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Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction:
MudderChuck
Member Posts: 4,105
Realize I'm a new guy, but thought I'd start a thread and see what happens.
Lets hear a war (war defined as military of whatever flavor) story. Anything from rib splitting to mildly amusing, military planning gone wrong, black humor, sarcasm and irony are also welcome.
Chuck[:D]
Lets hear a war (war defined as military of whatever flavor) story. Anything from rib splitting to mildly amusing, military planning gone wrong, black humor, sarcasm and irony are also welcome.
Chuck[:D]
Comments
Back at our barracks in "Graf" we had diesel heaters (Camp Normandy???) if you ran a diesel heater for a time and looked down into the burning chamber it was like a sea of carbon "sea weed" ...which left unattended would end up plugging the heater carburetor, the fire would go out and it would get cold in the barracks FAST! .SO the LT.(my section leader) handed me about 6 packs of these 4.2 mortar charges and told me to give them to my Section Sgt. We were suppose to break these charges down into the single leaflets (a pack was about 10 single leafs .as I remember??) and throw them into the burning chamber of these diesel heaters and shut the door fast. The charge would cook off and blow the carbon "sea weed" up and out of the stove clearing it so it wouldn't get clogged up and go out. I gave these to my Section Sgt. and didn't think much more about it.
In these barracks the Redeye Section wasn't large enough to take up a whole barracks so we shared ours with the medic section. We got to be pretty good friends with them, their Section Sgt was and old E7 .SFC Martin, he had only about 18 months more to do in the Army and he was retiring. He was kind of "crotchety" in his old age ....complaining about everything and everybody (if you seen these medics you'd know why!*G*)
...SO it's about 3 weeks later and I wake up early one morning to a funny noise, I roll over to see SFC Martin in his old civilian bathe robe and slippers stripping down these mortar charges I had given my Section Sgt. He had done 1 single and had gotten down to the last two in the packet ...these were sewn together on the 2 opposite sides, he tried and tried to get these last two charges apart with no luck, so he decides to toss them both in together! ...He must have been alittle apprehensive because he was fumbling with the door trying to get it closed ...when both charge cooked off! Flame was shooting out of the door ...along with the carbon "sea weed"! Now this REALLY spooked him, he quickly steps back .tripping on his bath robe and falls back onto his butt! .I was dying laughing! Between he and I, we were making so much noise it woke everybody up ...in time to see the carbon "sea weed" landing on everything in the barracks!*G* Only other good thing (besides the show) was watching the medics cleaning up his mess! .We wouldn't let him hear the end if it all the rest of our time there! .I can still see him sitting on his * in that old bath robe!! *LOL* .Loved those 4.2 mortar charges!! .You should see a whole trench full cook off!! .Now that was a show!
I was in the S2 section of the 2/47th Mech Inf Bn in 1969 that was equipped with the M113 APCs. We got a new major in Bn Hdqts who decided our APCs needed more firepower to supplement the 50 cals mounted on them. When the members of our section discussed this, I had suggested mounting 106 recoiless rifles on our tracks, but my idea was dismissed.
The major managed to acquire a drum fed mini-gun and it was mounted on one of the APCs. When it was test fired it worked well. But, after just a few seconds, the drum was empty and the general consensus was there was no way we could carry enough ammo to feed the mini-gun. The mini-gun was traded to some navy unit in the Delta for what I'd describe as a small artillery piece that had a barrel about 30" long and chambered a round that was about 57mm in diameter. Once mounted on an APC, they took it out into a nearby rice paddy and test fired it. Well, the round landed and then began to skip accross the rice paddies. It skipped and skipped. LOL, it had every appearance that the round was going to hit some poor Vietnamese hootch (house) wayyyyyy beyond the point of initial impact. Luckily, the round hit a dike about 30 yards from the hootch and finally exploded. As I recall, it was determined the rounds would not explode on initial impact unless the angle of elevation was that of a mortar. With that, our experiments of additional fire power mounted on our APCs ended.
Spring forward from 1969 to 2008 and I am attending a reunion of my Nam battalion held in Columbus, Ga, just outside of Ft. Benning, where my unit is still active and now stationed. I'm chatting with a fellow vet of the 2/47th who was my S-2 captain. He'd become one of our combat company commanders about a month or so before I left Nam. In recounting our failed attempts at adding firepower to our APCs and laughing about it, my captain said, he'd had a 106 Recoiless Rifle mounted on one of his APCs and it had worked pretty good. Turned out, our unit had a number of 106s stored/never uncased in our base. My captain then recounted a night his company caught about 15 NVA in the open, heading directly toward them. He had a 106 flechette round chambered in the recoiless and with one round all of the NVA were killed. He said it was kinda strange, all the NVA went down like they were taking cover. But, after 30 minutes and no returning fire or movement that could be seen with their starlight scope they finally went to investigate. Numerous flechettes had hit each the NVA and killed them.
Russia had invaded Czechoslovakia.
