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Sergeant Baker blew himself up - Fate Fairies - book version
This entry was posted on 11/7/2011 2:00 AM and is filed under Fate Fairies:Fate Fairies - book version.
After recounting some of my military experiences, it seems more than a few of the shenanigans took place at the odious Grafenwoehr military complex near the then border with then communist Czechoslovakia.
"Graf" as it was called by us guys, was an Orwellian moonscape made so by generations of military troops training and basically...blowing the shit out of everything in site. There was even thick bunkers left over from Nazi days. Hence, unexploded ordinance (stray explosives) could be collected like sea shells on the shore line at low tide. Again, the Engineers got the nod. We would scour the landscape of the massive military reservation picking up dangerous shit. Then we were to detonate it. Safely...of course.
A guy, a sergeant, joined my unit - we will call him Baker; every unit has a guy named Baker. Ol' Baker was probably 23 years old. With his glasses and boyish face, he looked more like a new high school English teacher than a Combat Engineer. I believe he came our way from duty in Korea. But - that odious "but," - but, regardless of his youthful demeanor he had that, "Fuck with me and you will be sorry" aura about him. Them Demilitarized Zone Korean duty veterans often had a harder swagger than some of the 'Nam-vet guys. He was on his second enlistment.
Anyway, I was to drive the five-ton dump truck we would put the "dangerous" and loose, ferrel explosives in. Baker was in charge. Dep The Mad Shitter talked about the art of derfrocking German frauleins. And a couple other guys rounded out the squad.
I remember the famous last words by the Platoon Sergeant, "Baker, this is your first assignment in my unit. Don't fuck it up...and don't use gasoline to enhance the demolition of the stray ordinance."
After we had easily picked up enough stray explosives and put them in a pile to detonate or blast a small satellite to the moon, and Dep was well into his one-hundredth vignette regarding the conquest of German tail, Baker promptly directed The Ol' Mad Shitter to fetch a can of gasoline to..."enhance the demolition of the stray ordinance."
When all was ready, ordinance neatly piled, gasoline generously applied, and final details of detonation devices being secured by Baker, the "Fire in the hole," warning was about to be shouted.
Whizzz! It was a strange sound. Not loud at all. I was only a few feet away, the closest guy to Baker, and I had just turned away from pile of ordinance. Had the whole pile ignited, both Baker and I would be only distant memories to our high school classmates now almost 60 years old.
I can hear in my mind the chit-chat at a 40th class reunion:
"Bob Keith, I think I remember him, wasn't he the one who drove that '66 Fairlane around on a relentless crusade trying to get his winky yanked by nefarious chicks? Ya, that was him; he done blow'd himself up in the Army as far as I remember - Ol' winky yank'n fucker."
The letter from Uncle Sam to my poor Irish mother might read:
"Dear Mrs. Keith, we regret to inform you that although your son Robert performed his orders admirably, he was killed in the line of duty. You see Mrs. Keith, while Dep the Mad Shitter prattled on about slipping dick to German chicks, Robert and his Sergeant blew the fuck out of themselves while disposing of unused explosives using gasoline to make the shit blow up better. Actually Mrs. Keith, somebody really fucked the dog on this one..."
I don't know what Baker did to ignite only some of the ordinance. It appeared to me, his detonation device ignited prematurely but the pile of explosives did not.
Baker hesitated for a second in a shroud of smoke and emerged with face burned. His hair to the front, eyebrows, and mustache were gone. His classes were cracked and crooked on his face, but they probably saved him from being permanently blinded. I could see his arms, hands, and various parts of the front of his legs and body where badly burned. He began to wander around blinded and the pain must have started to kick in.
"Bob, are you there, get me some help," I remember him saying over and over.
Dep finally figured out we were...in deep shit, but stood and stared for a moment - years later I learned it is called "bystander syndrome."
We finally had enough sense to put out the fire of Baker's smoldering fatigue uniform.
The only thing I could think of was to load Baker in the front of the dump truck and drive to the helicopter tower a few miles away. Of course Uncle Sam sent no two-way radio with us. And it was 30 years pre-cell phone era. Dep and I hoisted him in the front seat. Dep hopped in the open bed of the truck and I drove like a, well, like a mother fucker.
I remember driving the dump truck at 60 miles an hour through restricted areas reserved for "The Brass." At least I had been to Graf enough to know all the nooks and crannies and short cuts.
Dep rode in the back of the truck and shouted like a mad man for anyone and everyone who happened in our way at 10 miles an hour to, "Get the fuck out of the way, assholes!"
It probably only took five minutes to get to the tower. It seemed like an hour. Baker's cries got worse and worse as I approached the runway and luckily, one medical Huey helicopter waited patiently near the tower.
I had little useful medical training in those days, but I knew an emergency when I saw one, having been raised on a farm where only the most egregious injury was considered a cause for notice.
I drove at an angle across the huge concrete landing zone toward the tower. Dust flew up behind the iron clad truck now screaming at 70 miles an hour; a hulk of a beast meant mostly to lumber slowly around and carry dirt and junk.
"What the fuck is your problem, asshole?" I remember the tower officer, a Captain, shouting at me as he bolted down the tower stairs skipping steps. "I will have your idiot-driving-ass finishing your enlistment in the brig, Fuck Face!."
Then the Captain who tied into me saw Baker.
"Well don't just stand there, load the Sergeant in the bird, Hot Rod," he said with a bit of a smile then. It was like the movies I would see 15 years later with a medevac chopper lifting off at a hostile angle and disappearing behind the low trees - patient safely on board. Nothing ever came of my driving antics. Baker got a transfer; at least he disappeared. The last time I saw him was a couple weeks later in the hospital in Nuremberg - he was getting better.
Years later I would sometimes think of the experience as I drove ambulance for 10 years in rural Green County, Wisconsin. Baker, I hope you were able to have a full recovery and to grow your mustache back; and, I do not begrudge you for the experience that almost got us all...all fucked up. I was there too. What was I thinking? Shit like that happened all the time in that fuck'n place.
Note: This blog "Fate Fairies" - book version Category is a work in progress. The original vignettes are being edited for book form. Go to the Cooldadiomedia Web site and the Fate Fairies Page for an ordered chronology of the book vignettes (chapters).
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