"Strap Hanger" [This section covers duty with the 11th Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, KY and in Augsburg, Germany.]
Shortly after the mortar accident, we returned to Fort Bragg and about a month later, I was shipped out. A large group of Eighty-second were transferred to the Eleventh Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. We went to Fort Campbell by troop train. That train must have gone by way of Montana because the trip took almost three days. That was my longest train ride ever, but I still pretty much enjoyed it, even if it was a bit crowded. The chow line on that train had to be a record-setter. The kitchen was in a car somewhere up near the engine and the chow line ran the entire length of the train. It seemed that we spent the entire trip in the chow line. When we arrived at Fort Campbell, we were bused from the train to the Eleventh’s Reppel Deppel. When we pulled into the Reppel Deppel there stood the sharpest soldiers I had ever seen. They were all sergeants and they were not wearing dress uniforms. They were only wearing fatigue uniforms, but they were sharper than that very first 508th paratrooper that I had seen a year earlier when I had first arrived at Fort Jackson. Those sergeants had a colored cloth background behind the metal parachute badge on their "blocked" field cap. They had the same color background with the wings embroidered on it on their fatigue jacket. The color of the background denoted their unit within the Eleventh. They also had a glider patch on the side of their field cap, patches sewn on the pockets of their jackets for Jungle Warfare, Ski Training, etc., and they had the Eleventh Airborne Division patch sewn on their left shoulder. I just thought they were sharp. I later learned that they were even sharper in their Class A uniform [dress uniform. At that time, the Eighty-second Airborne fatigue uniform included no unit patches, a plain cloth parachute badge (white wings on an OD {olive drab} background) over the US Army tab and the metal parachutist badge on your fatigue cap. That was it.] These sergeants were wearing fatigues that were tailored to be form-fitting and you could have used their "black" jump boots as a mirror while shaving. They each had a shiny brass whistle draped down from their collar to one pocket and a cute little swagger stick with shiny brass tips. I thought that the paratrooper that I had seen in the recruiting poster must be in this outfit. "He just has to be." These guys made Easy Company 325th troopers look like a bunch of boy scouts. As our bus pulled in, a group of lower-ranking enlisted men greeted us with a loud, "You’ll be S-O-R-R-Y!" Here we go again. As usual — they were right. [Several years later, I encountered several ex-World War II veterans who had met members of the Eleventh during that war. They all said, "You couldn’t associate with those Eleventh Airborne guys. All those cocky bastards wanted to do was fight." Some of those vets had known members of both the Eleventh and the 503rd Airborne Regimental Combat Team. They thought highly of the 503d. They said, "It was easy to get along with the 503rd guys. They were nothing like the guys in the Eleventh." I have a theory why the Eleventh Airborne were so unsociable. 1) All infantry divisions, including the airborne, usually had three regiments. The typical airborne division had two parachute regiments with parachute support units and one glider regiment with glider support units. For some strange reason, the eleventh was organized exactly the opposite. The 11th Airborne Division included the 187th and 188th Glider Infantry Regiments and the 511th Parachute Infantry regiment. 2) The eleventh’s glider-riders were drafted straight out of civilian life right into the glider units where they stayed from basic through combat. They had no choice. The gliders were ten times more dangerous than the parachute jumps, especially in combat, but the glider-riders did not receive any extra pay. Only the guys on jump status received extra pay. That could be one reason why at least two-thirds of the eleventh were always pissed off.] The Eleventh was nicknamed the "Angels" from World War Two. One battalion of the Five Eleventh Regiment raided a POW camp in the Philippines, killed all of the Japanese guards and freed the allied prisoners. The Five Eleventh didn’t lose anyone, except for one sprained ankle. One of the half-starved US POWs told somebody later, "They looked like angels to me." That’s how the Eleventh became the "Angels." If that same prisoner hung around long enough to get healthy again, somebody in the Eleventh would probably have punched his lights out just to watch him fall. Their actions and their shoulder patch earned the Eleventh a nickname that was much more popular amongst the enlisted men in the other army units, "The Flying Red Assholes." Their shoulder patch was a blue shield with a pair of white wings attached to a white halo centered on it. The background inside the halo was blood red with a white "11" in its center. Thus, the "Flying Red Assholes" and they seemed determined to live up to that awful nickname. A few of us were assigned to K Company, 511th Airborne Infantry Regiment. The Five-eleventh’s unit patch depicted an eightball suspended beneath a parachute. A dog that sported a halo around his head peeked out from behind the eightball. Thus, "The dogface behind the eightball." "Dogface" was an alternate term for American soldiers during World War II. If you were behind the eightball, you were in trouble. Eventually, a chronic screw-up was just called an eightball. At that time, the Eleventh was composed of three infantry regiments, the 503d, 188th, and 511th. The three regiments of the Eleventh were billeted in new masonary, multi-story barracks. They resembled civilian apartments, especially government housing projects. [Originally, the 503d had been a separate Regimental Combat Team and the 187th Regiment had been one of the Eleventh’s regiments, a glider regiment. When the Korean Conflict broke out, the Eleventh was stationed in Japan and the 187th and support units were detached and it became a Regimental Combat Team. The 187th was then sent to Korea. The 503d was assigned to the Eleventh to replace the 187th and to the best of my knowledge, the 187th was never reassigned to the Eleventh after the end of the Korean Conflict.] Personally, I preferred the old wooden barracks because of the building’s design and the way they were actually laid out on the ground. They were smaller than the modern style barracks and each platoon-sized unit had their own barracks. The interiors needed finishing such as: insulation, ceilings, paneled walls, and a modern heating system. The inside of the exterior walls weren’t even paneled much less insulated. In some of them you could see outside through the cracks. Some of them still had the old wood tongue and groove flooring but most had been covered with linoleum. Those large new apartment-like barracks just didn’t "feel" army and living in those monsters was more like being in the "projects" than being in the army. The old wooden barracks were even laid out like you were in the army. Typically, the orderly room and supply room shared one, one-story building and was located on one end of the company area. The supply room end fronted what the enlisted men referred to as Motor Pool Street and guess what was located across that street from the Supply Room, the Motor Pool of course. Naturally, the real name of these streets varied from post to post and unit to unit, but the enlisted system was much simpler. The Orderly Room end fronted Orderly Room Street. On the opposite end of the company area was Mess Hall Street and in between were four, two story barracks and a one story Day Room building which fronted Mess Hall Street and of course the Mess Halls were located across the street from the Day Room. The mess halls also bordered on the Regimental Parade Field and on the opposite side of the parade field were the Bachelor Officer’s Quarters which fronted a small street and across that street and also fronting the main avenue through the area was the Regimental Headquarters. If it was a division area, side streets separated each regimental area from the next. The first unit beginning at the side street was Head and Head [Headquarters & Headquarters Company]. A PX [Post Exchange] and Gym were usually located in their area on Mess Hall Street. The units then were arranged in sequence alphabetically, A Company, B Company, etc., with four companies per battalion, three rifle companies, and one heavy weapons company. Each regimental headquarters building was plainly marked with its unit designation and each company orderly room was also plainly marked. There is a good chance that I am the only GI that feels this way about the old barracks. In the old system, finding a buddy in another unit was easy, unless your buddy was in SF [Special Forces]. SF never marked their buildings with their unit identification. They went strictly by building numbers, except for the company guideon which may or may not be displayed outside the orderly room door. If you didn’t know where you were going, you obviously did not belong there and you would stand out like a sore thumb. Every building on a military post had a number and a fire light at each entrance. The telephone number for the post fire department on army bases worldwide was 17. All you had to know was the building number and the purpose of the fire light was to illuminate the building number. So the army had the "911" system a long, long time ago. With those old wooden barracks, they needed a fast system. [The old World War II barracks have been removed from almost all of the large army bases. When I visited Tank Hill at Fort Jackson, SC a few years ago, which was where I took Basic Combat Training, they were in the process of removing the old barracks. It was a sad sight. I miss the old barracks. If I were single, I would love to have an old orderly/supply room or day room building converted into a single family home, if it was insulated and had central heat and air-conditioning that is. Hell, I would even enjoy a quonset hut, provided it was insulated and had central heat and air-conditioning. That damn thing would stand up under just about any kind of weather. Well, if you still had any doubts, I guess that finally proves that I am a nut. Personally, I think complete "sets" of those old wooden barracks should be preserved for posterity and offered free to Military Associations or Military Museums whenever a post decides to replace them with newer buildings.] Our company shared our building with another rifle company, Item Company. That situation sucked. There was no unit integrity. King Company, 511th was as different from Easy Company, 325th as night is different from day. Every morning we had to make our bunks with white collars and usually we had to lay out certain equipment or clothing on our bed which our CO would inspect. Normally, when you made your bunk, you used your second blanket for a dust cover to protect your pillow. When you made a "white collar bunk," you folded your second blanket and placed it on the foot of your bed and you neatly folded the top sheet and blanket down the length of a dollar bill and then tucked that in under the mattress. In K Company, the barracks were inspected every morning, sometimes by the Company Commander, sometimes by the first soldier [First Sergeant] and sometimes by both. One day one of the goof-offs in our platoon had somehow dodged duty and was goofing off in our platoon area when he heard the CO and First Soldier coming up the stairs to inspect. He quickly squeezed his skinny ass into an empty metal wall locker and closed the door. Naturally, when the CO spotted the unlocked locker he opened it. Out sprang the goof-off who snapped to attention and yelled, "Attention!," and saluted. He quickly joined the First Soldier’s screw-up detail. Our Company CO and First Soldier were like the old cartoon characters, Mutt and Jeff and K Company began calling their company the "Mutt and Jeff Company." The CO, Captain Queen, was a black man who stood about 6’9" and weighed about 300 pounds. A little later, I learned that he had served in the Korean War with the only all black Airborne Ranger Company in the army. The First Soldier, Master Sergeant Ernesty, was a white man who stood all of 5’6," maybe only 5’5," and was a fat butterball. Ernesty spoke in a gravel voice, some folks may have referred to it as a whiskey voice. Ernesty had also served in the Korean War with the 187th Airborne Regimental Combat Team. They did have one thing in