A small word of warning. I don't do blue...but this one may not be for everyone...contains scatological humor. In order to ramp up for any major exercise, little three day exercises are planned to fine tune some aspects of field operations. I have been against three day field stints for a long time. The problem is that a GI can endure anything (almost) for three days. They can avoid hygiene, live in the same clothes, and hold their potty needs. In order to learn to live in the field, ...

We were pulled out of Log Base Nellingen and regrouped in Echo. We only had one vehicle loss, a 5000 gallon JP-8 tanker that was still burning two weeks after we dropped it in flames. We accounted for all of our equipment and did a couple dozen shake down inspections to make sure no one was trying to bring an AK-47 back to Germany. There was a mad rush to get us down to the Desert Inn, a holding camp set up with tents, pizza hut, ice cream shop and other comforts so we could move our vehic...

I went to Twentynine Palms in the summer of 1977 with the 7th Infantry Division. We were part of a huge exercise that was supposed to teach us a lot about living and fighting in the desert. The Marines were our aggressors (that means that they were our simulated enemy). The Marine/Navy aviation were bad guys, Air Force was on our side. There wound up being more than 25000 troops involved in this little desert war. Before I tell you how the Colorado National Guard played a huge role in ke...

I was musing over things that were common experiences for GIs in the sixties. Life was a lot different then, obviously, but there are a few oldies but goodies out there so I decided to play the old, "Do you remember..." game tonight. Wherever you go in the Army, you hear the troops talking about the places they've been and the things they had to do. It serves as a kind of bonding to have common experiences...it also provides your creds...you have been there and done that...you are one of u...

I had my first sit down with the two most important men in my platoon as soon as I could. I knew Pwoody from an earlier turn at Fort Ord; he had been a hell-raising drunken corporal at the time. When we locked eyes I saw that he recognized me. We had not been friends. Ricky was a small Philipino who looked as straight as they come. These were my squad leaders, the intermediate leaders who would be the supervisers in my platoon. In a nutshell, they could make or break me. They both had...

Over the years I have met all kinds of people in the Army...I mean people from all over the world. Sometimes the people you meet that are from other countries don't speak English all that well. It can lead to some funny situations. I have already mentioned my first First Sergeant whose accent was so thick that when he got mad and started chewing everyone looked at each other and shrugged, no one knew what it was about. I was in a unit once when the operations sergeant was Philippino and ...

I mentioned recently that I had to attend a funeral for an old friend. He was a retired Sergeant Major, an organized and responsible man, who knew he had just a few days left. He called in his kids and gave them instructions on how to take care of their mother after he was gone. He had arranged things to a "T" and gave them all the information they needed to take care of his affairs. He told his wife the night he died that she would not have to worry about anything, the house and the car...

Happy Thanksgiving, Joe...hope you have a lot to be thankful for.

Litke came back from Germany with a Super Beetle, a 1600cc with loud pipes and oversized tires. We were on the same team of instructors at the Fort Ord Drivers School. Our office was connected to one of the big classrooms in a drafty old pre-WWII shop building...the last in a row across the street from the monster motor pool where our trucks were parked. Just across the apron on the north side of our shop was the post incenerator where the local police and sheriffs offices burned up all t...

This is a short one but has always been one of my favorites because Willie is involved and his quick wit was always a joy to me. I am not sure how it will come across in print, well, you be the judge. When we were doing student convoys in the back country of Fort Ord, we were fed lunch by the cook school's field mess operation (where their students learned to use their field equipment). There was limited parking at the field mess so we parked the convoys at a nearby break area and loaded...

Fort Ord was one of the most beautiful places I was ever stationed. Right on the northern lip of Monterrey Bay, it has sand dunes, sea scapes, coastal hills and behind them there is a series of valleys and ridges that are literally breathtaking. I was stationed there four times (basic training counting as one). I attended the truck driver school there in 1964 and returned as an instructor in 1975. There were 5 Driver Training Ranges the school used; DTR 1 was in the sand dunes along Im...

As a coming-home-in-one-piece present to myself, I bought a 1965 GTO when I got back from Vietnam. How I started off shopping for a '66 Chevelle and wound up with a '65 Goat is another story I have already told (http://bigfatdaddy.joeuser.com/article/153991/Little_GTO ) and ( htp://bigfatdaddy.joeuser.com/article/153517/A_Gift_To_MeFrom_Me). But the actual purchase of the Goat is a story that spotlights a few things about The Chief that were amusing to me. After the test drive and the negot...

I used to drink a lot. Sometimes I would drink until I puked. Sometimes I drank so much that I would wake up sometime, somewhere, with no memory of how I got there or what had happened the night before. I wasn't alone in this. In my platoon at Bad Kissingen, almost everyone in the platoon drank to excess and lots of them were like me, puking, lost, underaged, irresponsible drunks. The sergeants I worked for were responsible, functioning, mature drunks who got a kick out of the antics of the no...

With a nod to Ok for jogging the memory. He posted a re-write of an article he had posted on another site awhile back. When I read it the first time it reminded me of an incident from my own travels that I had intended to write about then promptly allowed to slip into the black hole between my ears. Similar is some ways, but different. My rainy flat tire story took place in Dallas. I was a platoon sergeant in a truck company stationed in California. We were on one of the screwiest convoy mi...

Today marks the 19th anniversary of the reunification of East and West Germany, which marked the end of the partition that was established by the Big Three near the end of World War II.   I was in Stuttgart the night the Wall came down in Berlin.  I was still there when the Germans voted to become one nation again.  It was awe-inspiring to witness such historical goings-on.  I am happy for them, wish them well.  I have a huge soft spot in my heart for Germany and i...