I want to keep this feature going, but I’m nearly out of stories. So, if you have a military story, e-mail me with the subject “Military”. Thanks.
Here’s a Marine’s praise for patriotic civilians in Iraq. A great story:
I was sent to do some work in Baghdad and billeted at the CPA headquarters in the Green Zone. The CPA headquarters was an eclectic collection of people from all over the world -from Ambassador Bremer to the Gurhka guarding the door it was a strange brew indeed. One day I sat down for chow with three civilians. I’m guessing they were 65, 45, and 30 year old men (not guessing about the men part). They were from different parts of the county, but all worked for the Army Corps of Engineers as hydro power gurus. We struck up a conversation and I asked them what brought them to Iraq. A standard question in the Green Zone and the 30 yr old’s was typical.
He said – “They came around the office and announced that the Corps of Engineers needed to send some people to Iraq. They asked if anyone wanted to volunteer. I thought it would be interesting, kind of an adventure – so I signed up.” That was pretty much what most of the civilians in Iraq would say – a few would also add, ” and the money is good.”
The 65 yr old said – “I am the boss back where I work. I have been employed by the U.S. government for over 30 years and have never really had to do ‘anything above and beyond’ my day to day duties. I thought this would be my opportunity to pay the country back.” I hadn’t heard that one before and was a little bit taken aback. The 45 yr old’s response only solidified the fact that there are Patriots in America, and there not all wearing a uniform.
He said – “Same here, they came around the office looking for volunteers and told us we had a couple of days to think it over. I wasn’t really sold on the idea, and went home and talked to my wife about it. I imagined that she would be adamantly opposed and I wasn’t going to push the issue. I mentally ran through the list of reasons she would come up with and sure enough she hit me with – ‘you’ll be gone for 6 months, isn’t this really dangerous, it will be hard to run the household without you, what are the kids going to think.’ We talked briefly about it, she thought for a few minutes and then said ‘all those things are true, but we owe this to the country’ so here I am.”
I just nodded, didn’t really know what to say – after twenty years in the Marine Corps I usually thought of civilians as lesser mortals that needed my protection (with only about 20% worthy of it ). Even after 9/11 I thought – sure, there are a lot of flags out these days, and people are inclined to be a little more patriotic, but talk is cheap and a flag and pole cost about 40 bucks. Now when I see some old lady waiving a flag, or hear some trucker talking about what he would do to UBL if he could get his hands on him, I think back to that conversation and conclude that the enemies of America have no idea what they are up against. If need be – the 65 year old men and engineer’s wives of American can take UBL and his ilk any day.
Semper Fi,
John
DNice has some stories of some fun in Germany:
When I was stationed in Germany (1986 – 1988) I was in a Lance Missile Battalion. I had heard that we were the “most forwardly deployed nuclear capable unit” in Europe. We were 60 kilometers from the Czech border. (I have no independent corroboration of that… whatever.)
Anyways, because we had nukes, we were stationed out in the middle of nowhere (which is pretty hard to do in Germany, but they did it). There were corn fields as far as the eye could see. And worst of all, we were in probably the only town in Germany that didn’t have a train station!
When we went out to the field for exercises, we didn’t go to Graf, where everyone else went (a big training area). OHHHHH nooooo! We went out into the German countryside and set up the woods between small towns.
We would regularly have German citizens walking their dogs through our areas.
My first time in the field I was guarding the entrance to the woods where our Battery was set up. We pulled a fallen tree across the dirt road, and I was sitting prone in the bushes with my M16. A car pulls up and stops at the log, I jump out of the bushes in my BDUs, kevlar, and M16 and the guy almost has a heart attack. He rolls down the window and asks in broken English if the woods are full of soldiers. I said yes, then he picks up a shotgun… I freak out and jump back about 10 ten feet (I don’t have any real ammo…). Suddenly I realize he’s trying to tell me he wanted to go hunting and would he be allowed?
Another time, in the middle of winter, we got a visit from some neighborhood kids while we were set up outside this small town. We bribed them with camo sticks (the camouflage makeup sticks) and MRE’s to get us some beer. They come back with a whole rack of beer from a nearby Gasthaus. Awesome!
Then we got the order to move out the next day, so we paid the kids with chem-lite glow sticks and some more MRE’s and they broken down all of our equipment and packed up our tents for us. We sat on the truck and drank the beer. God bless those kids!
Paul from Memphis, TN, has another story about dealing with the Germans… though from a quite different era:
This one is about 3rd hand, but it’s still pretty good. My dad worked as a law clerk for a federal judge down in Mobile, AL who had served as a P-38 pilot in WWII in Europe. The P-38 was an amazingly versatile and dangerous aircraft (to the Krauts, that is). One of the missions that got flown a lot was tank busting — German tanks were highly superior to American ones, but the USAAF ruled the skies. The worst nemesis of Allied armor was the King Tiger, the Panzerkampgwagon VI.4.c B — the frontal armor was 150mm thick, which, for reference, isn’t too shabby for today’s MBT. It was essentially invulnerable to frontal assault; a King Tiger with a clear field of fire could whipe out entire batallions of Shermans or T-34’s alone — the high power 88mm gun was a killer. But the King Tiger presented a quandry for the air force as well: the armor was so thick, even on top, that 500! pound bombs had a tendency to bounce off. So, what the pilots resorted to doing when out on bombing runs against King Tigers, was to drop bombs on either side of the tank, and the concussion from the blast would actually FLIP the vehicle over. Sounds weird, but it’s true.
