubt generate a jillion discussions on funding, inspections, work slowdowns, etc, etc...and it will turn out ot be George Bush's fault. I don't want to make light of a real bad evening for a lot of folks. Listening to the local talk radio this afternoon, I heard lots of comments about the agony of waiting for news...who is and who isn't...when will we know??? Flashbacks to every major catastrophe in the last generation or so...whenever there is a huge me...
Lieutenant Hartney was a true southern gentleman. He spoke with a soft, long vowel, aristocratic, old south voice. He graduated from VMI and came to us from a basic training company, where as a commander he apparently had a hard time with his NCOs. He was distrustful of anything we told him at first, it took some work to gain his confidence. After extensive searching, however, we found his sense of humor. He became one of my very favorite platoon leaders. I was a squad leader in the t...
EUCOM is a unified command, meaning that it all the major military organizations are represented there, located at Patch Barracks in Stuttgart-Vaihingen. It is a top heavy command...in the area of about 10 acres there are about 15 general officers or civilian equivalents. Majors and Lieutenant Colonels are a dime a dozen. This takes some adjusting to, since most of the field grade officers come there from battalion, squadron, or ship commands and wind up in an office cramped up with four ...
One of the benefits of military life, for my family, was the opportunity to travel and spend some time in Europe. We used to load up the wagon with all the littlies and the dog and go find something neat. A lot of the time we just headed out without a real destination, just looking for something. One Saturday we traveled to Trier, one of the oldest towns in Germany. There are the ruins of a Roman aquaduct, Roman Baths, and roads built by Romans...or actually slaves of the Romans. It is a...