Cowboy

Like several bloggers my upbringing involved ranching and horses. My father worked many different jobs but always made money on the side shoeing horses. I was riding a horse by myself before my fourth birthday. By the time I was in high school my parent had a small ranch but both had “town jobs”. One guess as to who did 65% of the ranch work.

The best rider I ever saw was my father. He didn’t become part of the horse; the horse became an extension of him. The second best rider I ever saw is my sister. By age 13 she was a certified riding instructor. While I could ride any horse, I was never fond of them. I sat a horse like a sack of potatoes tied to the saddle horn.

“Your cows are out”, is one call no rancher wants to hear. A couple working for the same organization paid for their ranch “hobby” by selling cars. One night they rolled their pickup and were laid up for a few days. At the end of the month I drove their “wash out” checks to them. While I was there, they got that call.

After trying to herd the cows back in with vehicles, I went and saddled one of their horses then rounded up the cows. Afterwards, while enjoying an adult beverage, they started ragging me about my horsemanship.

“Let me ask you one question”, I said. “Are your fucking cows in?”

My mother was fond of saying the two glamorous cowboy occupations were fixing fence and bucking hay bales. When I went in the Army, I hoped to do something fun like driving a tank or shooting a cannon. Instead, the Army made me a combat engineer stringing barbed wire and stacking sandbags.

Not complaining. A cousin joined the Navy to see the world and spent all of his post training on Adak Island.

 Every summer from the time I turned 11 I worked hay fields near Coalmont, CO (North Park at the East side of Buffalo Pass). A big kid, I worked behind the bailer. Two planks side by side with a slot between would be pulled and six bales would be stacked. Then a long crowbar would be rammed into the ground and the bales would “slip” off. The bailer would spit out 2,200 to 2,500 120 lb wire tied bales a day. Old repurposed buck rakes would pick up the small stacks and take them to the main stacks.

Being ranch raised does equip you for life. Whatever situation faces you, you cannot just walk away. You learn to find solutions. The solutions may not be the best, but are better than none. You learn to turn wrenches and operate shop machines. I was never taught how to weld but I can, and have, done a lot of welding.

A small example of finding a solution occurred while I was managing my primary employer’s skylight company subsidiary. A job called for polycarbonate instead of acrylic and our vacuum tanks wouldn’t pull the sheets into uniform shapes. Our foreman and engineer were having a big confab as to how to solve the problem. I went into the store room, picked out a electrical box, placed it over the vacuum port, and viola!  Problem solved. The vacuum draw was slowed down enough for the polycarbonate to form uniformly.

YouTube videos of off road recoveries I find interesting. Growing up, getting things “unstuck” was frequently needed. Watching the pros you see different techniques, many decided on the spot.

Serving as a combat engineer was interesting. You easily spotted the farm/ranch/construction trades raised from the city raised soldiers as we tackled various problems. Mud! Damn I hate the stuff. We were a float bridge company and where you have rivers you have mud. When you get a TD18 buried, you know it is really bad.

So here is a salute to all, men and women, who grew up around agriculture. 

A question. Do Sargents  still get pissed at troopers wearing Air Force mittens?

12 B

 

 

Trading remarks with LL (Virtual Mirage  https://www.virtualmirage.org) stirred a 50+ year old memory.

“Son, you’ve done this before”, said the kindly SFC teaching us newby Combat Engineers starting our week of barbed wire training. “I’m making you my assistant instructor”.

“So, when someone tightens the wire tell it breaks, it will wrap around my legs instead of yours?” smartass WSF replied.

“I knew you were experienced”, he replied with a grin.

Old family joke, a favorite of my mother, was the two most glamour’s cowboy jobs was fixing fence and bucking bales. Of course, the Army decided to make me a Combat Engineer so I could build barbed wire barriers and stack sandbags.

So began a very long week. The one bright spot was the SFC remarking, as an NCO, he couldn’t knock sense into a trainee. On the other hand, as a Private, I could so long as he didn’t see it (hint, hint, hint).

Interesting time in that training cycle. We were mid cycle when President Kennedy was murdered. Prior to that, I was well on my way to not earning a Good Conduct Medal (drowning a civilian in edible garbage https://wellseasonedfool.blogspot.com/search?q=KP)

 among other misdeeds that weren’t in accord with good discipline, etc. insured that.

I think the real reason I graduated was to ship me off to be someone else’s problem (hello, 814^th Engineer Company).

Enroute, the unauthorized absence at Ft Dix waiting to board a troop ship wasn’t well received.

