I hadn't been in Germany more than a couple days and there was a duce-and-a-half cargo truck ride up to the then Czechoslovakian border to my Army unit’s field detachment near “The Wall.” I later found out that no matter what we did, that man-made piece of geography was always in the background somewhere. A one-thousand mile barrier between East and West – it ran down the middle of Europe during the 45 year Cold War. Then it took a detour and cut the land city-island of Berlin in half as well. In 1974 I arrived at its tangled barbed wire, minefields, and German Shepard guard dogs. It had long become a fixture of the border culture by that time. Orwellian guard towers loomed on its entire length – nation after nation – one tower never out of sight of the next. It ripped through the middle of towns and villages, an “Iron Curtain” casting an odious shadow on playgrounds, cemeteries, and markets. After I will leave the country and my Army obligation, “The Wall” continues to stay up another 15 years.
My unit, The 84th Engineer Company was hold up in Grafenwoehr. "Graf," as we called it, was a training facility not far from that border of then Czechoslovakia and our Cold War communist nemeses. Many of my platoon members were playing cards and drinking beer in the canteena as I was introduced to them by my lieutenant. He informed me I would need to pull "bunker duty."
Someone had to reset the wood tarkets that the tanks fired at to calabrate their big guns. To facilitate this a couple of schleps had to spend 24 hours down range and stay in a bunker. When their was a cease fire, the targets would be replaced.
I was to get with a sergeant named Long to take the ride down range. I found Sergeant Long crushing out a cigarette butt on the side of the beat up six-wheeled contraption of a truck we would take down range to the target bunker. I had never seen this type of vehicle State-side. I later found out it was called a 'Goat.
Sergeant Long's jacket was covered with range dust. He looked more like a World War II sergeant from the old movies than one of those modern poster boys they plastered on the recruiting ads in the early ‘70s. ' Nam had damaged the Army's image and Public Relations had to be stepped up. Yet, with all his John Wayne demeanor Sergeant Long was probably all of 21.
"Let’s go, new guy," Long said.
He smirked like maybe he took new guys down to the bunker and never needed to bring them back. I imagined him bragging to the card players, "
Yah, I never brung a ‘cruit back from that fuck’n bunker alive yet boys." Then there would be laughter and shaking of heads, but just long enough until the cards were dealt again. I would have to prove myself to these worn veterans. To them I would be a recruit until future notice – ‘cruit. Bob the fuck'n 'cruit.
I tried not to think about what could happen down range in a bunker when five tanks from the Second Armored Cavalry sat side by side and fired artillery volleys at the berm of targets that sat directly in front of the bunker that I would spend the night in. American tank crews sat day after day facing-off across the border with allegedly well-trained Russian tank crews. Adding insult to injury, the Russian tanks were alleged to be bigger, more powerful machines. The manpower ratio was said to be six to one. The American tank crews took on a swagger of being the underdog.
The bunker duty routine was that, when the firing stopped, the bunker crew hops out and replaces the destroyed plywood targets – one could only hope the tank crews paid attention to the radio directions to maintain cease fire. A realistic potential was this: The paperwork concerning one accidentally blown up Private Keith down range by the tank guys is not likely to see the light of day. Nor, would the powers that be find much distraction by said incident.
"
Dear Mrs. Keith, We regrete to inform you that although your son Robert performed admirably in his duties, a stray wire-guided missile penetrated his bunker and [ blew...the shit out of poor old Bob the fuck'n 'Cruit ]
..."
A grungy guy named MacAmmis appeared from nowhere to drive the Gamma Goat truck to take me down range. He had a beer bottle sticking out each fatigue jacket pocket. And he, this little ape of a man with his four-day beard, would drive the infamous M-561 6x6, amphibious,
articulating-steering truck - the fucking 'Goat. It was a six-wheeled Orwellian mechanical beast. It was designed to navagate the rice paddies and rivers of 'Nam - only problem, it frequently got stuck in the paddies...and worse yet, it easily sank in the river. Long and I rode in the back on the wood bench. We rumbled down the shrapnel-filled trail to the bunker.
Sergeant Long looked at me with an unlit cigarette in his mouth and said, "I've been fuck'n keeping an eye on the Russians from this shit hole duty station since ’71 you know that new guy? What were you doing before you came here, mowing the unit commander’s fuck'n yard back in The World?" "The World" was a term GIs called home.
