We sent privates out for 100 yards of flightline, gallon of rotor wash, etc.

Let us not forget te boxes of "grid squares and ground guides." That was my favorite.

Two SPC go out driving a 2 1/2t (M-35A2) pulling a MUST box (expanding light weight shelter that was part of the inflatable ‘bubble’ hospitals as seen in Viet Nam) to practice towing loads. The public is safe, we send out to do the loop around the ranges. They are long over due and we are getting worried. These two guys just happen to be the two biggest bodybuilders in the unit. We get a vehicle and go looking for them. We find them waaaay on the back side of post with flat tire. They have been trying to get the lug nuts off for hours and they aren’t budging. Now picture this, two big strapping boys, stripped down to their t-shirts, very VERY un-happy and there is the lug wrench on the lug nut, the breaker bar is bent almost to a 90 degree angle. And we just about died laughing. Their flat was the front drivers side wheel, left hand thread on the lug bolts and nuts on the driver’s side. They had forgotten the left hand threads and had been pushing, pulling and jumping up and down on the bar trying to brake the bolts loose, all the time they were tightening them tighter and tighter. The breaker bar for a deuce and a half is a steel bar at least ¾ - 1 inch thick.

Made them do a remedial training class on tire changing at the next motor stables for the whole platoon. Really put strain on their sense of humor. Peer group ribbing, the best reinforcement to remember things.


Dave

Not just in the Army - they send Airmen Basics out for cans of black & yellow striped paint...

Gunnie

A bucket of muzzle blast, a can of end-connector grease...Supply was onto the scam, and a sufficiently gullible private could spend all day running around.

Funniest moment: At Engineer Officer Basic my class had about 60% West Point grads. Nice folks, but socially arrested developement from four years in the Hudson School for Wayward Girls and Boys. Their soap opera shenanigans were a source of great amusement for the OCS and ROTC grads, many of whom were prior enlisted with 5+ years before becoming officers.

Our 10-day final exercise was at lovely Ft. A.P. Hill in December. My squad was shorthanded, and we were sent out to build an MGB bridge (usually requires 3-squads, according to the book). For those who aren't familiar, the MGB is a modular bridge that is composed of aluminum box sections up to about the size of a steamer trunk. Significant to the story, each section is marked "Two-man lift" or "4-man lift" (depending on the weight) on the side, and they are picked up with bars. They stack neatly into loads for a standard cargo truck, and pinned together in the right order they turn in to a rather nifty and useful bridge.

So my shorthanded squad set to work in the dawn's early light. Around 1:00 in the afternoon, arrives another half of a different squad to assist us. We had been working like demons all day, and were all in t-shirts, despite the cool weather. None of us had had time to eat, and we were kind of "in the zone" by that time. One of the female West Pointers was sent over to work with me. By this time all of the bridge sections we were moving were 4-man lifts, which we had stopped paying attention to hours before because we were so shorthanded. The next piece was one of these and I took her to get one. As I bent over to pick it up, she looked aghast at me and said, "but that is a 4-man lift..."

Without a thought, I looked up and replied, "Well, you're a husky girl. Grab ahold!"

Struck speechless, she helped me carry the piece. Then, she walked away, and didn't speak to me again for the rest of the time we were there. I guess "husky" wasn't the way she thought of herself...?

I love making a good impression on people!

Escorting an M-88A1 through the desert of Kuwait in late 1992, my driver and I noticed several white polls sticking into the sand. We were only doing about 30 mph since the 88 had to keep up. As we drove by the polls we looked at them trying to figure out what they were. About this time, we heard a loud thud. When we looked back, the M-88 had a large cloud of dust surrounding its right front track.

Apparently, the M-88 had hit a part of a cluster submunition and the white polls were the outer casings. The strip of sand was littered with them and my driver and I had passed through untouched. The 88 had only some minor damage done to a few track blocks and I radioed them to continue to my position and to not get off the track. The 88 crew told me they had been following my tracks (I was in a HMMWV). Apparently we had missed the mine by about 3 feet.

The pucker factor sucked the HMMWV seat cushion about 3/4s of the way up my colon. Hate to think what would have happened if our front tire had hit the mine at 30 mph. Charmed life.