common, they were both a son of a bitch. That damn Ernesty was as mean as a striped snake and that damn CO wasn’t much better. Most mornings we were awakened by Irish ballads sung by a cocky Staff Sergeant named Ryan. Sergeant Ryan, who had served with the Eighty-second Airborne during World War II, spoke with an Irish brogue. The tune of one of his favorite ballads is still stuck in my mind, but I can't recall the words. Seems like it was about a guy named Paddy Reilly leaving home. He sang that song more than any other. Every morning for as long as I was in the Five-eleventh, we stood a battalion muster reveille. While we were at Fort Campbell, this is how the "roll call report" usually went, "Fall in!" "Re-e-e-port!" "Item Company, ten old AWOLs, five new AWOLs, Sir!" "King Company, fifteen old AWOLs, ten new AWOLs, Sir!" "Love Company, five old AWOLs, twelve new AWOLs, Sir!" and so it went down the line. I do not recall ever hearing any unit respond with the normal "All present and accounted for, Sir!" Not once. During my time at Fort Campbell with the 11th, it seemed that our battalion averaged about having ten percent of their soldiers AWOL [Absent Without Leave]. The enlisted men simply referred to this as "being over the hill." It meant that those men had left without permission. [Also, there is no "J" Company in the US Army. According to the latrine gossip, the first "J" Company had been a bunch of eightballs who did not properly care for their equipment and avoided training. They were supposedly wiped out in battle because of equipment failure and panic.] I soon discovered that the Five-eleventh had eightballs and goof-offs also — a lot of them. The "brown boot" rule also applied here, even though most of the enlisted men were wearing what sure looked like black boots to me. Uniform jackets could be form-fitted but the trouser legs could not be pegged to less than seventeen inches regardless of what size the man's lower leg was. Sometimes we were inspected while standing reveille in the mornings. When Captain Queen spotted a soldier wearing trousers that were pegged down to less than seventeen inches or black boots, he whipped out his trusty pocket knife. The good Captain would then convert the non-regulation boots into oxfords or the non-regulation trousers into Bermuda shorts right there in formation. This happened anytime Captain Queen spotted a man wearing non-regulation trousers or boots, not just during inspections. Later, the offenders were given an Article 15 usually referred to as, "Company Punishment" That’s when Ernesty took over. All screw-ups were assigned to the screw-up detail where they really caught hell. They were sometimes sent into the crawl space under the barracks with mess kit spoons and told to dig a six-by. They also performed any other evil deed that Ernesty’s sadistic mind could conjure up. [An Article 15 is the army’s version of punishment for a misdemeanor offense. Everyone is always convicted in an Article 15 or a Summary Court-martial. It’s just a matter of procedure and paperwork and how much punishment they want to inflict on the offender. A Special Court-martial isn’t much better, it just involves an officer from outside your company. The easiest one to beat is the General Court-martial. In a general court-martial, you get to present your case to the court-martial board, of which one member may be an enlisted person if the defendant so requests and if the defendant is enlisted. You can also be represented by a lawyer. They had to offer the poor guilty son-of-a-bitch a choice. For example a Special Court-martial or a General Court-Martial. I was advised by an old sergeant, if it is one of your options, always take the General Court-Martial. Like I said, you can't beat a Special Court-Martial anyway even if you are 100% innocent ― unless the guilty party has mercy on you and confesses. Don't hold your breath waiting for that to happen.] But little hazards like this did not daunt the mischievous and devious enlisted men of the Eleventh. Someone quickly discovered cordovan colored boot dye and shoe polish. Cordovan is a very dark brown with a reddish hue. It was not black, but it was darker and much more desirable than the natural baby-shit brown color of the army-issued boots. We later discovered that you could melt cordovan and black shoe polish and mix them fifty-fifty. This produced an even darker brown that only direct sunlight would show as having a brown tint, especially if applied to boots that had been dyed with cordovan colored dye. Of course, once mixed, you stored this "special" polish in the "cordovan" shoe polish can. The American enlisted man has a very keen native intelligence and tends to be a shrewd devil who quickly becomes an expert at surviving in the worst of conditions. To the best of my knowledge, no officer ever caught on to this trick. If any NCO or Officer did get wise, to the best of my memory they never punished anyone for it. The first person that I heard about after I hit K Company, was General Wayne C. Smith, whom, I believe, was transferring out as I was processing into the outfit. Thank God for small favors. If any of the stories that the old 11th soldiers told me about their former division commander are true, he must have been a damn psychopath. A rumor that went through the entire division said that, Wayne C. made all of his children, and even their pet dog, make a parachute jump. He wanted them to truly be an "airborne" family. Families that jump together, I suppose go "Ahhhhh shiiiiiit" together. Wayne C. held parades and full-field inspections every payday for the entire division. After the inspection, the entire division went on a 20 mile speed march with full-field gear. A full-field inspection is where you pitch tents and display all of your field gear and any other gear that the unit required. A speed march is where you walk as fast as possible. If the long-legged men are in front, everyone from the first platoon back will run about half of the time. If you wanted to get paid, you had to stand the inspection and make the march. At that time, no one got paid by check. Everyone had to stand in the pay line and collect their pay in cash. Wayne C. also required every 11th trooper to qualify in a combat swim with full-field gear, including the steel helmet. This meant that you had to jump into an Olympic-size swimming pool and swim to the other end of the pool while fully clothed and wearing a full-field pack and helmet. Some of the troopers who couldn’t swim jumped into the pool without complaint. They went straight to the bottom and tried to hold their breath and walk to the other end of the pool. When their forward progress stopped or maybe when their air bubbles stopped floating to the surface, the lifeguards were allowed to save them. [I think this was intended to encourage them to learn how to swim. It would have motivated me to learn how to swim.] One section of Fort Campbell was nicknamed the "Bird Cage." The "Bird Cage" was a secret compound that was guarded by marines where the navy stored secret material. They sometimes convoyed that material to the airfield on Fort Campbell. We figured that this secret material was atomic bombs because the air field was a SAC [Strategic Air Command] base. One day Wayne C. was in his chopper and flew over the "Bird Cage" on Fort Campbell. A marine guard shot at him and missed. Wayne C. court-martialed the marine for incompetence — because he missed. [In January 2001, I received an email from one of the guys that guarded that convoy from the Bird Cage to the airfield who had read this on the 11th Airborne on my web page. Here is what he told me about that duty: "...After several
months in A Company, 503rd, I got transferred to a newly formed unit,
Honor Guard Company. We were housed way down on Ohio Ave. near
Gate 2, next to the Post MP's. We even ate in their
mess hall, so we got to know them pretty well. Good people to
know, I'll
tell you. On more than one occasion, one or more of our men would
be dragged from the back of an MP pickup truck, right at the barracks
door. That's service. STRAC [Strategic Army Command] was the army’s equivalent of SAC. Or at least that is what I think STRAC stood for. The actual name is difficult to remember because being an enlisted man, I never referred to it by its proper name. The enlisted men quickly nicknamed STRAC as "Shit, The Russians Are Coming" and that nickname stuck forever. American enlisted men have a knack for getting right to the point. I was told that officer candidates at one time were warned, "Beware of the enlisted men! They are treacherous and as sly as a fox." The enlisted men that become professional sergeants were greatly respected for the most part and their use promoted in OCS. I don't know how true it is, but here is one story that relates to that subject. One instructor in OCS only asked one question when he tested his students on the subject of "Delegation of Authority." First, he gave his students this situation, "You are a young lieutenant and your Regimental Commander assigns you the responsibility of erecting a flagpole on the parade ground." He went on to describe the flag pole and its foundation in great detail. Then he asked the students, "How would you erect the flagpole?" Most of the students described how they would erect the flag pole step-by-step and in great detail. The "correct" solution to this problem however was simply, "I would ask my First Sergeant for one good sergeant and then I would turn the job over to that sergeant and see to it he had whatever he needed to get the job done." The army officer corps is infamous for gobbley-gook. One example of their over-educated gobbley-gook concerns jumping as a "wind dummy." On many parachute jumps, a wind dummy is dropped to evaluate the wind conditions before any troops are jumped. Usually, the plane does not have a wind dummy to drop, so one trooper is required to jump first and act as the wind dummy. When this jumper is an enlisted man, he is simply referred to as a "wind dummy." When this jumper is an officer, he is referred to as a "turbulence tester." Big deal. An enlisted man’s wife, even the Division Sergeant Major’s wife, is referred to as a "wife," but any officer’s wife was referred to as a "lady." Many an officer’s "lady" never lived up to the true meaning of that word. Too many of them just married the man because he was an officer and too many of them acted as if they wore the rank. A hurricane hit the east coast, I think it was called "Dianne," and we got a tremendous amount of rain from it. No sweat, First Soldier Ernesty was on the job. All "screw-ups" were assigned to sweep and mop the rain off the sidewalks while the rain was still pouring down and I mean it was really pouring down. Their orders were, "Mop the sidewalks dry." That was it. They stayed on the job, working in shifts, until they finally had the sidewalks dried off again, which naturally was after the storm had passed. Ernestine also put the screw-ups on the flat roof of the 4-story barracks beginning at work call in the morning and ordered them to, "Sweep the sun off the roof." In other words, they constantly swept the roof until the sun went down. My platoon, Second Platoon, was in the bay that was on the same approximate level as the roof of the mess hall and adjoined the mess hall. The mess hall section of the building was on the end of the building and it was only one story high. Some of the guys used to smuggle booze into the barracks. One of them would climb out a window and onto the mess hall roof where he would hide the booze. It seemed to me that somebody was always fighting somebody in the Eleventh. Sometimes it was company against company and sometimes it was regiment against regiment. We had several incidents between members of our Company and Item Company, the other company that shared our building. One night before I arrived at Ft. Campbell, a mob from the Five-eleventh and a mob from the Five-Oh-Eighth Airborne Regimental Combat Team faced each other off on each side of the regimental road. Many of the mob were armed with entrenching tools and bunk adapters. I never found out what caused this riot, but it took the entire MP Battalion and officers from both units to break it up. By the way, in close combat, entrenching tools and metal bunk adapters made very effective weapons. More than one desperate soldier has won the MOH [Medal of Honor] with an entrenching tool, but I can’t recall any soldiers winning the MOH with a damn bunk adapter. Even with all of that trouble, the Five-eleventh was still more like being in the paratroops than the 325th had been, which really isn’t