Saturday, June 17, 2017

Halt! Who Goes There?

Daily Timewaster has a post that brought back a 50+ year old memory.

http://dailytimewaster.blogspot.com/2017/06/german-soldiers-pose-with-huge-wild.html

Our Engineer company was bivouacked in some trees near Wildflicken, Germany. As normal, having pissed off one of the NCOs, I was walking guard on a dark night.

Hearing noise on the perimeter I turned on my flashlight while calling out,

"Halt! Who goes there".

The light revealed the intruder.
Abandoning my post, I climbed up the nearest truck.

12 comments:

LL said...

You're definitely a prudent man and a survivor, WSF.

Coffeypot said...

Smart move. Those bad boys are hard to kill and can do some damage on a body if you piss them off... like only wounding it.

Well Seasoned Fool said...

Nobody else looking out for my welfare.

Well Seasoned Fool said...

A M-14 with no ammo not much use. Guess I could have fixed bayonet and charged.

c w swanson said...

When my cousin was in the air force and stationed on Guam, they used to hunt pigs at an abandoned airstrip, where they could be easily seen as they came out of the jungle. One day he went with a city kid from Boston. They saw a big one down the strip, and my cousin offered first shot to the kid. He popped one off, winged the hog, who then charged furiously. The Boston kid froze in fear, and no matter how loud my cuz shouted at him to shoot, he just couldn't. Finally, cuz got out his trusty 1911, and lit up the angry swine, who skidded to a halt, dead, at their feet. The Boston kid said all he could remember was staring at the hog as it rushed them, and then at the 1911 as it racked one shell after another in and out about a two feet from his face. Good times....

Well Seasoned Fool said...

The lesson there was if you shoot something your aim better be good. One four wire winter elk came into the field we fed cows in. One bull decided to climb on the sled. Dispatched him with an ax. Then spent five minutes shaking.

LL said...

I never understood the value of standing guard with an unloaded weapon. Oh, yes, I know that it's done. But I still think that it's stupid. At the very least, give the guard a loaded magazine.

Well Seasoned Fool said...

Gutless leadership at the top. Only when guarding the cash payroll were we issued live ammo. In our case, five rounds.


The officers carried empty 1911s.

LL said...

There was a move by a dweeb when I was at SEAL Team Five and had to stand OOD quarterdeck watches to have us remove loaded magazines from the 1911's that we carried. It came from a moron at Group 1 to Teams West Coast. It was nixed and the trident machine Peter Principled him to someplace in the Pentagon where he would do less damage. We always carried full magazines, round in the tube, cocked and locked.

The Marines carried them empty.

Well Seasoned Fool said...

Glad there was some sanity in the armed forces. Our war load ammo was safely under lock and 24 hour guard while we would be hours away doing Army shit. The only readily available ammo was what we active shooters owned. That was in the unit arms room.

Old NFO said...

Yep, smart move on your part! I've been treed by a boar, NOT fun!

Well Seasoned Fool said...

He went on about his boar business thankfully. After a few minutes went back to walking guard.