Rob,

Almost makes you want for a M-1114 HMMWV in place of the standard M-998. I have a good picture of a HMMWV that hit a mine in Iraq. Parts and pieces all over the place.

Next, what is a M-1114? Here is a blurb from a DOD press release:

Troops deploying into high mine-threat areas also used the
M-1114, a modified High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled
Vehicle, or "Humvee." Similar in appearance to a standard
Humvee, the M-1114 has a heavy-duty chassis and extra armor
to withstand a mine blast.

Understand the pucker. Followed the 25th ID into Iraq. And on the way back to Saudi you could see the cluster bomb casings in the fields just off the hardball.

Dave

I remember once at Tank Commander's school (RCTCC-Boise ID...coldest I've been in the lower 48), we had a TC and loader from Alabama for a gun run, with a gunner from Mass. I (NJ) was the driver. There was a slight communication problem...
TC...Gunnah, say-boh, tank!!
Gnr...Aye-dentified!
Ldr...Say-boh loadid!
Gnr...Lay-zing! (M60A3)
TC...FAR!!!
Gnr to Ldr...Whad he say?!?
Ldr to Gnr...Bah gawd, he sayd FAR!!!
We got an alibi on that one...TC explained it to the evaluator as "Damn Yankee problem!"
Happy ending...they worked it out and we qualified the whole crew.

Sneaking over to Charlie company and tear gasing their mess tent while out on a traning mission,talk about some mad suckers. They had to get new food sent in all of there stuff that was out was runied.. should have seen those boys stumble out of their coughing and spiting and just plain slobering. Well they should of had better Guards.You know some of the best friends were in the Service. Scariest time I was in Korea in a hooch sleeping like a baby when at about 0:500 on a saturday bang the whole hooch shook I fell out of bed and was running to get back to compound I thought we were under attack.,I get outside and look across road and what do I see but two ROK M-110s laying some down range darn those 8" babies make some noise when they are across the road.

In basic, during a bunker firing exercise, I was firing through the window, and since I'm right handed, I was on the left side. I was also at the perfect position so that my spent brass ricocheted off the opposite side and came back at me. Needless to say, I ended up with very hot brass going down my BDU shirt and had 2 that stuck to my face. The drill sergeant was wondering why I was jumping around and clawing at my face. It's funny now, 15 years later.

OK, I can't resist another story...

My Guard tank battalion was shooting at the Ft. Hunter-Ligget MPRC, which is reached from Camp Roberts (California) via a ~25 mile single lane tank trail through the mountains. In the summer it is a long, dusty road march. nearly every meal that week, the mess section sent us a half a case of fruit, either apples or oranges. The apples went bad and we tossed them, but kept the oranges for later. By the end of a week we had two or three cases of very ripe oranges. On the way back to Roberts, we were passed by another company, who were supposed to pull over behind us for a rest halt, making us eat their dust. My company commander got pissed and threw an orange at them, hitting their CO's tank square on the turret (nice throw actually!). Of course we passed them a little while later when they stopped, and got a scattering of (poorly thrown) oranges back from them. My CO started scheming, and immediately distributed oranges to every tank at the next stop. As they passed us again, we clobbered them with about 50 oranges, most of them good direct hits. They tried again later, with poor results again. Now,a very ripe orange makes a lovely star-shaped splat. The sugar in the juice attracts the dust. By the time we got back to Camp Roberts most of their tanks sported several nearly white star marks, visible from a pretty long distance. They wouldn't answer questions about waht happened for some reason.

On the same road march, I got a call from one of our Platoon Leaders running ahead of me (I was the Company XO). (He had tried to reach the Boss, but couldn't in the mountain terrain.) He asked me to see if everything was OK with the two M577s we were about to pass. the two 577s were parked on the outside of a curve, beside a steep drop off into the valley, apparently to answer natures call. As we passed, I called and told him that they looked OK, and why did he want to know. He explained that his driver had come into the curve in HIGH range, and had shifted into LOW as he passed the 577s. "I think we "bunny-hopped" the S2!", was how he described it. This was true. The sprocket of the tank had etched a swirly mark all the way down the side of the 577 (it never washed off), and had obviously scared the crap out of the folks inside, thinking they were being knocked over the edge. We found out later that the cause of the stop had heard the bang and tripped over his own feet, rolling 20 feet down the slope with his, um..manhood...hanging from his pants. They never found out who did it, and we didn't volunteer.

