Another PVT Johnson story
Oh God how I wish I were making this shit up.
Thankfully, professional ed my experiences with this soldier were brief, asthma and this is the last (or nearly last) experience that I had with him. Again, stomach we were deployed in Orgun-e (read my earlier post if you need to know where that is), and again I was on tower guard with him.
Thankfully, we had a rotating guard shift, which left us with a different person each time (or at least a welcome respite between shifts with Johnson). Due to the fact that this was almost six years ago, I forget if this was before or after the spoon incident, but it was the same deployment at the same base.
In addition to our tower duties, each of us had an assigned duty around our platoon area to help things along and keep the boredom away. Mine was the maintenance and repair of the tents, as well as the restocking of provisions for missions. PVT Johnson’s duty was simply to make sure that the arctic stoves had enough fuel in them to continually run. It was snowing out, and this is an important task, but a relatively simple one.
If you have served in (or lived around) the armed forces, you know that there are essentially two types of fuel that ground forces use. Diesel with a kerosene stabilizer for altitude and cold (we call it JP-8) and plain old American unleaded (which we call “Mo-Gas” for some unknown reason).
Orgun-e was a small FOB when I was there, and our flight line consisted of a patch of gravel roughly the size of a AYSO Soccer field. Our tents were on one side, while the fuel point was on another. If you wanted to fuel up your vehicles before mission, you simply drove across the flight line, and pumped your own gas from a blivet (giant extremely thick water balloon in the shape of a rounded cylinder that holds liquid to be dispensed later). Or, in the case of the arctic stoves and their illustrious keeper, you hauled two 5-gal fuel cans by hand across the flight line, filled them up and returned. PVT Johnson would return with the cans, swap them out while the stove is running, then go refill the cans he had just taken off the stove as well, leaving us with two full fuel cans per stove and a nice interval before it had to happen again.
So, back to our story: PVT Johnson and I are just coming off of 24-hour tower guard (thankfully with no incidents), and walking the long walk to our respective tents. Though I was only a SPC(p) at the time, I was in a leadership position (mistake) as a team–chief and lived with the NCOs. Johnson, lived in another tent with his fellow soldiers so that they could bitch and gripe without fear of being overheard. This may sound like a bad idea at first, but I remember being a Joe, and you need to get out from under your supervisors eyes for a while. It helps to maintain the sense of normalcy. As Johnson and I split the path to our tents, I said, “Hey Johnson, before you get out of your snivel gear, I want you to get the cans refilled for the heaters. Get some more gas and then go to sleep. I’ll see you in the morning.” The cans felt a little light, and so Johnson took them and started the swap like he normally does. Johnson has been doing this for almost two months straight, and there had been no issues until tonight.
I walked into my tent, and crawled out of my uniform and into my fart sack. I was reading by book light (thankfully) when about twenty minutes later, the arctic stove starts glowing cherry-red. I jump up, and rush outside to disconnect the hose, wondering what the hell went wrong. Standing out there in the snow, in nothing but briefs and socks, it occurred to me that if there was a problem with our heater, then there was probably an issue with the other one as well. I hopped the two short sandbag walls to the other tent and disconnected their heater as well. I poked my head in, and noticed their heater glowing bright red also. I stepped in out of the cold, and checked the settings on their valves. Everything lined up where we marked them earlier. What was wrong? I went to ours in my tent, and checked it as well. This needed further investigation.
I popped back into my snivel gear and walked outside. The tents (and stoves) were rapidly cooling, and would get to be very cold, very quickly. I looked at the fuel cans, and didn’t see anything wrong. I opened one up and took a whiff. There was the problem. If you have ever run an arctic stove, you know that like all fuel powered heaters in the Army inventory, it runs off of JP-8. It burns longer and slower than regular unleaded. Arctic stoves weren’t designed to run off of unleaded, the heat is too intense. And there they were. Two JP-8 cans full of the unleaded fuel we set aside for the local nationals to refuel off of. I jumped into PVT Johnson’s tent and started shaking him.
“Wake up you stupid bastard!”
Johnson gave a fuzzy “whaddido?” as he sat up.
I started screaming, “You could have fucking killed us! You know they run off of JP-8! You’ve been doing this for MONTHS!!! FUCKING MONTHS!!! What on EARTH would have possessed you to fill the goddamned stoves full of unleaded?! WHAT YOU STUPID FUCKING RETARD?!?!?”
Johnson tried mouthing reply after reply but I wasn’t anywhere near done. I wanted to drive certain points home, and I planned to do it effectively. When I finally ran out of steam, every gunner and driver in the Platoon was staring at me as was my Section Sergeant, whom I had woken by my screaming.
Finally, I asked him one last time: “Johnson, why didn’t you put JP-8 in the cans?” His answer left me stunned. He looked up at me and said, quite plainly: “Specialist, you told me to go get mo gas, so I went and got mo gas.”
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February 9th, 2009 at 10:39 pm
*facepalm*
where the hell was this guy from?
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February 9th, 2009 at 10:52 pm
damn that was some epic screw up on Johnson’s part.
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February 9th, 2009 at 11:17 pm
Either he has some sort of hearing problem or you have a problem enunciating.
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Podmunki reply on February 9th, 2009 11:56 pm:
Yes, but Dear God, you have to have a certain level of intelligence ( or prove a certain amount of ability to learn to enter the military )…….with the sole exception of those poor souls not given a choice because of being drafted. And even then, they either figured things out or seriously got their asses handed to them until they did.