My partner in crime, Tom O’Connor, understood shipping schedules and thought three days in Boston seeing his girlfriend beat three to four days of shit details at Ft Dix. Can’t have your buddy facing danger alone, can you? Plus, his girlfriend had a cute sister. We managed to bluff our way out of that. Easier to throw us on the bus to the Brooklyn dock then do all that messy paperwork.

In a way, being in the engineers was a stroke of luck.  The engineers were a rowdy bunch, from the lowest private to the First Sergeant. If you were a worker, did your job and could be counted on, many things were overlooked. If you were a slacker, life got real hard real quick.

Just to be clear, choices were to volunteer for the First Sergeants extra hour’s projects, or see the Company Commander for an Article 15. There were no free rides.

The irony was both O”Connor and I made E-5, he a Sergeant and me a SP 5.

LL mentions landmines. Most had been cleared by the time I was there. One place, not so much, the Hurtgen Forest. Horrible WWII battle, 30,000+ Allied casualties. In 1965 there were still areas fenced off. We spent ten days there. We would take a section a meter wide and work our way through in a straight line stringing det cord behind. Move over, do the same, etc. After ten or so corridors, the det cord would be set off and the Munson effect would (in theory) set off anything explosive.  Nasty work. Hell of a way to make an extra $55 a month. Our equipment was all WWII vintage plus ice picks for probes. The place was littered with moldering military detritus. We left it alone and worked around it. That old helmet just might be booby trapped. I was glad I only went there once.

Old AF Sarge is writing stories about  WWII and one place nearby he uses as a scene is Kreuzau. We bivouacked nearby.

https://oldafsarge.blogspot.com/2021/02/the-assault.html

Worth reading his series, IMO.

Wayback Machine

 

Someone I served with sent an email asking if I still had some pictures. Yes, not the greatest quality after 55-56 years of benign neglect. Maybe some of you might enjoy them.

The title picture is a float bridge across the Rhine at the place Patton crossed. We could only close the river on Sunday for an hour or two.

LL talked about the Danube, which is the Donau in Deutschland. This is our bridge across it in the dead of winter. The water was so cold when you filled a bucket and set it down, the water immediately froze. If the picture seems especially weird, we were being covered with a smoke screen.

The Army was modernizing, slowly, and going to what was called a Mobile Assault Ferry. This unit didn’t succeed in building a complete bridge.

The next picture is a footbridge, all built by muscle, and not much different than the Romans used. That is ice floating in the water.

We used 27’ Bridge Erection Boats, powered by two 6 cyl gas engines. The stern section rode in a 2/12 ton truck with the bow section in a towed 1 ½ ton trailer. A crane was necessary to launch.

With no NCO’s around, the lads wore Air Force Mittens for this picture. The truck wasn’t stuck; just in Rhine River mud as was the 5 ton with a bridge section. The trucks could always move but sometimes had trouble getting out of the ruts.

Finally, two PFC’s ready to hit the Strasse and find some trouble.

USAREUR 1966

 Weaponsman Blog often has a post up about the Special Forces. That makes sense, being ex Special Forces (if there is such a thing as ex Special Forces).

http://weaponsman.com/

This brought to mind an encounter with the Special Forces and our motley collection of PFC Roosevelt McSurly’s in the Combat Engineers.

Circa the winter of 1966, we were doing our annual clusterfuck goat roping, officially know as the Annual Combat Proficiency Test. This was a three day affair which, if you didn’t pass, you repeated. Without going into gruesome detail, believe me when I say it was not designed to be a fun time.

We were bivouacked in a forested area. The German civilians were always working in these areas even as we played soldier. God help you if you damaged a tree! A four silver acorn tabbed Forest Miester could make the meanest 1st Sergeant look like a recruit.

Our problems were increased by having 105 vehicles with roster strength of 120-130 personnel of all ranks and specialties. Everyone was a truck driver first. Our vehicles were large, not real maneuverable, and needed to be scattered to make an “air attack” harder. 

Up to our roadblock came an agriculture tractor pulling a trailer with five very fit young men riding on it. All were dressed as forest workers,  but seemed a little off. They were clean, and the tractor new and shiny. We were suspicious.

 1^st Lieutenant Fuckup IV came up and took charge. He ordered us to allow the tractor to proceed. We tried to voice our suspicions but were firmly told he didn’t need our input, just to comply with his orders, in a rude and arrogant manner.

