How to get out of chores

There's a meme going around that goes something like, If you screw up the laundry bad enough your wife will never ask you to do it again."

While the Army pretty much beat the fear of public speaking and presentations out of me there were still quite a few chores I really didn't like.  Calling cadence was on of these.  35 years later I can still remember tiny bubbles, Jody, C130's and smashing in the birdie's head but put me up front on a battalion 4 mile run and my brain just locked up. Call of our platoon by itself was nothing but something about calling cadence for 1000 grunts just flipped a switch. 

The company 4 milers typically were run around the airfield or out smoke bomb hill. We would turn out by platoon with a cadence caller for each platoon.  Heading back to the company AO I was tapped to take over.  Imagine watching a group of young, fit soldiers jogging into view.  Everyone is in perfect sync. The sound of their feet hitting the road in time makes a noise that is instantly recognizable.  Then you hear the caller yelling.... Old McDonald had a farm...... and hearing everyone reply E.I.E.I.O. The look on the company commander's face as we jog into the back parking lot to "Moo Moo here, Moo Moo there" was worth the ass chewing I got.  

And that's how you get out of doing a chore you don't like. 

How not to order a Tank

 The conflict between Sgt A, my platoon Sgt and the supply Sgt started when supply decided that avionics should not be in control of their own repair parts and supplies. This resulted in a supply clerk being forced on us.  We went from getting what we needed within a few days to having to remind the supply guy that he actually had to order the parts and that we actually needed parts to be able to do our job.  This concept is completely alien to the typical supply clerk they usually didn't order stock EVERY.DAMN.DAY. That's a little misleading.  We really only turned in the orders twice a week but he did have people coming in to fill out the part slips every day.

Being as I considered it to be a good idea to make friends with this guy to reduce the friction when ordering parts I had a front row seat to the upcoming circus.   One day he looks up from the microfiche machine and asks if I knew grenades only cost $1 each. As an E4,  I'd never really considered the ROI or considered the cost benefit analysis of grenades.  As we BS'ed a little he continued to throw out the costs of various gear until he came to the stock number for the M1 Abrams tank.  At that point he laughed and said "wouldn't it be funny of I ordered a tank"? I told him I thought that would be an all around bad idea but he insisted that since it was not on our TO&E it would never make it through the order process and was sure that Sgt A would catch it and consider it a great joke.  So he filled out the parts slip, stuck it in the pile of parts to be ordered and turned it in for Sgt A's signature and then promptly forgot about it.  

I don't know if Sgt A missed it or if he saw what it was and figured this was a good way to screw Sgt B but he never said anything about it.  90 days later I drove into the airfield and there set a brand-spanking new M1 tank on a flat bed trailer. Flat OD green, never been camo painted.  It still had that new tank smell. The whole surreal scene was unfolding like the MASH tank episode. My squad leader, Sgt L, was just standing there beside his truck starring at it.  We lined up for morning formation in front of this marvelous machine and Sgt A gets out of his truck and has a conniption fit. 

The best part is that the supply clerk only worked afternoons and he had no idea what was waiting for him. 13:00 rolls around and we have afternoon roll call, right in front of the tank, of course. Supply dude comes walking up and gets ripped a new one right in front of all of us. The MP's come walking up and Sgt B gets there just in time to watch his guy get perp-walked to the patrol car. Supply dude ended up with something like 2 years in Ft Leavenworth, with the remainder of his service time to be completed on his release so they could dock his pay for round trip tank delivery fees and we went back to ordering our own parts. 

Like Gold

I found my milspec map protractor while digging though some old stuff.  Thinking back I'm amazed at the things that were difficult to get back in the 80's Army. These things were like gold. 

 

Anyone that was in the service will recognize the puke green binder.  There were 2 books that were mandatory that you keep.  The first was you "I love me" book.  It had all of your course completion  certificates, letters of recommendation/recognition, awards, promotion paperwork, and orders. The second was this book: your bible.  They were all personally individual but basically they had notes on how to do your stay alive in the big green machine.  Mine had hand drawn notes on layouts for inspections, stowage instructions for packing my shop van for deployment, equipment inventory, directions for ordering parts, an inventory of consumables for each radio type that I repaired, promotion board study guide, and notes and drawings for every "block of instruction" I had to give.  This covered call for fire, map reading, fields of fire, and NBC decon.  Basically any one of us could be called on to lead a class on anything that you would find in the FM21-100 or the FM 7-11B. I learned to keep notes on the classes I gave and steel notes from any classes my supervisors gave.