First!
great great stuff Frank. Keep it coming (if you dont run out of stories that is!)
“UBL and his ilk?” What does that have to do with Iraq? Before we invaded Iraq, UBL and Saddam were enemies. UBL is a religious fanatic, and Saddam ran a secular dictatorship. Not taking anything away from the civilians who volunteered to go to a war zone, but defending America has nothing to do with it. Not even Bush believes that lie.
Et tu, Megan?
fishfry,
You must be new to this site. Just so you know, you’re a muckadoo.
Hey! Frank! What’s the deal?!
I ordered my Nuke the Moon t-shirt like a month ago, when they were scheduled to begin shipping May 5. So, today I went back to the website (everyone go there and order one), expecting so see something like “Shipping Now!” Instead it still says “Scheduled to ship 5/5/2004.” What’s the deal Frank? You can’t schedule something for the past, man, it just doesn’t work that way. Also, I want my t-shirt. Gimme, gimme, gimme.
lol Am I the only one that pays any attention to the numbering? It should be “Our Military XVIII” Other than that, great series and I hope you can keep it up.
Frank
Soy Aceptable. Estoy mirando adelante a este fin de semana!
And fish fry, in the grande scheme of good versus evil, we(America)are good and UBL, & Saddam are both evil. By taking out any one enemy, we become stronger and our other enemies become weaker. Even five year olds get that concept!!
–fishfry… “defending America has nothing to do with it…”?? Excuse me??
–Allow me to explain this concept to you (and you may feel free to repeat it to the others of your kind if you wish): Since we don’t know the exact number of terrorist bastards that have been killed in the Iraqi and Afghan theaters, let us assign an example number… say… 5000. Okay? Okay. So… we now know with some degree of certainty, and can say with some confidence, that those 5000 terrorist bastards will NEVER come to our shores and try to hurt us at home. Now… since we don’t know exactly how many of them are left, let us say that number is 1,000,000 (again, just an example number). We can then start a countdown with each and every one of the bastards that we kill. Then, someday, there will be none of the bastards left (or not enough to create any problems).
–Get it?? The numer of terrorist bastards in the world gets smaller every time we kill one of them. Then… since we don’t believe in the terrorist GHOST threat… there are less of them to come here and cause trouble. See how that works?
–It is, therefore, quite obvious to any but the most small minded (and/or hate-polarized) among us that this war is ALL ABOUT defending America. In short, we are taking it to them, rather than waiting for them to bring it to us (which they most certainly will try to do).
–Well, I think that went well… you??
I think fishfry has been drinking the grease instead of eating the fish.
Good stories.
Bingo – “18”? Can you count?
Mr. Fishfry,
Thank you for your interest in my story. You are now officially not part of my 20%.
Sincerly,
John
Maybe Frank just likes 12 twice better than thirteen?
Don’t worry, John. Most of us civilians are actually bright enough to realize that some dude who gives a bunch of blood for ink in a holy book aren’t running something entirely secular. And if you’re funding someone, you haven’t been convinced that they are your enemy. And you surely don’t put up murals of yourself over their atrocities, claiming them as your victories.
Iraq and Terror: A few points to ponder.
-Saddam was sending checks to the families of Palestinian suicide bomber’s families. Have you noticed the BIG drop off in the number of suicide bombers since we beat Saddam like a red-headed step child?
-Have you noticed that some people don’t get the difference between not having the evidence to support Saddam’s involvement in 9/11 and him not actually being involved in 9/11? (hint: it’s like voting for it, before you vote against it waffles).
-We NEVER declared war on Al Qaeda, we declared war on terror(ists) and ANY nation that provide aid to them. Iraq and links to terror (including Al Qaeda links, fryboy) are numerous, but cheese eating surrender monkeys like fishfry never bother to look for them
I liked Johns e-mail, it kind of puts the military lifers attitude towards civilians into perspective. As a former COE and current DoD employee and vet, I can say with some degree of accuracy that our Rich Uncle Sam does, for a fact, have some decent people on his payroll.
opps didnt mean to put the “V” in there oh well.
Fishfry is attempting to distract us from our terrorist hunt by screaming red herring. Therefore he is providing aid and comfort to the enemy. Therefore since he is not for us, he is against us (do I need to keep painting this picture any further?) Smells like a terrorist to me!
(Sound of a thousand rounds being chambered simultaneously…)
Regarding the P-38 vs tanks –
I’ve played a lot of flight simluators, and flown in some small planes…. Does anyone realize how difficult it would be to drop a 500 lb bomb from a moving plane onto – or next to – a moving tank????
Think about it – there are no digital pointers, and you can’t fly too low, or slow….
