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Compass reading wrong?
Wayne.B wrote in
: On Thu, 25 Feb 2010 19:34:11 -0500, "mmc" wrote: We just did a job at Ft Jackson. Thought about scooting down to Chas but was too wrapped up with work. You haven't *really* been to Ft Jackson until youve gone through Basic Training there. Fond memories of: Double time marching to the rifle range through the sand barrens; running up Tank Hill and Drag Ass hill with full combat gear; coming under "friendly fire" while on a work detail; having a brick of RDX blow up near you on the combat simulation course; being thrilled to get a weekend pass so you could share a room at the Holliday Inn with 7 other guys; etc, etc. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpKd-N71BfU About 1969, one of my boyhood friends had joined the Army and was going through basic training at Ft Gordon in Augusta, so I put on my best dress blues as an ET1 (E-6 Electronic Technician) and went searching for him at Gordon. I traced him through a few companies and met some nice Army NCOs who helped me only to find he'd been transferred to Ft Jackson in Columbia. So, back in my VW Campmobile and off to Columbia, no Joel yet. Army guys kept saluting me, even senior sgts, because of my ET1 crow and hash mark, I suppose. It was embarrassing! I knew what Army officers looked like! They should know what Navy officers look like! At Ft Jackson, I had a similar great time and after a few more orderly room searches found Joel painting another war mural on the walls of the local mess. Joel's always been an excellent artist, since he was a little boy. That was why he was still at Ft Jackson. They were handing him off from place to place doing murals of wars he'd never seen. The senior sgt in charge of his group gave him a weekend pass and I got him out of the Army for a few days to renew our friendship that went back to when we were babies. When I returned him to the post, the NCOs invited me to eat some Army chow in their NCO mess, making quite a stir as they had never seen a sailor in uniform of any rank/rate and didn't quite know what to make of me, but were very curious about Navy life. As I came off a surface ship, USS Everglades (AD-24), a destroyer tender and had done a couple of Med and Caribbean cruises aboard her, I was amazed at how little these Army guys knew, almost as if Army were afraid they'd defect....(c;] Their major got wind of my visit and also had a lot of strange questions about Navy life. These guys always flew to combat or overseas duty. I left the NCO club late and drove back to Charleston to work the next day. The Army guys had my address and sent me some stuff they gave to visiting VIPs and invited me to come up to their next dress parade ceremony. 4 of us sailors, all dressed up in blues, invaded Ft Jackson and were treated like VIPs by the NCOs at the ceremonies. They even announced us on the PA system for the brass. That was the last time I had any contact with Army until my father, an infantryman in the Big Red 1 (First Division) fighting Germans in WW2 got invited to a great program whereby very old Army vets were paired up with the newly graduated recruits and the Army showed the old vets what it can do with today's weaponry and skills. My dad went every year and talked about it for months until his death. THEY EVEN LET HIM DRIVE THE TANK!, something he found quite amusing because the tankers wouldn't let him anywhere near their tanks in WW2....(c;] Thanks for the memories..... We had no way of paying Army back for the honor of their ceremonies back then. I would have loved to take some of those guys out to sea on the ship and let them feast on the chow in the swells.... Larry |
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