He took out a lighter, clicked it open and lit the cigarette. Up front MacAmmis was slugging down one of his beers as he negotiated a pile of blown-up metal in the road. It was then I noticed the tipped over can of gasoline in the back with us.
"That little spill make you nervous new guy?" Long said as we bounced in the back.
The gas soaked the soles of our boots. I looked at Long’s cigarette as ashes fluttered to the gassy bed of the truck as he smoked it down to a butt. He took one last long drag.
"Fuck you, new guy," he said. He flicked the lit cigarette into the gas. It shot out of his fingers like a small jet. The fiery butt extinguished in the fluid and at the impact there was a little sound - shizzz. I shut my eyes for a second and thought about home.
"Not bad, new guy," Long said. He smiled with only one side of his mouth. Then he continued, "The last new guy jumped out the back of this here 'Goat and broke his collar bone."
I don’t remember much of what I did in that bunker for 24 hours. I remember my bunker mate was a private named Wally. I remember they had given us a whole box of fresh ham sandwiches and a case of Coca-Cola to tide us over. Wally demolished most of the sandwiches. The walls were damp and carved with generations of graffiti from soldiers manning the bunker from armies dating back to the Prussians. FTA – "fuck-the-army" dominated the more recent hieroglyphics.
The next day Long and MacAmmis came back with the 'Goat during a cease fire to pick us up. Now he had a five-day growth of beard. In the back of the truck with Long rode a man with captain bars on his collar. Wally and I jumped up in the back of the 'Goat, I started to salute the officer but Wally grabbed my hand and brought it back down. These guys still had their ‘ Nam habits. They did not always salute officers so as not to give away their rank to the enemy. MacAmmis put the truck in gear and roared out like he was in a Baja dirt race.
After a bit the Captain looked at me and said, "Cross your mind new guy as to why an officer might be riding down range in a piece of shit Gamma Goat like this?"
"Hadn’t given it too much thought, sir," I said. There was no spirit in my voice.
The captain looked at me over his glasses and smiled like an old friend – like an upper classman about to give a freshman some advice as to how to make an athletic squad. He took his beret off and held it next to his chest as if he were showing respect at a funeral. His hair was thinning on the top. He was probably 23 – could have been the captain of my high school football team. He pronounced his words like he had actually seen the inside of an English book. He probably had a couple years of college that got him eligible for officer training. Maybe he even spent time in the seminary or rabbinical – perhaps an English major.
I pondered the possibility of one savior in a hole from hell – one ally in a geo-global den of iniquity. The captain stared at me in the back of the bouncing truck and smiled. My heart warmed at the first sign of sanity in three days. I imagined him as a blue-collar guy who was going down range with his troopers to show them solidarity.
The Captain grinned as if reading my mind, and then he pouted. The pout became an ever flaring glower as his faced reddened.
He turned on me like a man just awakened from his asylum bed and hollered, "I am your unit commander new guy and you ‘will’ call me Captain Hellgod. This is my personal outpost of paradise. Ninety-nine percent of the mother fuckers back in ‘The World’ do not even know or care this fuck’n place exists."
Then he added in a poetic cadence, " Paradise, needs not its outposts of necessity known to the banal." He paused and tipped his head as if looking through my soul.
After the thoughful relfection, he continued his rant, "And you – you new guy – you are going to be my musical whore-bitch today. Now sing me the Corps of Engineers battle hymn new guy."
The Captian paused and then his voice crescendoed, "Sing it now - fuck'n 'cruit!"
Sergeant Long smiled his one-sided smile - lit a cigarette. A smell of gasoline wafted off the bed of the 'Goat. Wally looked out over the tank target range and pulled a ham sandwich out of his coat. MacAmmis wiped beer foam off his lips as he negotiated around an old skeleton of a target tank in the trail. I looked at the lot of them. I looked out the back of the bouncing truck. I looked out over the moonscape of the tank target range. I looked up through the driver’s compartment and out the front window. I imagined just over the tank firing-pad knoll and beyond the tree line could be found the roof of a "Wall" guard tower – the silhouette of a Russian soldier with AK-47 machine gun just recognizable.