 You learn early on that you need to have friends in certain places.   It's helpful to be friends with the armorer. You do not want to piss off anyone in the motor pool. And it is very, very helpful to have a friend in supply. My advantage was an unlimited supply of batteries. They were on our TO&E and so we'd stock up anytime we were heading to the field.  Interestingly enough they were not something that the platoon supply room could order. So when I had to give a map reading class I was able to secure enough of these to supply my entire platoon. To Bad, So Sad - there were not enough for the other platoons when we cycled around.  

My buddy Jim and I both scored one of these.  We were an aviation platoon so they had pilot survival knives.

No trade involved. We had an IG inspection coming up and they were overstocked.  Just a case of being in the right place at the right time and having a fiend. First thing I did was use boot dye to blacken it.  It was part of my EDC when in the field.  My EDC care for daily operations was a 1981 stainless "demo" knife that I bought from the PX at Ft Gordon.  It's the military equivalent to the Boy Scout Knife.

One of the reasons it was so important to keep a friend in supply was because my Platoon Sargent, Sargent A, was at war with the supply Sargent. He had served in Vietnam and was determined that we were going to be technically and militarily proficient. The entire platoons training records were up to date: NBC, Weapons, First Aid. Everything.  Supply Sargent was also the training Sargent and informed everyone in the NCO staff meeting that he needed people to fill his training quota and that Sargent A "HAD" to supply some bodies even though we were all up to date. Sargent A filed a movement order with the CO and mobilized the platoon and we deployed to the field.  The best part was the CO agreed that it was petty BS and allowed him to "classify" the entire mission.  So Monday morning when the supply Sargent showed up the yell about none one from our platoon showing up at o'dark-30 we were gone. We weren't just camping. We needed to remain mission capable and still needed to collect broken electronics and pickup parts etc.  Our primary mission was repair depot and had to continue  Since it was a clandestine operation we had to practice evasion and escape. We completed the entire year's training roster while in the field including weapons and NBC qualification. The fact that we kidnapped the supply platoon leader and had him sign off on our training docs really pissed off the supply Sargent. 

Most military posts have a place called "no questions asked turn in."   Basically the idea is that if you misordered something or have too many of something or you managed to get something that was not on your TO&E you can take it here so someone else can use it rather than junking it. Sargent A managed to pick up an office trailer from there. When we returned from the field and finished the maintenance on our gear he tasked my buddy Jim and I with going to supply and getting him a clock for his new office. Of course the supply Sargent turned us down.  When I told Sargent A that his response was, "I told you to get me a damn clock." Now the supply room was in the back of the company office.  The actual supply inventory was locked up behind a floor to ceiling chain link wall.  However, the supply room offices were simply 8 foot tall walls made of 2X4's and plywood.  Using Jim as a ladder I climbed into the supply Sargent's office making sure to leave size 12 boot prints on his desk while I stole the clock off his wall.  Mission success and I was back in time for afternoon volley ball and a cold beer.

Burn It Down - Part 2

 

When I was assigned to Fort Bragg back in the 80’s my battalion was out in the field.  After one of the E6's from my new platoon finally rescued us from the transient battalion one of my first jobs was to rewire all of the shop trailers and replace any bad ballasts in the lights as they came back to base.  They were 440, had 2 50K BTU HVAC systems and a 28 volt inverter. 

Every.One.Was.Wired.DIFFERENTLY!?

So of course, they blew out all the ballasts while they were in the field because of course they connected them all to the generates the same way. The Big Green Machine is ALL about standardization, right?

The E6 that was supervising all of us noobs pulls us into a van and explains the job.  He throws the arm on the circuit box to turn off the power and opens the door.  I interrupt him to tell him the power to the box is NOT off, we were still connected to shore power and I get smacked down.  Now, the dude is something like 6’4” and a beanpole.  There are at least 5 of us standing in the aisle of the van watching as he shoves the Allen wrench into one of the hot lugs. A fireball the size of a basketball shoots out and he is thrown the length of the trailer, knocking us all down.  Thankfully he wasn’t killed. He gets up, shaking like a crack fiend and is now so white he’s translucent which is not a good look for anyone let alone a black dude. He looks at me, says “You obviously know what to do. You’re n charge” and he left.