We'd been moving for like 10 hours and for once the system actually worked and our fuel was where it was supposed to be and on time.
Right in the middle of the autobahn, out in the middle of nowhere, we set up a refueling point. Gas in one line, Diesel in the other. Word came down to speed up the refueling, we were behind schedule.
I told the tanker driver to drive along beside the tanks and fill them on the move. He argued a little, until I showed him my fist and gave him the look.
Fast forward, the BG in charge of training, comes storming into the orderly room (he stormed into every room, you usually heard him way before you saw him). And yells, who's idea was it to fuel the tanks on the move? The XO visibly shaking, points at me with fear in his eyes and says him.
The General puts his arm around my shoulder, says good job, good initiative, that's the way to get things done. After I got my bladder under control and managed a weak smile,I remembered to salute and thanked him.
That was the second time I got noticed by him. The first time, was when he gave me and another troop the Soldiers Medal and pinned on my Sergeants strips. Me and the other guy had put out a fire in the turret of an M-60 tank (fully uploaded with ammo) with most of a case of Coca Cola and half a case of Flippies (German Beer). But that's another story.
Our battalion in Nam had about 6 snipers assigned to it after I had been with the 2/47th for about 4 months. Late one afternoon, the snipers went out in the field with one of our combat companies mounted on their APCs. The intent was to set up a night ambush. Unfortunately, before our unit reached their destination, they were ambushed just as the sun was setting. The battle would last till about midnight. We would lose two APCs to RPGs. I can't remember our casualties. I do remember as soon as possible, we sent at least fifteen 50 cal barrels to our unit to replace the burned out barrels. Battle so close to our basecamp, you could clearly hear the fighting.
Anyway, two things occured I clearly remember. One, I had listened to the incoming messages to our Battalion Headquarter Tactical Operation Center and was well aware of what had happened. Working in our S-2 Section, I knew I was in for a long night. So I went to my barracks to get something and along the way I passed a guy whose company was in the fight. He had stayed behind because he was ill with something. But, due to the beer in his hand and the way he spoke, his illness didn't prevent him from being drunk. Guy commented to me, "man my guys are really giving it to them." Like I wrote, you could clearly hear the fighting. I made the mistake of informing him of what had happened, "they caught us, we didn't catch them and etc." Guy took off running and I proceeded to my barracks. I had just sat down on my bunk, when I heard a M79 40mm being fired, and then the report of an explosion outside of our base. What the heck I thought and I began to trot down to the other end of our barracks where there was an exit. As I neared the exit, another M79 round was fired. When I exited the barracks there stood the guy about 30 foot away that I had spoken to on the way to my barracks. He was chambering another round in his M79 to fire at some Vietnamese hootches about 250 yards outside our perimeter. Another G.I. was on a dead run towards him and I joined in by taking off towards him too. We blind sided him, with me hitting him low and the other guy hitting him high, knocking him off his feet. We disarmed him. The guy was sobbing, saying he should have been out in the field with his buddies. Fortunately, both rounds he had fired landed well short of the hootches. I just shook my head and told the other guy to take the guy away and find another buddy to control him, which he promised to do. I kept the M79. As far as I know, no actions were taken to punish the guy and I never reported it.
Now, the funny stuff concerning the battle. Within a week of the action, paperwork is submitted by the E7 sniper sergeant for awards to be given to him and his men. The paperwork was given to our section to approve. Well, you'd think the sniper section alone, had fought off an entire NVA division equipped with armor. My section sergeant and I chuckled at the ridiculous claims made by the sniper sergeant. My sergeant, nor I for that matter, didn't particullary like the sniper sergeant, sooooo, off goes my sergeant to investigate the claims by speaking to other NCOs and officers of our combat company involved in the fighting. About an hour or so later my Sergeant returns saying, as we suspected, the sniper sergeant's claims were all B.S. We chat for a minute or two about what to do and then my Sergeant decides to talk to our Battalion Commander about the problem. LOL, our Colonel went along with our idea of a bogus award ceremony for the sniper sergeant. I came up with the idea of cutting out the Pasbt Ribbon Label from a can of that company's beer and attaching something to it that allowed it to be pinned. I obtained a real medal award's box and put it in it and wrote the appropriate words to be read when an award is given. We waited about 2 or so weeks and then held an awards ceremony in our Battalion Headquarters for the Sniper Sergeant. Only my Sergeant, the Colonel and I knew the ceremony was a fake. Chuckle, most of the Battalion staff attended. The sniper sergeant stood proudly at attention, while our X.O. read the award letter I had written. The Colonel, took the awards box and opened it in a way to hide its contents and quickly pinned it on the sniper sergeant. The X.O. did a double take at the Pabst Blue Ribbon award, as did the many others facing the Sniper Sergeant. Then the chuckles/laughter began. The sniper Sergeant realized something was amiss and lowered his head to see the medal. The sergeant deflated like a ballon, his face turned red and then white and he quickly left Battalion Headquarters to hide for a few days.