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...
We stood at attention as the rifle salute was fired. Another old soldier lowered into the ground. this one an old and dear friend, a long time retired but not long enough on earth. A big man in body and spirit, a sergeant major of the old school and deserving of the honors given him today. Watching the burial detail go through their moves, I was silently going through the commands and the timing of the shots. It took me back to Fort Ord in the middle seventies when I was the NCOIC of the...
Sorry JU readers. As many times as I have warned others about believing what you find on the internet, I fell victim by not listening to my own advice. There is now an updated article from the source I used for a previous article about a Florida School honoring COs on Veterans Day...and apparently the school had a good old fashioned Vets Day celebration without any mention of COs. At least that is what the principal says. I guess the correct thing to do would be to pull down my original a...
My normal wake-up at 0400; down the concrete stairs in the dark to the cold shower. Half-way through the ritual I hear a roar. I dash upstairs and find that Pvt K has awakened to discover that someone has urinated into the top of his footlocker, which he has left open overnight. He accuses me of being the culprit since I was the first one up...we "discuss" this for a few minutes and after many assurances that I know where the PP goes, he grumbles his way into the clean-up. We don't ...
I think it was the summer of 1968, we were living in a little apartment over a shoe repair shop in Lampertheim, Germany. We used to listen to an English radio station (Radio Luxemburg) in the evenings because AFN just played an hour of popular music and the brits played it all night long. It was cool to listen to, it sort of faded out and then it would come back in sometimes but it was music young 'uns like us liked. The British news reader (that was what they called him...no putting on...
Several times during my stay at the 301st we were tasked to do what we called, "drive-aways". We would be whisked off in a bus to someplace and pick up some one else's equipment and drive it to some place else. I am cryptic on purpose...these were usually classified and I don't know how long it is supposed to stay that way. Sometimes we had to train on special equipment before we could move it. It was a lot of fun. On this particular drive-away, we picked up the vehicles and stuff at ...
One of the missions of the 301st Trans (Fort Ord CA) was a general support of the depot activities in the western USA. One of the depots we saw a lot of was just outside Stockton, CA, in Lathrop. They transferred material and equipment from one depot to another, or to ports, or to end users. It usually meant a mission for about 15 tractor trailers lasting a week or more. It was TDY for the drivers (that meant extra money...), so these runs were pretty popular. The other mission of the ...
LH challenged me on my article about the guys in the barracks at Ft Huachuca. I claimed that the Article 15 I got because Cicely attacked the company clerk wasn't my fault. She said, "That's what they all say." She wants to hear the whole story. So here it is, you judge: It was very early in the morning and we were all about our normal get up activities. I was making my bunk and the clerk, one bunk over behind my wall locker, was starting his daily rant about what a crappy soldier Ci...
It was one of those deals, Colonel so-and-so is having a birthday...let's all go sing to him...and have a bite of his cake. I knew him well enough; we didn't go bowling together on Thursday nights, but we were on speaking terms. He was an old guy about ready to retire...and there was cake. We all gathered in the office and sang the song and that's when I saw the cake for the first time. I was a little surprised to see Snoopy sitting on his dog house on a grown-up's cake. The lettering s...
I went to Transportation Corps Senior NCO Course (ANOC) at Fort Eustis Virginia in the fall of 1981. I had been in Germany for more than four years and fully intended to plunge into all the neat stuff you can't get in Germany. The night I arrived I made the mistake of turning on the TV in my BOQ room and discovered cable. In Germany there was one channel (US). When I had left the States, there were three channels and no cable...on this system there were at least 60 channels. I stood t...
In all the old war movies the make up of the platoons was always the same. Big City Italian, smallish Jew, a big ole farm boy, a Pole with an unpronouncable name, Hispanic, Amerind, after WWII there would be a black or two, skinny kid with thick glasses, muscly dumb guy, and of course, the tough sarge with scars and memories. Give or take a few types, there was always this mix. And the crazy thing is, I found the Army to be just like that outside of Hollywood, too. I used to love the old...
Some time in '58 or '59 it was decided that the USS Etlah, AN-79, would return to the 32nd Street docks to be unfitted for storage, her pennet retired. Her departure date was to be spring of '60. This ship had been cruising the waters of the West Pacific for many years but had not done a crossing in a LONG time. So the crew was tasked to put the Etai (Japanese for "ouch") in "shipshape". So in between cruises to Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea and one adventure to Okinawa, there was furious act...
We were sitting in the snack bar in the basement of Greely Hall, the admin headquarters at Ft. Huachuca. I was processing in and ran into Mike and Jimmy, a couple of guys I had known in Vietnam. Mike had left about a month before me and Jimmy had been back for a couple of months. We were goofing off...I was supposed to be upstairs in one of the marathon trail of offices I had to go through to be processed and they were just hiding from work. They were filling me in on what Huachuca was li...
Back as far as I remember, there have been judges who thought it was the mission of the military to build men...Maybe because in the sixties the Marine motto was..." The Marine Corps Builds Men"...so the judge would give some ot the miscreants the choice of two years in jail or three in the Army. The Marines normally screened these guys out but the Army took 'em. Over the years I came across several of these fellas...but a few stick out in my memory because they really were gangsters.\ T...