saying very much. We could see the practice parachute jumps from our mess hall almost every day and almost every day we would see at least one parachute malfunction. The DZ [drop zone] was that close to our barracks. The Eleventh "allegedly" had a DZ ritual they followed when a trooper was killed parachuting. They left the body lying where it hit and they made all of the other jumpers file past the body and look at it. It was never my misfortune to personally witness or participate in this unpleasant ritual. I don't know whether they were trying to weed out the men with a weak stomach or emphasizing the need to follow proper jump procedure. All of the DZs at Fort Bragg were plowed and sandy. The DZs at Fort Campbell were never plowed and I never saw a single grain of sand anywhere on that post, just clay. The practice DZ on the Air Force Base near Main Post was where we made "pay" jumps. It was a hard grassy pasture, but at least it had been cleared of trees, stumps and large rocks. The tactical DZs were scattered all over post and they had not been cleared of all trees, stumps or large rocks. The army requires each jumper to jump at least once every three months to qualify for jump pay. If you’re just making a jump for pay purposes, there is no training maneuver involved. You usually wear nothing but your fatigue uniform, parachutes and helmet. We referred to this as a "Hollywood" jump because that’s how movie heroes are always shown jumping into combat. For some reason when Hollywood producers make a movie about paratroopers making a parachute jump, it is never realistic. They never show them properly equipped for a combat jump. An infantry paratrooper fully dressed-out for an actual combat jump is miserable and looks it. He is loaded down with so much equipment [300 pounds on the average-including the chutes] he can barely move. He is in constant pain and standing up and climbng into the aircraft usually requires assistance. During the six and half years that I served in the infantry, I only made a handful of Hollywood Jumps. I was assigned to Gator’s squad. Gator was a Speck Three [Specialist Third Class] whose real name was Byron O. Gates’. Gates was from Tennessee almost on the Alabama line. Gates’ was the machine gunner and I was his assistant. Gates was short, dark haired, and built like a fire plug. The other gunner was Joe Del "Jody" Manasco from Tupelo, Mississippi. Jody played football at Mississippi State and looked it. Jody’s assistant gunner was Brian S. Meyers I, a tall thin kid, who was from Paramus, New Jersey. The ammo bearers were Robert "Bob" Short, a tall even thinner kid, from Chicago, Illinois, Rodriguez from Cuba, Bobby E. "Mouse" Richards, a short dark haired kid, from Greenwood, Mississippi, and Lynwood Morgan, a tall lanky black, from Pennsylvania. I can not recall everyone else that was assigned to our squad at that time. I know that Dan Fink, a dark haired short kid from Ohio, was later a part of our squad, but I can't recall if he was a part of it from the beginning. I do not recall who was our squad leader when I first joined the squad. Shortly afterwards, I believe Gator became the squad leader and I moved up to gunner. Gates’ running buddy at the time was PFC Randall who was in one of the other rifle platoons. Both Gates and Randall looked sharp in uniform, but they were a tad wild and crazy. Randall was infamous for his "sticky fingers," but Gator was "regular army" [professional soldier]. Gates made the mistake of going on pass with the wrong buddies.. The other three planned on going AWOL all along, but didn't bother to tell Gates that. Gates went to sleep in the car thinking he was going back to camp and woke up AWOL. He wanted to leave them and return to camp, but they talked him out of it. One of them could talk Gator into just about anything then. In addition to being a thief, he was also a first-class con-artist. They came back about three weeks later. They were busted [got reduced back down to "Buck Private"] and sent to the post stockade. If the army had found out how they financed their ad-lib vacation, they would have gotten much worse punishment because Randall had paid for the trip by shop lifting and stealing cars or at least that’s what I was told. Then Specialist Third Class Jack B. Watson, a former motorcycle cop from Wilmington, North Carolina, became our squad leader. Jack was a good-sized blonde who stood about six feet tall. He was muscular built and weighed about 180-190 pounds. Jack did not get along with another squad leader in our platoon whom I will call Specialist Stephens, who acted like he was a Nazi Gestapo. One night Jack had about all of Stephans attitude that he could handle. When Stephens was alone in his cadre room, Jack paid him a visit. He told Stephens what he thought of him and then he commenced pounding on him. That incident seemed to have little affect on Stephens because he still acted like a jerk. [Jack got out of the army after his first hitch and returned to his hometown where he began as a deckhand on a tugboat and now he is a harbor pilot there. That took a lot of hard work and dedication.] We didn’t think PT could get any worse — but it did. Every now and then, we took PT while wearing our gas masks. We also practiced bayonet drill while wearing gas masks and that too was an unpleasant experience. There was only one good thing about wearing that damn gas mask — the sergeants and officers couldn’t understand what you were calling them. I pulled guard duty several times while at Fort Campbell. Once I had to pull shotgun guard on prisoners from the stockade who were out on work detail. Captain Queen told me, "If your prisoners escape, you will take their place in the stockade until they are caught." After I relayed this information to my prisoners, I added, "Boys, I personally don’t care if you escape or not because I have no grievance with you. I just want to make sure that you understand the situation. I will not take your place in that damn stockade. If you try to escape, I will shoot you. I will do my level best to just blow one of your legs off with this damn shotgun, but if by chance I should miss and do more harm, I just want you to know that it will be unintentional." They didn’t try to escape, but maybe they weren’t interested in escaping anyway because they slept in the "tent city" outside the stockade at nights. The Eleventh had so many men serving time in the stockade, they couldn’t fit all of them inside the stockade. The commander had tents erected just outside the stockade to hold the ones who were serving time for the less violent crimes and who were the least likely to go AWOL or, if they did, they would be of little threat to anyone. The Eleventh had the equivalent of one battalion in the stockade or tent city at all times. Just before we departed for Germany, the division commander emptied tent city of almost all of the Eleventh personnel and sent them back to their units so they would have enough men to send to Germany. I believe that was when Gates and Randal returned to our company. Anyway, when I picked up my prisoners for detail, it was before daybreak. The guys inside the stockade were practicing dismounted drill. Their leader shouted, "Fall in! At ease! Now men, I want you to remember that you are not prisoners. You are soldiers in confinement. Is that clear?" "Clear Sir!" "Prisoners, Atten-hut!" Then he marched them around and around the compound . Their leader was Private Love. Naturally, they were doing the "Stockade Shuffle" and following Private Love in singing Jody Cadence. Periodically, Love would shout, "What do the girls in Hoptown say when I go to town?" and the other prisoners would shout back in unison, "It’s Love baby, it"s Love." To me, that was funny. When I arrived back at K Company after my shotgun detail was finished and relayed that to some of the old soldiers, they told me who "Love" was. Staff Sergeant Love had been assigned to Item Company, 511th. According to the rumor, Sergeant Love had apparently gotten fed up with his company commander and shot him. Normally, you would go to a federal prison for something like that, but here he was in the Fort Campbell Stockade. That indicated to me that somebody on his court-martial board figured that his company commander deserved to be shot. This was winter time at Fort Campbell and walking a guard post was miserable duty. The only guard posts where the guard was issued ammunition was the stockade and the ammunition dump. No one else was issued any ammunition with their weapon. So the only guards that took guard duty seriously, except for the young soldiers and the really gung-ho guys, were the ones that were issued live ammo for their weapons. A lot of our guys had a good head on their shoulders, even some of the goof-offs. One of our goof-offs was assigned to guard a warehouse full of salvage clothes. It was bitter cold outdoors. The guard would stop in the boiler room every other lap to briefly warm his hands and feet. Then he stopped every lap and then he just stayed there. He became drowsy in the nice warm room and leaned against the inner wall and fell asleep standing up with his head against the wall. Suddenly, the boiler room door burst open and in popped the Officer of the Guard with the Corporal of the Guard close behind. The quick-thinking guard, put one forefinger to his lips and whispered, "Shush!, Somebody’s in there!" pointing towards the wall. The Officer sent the sergeant back for additional men and then surrounded the building and called the MPs and the person responsible for the building because it was still locked and there was no visible sign of a forced entry. The MPs and guards could not get inside. When a sergeant finally arrived and let them in that building, they searched every inch of it for the thieves. All the while, the quick-witted Guard never cracked a smile. Finally, it was agreed that the guard must have heard rats and that was the end of it. That slick son of a bitch got away with it. "Beware of enlisted men, they are treacherous and as sly as a fox." At that time, many of the Eleventh troopers took really crazy chances during parachute jumps just for the thrill of it. A lot of men did not want to go overseas with the Eleventh. Some of them resorted to all sorts of zany antics. They were trying to get discharged with a Section 8 [psycho discharge], transferred, hospitalized or even jailed. Several of them unhooked their static line from the anchor line cable and jumped with just their reserve parachute. That worked for them. Three sergeants "daisy chained." Daisy Chaining is against regulations. Three jumpers are the maximum that can "daisy chain" from the normal jump altitude of 1,250 feet. That would allow them enough room for one of them to open a reserve parachute should one of the three experience a parachute malfunction. There is no "safe" way to Daisy Chain. A "daisy chain" is when only one of the three men attach their static line to the anchor line cable in the plane. The last of these three men to jump would be the one that hooks up to the anchor line cable. The first man of this trio hooks his static line to a metal D- Ring in the harness of the second man to jump. The second man does the same to the last of the trio. All three daisy-chain jumpers fall until the anchor line cable in the aircraft pulls the third jumper’s parachute open. When his chute opens, it pulls the second man’s chute open which in turn pulls the first man’s chute open. The parachute of the last man in the daisy chain to jump is the first chute to open. The first man in a daisy chain jumps first and falls the farthest, about 500-700 feet, before his chute fully opens. Military static-line parachute training jumps are usually made from 1,250 feet. At that altitude, there is no room for error or equipment failure when daisy-chaining. The last jumper’s parachute must open before the other two parachutes will open. Daisy-chaining was a very stupid thing to do. The parachute jump when Gates was injured is another example of just how nutty these guys were. Gates was the first man in the stick and Randall was the second man in the same stick....Randall was behind Gates. When the jumpmaster stood Gates in the door, Randall yelled at Gates, "Betcha I beat your ass out the door." Gates thought Randall was joking and he just laughed and said, "Okay, you dumb son of a bitch." Randall wasn’t joking. When the green light flashed, Randall slashed down on Gates’ nearest arm, pushed Gates aside, and beat Gates out the door....by a split second. Gates and Randall both left the plane almost as one jumper — but Randall was first. The third man in line, who