A First Sergeant isn't the oldest or the first one up in the morning;  the "First Sergeant"  is the senior enlisted man in any Army company.  The First Sergeant (abbreviated 1SG) has many varied duties and responsibilities.  I won't list them all;  it would take a lot of space, but I always felt that one of the most important responsibilities a 1SG has is the management of the unit's training program.   Everything a soldier does is planned...

  I had it in mind to write about my Uncle today.  Omar.  He was a local hero; he grew up in the East County area of San Diego and  had a reputation as a tough guy and a ladies' man.  He raced stock cars on a dirt track and drag raced on the back county roads.  He was over six feet tall, dark curly hair, deep set eyes, and hands the size of a five-pound ham.   But while I was thinking about Omar and the things I remember about him that are signific...

  I tried to break my wrist the other day.  I was changing the brake pads on Charlie's Grand Prix and was using a 24-oz.  mini-sledge to tap the lug wrench in order to break the lug nuts free.  That in itself is not an unsafe practice, but the position I was in and the angle I had to use had me holding the lugwrench in place with my left hand and swinging the hammer across my arm to hit the wrench to the left of my left hand.  That was the unsafe procedure.  ...

  In the late fifties I woke up to the world of "cool".  Guys around me were starting to look cool, dress cool, talk cool,  and act cool.  I tried hard to be cool like them.  I had the engineer boots, the black leather jacket with zippers and studs, form-fitting white tee-shirt, levis down on my hips...and the hair.  I went for the Elvis/Fabian/every-other-teen-idol look.  Tried Brylcream, Vitalis, Wildroot Cream oil, Vasoline,  and Valvoleen but I neve...

  I met Admiral Friedrich Ruge when I was assigned to pick him up at his home in Tubingen and take him to a formal dinner being held at the Deputy CinC's house in Stuttgart.  It was late 1977;   I remember it was a very chilly night.  I was selected, I think, because I could speak a little German and had proven that I was able to get around without too much supervision.  I had never heard of the Admiral Ruge.  I was told that he was a retired German Admi...

  I have to thank Sherabella for prodding my memory,  when she wrote about attending a seminar where the speaker illustrated that we all have a little more effort to expend, even when we think we don't.  It immediately got me to thinking about Army Basic Training, Fort Ord, California, Summer of 1964,  learning lessons every day about pushing just a little bit harder.  Our seminars were not conducted in air-conditioned auditoriums...we learned our lessons under th...

  These days we throw the word "Hero" around too liberally.  I agree that our men and women in uniform are serving our nation with honor and courage and we should support them and recognize what we owe them.  It is a very big deal.  Our police and firemen and EMTs and other rescue- and "first responders" serve with courage and often go "above and beyond".  But does the term "Hero" apply to every single one of them that shows up for work every day?  In my day, bei...

  The Armed Forces Network - Europe provides radio programming for servicemen and their families in Europe.  It has evolved over the years.  The programming has changed a lot.  During the sixties, AFN only played popular music a couple of hours a day...country music a couple of hours a day...dinner music at dinner time...radio dramas in the evening...classical music in the afternoon (did you know that Carl Haas was very enamoured of Berlios?)...various and sundry other pro...

My dad, the Chief, was a hard-hat diver for most of his Navy career.  He was rated as a shipfitter (which became a metalsmith which became a hull technician).  He was not a formally educated man but he was very intelligent about things to do with metallurgy, gases, atmospheres, depth and pressures and all kinds of things.  I know because every couple of years he had to take a test for promotion and I used to quiz him from his manuals;  they had sample tests at the back o...

  Sitting in the airport waiting for our new Marine to arrive, MC and I started noodling about how many airports we have flown in and out of.  It has been a few.    When I was a very young fellow, most of my travel was on trains.  I rode the Super Chief halfway across the country, and several others, too.  I wrote a couple articles about that awhile back.   My first memory of flying was out of Norfolk;  our plane's engine caught fire on ...

  I eat my peas with honey   I've done it all my life   They do taste kind of funny   But it keeps them on my knife !   We all have food idiosyncrasies, I think.  I knew a man who loved to eat chocolate cake with roast beef gravy on it.  Sounds yucky to me.  Like the Smothers Brothers singing about "pancakes boiled in cabbage juice...of course it's not so popular now..."   One of my particular peculiarities is ...

  We are proud grandparents around here today.  Most of our grandkiddies are starting school this week, or did last week, and most of them are in advanced classes.  We love them all and marvel at their poise and intelligence.  But today one of the pack stands out for special attention.   I have posted a couple of articles about Emily in the past;  she is the trumpeter who joined up with Bugles Across America to play Taps at military funerals and ceremonies....

  This should be a short one;  I can't believe I haven't written this up before...I've told this story a thousand times.  But the geek-speak joke on Stevesplace reminded me of it:   In June of '67 the semester ended at the U of A in Tucson and MC moved out of Arizona Hall and went to Phoenix to join her family who were in the process of moving there from Oklahoma City.  She and her dad were staying with his sister, MC's Aunt Rita.  One S...

  The 5-ton Truck was just over the top of the ridge.  Large logs had been placed in front of its drive tires, and the winch cable had been played out and attached to the frame of the 2 1/2-ton truck at the bottom of the hill, about fifty feet away.  All of the rigging had been inspected and the shackles and pins all double-checked.  Unfortunately, not all unnecessary personnel had been moved out of harms way.  The cable lay slack on the ground.  The sergeant in ...

  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 th...