One day at the rent-a-truck assembly plant we pulled the trucks with their unattached cargo boxes, into the welding bay like always. But what was different this day is the snow had accumulated on the top of the cargo boxes. After they sat in our welding and undercoating bay for a few minutes the snow melted and created a small pond under the truck - there was no drain of course. My work partner was a little prick named Jim. His hair stuck out from under his hat like a clown's might. He would weld one side of a truck as I undercoated the other, then we would switch (anything wrong with that picture? Stay tuned for Part III). Jim liked to get high and have a drink of alcohol at lunch so afternoons were rough on me. Jim would throw the welding wand under the truck at me as it sparked on the floor. He loved to heave the pneumatic wrenches at me and then glowered at me from under his side of the truck as they spun and whizzed and bounced into my knees.
On this particular day the snow outside was heavy and thick. The bay looked like a small lake after lunch. I told Jim I was going out back to find a wood pallet to bring in and stand on so as not to electrocute myself with the welder. I asked him if he wanted one also. He called me an expletive and flipped me off. As I walked back toward the dock, I heard Jim curse some more and switch on the welder.
By this time you are asking yourself, "Bob, you were in the Combat Engineers, you were an all-conference defensive end, you were a rock climber, and you ride a motorcycle in the winter. Why didn't you fold Jim-the-little-prick into a pretzel?" Jim was a relative of the shop manager. I would have surely been fired in an economy with no job waiting to replace this one. And, my father had taught me much better than resorting to muscle.
In 1980, The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) was just a phrase you heard on TV once and a while. When I walked back to the bay there was a buzzing sound. Something smelled foul. As I rounded the truck and the bay partition wall, there was Jim-the-little-prick - slowly being electrocuted. He was stuck on the side of the truck, he could not let go of the welding wand, his boots smoked as he stood in the water, his hair and eyebrows were slowly burning off. He looked at me with watering, bloodshot eyes and mouthed with no voice, "t-t-t-turn i-i-it o-o-off."
I yanked down the big circuit breaker lever near my work station. No one could see us as we worked back in that shit-hole of a bay because of the partition walls. The rest of the plant needed to be protected from our welding glare. Jim fell to the floor, in the water, it sizzled as he slumped his burning face in it. When I pulled the master breaker, it shut down the whole building. It went silent like a mausoleum. Normally, there would be deafening riveting, hammering, and screaming pneumatics wrenches. The supervisors came running from their hiding places.
Their initial response was to chide me for "fuck'n off," and berate the smoldering Jim, "to get up off his, ignorant ass." Once the supervisors' understanding of the saga came together, Jim eventually ended up in the office on a make-shift cot - an office desk. I don't think Jim left that day. He pulled his burnt self together and stayed at work sorting bolts and rivets for the rest of the day - speaks to the urgency of a decrepit economy.
My friend who always brought the police accessories to work to show them off (Tenth Job of Bob - Part I), suggested to me on the side that I, "should have let the little sanctimonious, self righteous, drunk-prick - fry to death." All I could do was sigh as he showed me his latest set of shiny brass knuckles.
This week's Wisconsin soldier to remember is Staff Sergeant Stephen G. Martin, 39. Staff Sergeant Martin died Friday, July 1, 2004, at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. He had been flown from a medical facility in Germany to Walter Reed. Martin was a member of the Sheboygan-based Army Reserve, 330th Military Police Detachment. He was wounded in Iraq when a truck bomb exploded June 24, near his checkpoint outside an American military compound in Mosul. It is the same incident that killed Sergeant Charles Kiser, 37 (remembered in last week's Cool Dadio blog postings) of Cleveland, Wisconsin and also from the 330th. Their unit was engaging an approaching truck, but it exploded, killing Kiser and fatally wounding Martin. Stephen was a New Jersey native. According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, he joined the Rhinelander police as a patrol officer in February 1996. He was a police sergeant at the time of his death. He worked in the bicycle patrol and the city's schools. Sergeant Martin had been prior-military-service and joined the Army Reserve in a Military Police unit in Sheboygan in January 2003. The unit was activated in December 2003, and sent to Iraq. The Journal Sentinel went on to mention Martin helped train Iraqi police and worked in emergency medical services and fire training. Staff Sergeant Martin was the 20th Wisconsin soldier to be killed in Iraq since Spring 2003.
3,722 Americans have been killed in Iraq since Spring 2003.
27,506 U.S. troops have been wounded in action in Iraq since Spring 2003.
78 Wisconsin soldiers have been killed in Iraq since Spring 2003.
112 journalists (several nationalities) have been killed in Iraq since Spring 2003.
Soldier of the week, military casualty, and journalist casualty information sources: Committee to Protect Journalists; cnn.com; and, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