About an hour later the umpires failed us. Chalk marks were on our water trailer, commo trailer, operations van, etc., courtesy of the “foresters”, indicating sabotage. We didn’t get to pack up. Instead, we finished the exercise knowing we would soon be repeating it.

Those Special Forces guys were too cute. With the way we dispersed our vehicles to prevent losing all of them to an air or artillery strike, any concept of a guarded perimeter was a joke. Guess they didn’t want to walk in.

They must have had a hard time suppressing smirks as they watched the Lt make an ass out of himself. He strutted around like a bantam rooster. Worst officer I ever had. I wouldn’t have trusted him to procure a pet license.

It would have been interesting to be a fly on the wall during that after action debriefing.

On a few occasions, we provided safety boats (27’ Bridge Erection Boats) at night while people paddled around in various inflated craft. We weren’t told, nor did we ask, who/what these units were. We had a fair idea, as only one part of the Army, at that point in time, wore berets or non standard head gear like forage caps.  Our only contact was when some of them would come over and mooch our hot coffee. 

Side bar, two engines per craft means two exhaust manifolds that will heat up cans of water quickly. We engineers made our comfort a priority.

Moving on to the Forest Meisters, after an exercise was over, we would go back in a few days to mitigate “maneuver damage”. One time a particularly inept unit member managed to knock down a scrawny sorry looking excuse for a tree by backing into it. Springing into action, we righted the tree, packed dirt around the roots, glued the bark back on, and left the area. Herr Forest Meister came in the next day to make his inspection. Of course, he parked his VW Beetle by the tree. Of course, the damn tree fell over on his car. Sucked to be the SLJO that day (Shitty Little Jobs Officer – other duties assigned, including Public Affairs Officer, Graves Registration, Supply Officer, Mess Officer, etc.)

Some of us thought those blanket heads borrowed that tractor and trailer from the Forest Meisters. Part of their skill set; making nice with the locals. Just another reason for us to dislike Forest Meisters, since we had an adversarial relationship with them anyway. We enjoyed the mental picture of the tree on the car. In fact, we laughed our asses off. German American friendship wasn’t a high priority with us.

In later years one of my best friends was ex Special Forces.

https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5926528617816553064#editor/target=post;postID=4237008542382486758;onPublishedMenu=allposts;onClosedMenu=allposts;postNum=1;src=postname

Dirty Al was just a tad bit full of himself when discussing Special Forces, but, if you walked the walk, you are entitled to talk the talk. The amount of motivation, effort, and dedication needed for that job was way beyond the likes of me.

Hope this type of material isn’t boring anyone. A past post, “Fulda Gap”, is still getting six or so views a week.

http://wellseasonedfool.blogspot.com/2013/08/fulda-gap.html

Rambling down memory lane seems to be part of getting old. Some relatives enjoy hearing old stories, from me and others, as part of the family lore. Lucky world; I’m the only blogger.

You'll Be Sorry

Tam has an amusing post, “Imagine Airman Johnny’s disappointment……….” about  farm tractors used by the military.

http://booksbikesboomsticks.blogspot.com/

There are many of us who can relate if we grew up as cowboys doing those glamorous cowboy occupations, fixing and building fence, and stacking hay bales.

We head off to the US Army with great anticipation, expecting to drive tanks and shoot large guns. Once there, we learn of a military specialty called, “Combat Engineer”, where some aspects are  building barbed wire barriers and stacking sand bags.  Little training is needed by cowboys.

We spent one entire week learning about barbed wire entanglements. First, you have your basic barbed wire and specialty anchors.

Then you have some truly nasty stuff called concertina wire. 

After building the barrier, you learn how to defeat it.

One unpleasant fact you learn is Combat Engineers are primarily assault troops, clearing the way for the Infantry through barbed wire and mine fields. Gee, isn’t that special.

After spending a week wrestling with the wire, you must gather it up and store it properly, so the next trainees can use it. You didn’t think the training cadre was going to do it, did you?

Back to the training.  About two hours into the course, Private Cowboy is taken aside by one of the Staff Sergeant cadre teaching the course.  The conversation goes something like this.

SSG: “ Son,  you have done this before. I’m going to make you an Assistant Instructor.”

PVT: “Yes, Sergeant. So when these dummies over tighten the wire and it breaks, it will wrap around my legs instead of yours?”

SSG:  “I KNEW you were experienced.”

PVT:  “Yes, Sergeant.”

SSG: “You see son, I can’t Whomp these dummies along side the head. If you decide to Whomp one, I won’t see you do it.”

Those 60’s era Army NCOs  were a kind and gentle group, oh yes they were. Just ask one.