That would have to be some damn good flying!
Oh, and fishfry is a muckadoo.
Hey Underscore Jon: Several methods were used. Low level bombing (a bit above treetop level) could easily deliver a 500lb to a tank sized target. Anything bigger would have caught the plane in the blast. However, the P-38 was frequently used to divebomb it’s targets. Real easy to hit a target that way. Problem was, the first models tended to keep flying straight towards the ground until they penetrated it somewhat. At high speeds, the P-38 lost airflow across the control surfaces (no elevator, no pulling out of the dive.) The solution was to add a big honkin’ airbrake – and soon thereafter it became one of the most devastating birds in the air – in Europe AND the Pacific. Not a shabby interceptor either. Remember, it was a P-38 that shot down Yamoto’s plane.
My great uncle tells of his time with the 45th Infantry Division moving north through Italy. Walking along a road with trees on either side, suddenly a P-38 comes flying down the road – knife-edge – wingtip about 3 feet off the ground. As the infantry are diving into the muddy ditches, the pilot pulls up into a victory roll as he barely dodges several rounds fired from the platoon’s M1 Garands. Apparently this was not too uncommon.
At the close of our weekly Boy Scout meetings, we say ” And now may the great Master of all good Scouts, be with us, and all our uniformed soldiers, until we meet again.” Our Scoutmaster recently returned from a tour in Afghanistan and one of our recent Eagle Scouts has returned from Iraq and Saudi Arabia. People like fishfry just don’t get what our children understand. Semper Fi John and May God Bless.
Re: How many terrorists are left.
Very unfortunately they seem to be multiplying pretty fast. It is a known unknown that we do not know whether we are killing them faster than they get recruited or vice versa. I am quite confident that our sticking a hot pocker up Arab ass in Iraq caused a huge swell in their ranks. I think there are actually now more terrorist grunts that there were before, ever. I still think we will prevail. They are dumb as manure. The main thing is to kill and continue killing their leadership.
This state of affairs may be the status quo for generations to come.
Maybe all the dictators in the Arab world are passing out airline tickets to their unemployed to head out to Iraq. Since you seem to think that poverty causes terrorism and the poverty level is generally set at about 30%, figure that we will have to kill 30% of the Arabs, then throw in a couple of Brits, some French, and an Aussie or two, with the odd American and that will be the number we have to kill, of course if we wound some bad then they will hate us but won’t be able to do anything about it. Until the Iraqi economy kicks off there will be potentially more terrorists. But most Iraqis aren’t stupid, dead men don’t get to booze and whore around with their Saudi buddies in Bahrain. There is a finite number of crazy people in the world or Israel would be gone by now.
“There is a finite number of crazy people in the world or Israel would be gone by now.”
Dude, you have been eating crack with a SPOON. I’m not arguing with the finite number thing.
of crazy people ≤ # of people < infinity
But your statement re: the destruction of Israel is right out of Magic Fantasy Land.
Try this instead:
“There are a lot of Israelis with great restraint, or the Muslim world would be gone by now.”
beo, you’re uncle was in the 45th ID in Italy? My husband is currently in the 45th, in afghanistan. He’s always trying to hunt down historical bits about the 45th. anyhoo, I just think that’s cool.
“There were no ties between Iraq and Al Queda!”
“There were no ties between Iraq and Al Queda!”
“Yo Quiero Taco Bell!”
Oh, wait, back to “There were no ties between Iraq and Al Queda!”: Um, so why was a high-ranking member of Al-Queda found in Baghdad after it fell? Why did troops find terrorist training facilities, including numerous pre-made suicide bomber vests? Also, one of the members of the group that bombed the WTC in 1993 hid in Iraq… How many more ties do you need?
Maggie – yes he was, but he didn’t tell too many stories about it. That was one of the few. Another one was about when they wanted him to reenlist. He told them “I’ll reenlist if you can get me the same exact rifle I had when we first deployed to Italy.” They said, “where did you have it last?” “Well, the last time I saw it was after an artillery blast, and it went flying down a hill into a ravine filled with mud.” It’s probably still there, somewhere in the north of Italy. The Italian campaign was probably one of the toughest, messiest campaigns of the war, and a lot of the guys who fought there tend to keep most of what happened to themselves, it seems.
Here is a site for you to check out, http://www.45thdivisionmuseum.com/
beo, I’ve been there once when my better half was in a color guard for something. memorial day? I’m terrible about those kinds of things. Needless to say he’s very proud to be part of the 45th and the history that goes with it.
Just a note on the P-38 story:
The standard Allied method of strafing in WWII was to come in on a tank’s flank and fire cannon rounds (the P-38 was cannon-equipped) at the ground just short of the tank. The rounds would then ricochet back up to the underside of the tank, which was unarmored. The resulting devastation would take out the crew and the controls. You can actually see this method in almost all gun camera footage from the war. I’ve never heard of flipping a tank over intentionally, but it would have to be a b%$ch to pull off since the bombs weren’t very accurate.
JR – that probably worked well against Panzer IV’s – but not likely against Tigers.