He was knocked from the yellow door on the left of this picture all the way to the back door.

 The lugs in the shore power breaker box were wired different and connector on the cables coming from the shore power box had been cut off and were all wired differently and the trailer was then rewired to match the screwed up cable.  We had to pull the shop manual for schematics and pin out the 440 cables.  We turned off power to the shore power box and rewired it correctly. Next the trailer breaker boxes were wired correctly, and the cables reattached.  Everything was then pinned out to verify they were right and reapplied shore power. After that the ballasts were easy. They were just a standard light fixture and were color coded correctly. 

Truckin

 

We towed those shop trailers with M-52A2 5-ton tractors.  These were 6X6 with power steering and very little else.   They had canvas tops that we later replaced with fiberglass. Multi fuel engines made it easy to keep them fueled.

 

The entire platoon had to be licensed to drive these for unit readiness. After the classroom work the road test was driven around Simmons Army Airfield.  Naturally, we started a bet on who could complete the circuit the fastest.  I’d be pulling trailers since I was twelve and was confident that I was gonna win.  The back side of the fence road zigged in a multiple S shape.  I was grabbing gears as I hit the first turn. The second S had a telephone pole in the corner. I grabbed another gear and finished the quickest. The E6 conducting the test jumped out of the cab white as a sheet, yelling, “You fail. You almost took out that pole!”  I replied that I missed that pole by a good 5 feet and that we should walk back and look for tracks in the grass/gravel.  There were none and so he grudgingly passed me.

I loved that truck and preferred it over deuce-and-a-half’s or jeeps.  That truck also got me my second challenge coin.  I was ordered last minute to be a driver for the annual ROTC gathering. My platoon’s deuce was red-lined and everything else in the motor pool was signed out. So I just took my 5-ton and showed up at battalion. (failure is was not an option) The Battalion CSM that I was supposed to drive chewed me a new one.  After taking my verbal beating, I explained the situation and he climbed into the cab.  That day we followed tanks, pulled out stuck 10-ton tractors with their load attached and a recovered bottomed out hummers. We went everywhere without a hitch.  That evening the CSM said to forget the jeep and make sure I came back in the tractor. The last day I also managed to man the radio during the live fire demo and called in artillery and air. At the end of the week I got a handshake and the coin.

Burn It Down

 

Writing about slim-Jim, roll-up antennas made me think about my time in the Army. I worked on aircraft radios as an avionics tech. I once set the woods on fire after deploying a long wire antenna for my HR radio bench.  Sometimes we’d wrap the antenna wire around a florescent light tube so it would light up while we were transmitting. 

When back on base the semi-trailer shops that we worked out of we backed into a roofed, enclosed walkway that had maybe 6 inches of clearance on either side.  The flight line side was easy; nothing in the way.  The grass side had fences, concrete drainage culverts, fire hydrants and telephone/power poles to dodge. You get good at backing up when you grow up on a farm, so it was my job was to back them all in.  The long-wire antenna for my trailer ran down the peak of the roof for the walkway. My “new” platoon sergeant was all about improving our work conditions. He found the materials to enclose the walkway. One of his projects was to install intercoms in all the trailers.  Of course, the shortest distance to run the wires was the underside of the peak of the roof.  Two or three weeks went by before the stars aligned and I was transmitting, and he tried to use the intercom. Thankfully we didn’t burn out the intercom, but he did get some burns on his lips. 

This is the M373A2 Mobile Electronic Shop. (or what's left of one)

 

 

A similar story happened while we were undergoing an inspection.  I had a very large caution sign on the door stating to remove jewelry, dog tags, and metal rank and insignia.  The inspection team we announced as they came in the door and told us to continue working.  I stopped them and pointed out the caution sign.  I had zero fucks to give after they finished chewing me out and so I silently went back to work.  Once I keyed the mic they learned why I had that sign on the door.  I was like I hit them all with a taser.  The Spec-4 mafia always has the last word.