I don't remember the name of the exercise, they all run together after a while. But it was the summer of 1977 and it took place in the Mojave Desert. I told you about the Colorado National Guard's Bikini Water Point, this is the same exercise as that. It was Navy and Marines against Army and Air Force. We were out there in the middle of nowhere on the 29 Palms Marine base, thirty miles in any direction to the nearest road. We had studied for weeks to memorize the Navy planes and the Marine v...

One of my best friends in high school was Charlie. The other one was Mike. Charlie had an older brother named Perry. Perry was a carpenter. As were all the men in Charlie's family and soon after high school, maybe Charlie, too. Perry bought a boat. It was an antique...er...classic ski boat. Wood and bright red paint and an old Ford flathead engine for motivation. It moved out good and sounded pretty tough, too. Unlike his '62 SS Impala, Perry didn't mind who drove the boat. Mainly because he...

We came to Texas from Germany in 1970. Fort Hood had recently been described in a national column as the place where you would insert the hose, should the world need an enima. Our initial impressions seemed to agree with that. The story of our arrival and the trials that went with it are subject for another time...today we talk about something else. In the late sixties and early seventies, Ft Hood and many other places were dumping grounds for soldiers who were returning from Vietnam....

Every now and then you come across an old movie and you just have to stick with it...for one reason or another. The other night it was "The Laughing Policeman" from 1973. It is a gritty police story filmed in San Francisco. I get a kick out of movies filmed in places I am familiar with, trying to place where they are and all. Laughing at the technology of the seventies (or the lack thereof) and how "things have changed". But beyond that, the story of "The Laughing Policeman" has a special value...

Happy Mothers' Day  to all you Mothers out there.

In most Army units, you have two or three times a day when the whole company lines up by sub-units and accountablity is made for each soldier and information is passed out, we call these occasions "Formations". For most soldiers, the first formation is Reville, you stand and salute the flag going up, then are released for breakfast, or go do you morning exercises (PT) or is some cases, go to work. The next formation is usually called "Work Call". Squads and platoons line up and are given pertin...

TW's recent post about her little green snake brought a lot of snakey memories back to me. I have written at least one article and some different comments about snakes in the last few months. I just don't like snakes, I don't care what they eat, how much you love them for a pet; if they come around here they will become a belt or pair of boots. Here's one example of why: Missouri summers get dark before they get cool. Most of the tack rooms at the saddle club didn't have electricity and abso...

Just another quick Poe story before I go up to watch the women's murder club. As the commander of AFLC, Gen Poe was in charge of fielding new equipment...one of his many duties. He came to Germany for the ceremony switching the first squadrons of F-4s out for the new F-15. He had been a zoomie in his youth but because of rules and situations, he hadn't been able to get checked out in the new fighter, yet. He figured the new squadron would be a good place to get his first ride. Whenever an Ai...

During my stay at EUCOM, I had the opportunity to have some very interesting people in the back seat of my sedan. One of my favorites was General Poe. He had been the commander of USAFE in Ramstein and went back to the States to be the Commander of the Air Force Logistics Command. He came to EUCOM often. He was a friendly, talkative man who treated enlisted with respect. I liked him. And I liked the stories he shared with me on several occasions. He was the CINC USAFE (Commander in Chief U S...

Big Fat Daddy, MamaCharlie, and the Goat In June the semester ended and MamaCharlie was moving out of the dorm and up to Phoenix. We had only been going together for a few months and I wasn't sure our relationship would survive the extra 130 miles. The first Saturday she was gone I went up to Tucson as usual and drove around feeling restless and hot. It was 105 degrees and felt like about a minus ten percent humidity. My little GTO was overheating and there wasn't much fun in the pa...

A few years ago we hired a Ukranian, I mean a fresh-off-the-boat Ukranian. His name was not pronouncable by western tongues so we called him "Slavic". He liked that as a nickname. He was about 5'8" and slight in build, dark hair and eyes, pleasant enough fellow; a very good truck driver, too. When I first met him I asked where he had learned to drive a truck. He had learned in the Soviet Army. I studied him quietly for several minutes, causing him to become very uncomfortable. I was so disappoi...

So the next phase was a "Train-the-Trainer" FTX, where all the senior NCOs in the Brigade went to the woods to learn some skills and be ready to take them back to their soldiers and train them on those skills. There was a gap in the senior NCO corps of some ten years or more when the forces of society caused the Army to stop training certain skills in basic training because...well...too icky. Because of my break in service (I was out from '71 to '74) and the catch up period after it, I was ab...

As we get older, we learn more about ourselves. We have experiences that test us, try our patience, stress us, bring us joy, put a tear in our eyes. Some of the things we learn can come as a real surprise to us, a talent, an ability, an attitude, a fear. Imagine my surprise when, at the age of 38 (and after 21 years of climbing around on trucks, throwing chains and binders, spreading out tarps, tying ropes to loads; sometimes quit high off the ground), I discovered I was terrified of heights. T...