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Fifth Job of Bob - Army - Part IV-B - Hold up in the boonies; almost blew up Comrade; pseudo-live-round cowboys and Indians
This entry was posted on 12/23/2010 1:30 AM and is filed under Jobs of Bob.
While still rather new at my dump truck driving assignments my company headed out yet again to some training mission near the Czechoslovakian border. My platoon was divided up into various assignments. About eight of us headed out to a rural area to stage up for the developing war games. At the time I was just a Private First Class so I did not preoccupy myself with the particulars of what we were even doing up there.
The main body of our Engineer Company staged out of the Grafenwoehr training complex. My little group however ended up in some hunters' forest and we camped out for about a week. I remember some gravel roads and even a hunters's cabin which a couple of my colleagues explored in short order. My job was to shuttle supplies in and out to the little camp in the forest.
A couple of Buck Sergeants who were not a day over 20 years old made up our small group's chain of command. My general impression was that we were just sent off to the boonies to be basically...out of the way. After a couple days we had settled in and got tired of waiting. I remember it was warm and the weather was pleasant all around.
Soon my buddy Roache decided to tinker with the means he had at his disposal and began to experiment with removing the shell casings from our hoard of M-16 machine gun bullets. He was careful to save all the powder from the shells in a large mess hall C-Ration coffee can. In the mean time Ol' Roache, who was all of 20 years old by the way, discovered that if you stuck a spent shell casing in the end of the M-16 gun barrel and fired the weapon (with no live bullets in the chamber), the empty shell casing would fly out for quite a distance. The compression of the M-16 firing mechanism would pop the empty shell off the end of the barrel like a rocket.
Of course the boredom prevailed and before you could say, "Poke an eye out," the fellahs were playing cowboys and Indians with pseudo-live-rounds via Roache's innovations. Ol' Roache got his comeuppance as one of the flying projectile shells left a hole by his nose severe enough to draw blood.
Once Roache licked his wounds enough to move on to other shenanigans, the coffee can of gun power was dispatched to blow up a culvert over one of the gravel trails. To think they let us have blasting caps was pause for thought. I remember old Public Service Announcements on black and white television in the 1950s warning kids not to play with blasting caps. Why there was rogue blasting caps laying around in the 1950s I still do not know?
At any rate no German Comrades had ventured through our camp for days of course until...Roache and Crazy Jimmy set the fuse to blow up the culvert. Like something out of a bad movie, a couple of hunters parked on the small bridge of the culvert to check their map to see which fork in the road to take.
"Shouldn't we warn them," Ol' Bob the worry-wart asked.
"Nah, I set the fuse for 10 minutes," Roache said with a confident smile.
"This is going to be so cool," Crazy Jimmy said with a sadistic grin. "And fuck Comrade anyway."
About three minutes after the charge was set, Comrade finally moved his car off the culvert. About 15 seconds later the entire section of road vanished in a huge explosion. Comrade hit the gas and disappeared down the trail in a hail of dirt and stones kicking up behind his little car, apparently non-the-worse for wear and unharmed other than startled.
I was actually relieved when our old Platoon Sergeant drove out to our camp and summoned our group back to base camp - apparently our contribution to the training was hailed as a smashing success.
We were all given approving compliments from The Brass.
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)
Navy Chief Petty Officer Patrick Lee Wade, 38, Oak Harbor, Washington (originally of Manawa, Wisconsin), was one of two sailors killed while participating in combat operations in Samarra, Salah Ad Din province Iraq, on Tuesday, July 17, 2007. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel noted Wade was an explosives technician and 20-year Navy veteran, a job which took him all over the world, including Iraq. Wade was attempting to disarm a roadside bomb that had partially exploded; a subsequent explosion killed the two sailors. The two men served with Explosive Ordnance Disposal Mobile Unit 11, out of Whidbey Island Naval Air Station in Washington State. The Journal Sentinel went on to mention Wade had helped clear debris from the second space shuttle explosion; he also at one point trained with German Navy divers recovering munitions from World War II. Patrick Wade was born in Appleton, Wisconsin and grew up in Manawa, a central Wisconsin community of about 1,350 people. He was said to enjoy fishing and canoeing Bear Lake and the Wolf River, and hunting deer and turkey with his older brothers. He joined the Navy after graduating from Little Wolf High School in Manawa in 1987. Patrick wrestled, ran track and played football in his high school days. He married his wife Keri in 2003. She had also been in the Navy when they met. Wade had been in Iraq about two months. The data base for war casualties iraq.pigstye.net noted via information from the Lacrosse Tribune that Wade was the second son from his family to die in the military. An older brother, Bob Wade, was killed in a helicopter accident in 1993 in Japan while serving in the Air Force.
Like so many military members, Wade was claimed by more than one state. The Web site heraldnet.com out of Everett, Washington notes Wade and his family lived in Oak Harbor, Washington, a Navy community. The site went on to note the two sailors killed were working with a battalion of U.S. Army Rangers. They were killed despite being in a special explosive ordinance disposal vehicle.
Another data base iraqnam.blogspot noted the Oshkosh Northwestern as saying Wade went into the Navy with a best friend who was quoted as saying Wade had a great sense of humor, was a pretty small guy and got into body building in his last year of high school. Both friends played the trombone together in the high school band. Wade comes from a family that had several generations serve in the military. At the time of his death Patrick Wade was survived by his mother Shirley Wade; brother Gary; sister-in-law Ann Wade; wife Kari and daughters Noel and Esme. Chief Petty Officer Patrick Wade was the 77th Wisconsin military service person to be killed in Iraq since the spring of 2003.
As of this blog entry's posting date:
99,052 Iraqi civilians have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
9,811 Iraqi Security Forces have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
4,433 Americans have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
1436 Americans have been killed in Afghanistan since October, 2001.
318 Coalition soldiers have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
830 Coalition soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan since October, 2001.
32,000 U.S. troops have been wounded in action in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
9,771 U.S. troops have been wounded in action in Afghanistan since October, 2001.
103 Wisconsin soldiers have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
27 Wisconsin soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan since October, 2001.
145 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.
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