was also from our platoon, "rode Gate’s backpack" out. If you followed a jumper too closely out the door, you "rode his backpack." The third jumper followed Gates so close he was smacked right in the face by Gates’ backpack. His entire face was raw and bloody all over. Gates more or less fell out the door when Randall forced himself in front. His poor body position caused Gates to spin and his parachute to twist very badly. Gate’s chute was so twisted it could not open properly. Gates dropped past Randall, and as he did so, his lines and chute slid across Randall’s body. Randall thought that Gates’ chute was not going to open at all so he quickly wrapped both arms around Gates’ lines and chute and held on for dear life. Randall finally lost his grip when Gates was still about 30 feet above the DZ. Gates fell the rest of the way to the ground and broke a big toe. Gates rolled around on the ground holding his foot with both hands and cussing a blue streak. The chaplain, who had jumped earlier ran over to him. The Chaplain, who was a Captain, reached Gates and bending down asked Gates, "Are you hurt son?" Gates replied, "No you stupid son of a bitch, I always roll around on the ground, hold my foot, and cuss like this after every damn jump." Without another word, the chaplain walked away and left Gates for the medics. The DZSO [Drop Zone Safety Officer] arrived before Gates was taken to the hospital and tried to sort out what happened. He soon became very confused trying to figure out how the second man to jump had caught the unopened chute of the first man that jumped in the same stick. At least that was the way that the officer assumed they jumped. The bewildered DZSO was still scratching his head over that when the medics took Gates to the hospital. One night when both Gates and Randall were on KP duty a group of black guys from Item Company walked into the mess hall and asked for something to eat. This was long after the last meal had been served. The cooks and KPs were trying to finish cleaning up so they could get out of there. The cook told them no and they cast doubt upon his legitimate heritage. That’s when Gates and Randall stepped in and told them to get the hell out so they could finish cleaning up. Words led to physical violence. At least one of the blacks pulled a knife and cut Gates across his forehead. Randall grabbed a chair from the dining room and attacked. Randall drove the guys outside the mess hall with that damn chair. The brawl was broken up before it got anymore serious than that and the guys from Item Company were court-martialed. There was seldom a boring day in K Company. Troops from King company and Item Company had other similar encounters over the next couple of years. When I found out what had happened, I became very angry. Most of the guys in our company were upset. The MPs arrested the two blacks and as they loaded them up into MP jeeps, I yelled, "Good enough for you, you fucking niggers." The instant that I said it, I regretted saying it because I knew all blacks weren’t like that. We had a couple of blacks in our platoon and they were good guys. Never before had I used that damn word. I had never heard anyone in my family use it. Hell, I had seldom ever even heard someone else use it. Sure enough here came, Goodwin. "Hey Val," Goody said. "Now why do you want to be using that word? I’m black and I’m on your side in this, not theirs." As soon as I said that stupid word I knew that I had screwed up and that I would have to eat humble pie, but I didn’t know that I would have to do it so damn fast. Just before we left Fort Campbell, I screwed up again. In fact, our battalion had cleared our barracks and was temporarily billeted on main post at Repple Depple awaiting transportation. When Gates and Randall had returned from their informal vacation and before they had been sent to the stockade, Randall talked me into keeping a pair of brass knuckles for him until he got out of the stockade. They really weren’t brass, they were made of lead. That was a stupid thing to do and I knew that it was a stupid thing to do, but that damn Randall talked me into it anyway. Did I tell you he was a con-artist? Eventually, I began to carry those damn things around with me because, like I said, I was a dummy and because there were so many altercations between members of the Eleventh and many times it was a gang, usually blacks, jumping on just one trooper. The last night that our company was at Repple Depple before shipping out for Germany, I carried them with me when I went out with Jack Watson. Jack and I had two or three beers at the local beer garden which was absolutely packed shoulder-to-shoulder with Five-eleventh guys and then we went to the PX which was next door or at least almost next door. The street in that immediate vicinity was also packed shoulder-to-shoulder with our guys. While Jack was talking to one of the lady cashiers somebody threw a tear gas grenade through the front door of the PX. Jack raced out of there through the front door like a bunny rabbit. Jack’s agility and speed amazed me; I didn’t know that he could move that fast. The guys sitting at tables in there also fled the scene right behind Jack. Being a bit tipsy, I just stood there and stared at all of this and laughed because I thought that it was just a smoke grenade. When I turned around to say something to the cashier, there was no one there. The cash register drawer was wide open but she was long gone out the back. That’s when the odor of the tear gas hit me and that’s when the spirit hit my feet and I headed for the front door. By the time I finally made it out of the PX, I had really gotten a face-full of that gas and I was pissed-off. The first thing that I saw when I left the PX was an MP sedan that was parked directly in front of the PX. As soon as I saw that MP car, I thought that the tear gas grenade had been thrown by the MPs. They’re the only ones who legally have the stuff and I thought they had tossed the grenade because they thought there was a riot in the PX. The PX had been packed and the guys were very loud and boisterous. I commenced to break parts of that MP car with those damn brass knuckles. Then the MPs arrived. That’s when I realized that I had screwed up — big time. They shoved me into the back seat of that sedan and I slid over to the opposite side and opened the door. The driver just happened to be passing enroute to the driver’s seat and he slammed that door shut, effectively preventing my escape. The MPs were so busy that night they never searched me. They never even identified me. They just cuffed me and took me straight to the MP Station. At the station, they uncuffed me and deposited me in a holding cell all by myself. One other trooper was in the cell across from me. Yep, little Donnie was in jail. Donnie did not like being in jail. As soon as they left me in the holding cell, I began prying out the nails and staples that held the metal mesh wiring over the one window in our cell. I used my fingers, keys, dog tags, and my P-41 can opener on those nails and staples. My fellow prisoner apparently did not mind being locked up. He just sat there and watched me in wide-eyed wonder. Of course his cell didn't have a window. When those bastards finally came back for me, I only needed one more stinking nail loosened so I could squeeze through that damn window. That’s when they searched me, identified me, and booked me. That’s when it dawned on me how serious having those damned knuckles were. That impression was definitely re-enforced when Captain Queen busted me from Private First Class back down to Buck Private the first thing the next morning and I had just gotten my one little stripe sewn on all of my uniforms. We loaded on trucks to go to the train station as soon as I left the orderly room. We took a troop train to the harbor at Wilmington. [Sometime in 1999 or 2000, the guy that threw that tear gas bomb into the PX read this on my web page and contacted me and confessed. He apologized for causing the problem. He wasn't an MP, he was with the 11th's Medical Battalion and drunk out of his mind at the time. His buddies came up with the idea because of all the hazing the 511th guys in the PX gave them the first time they entered the PX. They went back to their unit and got the tear gas grenade and returned and that was when they tossed it into the PX.] Bad things happen to you
when you associate with people who are self-destructive. This was my
first lesson on this subject, but it would take several more before it
finally sunk into my rock head. Some of the chaplains in the airborne units became legends during their own times. Sometimes for courageous acts and sometimes for other reasons. Just before I arrived at Fort Campbell, one of the Eleventh Airborne regiments had gone to Alaska for winter training. While they were still in garrison there, one of the Catholic Chaplains walked into one of the barracks one night. He stumbled into a crap game. The chaplain got down on his knees and put his money on the line with the rest of the guys. In a very short time, the chaplain had taken all of their money. As he pocketed their money on his way out of the barracks, he said over his shoulder, "I’ll put this in the offering plate this Sunday and that’ll teach you lads to not gamble." We sailed for Germany aboard a troopship from Wilmington, NC in late January or early February 1956. There is no need for me to bore anyone with a detailed description of every day aboard a troop ship. A description of a typical day on a troopship and a typical meal in the ship’s dining hall shall suffice, of this I am sure. First you get up and go to a latrine to clean up before breakfast. Troopship latrines and brigs are always located in the extreme ends of the ship, either the bow or the stern. This is also the roughest riding part of the ship. I’ll bet you think that they have "closed plumbing" in troop ship latrines. You naive civilian, you. A stainless steel open trough runs beneath the commodes, sinks and urinals. Only a damned sadist could have designed a troopship latrine. The contents of those troughs spilled over into the floor every now and then when that stinking tub "shuddered" or when the drains were plugged with an abundance of puke. By "shudder," I meant the vibration when the sea is so rough the props clear the water and instead of churning water they shake the entire ship from bow to stern. If you aren’t sick before you go to the latrine, you will be before you leave it. No one ventured near the latrine except when nature absolutely forced you to do so. If you survive the latrine and still have the stomach to face breakfast, you get in the chow line. If you can find it somewhere down there in the bowels of that ship. If I didn’t need something for my stomach to throw up, I would probably have skipped meals for the entire trip. If that damn torture chamber wasn’t pitching, yawing, rocking, rolling, and jammed elbow-to-elbow full of deathly sick GIs who were puking their guts out, I would probably have said that they did serve good meals on a troopship—except for ice cream, and all you could eat by the way. For some stupid reason, they only had coffee-flavored ice cream. Less than one percent of GIs like coffee-flavored ice cream. Why the government buys odd-flavored ice cream is a mystery to me...unless the navy mess officers have a very sick sense of humor. Troopship DROs [dining room orderlies—KPs assigned to the dining room] served stainless steel pitchers of iced tea on the dining hall tables. Good service, right? Wrong! Our land-lubbing GIs were the DROs. The first time they pulled DRO duty, they invariably "filled" the pitchers to the brim and naturally they all spilled as soon as they were placed on the table. Some guys puked into their trays before they reached the end of the chow line. Others made it that far only to drop their trays, grab their mouth and run out of the mess hall. Others held out until after they reached a dining room table and those guys were the ones you really had to watch. If you didn’t hold onto your tray every time the ship rolled, it would slide away from you. And when your tray slid back in front of you, it might be decorated with something it didn’t have when it left you. Perhaps a gift from that deathly ill, pale GI sitting beside you. To prevent this, you soon learned to take a piece of your bread and dunk it into your coffee, milk or tea and place that on the table beneath your tray. This would hold your tray firmly in place, even if a neighbor’s tray crashed into it. Every meal is a repeat of breakfast, only the menu changes. You also soon learn, that you never go