I seem to be stuck on this theme and I can't giddyup. So I will get a couple more of them down and hope I can let it rest a while. Warning: This one is not for the squeamish! I was very new to the 513th Trans in Coleman Barracks, just outside Mannheim in the town of Sandhofen. My platoon sergeant, Dave, came and got me out of the motor pool and told me to get ready to be gone a day or two. He said the jeep driver would pick me up at the barracks in a few minutes. One of our platoon...

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 updat...

Coming out of Kaiserslautern Army Depot loaded, most of the time you had to go east toward Mannheim to get to anywhere else. Because almost every place cargo would go out of KAD was east. So you got on the autobahn headed for Mannheim and wound up and down and curved around through forests and mountain country. At one point on the route you would come up on a piece of high ground with no trees in the immediate area and you could see more than a dozen little German villages scattered all around...

I haven't been there for a while, but the way it used to be set up, you came out of the Mojave over Tehachapee Pass, rode up to Bakersfield on Hwy 58, went under Hwy 99 and across some farm country to hit the interstate, I-5. The underpass that went under 99 was a low one with lots of "low bridge ahead" warning signs, urging truckers with high loads to use an alternative route. But these guys were Army truckers, they didn't have to stop at California scales, didn't have to worry about all th...

The light turned green, there wasn't any oncoming traffic so Fred started out to make his left turn. Just as he got into the intersection, he caught a movement in the corner of his eye...a big SUV was coming fast on the cross street to his left. He saw the SUV driver's astonished face.  Who had apparently forgotten that "Red means stop" or had stepped out of his mind for a second...in any case, he was doing the 45 mph speed limit and was micro-seconds from impact. Fred later told me that ...

I know it is after midnight "JU" time, but here in the Swirl it is still Saturday...Flag Day.  I can't believe I let it go so long with out a mention.  So Happy Flag Day, all, and Happy Birthday, U S Army.  Hoooyah.

Bo  Diddly passed away this last week and since McKay got a nice notice from Terpfan, I felt that Bo deserved a mention as well.  We heard his music, or cheap imitations of it, from the earliest days of rock and roll.  We sang his song while we double-timed up and down the sand dunes of Fort Ord. We used his name in lots of situations.  His hat, his rings, his distinctive rythmn were all part of the legend. In the 80s he even did a commercial with Bo Jackson...the two s...

The Chief had a cigar box full of photographs taken on his destroyer, the Lansdowne, during WWII. The Executive Officer would grab his camera every time they went to General Quarters and snap some amazing shots. I remember going through them like they were a treasure. There were a lot of shots of the crazy ceremonies involved with crossing the equator...they had some wild traditions, enough to rate a separate post later. My favorites were the action shots. Sometimes the Chief would tell me t...

There are darn few of them left, WWII veterans are leaving us at the rate of about a thousand a day.  How many Normandy survivors are still around?  Can't say, but for those who were there and are still here...my deepest, sincerest, heartfelt thanks for what you did.  There is no way to calculate the debt this country owes you, but I, for one, will always remember and be grateful.

For all those who were around to remember the most overplayed song since Gale Garnett's "We'll Sing In The Sunshine" in 1964.  Where once we wondered "What WERE they throwing off the bridge?" or "What happened to the Frog?", now we just pray it will be over soon...boom chinga chinga...baboom chinga chinga.  Here's to you!

Beginning in the fall of 1949, the United States began to evacuate American civilians and military dependents from China. The Communists were pushing the Nationalists out slowly but surely and between them was not a good place to be. It was a tense time, the Chinese (in spite of the fact that they had already begun moving their government and families to Taiwan) looked upon the US evacuations as a bad omen of things to come. They were right, of course. It was in this climate that troop ship...

I have told some tales about our German Shepherd "Wunderhund", Golf. I was thrilled this week when I found his father, Quido von Haus Schutting, on the internet. Only two of his male offspring made the championship line, but we already knew Golf wasn't a show dog. He was too doofy. We met Quido once, a long time ago. He was about nine years old when we saw him and he was frisky and active as a pup...and Golf looked just like him. So in honor of wonder dogs everywhere, here's another Golf gem...

Prior to his leaving office, Jimmy Carter's would have been remembered for killing a rabbit with an oar that swam too close to his boat on a fishing trip, admitting that he had lusted in his heart over a pretty girl or two, and a failed attempt to rescue the hostages being held in Tehran...oh yeah...the hostages...and gas lines and double digit inflation...and giving back the Panama Canal...oh, and by expediting the abdication of the Shah of Iran, he helped establish the first radical...

It was a dark and stormy night. I always wanted to start a story like that. But if I start there, it will be in the middle. So I better backtrack to the beginning. Almost a week before the dark and stormy night. It was my first road mission where I was in charge. I was half scared and half elated. I got my op order from the Truckmaster and my Platoon Sergeant ...they told me who was going with me and all the details of the trip. It was going to be six from my platoon and six from another. Th...

Just a quick "Happy Memorial Day" to all...lefties and righties and in-betweenies, and undecidedies and uninterestedies.  You have all posted some form of political message in the past few months.  Whether you make a comment on someone elses thread or write your own article...whether you support or don't support some candidate or other...show your disdain for or praise the current crop of administrators in our nation's capitol...or just vented some frustration over the way things are ...