There were a few us sent TDY to Graf for about three weeks to "patrol" the range roads and to work any accidents involving light vehicles and or tanks...if it were between the light vehicle and an M1, what was the point?..Anyway, while we were there, a story circulated that during a battalion live fire one of the arty rounds was deflected by another (that isn't even possible is it?) and it landed on and leveled one of the cinder block barracks. I bring this up, because I've heard this story again only a few months ago except this time it was a short round.

I'm curious, how old is this story? This must be one of those persistant stories like George at Ft.Polk.

Graf was a cool place, we had access to the towers and a schedule of the live fires....the MLRS and Cobra live fires were a religious experience.

Never try to kill one of the wild hogs at Graf...words to live by.

When I was there, we heard tell of a short round landing in a motor pool. True? I don't know, but it seems like it could happen. As for those wild boar, they certainly are something! One time they had our section out policing .50 cal casings from the range road on tank table VIII. It seems they didn't like to leave the casings that rolled off the turret to be left behind. When we were about 2/3rds done with our designated police area about six baby boar came running across the range road. We decided to get the hell out of there ASAP, Momma had to be near !

Thinking of killing them, one of my platoons gunners mistook some boar as an infantry target and hit them with the coax. We had another who claimed to have accidentally taken out a deer with a heat round. I can't verify either statement because I never saw the carnage. I have heard numerous stories about boar chasing people too.

I would suspect that the reason they wanted the brass off the roads was because the idiot MPs like us were out running around hauling them back as souvenirs. :-) :-) One of the guys from K-Town managed to latch onto a spent round from a recoiless...I'm amazed we never killed ourselves. We wandered onto more than one impact area.....

This story is not quite "urban" but I know some of you have heard it before:
A soldier has been on patrol with his team during the Q Course/Ranger School/whatever... And is so exhausted he begins to hallucinate. The teams moves after a short security halt, only to do a head count and fnd him missing. They go back for him, and there he is, beating on a tree. The reason? He thinks it's a Coke machine that he has put money into, and it will neither give him his drink nor his money back.

I heard that story when I was in the Q Course in '82, and was quilty of telling it to my recruits when I was a Drill Sergeant in '98. Of course by then, the story had evolved so that the guy was in my class.
Well, the next time I heard he story was in 2000, at ANCOC (if you're thinking how in the hell did it take you 18 years to get to ANCOC?-I had a twelve year break in service) and the guy telling it had "witnessed" this while on patrol in PLDC.
Other persistent stories:
The private who ties himself to a buffer cord and chucks the buffer out a second story window, only to find the cord is too long, preventing him from killing himself.

The private who is thrown into a wall locker, and rolled down a flight of stairs while still inside it.

And my all time favorite, because it is just not possible:
(The others are, because privates are just that stupid)
If you remove the spade grips from the back of the M2, the recoil spring and guide rod will shoot out and impale you. "I've seen it happen. This one time, in ______, I saw one shoot out and put a hole in a cinder block wall/tin roof/jeep..."

This one I've heard as well in 83, though it was a Spec. 4 DST plant who had his cover blown in an ADA unit. When I heard it, it was in the wake of the big drug suppression operation within USAEUR...I believe it was called Operation Blizzard...or Snow Storm, something to that affect. A lot of Skilcraft pens and 45 casings (field ready hash pipes for anyone wondering) were recovered in that one....

Health and Welfares were always an interesting event.

I know for a fact that at some point back in the late '60s there was an artillery short round that landed in a troop billeting area, and caused considerable damage, because I've seen the photos. I can't remember if there were any injuries or death, but I believe there were. Short rounds can be avoided if you pay attention, but they happen.

One story I had heard which is likely to be an urban legend involves the old Honest John rocket, which was just finally being phased out when I got to Germany. These things were pretty scary to fire as I understand, and the story goes that in this particular incident the crew neglected to remove the hold down clamps keeping the rocket to the launch rail. So when they fired it off, it proceeded to bounce the truck around on its way down range!

(Anybody ever build the old HJ kit kit back in the 50's/60's??)

Lots of Graf stories. As an artillery LT, I spent a lot of time on the OPs. We'd actually set up in one of the bunkers and "live" there for 3-4 days. The wild boar used to run around up there and those suckers were flat scary!

Speaking of fooling around with ordnance, I was assigned as a "Line of Duty" investigating officer for an incident involving a soldier in our battalion who was slightly injured when in the process of using an object to attempt to dislodge a fragment from the concrete of a bunker..............IN THE IMPACT AREA, there was a low order detonation of the item he was using as a chisel............A MORTAR ROUND. He was lucky all he got out of it was some cuts and scratches (and the need to change his trousers!)

Needless to say the investigating officer determined the incident to be NOT in the Line of Duty!!! :-)

Tom

I was never guilty of bringing back live ordnance, I had too healthy of a respect for it. though I carted off as many casings as I thought I could get away with. However, I lost most of it to Health and Welfare inpsections.......Kill joys Including a couple of smoke grenades I had plans for

I remember the Graf Arty Urban Legends being about overshoots that landed in some Ort or Dorf nearby.

I also remember sleeping in the buildings around Aachen, Algiers, etc & having the Arty shoots going overhead at night -- nothing like the sound of an 8in (or BTW, an HJ).

I've heard the HJ UL -- only it supposedly happened at Carson.

John

I was told a stroy during a safety officer class, of an incident at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii. the Arty range is pretty short, and because of that the cannon cockers are only allowed to fire Charge 1. so when they load, they put one powder bag in the breech, and lift the other seven to show the Range safeties. Supposedly this was a new guy loading the cannon, and he held up one bag. The safeties didn't catch it, and the cannon was fired with seven bags of powder loaded. Needless to say...... Some poor guy on the other side of the Island had a smoking crater for a garage, including his car. So he got a new Garage and car from the Army.

This story (man inside locker...) also made it into the very excellent novel 'Buffalo Soldiers' by Robert O'Connor, but NOT into the movie of the book, which is also excellent.

Ex-US service personnel may not like it, but your Army did skate on some pretty thin ice back in the day...

acav out