(For those who don't get the HIGH/LOW thing, the M60-series tanks turned sharper in LOW range than in HIGH. If you shifted from HIGH to LOW with the tiller bar turned, the rear of the tank would jerk or "hop" to the side as the tranny jumped to the more agressive steering.)

I'm still trying to forget Infantry basic at Ft. Benning (my senior D.I. was from the same town, hated me right away). Now the funniest and worst moment in the field was Thailand (Cobra Gold 98') We had just occupied our patrol base for the night in some this *ss jungle. About 2 minutes later my buddy four feet away starts screaming at the top of his lungs, like in a horror movie. When all the white lights turned on we see him standing there with his hand clutched by the other, babling... I I I Iju ju just got bit by a snake!!!!!!! He had just gotten bit by a Cobra and a medivac had him out and saved within ten mikes. So that was the bad part... The funny part is all the newbie privates in the Company are so terrified they will be bit that they start panicing and crying...like 20-30 guys.. and they all are sitiing indian style on their rucksacks the rest of the night, wide-eyed, refusing to go to sleep. The rest of us just laughed and laughed... In the jungle...the middle of nowhere...10,000 miles from home. First, and last, field problem I ever got to sleep 8 straight hours on cuz we had 30 cherries pulling guard ALL night...

I still remember walking into the 5-77 AR motor pool in Mannheim, Germany in December 1990. Seeing all those M60A3TTSs with the packs on the ground in the boneyard, I asked the company XO if we had some Guard or Reserve units' equipment in the motor pool. Nope, those are ours. Man, I thought the Army trained me to be an M1 tanker. I did learn to respect the A3 in the year I rode her. A good, dependable tank that would have held its own in Desert Storm.

Hmmm… Hunter-Ligget stories!! I can tell you about a combined air and ground live fire assault from the early 80’s. When the training area is not in use, local farmers graze cattle there. The cattle are moved off before exercises. Needless to say, the cows were still there. They ground forces crested the ridge to assault down into the valley. They some to a screeching halt dumbfounded. The CO sez, what the hell it’s not my problem if they can’t get their damn cows out of here and green lighted the attack. Even the air assets (AH-1’s) opened up.

You have to understand the mind set for mass destruction and the infantry. The CO took tons of heat for it, mostly for the poor decision of targets. Impressive of what damage LAW’s and M-60’s can do. Looking back it’s disturbing but, being young and dumb it was ‘fun’ at the time. For a long time there was a joke about how many cows a LAW would go through.

Now I have to come up with a lighter story to balance out.

Dave

We'd do the same thing with boar hogs in Grafenwohr during night fire. Those little babies showed up real well in the thermals.

Man, I got a late start on this one, so I'll add a couple.

- For Major GeneralFailure - In 1978 my scout platoon (we were at Reforge from US) to spend three days with a Belgian recon battalion at a formerr SS kaserne just inside West Germany. I an a couple other platoon leaders lived in the officer billets, where they had a bar with barkeeps, ate from regimental china with table clothes, etc. and where there was also two real bathtubs (quite an experience after four weeks washing from my helmet). The sergeants and junior enlisted ate at the Belgian mess hall. The NCOs sat down and were waited on by enlisted waiters, had table clothes, and real plates, etc. My NCOs just loved it. The E-4 and below just hated, as their Belgian counterparts were conscripts and they had to go thru the chow line with their mess kits!!! They were glad to get back to the battalion.
- In the dark days of VOLAR (post Vietnam 70s) the National Guard would put guardsman who failed to attend drills on active duty. I was a tank company XO then and the rhird platoon received one of these duds from the Michigan Guard. The PLT SGT got tired of him, so when our company got our 17th tank, a brand new M60A1 (RISE), he sent the kid out to find any air bubbles in the armor. Someone told me to go look at B35 and I found him with a ballpen hammer and a piece of chaulk. He was pinging the armor for hollow sounds and circling the spots (he never found any). I went back to my office, The Battalion XO was patrolling the motorpool and found him. He didn't say anything to him, but came to my office an told me he thought the kid had "finished".
- For SABOT- You may remember at Graf that the ranges shutdown from 6-8 in the evening for range maintenance. The hard targets required a heat source to be visible in the tank thermal sights. During one evening brake, my master gunner and I went down to light the fire drums in the 2800 meter hard target (used for service HEAT and HEP). As we drove down the service trail we had to get out of the jeep because the trail was a pin cushion full of 2.75" FFARs from AH-1s!!! We walked around the rocket bodies and were filling the fire drums with fresh fuel when the evening gun was fired (retiring the colors on main post). We were in the artillery impact area, and we nearly filled our pants, just waiting for that whistling sound of incoming. We checked our watches (whew only 1900) lit the fires and hauled ass back to the firing line.