near a water fountain on a troopship. Don’t ask me why because I don’t know, but all of the water fountains on a troop ship are always full of puke. For that matter, every corner, nook, and under every stairwell is also colorfully decorated with partially processed troopship meals. After enjoying a leisurely breakfast in the lovely dining hall, you return to your sleeping compartment and report to your cleaning detail. Somebody has to clean up all of that damn puke. If you are not on the cleaning detail, you must find a place to hide because those sadistic sailors slowly and methodically put every part of that ship "Off Limits" to all troops except those on the cleaning details. However, not once during five troopship crossings have I ever heard those jerks on the loudspeakers put those same areas back "On Limits" after they were cleaned. The cleaning detail starts with the Troop Compartments and Latrines. Then it moves up the stairwells deck-by-deck, until it finally reaches topside. Then five thousand deathly-ill GIs are searching for a hiding place somewhere on the top deck of that damn ship because everything below decks is still "off limits." By this point, many troops are so sick they don’t care if the cleaning detail sweeps them overboard. After they have been at sea more than one full day, many men never leave their bunk. They just lay there and puke. If they happen to be on an upper bunk and you happen to be on a lower bunk, that’s tough. By the second day, they think they are dying. By the third day, they know they are dying. By the fourth day, they pray to die and may even beg you to kill them. If Uncle Sam should ever invite you to take an all-expense-paid cruise by troopship to some exotic port of his choice, maybe you should consider a prolonged vacation in Canada instead. The last that I heard, Canada was a lovely country that did not bounce about. Remembering how I had joined the army, I am so glad that I hadn’t been passing by a navy recruiting office at the time. Bouncing about on the ocean is not my cup of tea and apparently neither the navy nor the army had any medicine that would alleviate seasickness. At least, if they had it, they never offered us any. For entertainment during our "cruise" we had movies, boxing matches and of course watching each other puke our guts up. Our fearless leaders encouraged boxing in a makeshift ring topside between different companies. These brawls were pretty rough, much to the delight of the troops, as none of the fighters were boxers, just brawlers. When we finally docked in Bremerhaven, Germany, even the deathly ill soldiers managed to get up out of their bunks and drag their dying ass down the gangplank and off of that God-forsaken ship. The ground, which thankfully did not yaw, roll, pitch or shudder, was covered with a light dusting of snow and ice. Even though we were loaded down with our AWOL bag [a very small overnight bag] and duffel bag, nobody fell. We had grown accustomed to walking on much worse footing than that, at least it wasn’t moving. Everything in Germany looked different. The buildings were all built different and even the trains were built different. We traveled by train from Bremerhaven in the northern part of Germany to Augsburg in the southern part of Germany. That was a nice train ride, we really enjoyed the beautiful scenery enroute to our new duty station. Even the ones who nearly died from sea sickness loved it. Hell, anything beat being on that damn barf barge. We had only been in Sheridan Kaserne a week when we were sent on maneuvers. This was the coldest winter in Germany in fifty years. They told us that the purpose of the maneuver was to acclimatize us as quickly as possible, so we could function in their winter weather. Well, we certainly did that because we froze our butts off. The only things I can remember about that maneuver is that it was the temperature—it was very cold, the snow, ice, and the last march. We marched all day and half the night. We marched so long, I fell asleep a couple of times while walking. When we came to the steep mountains, we were told to place our packs on the supply and mess trucks. Then we kept right on marching up into the mountains. We marched uphill until sometime after midnight. The roads were sheets of ice and we slid back one step for every two steps we took forward. When we finally halted for the night some where high in those mountains, we discovered that the trucks were still at the bottom of the mountain because of the icy roads. That meant that our packs, which contained our sleeping bags and chow, were also still at the bottom of the mountain. We had to make do without them. It was about thirty degrees below freezing up high in those mountains and we had been marching for a very long time. We were sweaty down near our bodies. Some of the guys hadn’t unbuttoned their clothes while marching. Hell I had to, I had worn every damn thing that the army had issued me and I was burning up while we were marching. As I recall, I was wearing my long johns, wool shirt, wool pants, field trousers with liner, field jacket with liner, parker with liner, pile cap, mittens with liners and also the liners of my regular issue gloves, and Mickey Mouse boots. The army called them Thermal Boots or I should say Boots, Thermal....after all that’s the army way. Our jump boots were tied to our packs and our packs were in the trucks and the trucks were still down at the foot of that damn mountain. We found out later that it was best to march in your leather boots and put on dry socks and your Mickey Mouse boots when you stopped. You had to keep your sweaty socks between layers of clothes so they would dry out because, we also discovered that your feet sweat even worse in the Mickey Mouse boots. In order for the Mickey Mouse boots to keep your feet warm, you have to move your feet frequently. That was something else we had to learn the hard way. We also learned to carry your next meal between layers of clothing so it would thaw out because the officers damn sure wouldn't let you build a fire to heat it. Fighting and surviving a war in this climate required a lot more than bullets and bombs. The ones who hadn’t loosened their clothing were in real trouble when we stopped because the temperature was below zero or very near zero and their sweat soon chilled them. As usual, we could not have a fire—we might give our position away to the enemy. Hell, our worst enemy right then was the cold, not our Recon Platoon guys that were playing the role of the enemy. Some armies do not operate like that. They allow fires in such situations. Maybe those armies don’t have any damn Second Lieutenants. One of the veterans of the Korean War had told me about the Turk units that had fought there. When the enemy first swarmed up the hill towards the Turk position, the Turks jumped out of their holes and swarmed down the hill to meet them. The Turks always had a fire behind their positions for their men in weather like this. The enemy knew exactly where those Turks were, but they didn’t mess with them. My platoon’s sector included the road so I placed my machine gun beside the road and started figuring out how to get some sleep without freezing to death. There was a shallow gully in the woods just a few feet from my position. It offered some protection from the wind and the trees there protected us from the snow or frost. Gathering up some evergreen boughs, I made me a bed in the gully. After I lay back on the ground cover, I wrapped my wool scarf around my neck and face, leaving just my nose clear, and stuck my mittens up the opposite sleeve of my parka and fell asleep almost at once. Cheerful voices awoke me at the crack of dawn. Getting onto my feet was a struggle because I was stiff from the cold and when I did get up, I realized that I did not have any feet. There were two chunks of meat down there, but I couldn’t feel a thing below my ankles. The same thing with my hands. When I looked around me, it looked for all the world, like we were inside a giant, crystal chandelier. It was beautiful—deadly cold—but beautiful. Everything was covered with ice. Sparkling ice was everywhere. The voices caught my attention again and I stumbled over to my gun position at the road and saw a group of people coming up the road: the same way we had came the night before. They were mostly grammar school age children and two women. They were laughing and joking and some were even singing. When they got closer, I noticed that some of those poor little kids were only wearing short sleeve shirts, leather vests, and leather short pants. All of their cheeks were so red, they looked like someone had sliced an apple in half and glued each half to one of their cheeks. I stared in disbelief until they were out of sight. My half-frozen jaw must have dropped all the way down to my frost-covered chest. I thought that those damn Germans were crazy as loons. Of course they had spent the night in a nice warm bed covered with several thick quilts inside a nice warm house. Then I started stamping my feet and flapping my hands against my chest and thighs to try to get the circulation going. Meanwhile, I stumbled around the area and yelled at the other guys to get up before they froze where they lay. Some of them had to be kicked in the ass before they would get up. Hell, any movement brought pain with it, so they needed a little motivation. It took us an hour or so to get everyone up and to get our blood flowing again. We moved out shortly afterwards. We had to attack the enemy positions which, naturally, were higher than us. When the assault began, we had to climb straight up through the forest and it was so steep I could not climb that hill with that damn machine gun. My assistant had to pass it up to me after I climbed up and got a foothold. We were supposed to be assaulting that hill so that wasn’t worth a shit so my assistant gunner and ammo bearer tried to push me up the mountain side while I carried the machine gun. No one fired while moving, hell we couldn’t. Before we could fire, we had to brace ourselves against a rock or tree so we wouldn’t slide back down that mountain. Hell, I could have defended one side of that hill all by myself in a real war with no more than a damn carbine and a case of grenades and personally guarantee the general that no enemy soldier would make it up my side of that damn hill as long as a mortar round didn’t land on me. That attack was utterly stupid. [Many years later, I read about an airborne unit in Vietnam that attacked a similar hill, but under entirely different conditions in 1969. Their hill was just as steep, but instead of snow and ice, they had rain and mud. They called it "Hamburger Hill" because they lost so many men. They went up and down that hill several times before taking it, , but as soon as they took it they withdrew. We never took any terrain and "held it" in Vietnam that I know of. Hamburger Hill was such a tragic incident a book was written about it and a movie was also produced based on the book.] It seemed that the Angels were constantly fighting amongst themselves and for almost any reason. Actually, being assigned to the Eleventh was a little like going to prison because most of the guys immediately chose sides for protection. Some stood by their units, some paired up with guys they knew from before, and some buddied-up by race. [Most of the airborne units that I served with were clannish.] Not being the "joiner" type, this left me in a bit of a bind. The racial gangs were the absolute worst because they were formed based on hate. This was during the race riots of the fifties and the racial gangs in the Eleventh were all black. All of the other groups were mostly based on unit pride and only fought when another such group provoked them. The racist groups went out of their way to provoke members of the other races so they could yell, "prejudice." The blacks who were members of these mobs were the worst racists that I have ever personally seen. When it came to prejudice, I had a big problem. Prejudice is something that you learn and I did not learn it at home. Most of the white guys in the airborne units were from the south or at least it seemed that way. I was from the south also, but I was from East Tennessee. There are three Tennessees: East, Middle, and West. Each of these districts has its own customs and dialects. Middle and West Tennessee were Southern Sympathizers during our Civil War while most of East Tennessee was either neutral or sympathized with the Union. Most of the East Tennesseans who fought for the Confederacy were actually kidnapped from their homes and forced to serve in their military. The