Captcha: building indorsers…apparently words don’t have to be real to be used (or built)
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February 10th, 2009 at 12:55 am
….any relation to the former marine who threw a grenade at the observation tower?
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February 10th, 2009 at 4:09 am
i have had 2 privates in my section that rival that guy for common sense. SGT: “Do not bring that ipod into work again” next day, brings in a different ipod “You didnt say i couldnt bring THIS ipod in”
/sigh
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Anonymous and STILL Employed reply on February 10th, 2009 4:43 am:
To be fair, you gotta hand it to that private for cunning. I just used to sing REALLY LOUD and off key until everybody realised the Ipod was a better option
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February 10th, 2009 at 5:44 am
Oh man, I can sympathize. Seems to me like there are PVT Johnsons in every army. In the HQ-company I was in the generators and stoves were continually dead or dying because some twit would use the wrong fuel. On one particular occasion the diesel went to the generators and the gas to the stove. So its around -15 degrees F outside, and we’re out in the middle of nowhere with a burned out stove and the generator powering our comm-systems flooded with diesel. Lets just say that nobody was very pleased with the person responsible.
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February 10th, 2009 at 8:10 am
“Get more gas.”
The guy got gas.
Seems every unit has one of these Pvt Literals hanging around somewhere. Always good for a laugh. This is the guy you send to supply to go get you a “Long Weight.”
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Andrew reply on February 10th, 2009 9:17 am:
lmao gotta get my friend to find me one of those :P
i also know a teacher who could and would use that… il make sure i tell him :D
write it on a bit of paper and go, hey kid go get one of these
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February 10th, 2009 at 8:40 am
That’s the hard part about the Army. For 2 to 6 months you get yelled at for thinking. The rest of the time you get yelled out for not thinking.
Isn’t there a kind of heater, a Yukon stove, that does burn gasoline? Our platoon sergeant found one when the commo guys were sorting through some gear. The other kind of heater was basically the same as the ones my grandparents used in their houses; the fuel oil was gravity fed into the heater and regulated by a carburettor that looked identical to the civilian model.
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February 10th, 2009 at 10:34 am
Every year one of those things blows up ’cause some moron put Mogas in instead of JP8. You’d think the numerous saftey warnings would be a tip off.
My NCO would yell at us telling us we weren’t paid to think….so I scanned my paystub and photoshopped in $100 of “Thought Pay” and kept it in my wallet. Now this was back in the mid-90’s, so it was easier to do.
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February 10th, 2009 at 10:50 am
I can understand his confusion. He’s not all there, and his natural accent renders “more” as “mo'”, so he doesn’t know there’s a difference between “more gas” and “Mo-Gas”… but he knew full well the things run on JP-8. He needs to learn that those higher up the chain of command Don’t Always Know…
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February 10th, 2009 at 10:51 am
This guy officially wins the Dumbass-of-the-year award.
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February 10th, 2009 at 1:10 pm
So, just out of curiosity, does anyone know why it’s called “Mo-Gas?”
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February 10th, 2009 at 1:11 pm
Mogas = Multiple Octane Gasoline Army Standard
In other words any gasoline the army got cheap that was between 80 and 100 Octane
Every unit hasa Johnson. We had a parts clerk in the motor pool who when you asked, “How’s it going?” he would stop for a full minute, think very hard, and sau “OK”.
Captcha Trinidad 1962 – Just a little before my time.
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February 10th, 2009 at 3:04 pm
The guy in this story sounds at least a little autistic. I have asperger’s syndrome myself and can imagine that having been told to get mo-gas that I would get mo-gas exactly as instructed. I am very literal like that.
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CCO reply on February 10th, 2009 6:11 pm:
NB: “PVT Johnson and I are just coming off of 24-hour tower guard.” Being up for a day makes me a little dull myself. I probably would have double checked if I thought he wanted me to put straight gasoline in it, but then I tended to ask too many questions & do stuff like removing the contents of my duffel bag — instead of DUMPING IT like DS S______ told us to do when we arrived at D/4/13/2.
(Ofpoutltry’spet naive: yeah, maybe, huh?)
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February 10th, 2009 at 11:23 pm
“like all fuel powered heaters in the Army inventory, it runs off of JP-8” Yukons run best off of mogas and they don’t use a carburetor they use a needle drip valve onto a rippled burner plate. Those were great stoves, easy to store, easy to clean (just throw in a 60 blank) with some good cooking area.
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CCO reply on February 12th, 2009 8:39 am:
You don’t mean a blank M-60 round, do you?
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February 11th, 2009 at 8:46 am
I always thought that mo-gas was short for autoMOtive GASoline. As opposed to av gas; AViation GASoline. I thought that the army had gotten rid of mo-gas. Pretty much all the trucks are diesels, although you CAN run some of the M35s on gasoline, it isn’t reccomended.
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CCO reply on February 11th, 2009 11:16 am:
The Mobile Kitchen Trailers (MKTs) had burners that ran off MO-Gas. They were, I understand, a little tricky in that they had to be pumped up with what looked like a bicycle pump. Thus they required a license to operate, usually held by (in our company) the mess NCO.
I heard in circa 1995 that the Army was getting rid of the MKTs, at least at the company level. People in the Sandbox would know more about that than me.
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SPC Johnson reply on February 14th, 2009 2:42 pm:
We still have MKT’s, you see them more on field exercises than you do on a deployment though.
And we have to keep MoGas, how would the SGM get around my tiny little FOB without his Explorer?
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CCO reply on February 16th, 2009 1:34 pm:
Umm, with a Hummer?