I had a company commander who would take a trip downrange at dawn after night firing. Guys in the unit used to look at this and think he was have some "moment" as he was a Vietnam vet. I soon found out he was doing this to collect four-deuce flare parachutes. He would have them made into ladies underware...

My best field exercise was my last NTC rotation (3rd in as many years). I had already been to the lovely Ft. Irwin as a tank battalion maintenance officer (in a freezing February) and tank company commander (in a boiling hot July).

Since I transferred to the ordnance branch, I had to command in a CSS (combat service support) unit to get branch qualified. I was fortunate to get a second command in a Forward Support Battalion in the Cav and this was to be my first assignment with the fairer sex.

I owned the battalion mess section and the 12 person section contained only one male. My first sergeant and I had just replaced the previous commander and 1SG who were not liked by the cooks at all. Those ladies took care of me and my first sergeant in the field. They would pile the food up on our plates, even when we told them not to do so. They would save food for me while I was at a meeting or doing evening patrols (my battalion commander was a former tanker too and he hired me on the spot to run his reaction force to patrol evenings looking for the OPFOR, scout commanders course came in handy for this job). The infantrymen and tankers as well as other folks from our battalion would stare in amazement at the amount of food we would get (more like dirty looks). It must have been the only field exercise where I gained weight instead of losing it.

Well let see............ By far my worst experience since I have been in occured over Sicily DZ at Ft. Bragg at 0200. Everything was normal until I stepped out of the C-130. I began my count to 4000, but only made it to 2000 before I was seeing stars. My equipment had become snagged on the exit platform and pitched me into the side of the bird. My pistol belt broke in two and caught the slipstream and slammed my pistol (luckily still in its holster) into my face. Broke my nose, smashed both my lips and knocked me silly. I must have blacked out at some point. I don't remember hitting the ground, the next thing I can recall was standing over my Kit Bag stuffing my chute into it, then going out again. I fianlly came to again with some guy standing over me holding a lighter close to my face and then screaming for a medic. Was evaced to the hospital where I stayed over night and went home the next day. They had me jumping 2 days later as the stick pusher.same DZ, same time on target. All went well thankfully.

For the more pleasant happenings,family day, again at Ft. Bragg range #63 during Tank Table 8, with wives, family members AND William Perry, Sergeant Major of the Army McKinney and several other big wigs in attendance. We were in the middle of our run and approaching the engagement know as the widow maker. RPG team and a BMP. Whenever the Sheridan fired it was capable of lifting the #3 roadwheel off the ground. We round the corner and here is mr. RPG team staring me in the face. I bark out the command and begin to engage with the .50 cal. As my gunner shouts his"On the way!!" for the main gun. I try to hold on to the .50 handle and brace for the recoil....bad move. It was like being in a carwreck. My gunner nails his target cener mass for the kill, I mow down my RPG team for the kill and all is well. On the commanders cupola of the Sheridan is what we referred to as the "Chicken Box". A monsterous armored tub we sat in. After each engagement I would hop backwards into this and relax unitl the next engagement. Well, after this particular engagement I hopped on back as usual only to find that the box had sheered off at the supports nad was now laying on the back deck, with me shortly there after following. All this isn't so bad yet....... our jump radio is still transmitting at this point. They had us rigged up so that the wives could hear what goes on in the tank during the runs......Bad move #2.
My gunner had his nose broke when he squeezed off the main gun,and also had the traversing handle spin wildly and break his wrist, so he's cussing up a storm, when I went out the back of the cupola, I hit my elbow when I landed, chipping it so I'm cussing to beat hell.....The whole time these pleasantries are being broadcast to god and who knows who else. Once the whole mess settled down some what.... Across the net we hear from the Tower.... "Blue 2, this is E92, sitrep over" I responded with "Battered, bruised, but still alive......over" "Roger Blue 2...standby" " Be advised, great engagement......Mr Perry has a coin for your crew" After we quit laughing and finished the rest of the run we met with Mr. Perry, The SMA and the rest of my company. I don't think that I have ever had so much go wrong with one pull of the trigger in my entire career. Even with the injuries we sustained it was very funny. I lost my Sheridan on a drop a few months later as not one of the 8 chutes required to bring it down deployed. Was a sad day for me, but I still have some of the pieces from the wreckage as momentos. "Q"