slave-holding states were primarily Democrats and the Unionist states were primarily Republicans. President Lincoln was a Republican. If anyone in my family or extended family referred to a black person as a "nigger" when I was growing up, I don’t remember it. They didn't discuss blacks at all, I suppose that was because very few blacks lived in East Tennessee. That’s because East Tennessee had very few plantations back during the Civil War days due to the mountainous terrain. The typical East Tennessean was as poor as a church mouse and therefore owned no slaves, but he was also very independent. Back then, the poor mountain people would rather die than beg or take a hand-out. They refused to be "be-holding" to anyone. Maybe that’s why they did not support slavery during the Civil War and that’s why they still do not support the Democratic Party today. In fact, East Tennessee almost managed to secede from Tennessee after Tennessee seceded from the United States, but the plantation owners in East Tennessee, even though very few in number, had enough money and political power to hire "enforcers" to help thwart the secessionists along with confederate soldiers sent from Middle Tennessee. During the early 1940s, my mother and I lived with my first step-father, Jack Allen, and his family on Dandridge Avenue in Knoxville, Tennessee. We shared the house with his mother, Alma "Mama" Allen, his unmarried sister, Helen Allen, and his brother, Cecil Allen. Mama Allen and Helen had rented the two bedroom house from Mrs Meeks. I thought that Mrs Meeks was a witch or a vampire. She was short, ugly as sin itself, and as old as dirt. She always dressed in all black. She always wore a dress with long sleeves and the bottom of the dress came all the way down to the floor. She never came outdoors into the sunlight and she always smelled like the inside of a medicine bottle. Mrs Meeks lived in a similar house about thirty feet behind our house, except her house was literally stuffed with boxes full of "stuff." Every room was filled almost to the ceiling with boxes stacked one atop the other. I was deathly afraid of Mrs Meeks. Mrs Meeks’ was a widow. Jack and Cecil never did anything around the house. Mama Allen, Helen, and my mother were almost always gone. They all worked outside the home during the war and Mom, Jack and Cecil partied many nights. Cecil went into the army when World War Two began and I found out later that Jack was a driver for the biggest bootlegger in Knoxville, I'll call him Sam P. The army wouldn’t take Jack because he had one hand that had been crippled. Mrs Meeks hired a black man whose first name was John to take care of the yard for her. John and his family lived on the gravel road behind Mrs Meeks, I think it was Rosedale Lane or Alley. At that time, I think it was a dead end street. John was a good worker and a nice man. I can not remember ever hearing John’s last name mentioned. John was a very nice man who had an easy going, gentle way about him: he was married and had a son and a daughter. One day he let his son come with him when he worked on the yard and we quickly became fast friends and playmates. Now I can’t remember his name—for some reason Leroy comes to mind. Maybe it was Leroy, but I’m not sure. They even took me home with them and I met the whole family. His sister was really cute and I really enjoyed swinging with her on their front porch. Leroy became a little put out with me because I carried on so over his sister. None of Leroy’s black buddies would come near me and I did not understand why. We played mostly in our yard and behind Mrs Meeks’ house. One day I introduced Leroy to my white playmates and they reacted exactly the same way as Leroy’s friends had. To say that I was confused, would be putting it mildly. Why we were being treated that way was a complete mystery to me. Neither my family nor Leroy’s family ever said anything to me about my playing with Leroy. Leroy and I were effectively ostracized, but we played together and had great fun for a while. Leroy was two years older than me and naturally bigger and stronger. One day while playing war, we began wrestling and Leroy beat me. Leroy beat me every time we wrestled, but this last time, I got angry and pitched a tantrum. Leroy left and I never saw or heard from him again. It was my fault and I was simply not man at the time enough to go to Leroy and apologize for acting so stupid. That was 1942, 1943 or 1944 and I was about five, six or seven years old at the time. That is why I had such a hard time dealing with prejudice in the service - I remembered John’s family, I couldn’t join the whites who hated blacks and I certainly couldn’t join the blacks who hated whites. So I became one of those that were caught in the middle in "No Man’s Land." After we went to Germany, racism in the Eleventh really became a major problem. In fact, I would say it was the most serious problem the Eleventh had. It was more than a bunch of egotistical dummies from one regiment brawling with similar louts from another regiment. The ignorant racists both blacks and whites were motivated by hate and only hate. Blacks traveled in large groups at night both on and off post. They were all armed in one way or another. There were large fights, you might even call them riots, everywhere and almost every night. Fights broke out in chow lines because a large group of these blacks would "buck" the line and taunt the other soldiers to do anything about it. After watching large groups of these blacks buck the chow line for several days and not one of our sergeants or officers there to maintain order, Jack Watson stepped out one day and decided that he was going to put a stop to it. He walked up on the front steps of the mess hall, turned and stood facing the sidewalk—all alone. Unfortunately, Jack was standing with his back to several black racists who had already walked up onto the porch to buck the chow line. When the next bunch of blacks by-passed the chow line and arrived at the mess hall steps Jack told them to produce passes from their unit or get back in line. Unnoticed by me, one of the blacks behind Jack pushed Jack off the steps. While he was stumbling forward, the black in front of him commenced beating him about the head and shoulders. Jack fell over a picket fence that lined the sidewalk and the sharp top edge of the fence cut him under the eye. That was about the end of that fight. We all thought Jack had charged the guy and stumbled, but he told us later that somebody had pushed him off the porch steps. Very large groups of twenty five to fifty blacks, prowled around our post, Sheridan Kaserne, at night, especially on or near the parade field. If they encountered a white soldier or a couple of white soldiers, they would pounce on them and hospitalize them. The most common weapon seems to have been stolen car antennas. As I recall, our battalion was the only battalion that fronted on the parade field, so our troops suffered the most of these attacks. Life in the Five-eleventh at this time was a living hell. Almost every company had a loan shark who was referred to as a "five-for-ten man" because he charged 100% interest. The mail man was allegedly our company loan shark. He was always standing at the end of the pay line immediately after the last table. Every pay line consisted of the pay officer and the company pay roll at the very first table and that was followed by several tables of people collecting for various things. We did not pull KP in Germany; we hired local civilians instead, so there was a table to collect for the KP fund and there was a table to collect for the Quartermaster Laundry. They were legitimate bills and I did not mind paying my fair share. However, I did mind the sergeants and officers trying to intimidate me into donating my hard-earned $135 for all the various other things in the pay line such as AUSA [Association of the United States Army], which was controlled by officers and primarily promoted things of interest to officers. They never got any of my money and I never borrowed any "five-for-ten" money either. Finally, I got involved in the race riots, not because I hated blacks, but because I was from Tennessee, one of the biggest guys in our platoon, and also because my father was a sleep-walker. I guess that sounds a little odd so I better explain. At certain stages of sleep, someone could get me to carry on a conversation with them and even get me to get up and go with them a little ways before I would wake up. At the time, I thought that everyone was like that. [Many years later, I learned that my father was kicked out of the marines during World War II because he was a very bad sleep-walker.] One night after I had gone to sleep, I awoke to find that I was being led down our barrack’s hallway by a private I will call Hendricks who was a member of my platoon and who was from West Tennessee. Hendricks was as drunk as a skunk. He led me into a room almost directly across from the company Orderly Room where the Charge of Quarters stays at nights. By this time, I was awake, but not entirely sure why we were here because this was a room occupied by members of the weapons platoon. When Hendricks raised the entrenching tool he had been carrying down by his leg and started for a black soldier lying in one of the beds. I hadn’t noticed that entrenching tool until then and that’s when I realized why we were there. I grabbed Hendricks and pulled him back. To help get him out of there without causing any more problems, I told him, "We’re in the wrong room and that’s not the guy you are after." It was a lie, but at the time I couldn’t think of an easier way to get Hendricks out of there and solve the problem without someone getting hurt, hell I still wasn’t wide awake. Hendricks didn’t believe me, but I finally pulled him out of that room and persuaded him to go to bed. I found out the next day that Hendricks was angry because a bunch of blacks had severely beaten one of the guys in our platoon. The best that I can figure it, Hendricks had picked me to go with him because I was bigger than him and his intended target, and because I was also from Tennessee. I guess Hendricks thought that everyone from Tennessee thought the way he did. The only reason that I had gone with him was because I didn’t realize what the hell was going on. The next night, just before I went to bed, I went to the latrine. As soon as I opened the door of our squad room I discovered that our company hallway was packed shoulder-to-shoulder with strange blacks and I was the only white in that hall. Everyone in my squad room was on pass or at the movies or club, except for me. There must have been a couple of hundred blacks in that hallway. While I was making my way through the crowd of blacks enroute back to my room, I heard one of them ask, "Where does that damn Valentine sleep." Well, I was the only Valentine in the entire regiment so now I knew why all of these guys were here. They were after me because of that damn Henderson. Hell, they didn’t even mention that little shit’s name, just mine. Instead of returning to my room where I was the only occupant at the time, I went into the squad room directly across the hall. As I recall, Myers, McGuire, Manasco, Richards, and Metcalf slept in that room at the time. When I told them what was going on in the hall, they pushed a double bunk bed in front of the door and got their entrenching tools. We stayed like that until that mob finally left. Early the next morning, we made a parachute jump. While we were waiting for the trucks that would take us to the airfield, our Company Executive Officer, Lieutenant Ragsdale, called me aside. He chewed me out for being a racist and almost causing a riot. The man never asked me what happened, he only accused me. He warned me that, if anything like that ever happened again, I would be facing a court-martial. No problem there, I had already told Henderson to leave me out of it. We ate in a battalion mess hall instead of individual company mess halls. We nearly starved for the first year. For example, at breakfast, we could have one egg, one-half a slice of toast, one slice of bacon or one sausage patty, either a glass of milk or a bowl of cereal, but not both, and one cup of coffee. Hell, we ate better when we were in the field and lived on C-Rations. The same outfit had fed us a lot better at Fort Campbell. The last guys through the chow line got even less because there was never enough. After a few months, we found out why. Apparently somebody had complained about the rations and the CID [Criminal Investigation Division] caught some of the mess sergeants and cooks selling our