My sight focused on the moment now and I looked up-range at the row of odious olive-drab green and camouflage colored tanks sitting patiently on the tank firing-pad – ominous gun turrets pointed in our direction – with their overused but patient engines belching out black diesel smoke. The tank crews displayed American flags from the long turret radio antennas. The silhouettes of the tanks got bigger as we drove back. As we got closer I could see the tattered edges of the worn flags. A haze of heat loomed about the flags and the hot idling engines.
Three years left in the Army. "
The fuck'n Army." My heart sank. The unemployed, shitty economy of the 1970s back in The World wasn't looking so bad now.
"Sing you goddamn ‘cruit," shouted the Captain over the high-pitched 'Goat engine. His eyes bulged out of their sockets.
The words of the Captain and the Engineer song sloshed in the murky sludge in my mind.
"
We are, we are, we are, we are the Army Engineers. We can, we can, we can, we can, demolish…"
Note: This experience was an inspirtation for my short story, " '
Cruit : Bansihed to an Outpost of Paradise" (May, 2005). Find it at my
Stories Page .
Note: This blog "Jobs of Bob" Category does not list the jobs chronologically - I write about the experiences as they pop up in my memory and I often revisit an older job. Go to the Cooldadiomedia Web site and the Jobs of Bob Page for an ordered chronology. Wisconsin Military Service Person Special Mention of the Week
(each week Cooldadiomedia mentions a Wisconsin service person killed in Iraq or Afghanistan)
Army Private First Class Nicholas Emerson Riehl, 21, of Shiocton, Wisconsin, died Friday, April 27, 2007, in in Fallujah, Iraq. He was assigned to D Troop, 5th Squadron, 7th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division based out of Fort Stewart, Georgia. Riehl was killed when a roadside bomb exploded near his unit during a combat patrol in Fallujah. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel mentioned PFC Riehl grew up just outside of Shiocton, Wisconsin and was a 2004 graduate of Shiocton High School where he was quarterback on the high school football team. He also played for the basketball team. Nicholas was also known to sing and play guitar. He was a member of church choir were he sang tenor. The Journal Sentinel went on to say Nic had a reputation for being a solid participant in many of his activities. He briefly attended the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee after high school.
The war casualty data base iraq.pigstye.net mentioned via information from the Post-Crescent that Riehl had a chance to get home for Thanksgiving just before being deployed to Iraq. There were 54 members in Riehl's high school graduating class. Nic was the school basket ball team's most valuable player his senior year. Shiocton is a village of 959 people and is around 20 miles northwest of Appleton, Wisconsin. The area is in northwestern Outagamie County. Riehl joined the Army in November 2005 and arrived at Fort Stewart, Georgia, in April 2006. He was deployed to Iraq in January 2007 and was a cavalry scout.
A biography for Nicholas Riehl found at clinehansonfuneralhome.com notes that he was born on December 2, 1985 in Appleton, Wisconsin. The biography goes on to list that at the time of his death he was survived by his parents Rick and Patti; a brother Evan Riehl; a sister Roselynn Riehl; paternal grandparents Duane (Sandy) Riehl; and, maternal grandparents Lloyd and Theresa Bunnell. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel also mentioned survivors as good friend/cousin Trent Riehl; and, godfather/uncle Robin Riehl. Private First Class Nicholas Riehl was the 73rd Wisconsin military service person killed in Iraq since the spring of 2003.
As of this blog entry's posting date:
98,872 Iraqi civilians have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
9,784 Iraqi Security Forces have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
4,432 Americans have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
1399 Americans have been killed in Afghanistan since October, 2001.
318 Coalition soldiers have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
827 Coalition soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan since October, 2001.
31,989 U.S. troops have been wounded in action in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
9,368 U.S. troops have been wounded in action in Afghanistan since October, 2001.
103 Wisconsin soldiers have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
26 Wisconsin soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan since October, 2001.
144 journalists (several nationalities) have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
21 journalists (various nationalities) have been killed in Afghanistan since October, 2001.
Wisconsin military service person special mention of the week, military casualty, and journalist casualty information sources: Committee to Protect Journalists; cnn.com; Milwaukee Journal Sentinel; washingtonpost.com; thehighground.org; Wisconsin Department of Veterans Affairs; iraqbodycount.org; www.defense.gov/news/casualty.pdf; and, icasualties.org.
