And ya know, if only you had stayed awake in math... You could've joined the Air Force


Hope you and your's are well.
Peace

I actually had decent asvab score and I just wanted to be airborne infantry. And don’t even get me started on the air force you S.O.B.s never provided inflight movies in hauling are asses to the DZ. hey joking but tell Allan I voted a straight dem ticket as usual last Tuesday.

I knew I'd screwed up the first time I ate at an AF chow hall.

And we dump on the infantry a lot. But the truth is, I respect the infantry very much.

I used to work with a M1 driver and I’d joke. Tankers never had shoe laces cuz they couldn’t tie them.

they would just call us 'computerized dumb-ass tankers'.

Is it leapoards the west Germans had. I remember in over watch on reforger this tank on black ice barrel tore into a house. Don’t know I heard black ice I saw it after the fact thru binoculars. You could see their toilet as clear as day where the wall was missing.

We never did any joint exercises with the Germans.

I participated in a CPX with the French, and got to become familiar with the AMX-10 APC. But that was it.

Off one night and of course the C.O wants a patrol. And the LT we had at the time was cool as hell and our platoon caught it. And really instead of sending out a squad LT ask for volunteers. So I had to go because I was playing RTO. WELL we’re walking past this farm. And we start talking to this farmer who was telling us he served in Russia now it is me the LT AND E5 and two dudes humping a m60. Well the farmer offered us to warm up LT said to the E5 and the 60 crew go ahead and him and I went to observe the valley. He was one cool officer.

Called us "crunchies"

That's a bad ass tank. That prob would have been my second choice.

Did they make y'all clean the barrels like we had to do our weapons? I've always wondered if they used a big bore brush

We used a long, collapsible ramrod and several detachable tools that screwed on to the end. First, there was a round wire-brush that we coated with break-free and scrubbed the tube with it. Then we switched out the brush for a bell-shaped rammer, wrapped a rag around it and then swabbed all the gunk out of the tube with it. As with cleaning a rifle, we kept ramming rags through until they came out clean.

It took pretty-much the whole crew to clean the gun tube. Two or three guys road-ganging the rammer from outside the tank, and a guy inside to grab the cloth as it came through, and toss it back out to the crew to ram again.

Fortunately, we didn't have to do this too often; just during live-fire exercises. For field exercises, we kept the gun-tube covered with a rubber stopper to keep out dust and moisture.

The life of a tanker...

That's exactly what I figured. You know if it's the Army they go overboard on cleaning anything.

We used caps and I despised using blanks. Cause of the mess it made

The M1A1 120mm smoothbore gun used ammunition with a disintegrating cartridge that burned up in the gun tube after the round was fired. This left only a small metal stub, instead of a large brass casing that cluttered up the turret floor.

If the gun tube was not properly cleaned, the casing would dissolve only incompletely, and flaming casing material could spew back into the turret on recoil when the gun breech dropped. This was called a 'flare-back'. It was so dangerous that, even if none of the crew were hurt, it would bring the entire live-fire exercise to a grinding halt, sometimes even for an entire day while the matter was investigated.

Well I forgot to add that when LT and me come back thru the village to get our people. The E5 and the 60 crew they were blasted drunk drinking with this farmer. LT was ok on it you know but no quiet on the way into the lines with three drunk tread heads. Laughing and stumbling so they went to the 113 to sleep. I’m radioing the ambush hey it’s us and the drunks screaming don’t shoot.

It's nice when you get an LT that knows when his guys are a great team but isn't a hard ass all the time.

Problem was the CO was sharp and he likes to talk. To everyone who was on patrol even a E1 because he believed in getting all intel. I mean captain was smart decent and he would take all details from all of the men. But that morning LT goes sir I sent sgt and 60 crew to rack out their exhausted. Well C.o was Lt we all our tired and he asked me how you holding up corporal and I’m like well waiting get debrief over with so I can catch some z’s sir. Glad he never sent for the three drunks. Cool thing was the old man always had coffee brewing in command track.

I've found that hanging around other vets is better for me.

Several times a year my Army buddy's will come over. My daughter said she'd never seen my laugh so much.

The colonel that interviewed me for the army said he could only tell me two things. It was a desk job and I could not go to a country where there was a military conflict plus other considerations. He was a man of his word. He did tell me that it was four years not three years active duty. Army May 31, 1963-May 29, 1967.

And scored quite well on asvab. but I just was kid and wanted to be airborne infantry. Go big or go home to see if I could do it. I remember the recruiter saying well you could go into computer or missle repair. Nope I wanna do this there is a huge misconception that people in infantry are bottom barrel in intelligence. Not true I meant some very interesting and intellectual people in my rifle platoons. And I was never that hardcore but I made it gave em 3 years.