chow to the Germans. Those damn belly-robbers went to Leavenworth for a few years and you can bet that none of them got any sympathy from the troops they were supposed to have been feeding. Our training schedule changed drastically from what it was at Fort Campbell. Every morning physical training came first. Then, three days a week we speed-marched, while wearing full combat field gear and weapons, about five miles out to the woods where we practiced tactics. We also speed-marched back to the barracks for retreat and chow call. Parachute training became a major problem. The airfields and drop zones were many, many miles away from our post and making a parachute jump, even a Hollywood pay jump, became an all day job. It was a real pain in the ass. Just to make a Hollywood pay jump, you had to get up at 0300 hours and travel by truck to the airbase at Munich, jump, and then return by truck to Augsburg. You left before daylight and returned after dark. At Fort Campbell, we could watch pay jumps from our company mess halls and everyone volunteered to make extra Hollywood jumps when they got a chance, but in Germany nobody in their right mind volunteered to go through that ordeal. On one jump, I believe that I hit my head against the side of the plane because I was dazed all the way down to the ground. When I tried to look up to check my chute, I was unable to raise my head because my risors were twisted all the way down to the back of my neck. Then I twisted my head to the side and glanced at the other jumpers around me and they seemed to be descending at about the same speed as me so I didn’t pull my reserve chute. Around-and-around I spun all the way down to the ground as my twisted risers unwound. When I was just above the ground, somebody on the ground yelled, "Get ready, you’re gonna hit!" and that’s when I first realized that I was descending too fast, but it just didn’t seem to matter to me. Wham! I clobbered into the ground. That was the hardest that I ever landed in all my years of parachuting, but I bounced right back up and rolled up my chute and headed for the turn in point, like nothing had happened. When I hit the ground, the only reason that I wasn’t crippled must have been because I was already dazed and as limp as a wet dish rag. After I turned in my chute, I walked around like a zombie until somebody sent a medic to check me. My buddies told me later that I cursed him out and ran him off. My mind cleared up shortly afterwards, but I had a slight headache later. My chute had suffered a "complete inversion." That is when your chute turns completely inside out and the risers cross just above your head. My lines were also badly twisted all the way down to the back of my head. A "partial-inversion" which old jumpers called a "Mae West" is when only part of your chute turns inside out. A partial-inversion is when "some" of the suspension lines slip over the top of the canopy and pulls it down in the middle. This causes your canopy to resemble a brassiere. Thus the term, "Mae West." As you may suspect, this term was coined in the early forties and refers to the generous bosom of the late actress, Mae West. [I still believe that plane was flying faster than normal jump speed. I was not the only jumper from that plane load to experience problems.] On another pay jump in Munich, after I hit the ground and had rolled up my chute, I hesitated to watch guys jump from the next One-nineteen. Four jumpers become entangled as soon as they exited the plane. They weren't all four tangled together, two tangled up and then the next two jumpers tangled up also. They only had two chutes between the four of them and those chutes were only "streamers" or "cigarette rolls." When a chute streamers or cigarette rolls, the canopy comes out of the back pack, but it is twisted so badly it can not fully deploy. The chute looks like a "streamer" or "roll-your-own cigarette" as it follows the unfortunate jumper down to the ground. Streamer was the most commonly used term for this malfunction. There appeared to be two streamers with a jumper beneath each of them and suspended just below each of those jumpers was another jumper. At first I thought that two pair of jumpers had tried a two-man daisy chain. One pair from each door, but I was wrong. As soon as they clobbered in, I picked up my chute and headed that way. Maybe I could help, besides, they had landed between where I was and our parachute turn-in point anyway. I ran over to the first pair and found one jumper lying on his back out cold or maybe dead. Then I followed his suspension lines through the grass to the jumper who had been above him, the one with the streamer. He was completely wrapped in the first jumper’s chute. He looked like a giant OD cocoon. He was still alive because the chute was moving a little and in a very low voice that was partially muffled by the canopy he called out, "Mama, mama." Over and over he repeated that word. There was nothing that I could do for those two, so I ran to the other two jumpers. They and their chutes were in exactly the same condition as the first two, but neither of those jumpers were conscious. That made it a lot easier on me because I did not want to hear a grown man begging for his mother. The two injured jumpers that I could see were both black soldiers. Meanwhile the parachute operation continued and other troopers were jumping from the planes, descending under their parachute, landing and moving off the drop zone all around us. As always, equipment that had broken free from troopers during the fall before their chute opened were crashing to earth all over the damn DZ. The equipment that the trooper most frequently lost during a jump were helmets, weapons and canteens. If a canteen full of water falls one thousand two hundred feet and lands on your head, it will drive your head right down into your chest. Mass tactical parachute drops are always very dangerous. Apparently, the four injured jumpers had not "leaped" from the door but more or less just stepped out or fell out the door. The prop-blast blew them together beneath the plane and they had became entangled. Most parachuting accidents are due to human error, not equipment failure. In fact, one of my old sergeants strongly insisted, "There’s no such thing as an accident. Most accidents, as you call them, are really premeditated carelessness." If you think about it, he’s right. Somebody is almost always responsible for an "accident," all you have to do is thoroughly analyze the incident. When the first medic jeep roared up, I pointed out the other pair of injured jumpers to them and then picked up my gear and headed for the turn-in point. We never heard anymore about this parachute accident. We seldom ever heard anything about parachute accidents. You would think that we didn’t have any parachuting accidents, but we knew better. We had lots of training accidents and some were not involved with parachuting. Tank training also caused the Five-eleventh several casualties. One of the guys from our weapons platoon was killed when he fell from a moving tank during maneuvers at either Hoenfelds or Grafenwehr Training Area. I may have misspelled those two names. I will call the soldier that was killed Private White. White was from somewhere in New York. It was so long ago, I can not remember which training area it was for certain. White was killed because he did not respect that tank. He got a poor position on the tank because he was the last man to climb onto the tank and he carelessly held on by only one hand. When the tank hit a deep ditch and bounced out the other side, he lost his grip and fell under the right tread. I heard somebody yell — maybe it was White, but I did not see him fall. Then the tank screeched to a halt because the driver had seen the soldier fall and he had slammed on the brakes. Screeching to a halt did not help matters, as you might suspect. The tank tread had caught that kid dead-center across his hips. It drug, crushed, and twisted his body when it slid to a halt. The tank was still sitting on him when I got to him. He was sitting up and beating on the tank tread with his rifle butt. Then he dropped his rifle and tried to push it off of him with his hands. The driver backed up and chunks of bloody meat the size of my fist flew from beneath the treads. All of the infantrymen leaped down from the tank. As soon as they saw the man caught under that tread, they all ran for the nearest brush — out of sight of that mangled body — where some threw up. The only ones with White then were the tank commander, the driver, our assigned medic, who had also been on the tank, and me. White and I were not personally acquainted. His last name and that he was generally considered to be a goof-off was all that I knew about him. Something inside of me wanted to get away from that gory scene too, but I just couldn’t leave one of the guys from my company there all alone to die with strangers. That poor guy’s entire midsection was literally squashed into mush. The center of the tank tread was centered on his hips. He was definitely a goner, we all knew it, but I tried to keep him from knowing it. The driver was clearly shaken. He was begging the injured trooper to forgive him. The injured kid told him to, "Get f..ked." The tank driver gave me a blanket and I covered White up from the neck down. The tank commander walked away and radioed for a helicopter. Then the tankers quickly joined the rest of the guys in the brush or remained in or behind their tank and that left just the medic, the dying trooper, and me with White. I sat down beside White and held his hand as we talked. The medic got up and walked a short distance away from us. Then it was just that dying soldier and me. "Where are you from White?" I asked. "New York," he answered. Then he said, "Val, I may be airborne, but that damn tank is heavy." and he laughed a little. He tried to set up and pull the blanket back so he could see how bad he was hurt and I pushed him gently but firmly back down to the ground and told him, "Don’t sweat it. The tread just barely caught your ankles and twisted them a bit." He said, "Val, you’re lying to me. I saw where that damn tank got me." When Captain Queen arrived, White begged, "Val give me my rifle and just one live round so I can take that sorry bastard with me." "I can’t help you do that buddy. Sorry," I said. He seemed to forgive me a little better than he did that tank driver, at least he didn’t curse me. The chopper finally arrived about twenty minutes after he had been crushed. Before he left, White kid asked me to write his parents and tell them what happened. He insisted that I promise him that I would do that and I promised. Then they took him away. When they picked White up and put him on that stretcher, blood literally gushed onto the ground like it had been poured out of a bucket. No one could understand how that kid had lived that long. They later told me that he died on the chopper before they reached the hospital. That was one of those little two-man "bubble" choppers. There was no room for the medic or anyone from our outfit to ride with him. Everyone that had been on that tank was sent directly back to base camp to the CID office for interrogation. The CID agents treated me as if I had murdered that kid. I discovered later that they had treated everyone the same way. Finally, they released us and we returned to the barracks. We had barbecued spare ribs for supper. When I saw those spare ribs, I got out of the chow line and returned to the barracks. That was one of the few times in my life when this East Tennessee hillbilly had no appetite. As it turned out, I never wrote White’s parents because I didn’t know him personally and I didn’t know anything good about him to say. The only good thing I could have told them was when he was squashed like a bug, he took it like a man and died still full of spunk. How could I possibly describe to them how he had died. That was all that I knew about him and I wasn’t going to lie to them about anything either. As far as I could see, there was nothing to be gained by writing them. Until White fell under that tank tread, I barely knew his name, but I knew him a lot better after we had shared his last twenty minutes on this earth. That was my first time to smell a man’s blood and guts and to smell death. It was my first time to watch a man slowly die. When we returned to Sheridan Kaserne a memorial service was held in the chapel next door and we were all marched to it. That was the strangest funeral or memorial service that I have ever attended because sometime during the service the chaplain said, "You men should not let this bother