(7.5 minute read)
Today is Veterans’ Day so it seems appropriate that I post another story from my time in the Army. I did story about Korea, so I’ll go ahead and do one from Germany. That was my last duty station. Now, I’m going to give fair warning that I’m going to do an update tomorrow about where we are concerning the midterms and what we might have learned politics wise. This will be the fifth in this series of non-political posts.
Back then the Army was sending people nearing the end of their enlistment to Germany. It was good duty, especially when compared to other places and it was possible to bring family there. It was kind of a bait-and-switch scam—people would reenlist because, you know, Germany—and then surprise, surprise, they would get shipped off to Viet Nam. The word spread quickly so getting people to re-up because they were in Germany wasn’t effective for very long. That’s what I told the reenlistment sergeant when he tried to talk me into signing up for another 4 years. He wasn’t happy.
I was.
Wakey wakey
When I was stationed in Texas the First Sergeant made me sew on Sergeant’s stripes because I had been a temporary drill sergeant until I was transferred to a missile unit. By the time I hit Germany I had already converted my arm patches back to showing my SP5 rank. I ended up over a crew again anyway.
There was one guy that didn’t like to pull his shift in the situation room. (We were on 24 hour a day manning, 7 days a week.) When I first got there I would notice this guy’s initials missing from the log books even though he was scheduled to pull a shift. I found out that guys were afraid to wake him up because he had established quite the reputation of being a madman when awakened. The myth in the military then was that you could get away with all manner of mayhem for the few seconds waking up due to the fact that a person not fully awake is responsible for what they do. According to the other privates this guy always woke up yelling, fighting and throwing punches.
I checked up on Gunther’s (not his real name) sleeping arrangements since he wasn’t sleeping in the bunk room. I found his little place in a maintenance odds and ends storage building outside the block house. There was a little room down on one end with a regular bed, nightstand and curtains on the windows. It was like a little hotel room. He had a sweet setup. I was somewhat of a scrounger in Korea so I appreciated his accomplishment.
The next schedule I made up, this would have been my second one, I put myself on the shift before Gunther so that I would be the one waking him up. The schedule was always posted where it could be easily read. It was up to the crew to find out when they were scheduled to pull duty in the evening.
I finished up my shift and went into the bunk room to see if Gunther was in there. He wasn’t but I knew where to find him. I got one of the privates up to watch the communications while I went to get Gunther. I used the 2 X 4 alarm clock method. He was sleeping like a baby when I got to his room. I was carrying the board that I had picked up along the way. I carefully picked up the end of his bed with one hand and raised it up. I had the board on my shoulder like I was getting ready to swing a bat. I dropped the bed and quickly got both hands on the board and pulled back.
True to his reputation Gunther came up like a madman screaming a guttural yell, lips pulled back, hands in fists and ready to go! I swung the bat and stopped it just inches in front of his face. He was instantly fully awake—no more screaming or yelling. His eyes were as big as saucers, a look of shock on his face. The first thing I said was, “Next time I won’t drop the bed or stop the swing.”
He understood.
Funny not funny
Gunther wasn’t really a bad guy at all. He had just found a scam that worked for getting him out of duty. I just explained the way things were going to be from now on and that I wasn’t going to let him screw over his buddies. He had to say goodbye to his little room and throw in with the rest of us. He definitely had some attitude.
Getting him to pull duty turned out to provide a good story. Sometimes the battalion commander, a Colonel, would call up to the situation room to find out what was going on. It was kind of a silly call because we couldn’t talk about anything classified over a non-secure line anyway. Well, as luck would have it he called in the early morning hours when Gunther happened to be on duty.
Gunther was asleep; the ringing phone woke him up. He promptly chewed out the caller for waking him up. He used a lot of indecorous language and vulgarity knowing that it was the outside line and probably safe. When Gunther stopped to take a breath the caller said, “Do you know who you’re talking to?!” Gunther said no and then unloaded some more, having had time to get a fresh wind. During the next brief pause the caller said, “This is your commanding officer!”
I had walked into the war room to check things out because all of the hollering had awakened me so I caught most of the conversation. I heard Gunther say, “Well, do you know who you’re talking to?” The Colonel said, “No! Who is this?!” Gunther said, “Byyyye” and hung up the phone. (Brilliant!)
I looked at Gunther and ordered, “Fill me in!” That’s how I found out who the other party was since I had only been hearing half the conversation. I knew that I would have very little time to think things through.
Sure enough the phone rang. We both looked at it. I told Gunther to shut up and not say a word unless he wanted to end up with an Article 15 and be a private for the rest of his tour (if he was lucky). He was starting to realize the gravity of the situation and the magnitude of what he had done.
I picked it up and answered as we were supposed to with what unit, where I was (operations), my rank and name. The Colonel knew from my voice that I wasn’t who he talked with. He asked to speak to the other person there. I explained that I was the one on duty and that there wasn’t anyone else in the room. He asked a lot of questions. The lucky break was that he wasn’t anywhere nearby and from the background noise I could tell that he was in a club and had had a little too much to drink. We were miles away from our quarters. He said that he would get with me later.
Later came at morning formation when our Battery Commander tried to find out who it was that had cussed out and hung up on the Battalion Commander. He told the whole story of his phone conversation, and it sounded like a comedy routine! When he got to the part about “Do you know who you’re talking to” and “Bye” everybody cracked up. The Captain was hollering, “This isn’t funny! This isn’t funny.” But it really was—it still cracks me up to think about it.
I didn’t go to bed that morning after working all night because as Ricky Ricardo would have said, “I had some ’splaining to do.” I’m pretty sure that my Lieutenants suspected something but ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ seemed to them to be a good policy to follow for everyone involved. If it were discovered that one of our guys had in fact done it we would have all had a rough time of it for quite a while.
Besides, it really was funny.
Moral
If there’s a moral to this story I’m not sure it’s a good one.
BTW the Colonel talked to a lot of people. He thought, make that knew, he was being jerked around but was just fuzzy enough from the booze that night that he couldn’t swear that he had called the right number. I had a good record as far as the military brass was concerned so I managed to stay in the clear too. Gunther turned into a pretty good soldier after that and didn’t sleep while on duty anymore. I think that somehow he finally realized that sure ‘it’s all fun and games until somebody pokes an eye out’ but that you really need to stick by your buddies.
That’s it for now.
Byyyye.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Please avoid name calling, personal and/or abusive language. In other words be civil. We need a lot more of that these days. Try and confine your comments to the topic of the post.