This isn’t on my list. I was not an active participant, but an observer. It’s something that sticks with me even today, both the humorous and the parts left unsaid.
When I finished up my time in the regular army, I still had a two year commitment. I decided to spend my time in the reserve and make some extra money, as long as I didn’t have any problems like I did with my last section sergeant while I was stationed in Turkey [see the M-O-U-S-E story]. If that happened, my plan was to go into the IRR and since we were still fighting the Cold War, I was secure in the knowledge that I wouldn’t get sent to some rat hole overseas as an augmentee. I ended up spending one year of that time in a signal detachment.
In my duty section we had a host of Vietnam vets. Two of the sergeant first classes were always trying to one-up the other on how bad they had had it over in Nam. Back then one of them had been infantry, the other an MP. They both would be out of place today. The grunt’s hair was always just a little too long and the MP was always just a little too fat. He certainly wouldn’t have made weight or passed the tape test in today’s anorexic-army. Their BDUs always looked like they had slept in them too.
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