We had an XO in one of the line companies who would find his way into the chowlines before the EMs ate. That drew the derision of every other office in the Bn. But no amount of harassment would deter this pig...so the cooks did. They would minmize his portions, and when he griped about it, they would sneeze on his plate. He soon learned to fall in AFTER the enlisteds (and usually he got pushed back behind the other officers, too)

Yes, we ate last. One of the reasons we probably got so much food even after we told them not to. Since there was no one left in the chow lines, they just gave us the rest, or as much as they could put on the plates. It would only go in the garbage if someone didn't eat it.

Rob, I wasn't implying at all that you were guilty of such embarrasing behavior. It's just that your anecdote reminde me of Lt. Snotbag...

One important thing to note about the Mess Section...even in peacetime, even in training, they have to execute without fail.

No offense taken, I just considered those meals as payback for all the times I went hungry as the BMO. It seems the battalion S-4 would only send over enough chow to feed the personnel organic to my UMCP (Unit Maintenance Collection Point or place on the battlefield where broke vehicles that need relatively minor repair can be fixed and put back into the fight). Of course once the broke vehicles rolled in with their crews, we had to feed those guys so my chief warrant officer and I went hungry on more than one occasion. I couldn't get it through that S-4's head that he needed to up my headcount so the transient population could be fed as well as my mechanics and myself.

I finally got my point across when I took the food from his CTCP (Combat Trains Command Post) and let him, the S-1, Doc, and other strap hanging officers go hungry while the vehicle crews ate their chow. After that, it always seemed like we had enough to eat.

I was a 4.2 mortar maggot (11C) on a M106 in the mid 70's and we fired at Range 66 at Ft. Lewis. In morning after a night fire we used to go down range to get the silk parachutes from the flares. The range was shared with the M125's (81mm) SP mortars too. On the way we passed through the 81 impact area. Being young 18-19 year olds we of course BSed and screwed around on the way. We’d laugh and joke while kicking the 81 tail fins on the way by. One day the light dawned; I got to thinking about policing up the ‘chutes and had a very sobering thought, all those tail fins were DUD ROUNDS and still live. I guess God really does smile down on idiots and morons.

There we all kinds of fun things. We started using the clip on the propellant tube to hold the loose piece of ‘cheese’ charge after the final cut. The 4.2 propellant are stitched together in bundles of 10 sheets about 4x4 in. square, with a big hole in the center to fit on the propellant tube, a cut through on the middle of one side to the middle and is a splotchy yellow color that almost looks like Colby cheese. When there was a charge of ½ or ¼ that meant there was a loose piece, push the clip up and compress all the charges together, works great until there is a collection of clips on the bottom of the tube. The 4.2 in. (107mm) mortar has a fixed firing pin the bottom of the tube and what looks like a 12GA shot gun shell at the end of the propellant tube. There are holes in the side of the propellant tube to allow the charges (a modified C4) to ignite. So after awhile you get a misfire because the round can’t reach the bottom of the tube because of the clips. Anyone who has crewed a large caliber weapon knows the joys and fears of a misfire. Being a track mounted tube, there isn’t much room to work or go to get out of the way if something happens. That was in the days when we still left the tube attached to the standard and only disconnected the base before tipping the tube and trying to shake the round back out. Always had the fear of being beaten to a pulped if the round went off while trying to get it out of the tube. Stopped the clip trick after that.

Just that you brought back some old memories.

“Hang and fire”

Dave

Ahhhh motarmen, The last surviving muzzle loaders in the Army Inventory.. Gotta love em'. "Q"