you too much because he was just another eight-ball anyway." We could not believe our ears. [Dan Fink reminded me of this church service at a K Company reunion in 1999 and I added it to this section. I had completely forgotten all about it until he brought it up.] The medic that had been with us on that tank went back with another unit for more tank training and witnessed more carnage when a tank retriever turned over and rolled down a mountain, squashing some of the crew members in the process. The next time that medic went on maneuvers with us he told me that he was going to refuse to be a medic as soon as he got back to camp. That medic never returned to our unit so I do not know what happened to him. This was 1956 and I was eighteen years old. Most of my memories are of the best and worst things that happened. The daily routine activities just seem to have dropped out of my brain. For example, another parachute jump that I remember was a tactical jump, but we had very few GP [General Purpose] bags. A GP bag was a large canvass bag with three retainer straps around it and front flaps that snapped shut which was used by an individual trooper to carry the heavier weapons and other cumbersome equipment on a tactical parachute jump. Each weapons squad in a rifle platoon was supposed to get four GP bags. One for each machine gun crew and one for each rocket launcher crew. Each machine gun crew placed their machine gun, ammunition, spare parts, tools, etc. inside the bag. We were lucky if we could get two GP bags. If there was room, the man who jumped the bag might even be able to squeeze his pack inside the bag too. Most often, I had to strap my full-field pack to the outside of the bag. I was usually the man in our platoon that jumped the GP Bag, if we could get one. A full-field pack is a field pack with a horseshoe roll attached. A horseshoe roll consists of either a blanket or sleeping bag and perhaps a deflated air mattress rolled up inside of the canvass shelter half along with the tent poles, tent pegs, and rope. This roll is then strapped to the top and sides of the field pack in an upside down "U" or horseshoe shape. Sometimes, machine gunners in the Eleventh were lucky if they got a Griswold Container for their gun. I jumped the machine gun more times using a Griswold Container than I did using the GP Bag. If we only got a Griswold Container, the ammo handlers had to strap the extra ammo cans to their parachute harness the best way they could because there was no room for it in the container. A Griswold Container is a canvass container that was adjustable for length which was designed to contain carbines, rifles, BARs and SMGs. It was snapped to the same metal Dee-ring to which the left side of your reserve chute was attached. It had two straps that you tied to your parachute harness to keep it from flying up and smacking you in the head or becoming entangled in your chute. One strap was about half way down its length and the other was near its top. When you placed that big-ass machine gun in a Griswold Container and hung it on your left side, you could forget having a "proper" body position after you left the airplane. You just naturally flopped over and fell on your side as soon as the prop-blast hit you. The Eighty-second guys were always issued Griswold Containers and GP bags for their jumps, but the Eleventh always jumped their individual weapons "bare-back." By "bare-back," I mean we taped a sock over the muzzle to try and keep it clear for firing. We also attached a "tie-down" string to each of the sling swivels. The one on the stock we tied to the left side of our parachute harness and the one on the front sling swivel we tied to our thigh. We also stretched the belly band on our parachute harness around the weapon before we buckled the belly band. On this particular jump, my weapons squad was issued only one damn GP bag. I volunteered to jump the bag, if we could get our squad's gear into it and if the other members of my squad were positioned in the plane so they would land near me and help carry the gear off the DZ. I knew there was no way that I could carry all of that gear off the drop zone. I would be lucky to drag it with me out the door of the aircraft. We set about trying to pack the GP Bag with all of our gear. We were lucky. We had been issued only two boxes of blank ammo for each machine gun and we had not brought the tripods along so this gave us a little extra room. We had decided to go with just the bipods and shoulder stocks instead of the heavy, cumbersome tripods. We placed two machine guns with ammo and at least one 3.5 inch rocket launcher into that bag, but we could not close the flaps and snap it shut. One of the ammo handlers went looking for something to use to cover the front of the bag to help keep the gear from falling out of the bag. He returned shortly with a mattress cover that he had "requisitioned" from a nearby barracks. We laid that cover across the equipment and then fastened the three straps around the GP Bag and through the shoulder harness on my pack to hold it to the outside of the GP Bag. We used some of our tent ropes as additional straps. Using the built-in straps and tent ropes, I secured my full-field pack to the front of the bag. That GP Bag was a load. After I donned my chute, I hooked the bag to my D-rings and tried to pick it up to see how I was going to be able to walk to the door and then jump out of the plane. The bag was extended to its full length and so heavy I could only lift it about two inches above the floor which meant there was not room for my feet under it. With that bag attached to my belly, shuffling and jumping out of the door was out and waddling and falling out the door were definitely in. Somebody got the jumpmaster to put me as the second man in the stick to jump. That eliminated a lot of walking to reach the door. It took three of us to get that big-ass bag to the plane and then up the ladder into the cargo bay. From there I drug it along the floor to my seat near the jump door. If I hooked the bag to my parachute harness, I could not sit back down because it was so long and heavy so I waited until the six minute warning to hook it to me. When the stick leader jumped, I lifted that damn bag the best that I could and literally drug it to the door. When I left the plane, I fell out the door head-first, then when my chute began to deploy it threw my feet forward and then I was falling on my back, face-up. Falling towards the earth face up, I watched my chute above me try to open and I saw that rickety-ass C-119 fast disappearing into the distance. My chute was having a problem catching air because the lines were badly twisted. The chute would catch a little air and then close and catch a little more air and then close again. When a chute did this, we said that it was "breathing." Because I did not want to risk my reserve chute becoming entangled in my main chute, what there was of it, I hesitated popping the reserve chute. Maybe it would take a little longer than usual, but I knew my main chute would open. For some strange reason, I wasn’t the least bit worried about my predicament....and in case you're wondering, no my head hadn't banged against the plane this time. Suddenly everything disappeared into a sea of olive drab. I had landed atop another trooper’s canopy! I sank so deep into it I was buried. The weight of me and that big-ass bag partially collapsed his canopy. We fell a little ways and then his canopy opened again with me still buried in the top of it near its apex with that damn big-ass bag laying on top of me. To be honest, I was very surprised that his chute reopened, but there still wasn't much I could do about it. Anyway, I spread my arms and legs to spread my weight out and to push his canopy away from me so I could get a look at my chute. It was still breathing, but at least there was wee bit more canopy now than before. We were slowly getting there, just a few seconds more and it would be fully open. I just knew it was going to open. Why I was so confident that my chute would open before I hit the ground, I can not explain. Meanwhile, down below, my host, the somewhat selfish user of the other parachute, was calling me every name in the book and a few I had never heard of before while ordering me off of his chute. He was cursing worse than a sailor. I yelled, "Hey asshole, I would gladly get off your fucking chute, if I could, but I’m weighted down by a hundred pound damn GP Bag and I can’t move." That didn’t slow that angry trooper’s tirade nor ease his wrath one little bit. He must have been a candy ass paper-pusher. Hell, I was only on his chute a matter of seconds, but it must have seemed like an hour to him. For some strange reason, I was still calm about my situation. Maybe I had gone crazy earlier and didn't know I was crazy. Finally, my chute opened enough to catch a good breath of air and drug me off of his canopy. See I knew it was going to open. Then the damn thing immediately closed again. Oops! And I shot past my selfish host like a blivet [ten pounds of shit in a five-pound bag], with an "Oh shit" from me and a "Fuck you" from my inhospitable host, while my chute tried to "breathe" again. As I zipped by him, I thought that guy must be a damn New York or New Jersey Yankee with an attitude like that. I looked up and watched my chute slowly untwist as it tried to re-open while I fell about a hundred feet below him. I still wasn't worried the least bit about the ground that was rushing up to meet me. Just before it finally fully opened, I heard a final parting shot from my unwilling host above, "Why don’t you pull your damn reserve, you dumb motherfucker?" We were so low by this time I didn’t have time to trade any more choice curse words with my not-so-generous host because I had to release that monster of a bag before I hit the ground. Immediately after I dropped my GP Bag on its line, it plowed into the ground and a second later I clobbered in also. The bag stayed attached to me and the parachute worked — a little slow perhaps — but it worked and nothing fell out of that bag. My chute was twisted more than usual due to me falling out of the door head-first, but, everything considered, it was a good jump. Any damn parachute jump that you walk away from is a good jump. After I hit the ground, no one from my squad was anywhere near me, as usual, so I just sat on that big-ass bag and waited for them to find me. If the squad leader wanted those weapons and ammunition, they would find me and eventually, they did. Never again did I volunteer to do anything that foolish on a jump. It seemed like we marched hundreds of miles on that maneuver. Many times, I fell asleep while marching with that damn machine gun across my back. Once I fell asleep and kept going straight on a curve in the road and fell flat on my face in the ditch. At the time, I was carrying that stupid light thirty across my shoulders and it nearly broke my damn neck. That particular march lasted longer than my water and I was getting very thirsty. It was summer and hot but it had rained quite a bit. Finally, when we crossed a field, I saw moonlight reflecting from water on the ground, a puddle. That’s the only time that I ever drank water out of a puddle. I was glad it was dark. I didn’t want to see what I was drinking. An infantryman learns to sleep and eat anywhere, at anytime and under any conditions. Give him a ten minute break on a march and he can get a nine-minute nap. They become adept at surviving in any situation. The typical grunt isn’t interested in being a hero, he’s only interested in just doing what he has to do for him and his buddy to survive from one day to the next or sometimes, just from one minute to the next. We spent a lot of time on field training exercises in all kinds of weather. Sometimes we had sleeping gear and sometimes we didn’t. During this tour in Germany, I spent many freezing, snowy nights sitting on my helmet with my back against a tree and my poncho thrown over me like a tepee. When they told me to move out, usually at daylight or maybe just before daylight, I would drag my frozen "tepee" behind me until the sun thawed it out so I could fold it across the back of my pistol belt again. Many times, when I did have a sleeping bag, I would take my machine gun off the tripod and place it on my air mattress beside me and hope that what little body heat came through that bag would keep the gun from freezing up on me. Taking care of that machine gun was important to me. I did not want my light thirty to freeze up because I dearly loved to shoot it. Carrying it was a pain in the ass, but I dearly loved to shoot it. |
