What Do You Mean, Live Grenade?

I was orginally in the army from 1966 to 1970. Then, I went back to college and got my degree in accounting. After working five years as an accountant, I went back in the Army in 1978.

I was sent to Fort Leonard Woods, MO for what they called "Minute Man" training. This was a two week course for prior service people from all military services who were coming into the Army. It was during this time I learned why people who had been there referred to it as Fort Lost-in-the-Woods.

Most of us in my training company were ex-Army, but we had a few who had been Navy, Air Force, or Marines. One fellow who had previously been in the Air Force had been a little worried at first. According to him, he had been born with a silver spoon in his moutn and had never really done anything physical or adventuresome, and this accelerated version of Basic Training was almost too much for him.

However, he held up pretty well, and, as the end of the course drew near, he was beginning to feel quite the soldier. One night, he was wondering what was going to happen the next day, so he wandered down to the end of the barracks to read the training schedule posted on the bulletin board.

As he read, he asked, "Hey! What does this mean? 'Live Grenade Throw'!"

Most of us did not realize at first that he was totally serious. Finally, as he stood there expectantly, one of us said, "You throw a live grenade."

Silence on his part. Then, "What do you mean, 'live' grenade?"

Then, he asked again, "Do you mean a REAL LIVE grenade? One that actually explodes?"

Getting several yep's, yeah's, uh-hu's, and nods his face crumbled. I think his last words before the barracks lights went out were, "Oh my God!"

When I fell asleep, he was pacing up and down the center of the squad bay.

He did okay, by the way. Only one guy fumbled his grenade but one of the guys in the pit with him kicked it through the hole into the sump and nobody was hurt.

My personal hand grenade story occured when I was going through Basic Combat Training at Fort Jackson, SC in 1966.

One fellow in our unit had never thrown so much as a rock in his life. During practice, I actually saw a dummy grenade backwards out of his hand as he tried to throw it.

When he threw his live grenade, he threw it straight up in the air. Fortunately, it fell just on the other side of the barricade and no one was hurt. Unfortunately, his position was directly in front of a viewing platform occupied by several officers and senior NCO's (Noncommissioned Officers). They were treated to the sight of a live grenade rising in the air directly in front of them.

We who were waiting our turns down below were treated to the sight of all those dignitaries, most of whom were highly decorated combat veterans, scurrying towards the exit at the back of the platform. The guys in the pit with the poor guy who had thrown the grenade did their jobs. They threw him to the ground and fell on top of him.

When he came out of the pits, he was bruised and shaken, but at least he was alive.

Fort Ord: Clancy and the Bowling Alley House

I don't think it was a common term, but I have heard a couple of people call them "bowling alley" houses.

When I was attending the Defense Language Institute, West Coast (DLIWC), in Monterey, California in 1983-84, studying Polish, my family and I were given quarters on Fort Ord. Because of the size of our family, three kids, two cats, and a dog...okay, the animals didn't count...we were given a four-bedroom home.

Originally there were not any of these on Fort Ord, and a lot of the housing was duplexes with only a couple of bedrooms. Each duplex had a carport on each end. However, over the years, the Army had the dividing walls knocked out of some of the duplexes and converted one of the carports into a master bedroom.

Since the original duplexes had a single hallway running the entire length of the house, when they took out the dividing wall, you wound up with one awfully long home with a verrrry long hallway running from the living room to the master bedroom. Hence the nickname, "bowling alley house".

It was nice on Fort Ord. Quiet, pretty, just minutes from Monterey Bay and downtown Monterey itself. One of the great things is that we did not have...or need...an air conditioner.

The kids liked the house, especially the pink-blooming ice plant in the back yard, which was long and narrow, like the house. However, Clancy liked it even better.

Clancy was our crazy cat. Lean to the point of scrawny and slightly mad, Clancy loved to run full-tilt down the hall, hit the living room floor, and slam on brakes. Trouble was, the living room floor was a very slick wood parquet. Although Clancy would go through the normal stopping process, on that floor it wouldn't work. Scrabbling madly, Clancy would slide at high speed across the living room floor and smash into the far wall.

Then, the mad Irish-cat Clancy would shake his head for a second almost like Tom in a Tom and Jerry cartoon, and then he would run back down to the bedroom for another shot.

We had given him the name "Clancy" because he had that lean appearance and slightly mad look which reminded us of a man named Clancy with whom we had once worked.

Sadly, one morning I got up and walked into the living room and found Clancy dead on the living room floor. We had no idea what he died from, but I have often wondered if he took one trip too many down the hallway at the bowling alley house.

New Blog on Senior Health

Since Google did not like the idea of me trying to help seniors stay healthy and maybe make a few dollars to supplement my military retirement and social security and therefore deleted my previous blog on senior health and fitness, I have bought my own domain and built my own blog on Senior Health and Fitness at http://fitness-after-40.ws.

Please just take a moment to take a look at it, and, if you think it of value, please bookmark it, link to it, and/or recommend it to others. I had the other blog up for about five years, and just now Google decided it was not worth keeping around.

Thank you.

Don Baldwin

Whatever Night at the Movies...Germany 1980-81

For a couple of years in the 1980's I was stationed in a small town in northern Germany, Soegel. Pronounced a bit like Zergal, only not quite.

Anyway the town wasn't a whole lot more than a village, and only had about 7,000 inhabitants if I remember. The U.S. Army did not actually have any real assets there, and we worked on a German Luftwaffe (Air Force) base. They provided all our support, and the married families, German and American, lived in NATO housing.

The unit I was assigned to was a "special weapons" (read "nuclear") unit and controlled the warheads and provided training to the German units actually assigned to use the weapons.

Like the town, our footprint on the Luftwaffe base was very small and we had a few buildings, including a tiny NCO/EM Club, PX, and Commissary.

The army considered us to be an "isolated unit", and sent us movies to watch for free. We got new movies almost every day, but I must admit that I use the term "new" very carefully and with reservations.

The way it worked was that the army bought a certain number of movies to display, but it was a mix of fairly recent stuff and some I would not show my dog. The movie distribution was from post to post and we never really knew what was coming. Since there was a movie every night and there was not a lot of other things to do, especially for the families and those who did not drink heavily, people would just decide to go up to the movies and watch whatever was showing.

The movies were shown by guys who got off the duty roster by being a "projectionist" in a building that was not a whole lot more than a shed. There were no refreshments and people would often pop big bunches of popcorn for everyone to share and sometimes would bring sodas and candy.

For a short period of time while the movie was playing, we were just one big family, and people, especially the enlisted men, often got a kick out of my ex-wife telling the post commander's son to sit down and behave, since he was a junior. She would yell out, "Aaron Royer, sit down and behave yourself." and everyone would laugh, including Colonel Royer, the base commander.

We got to see some pretty decent movies on a regular basis, but there were some dogs and some mix-ups. These actually were generally considered to be part of the entertainment.

There was one movie, somewhere below Grade B, which was terrible. It was so bad, I wish I could find out what its name is and watch it again. In one scene, a car and a truck had stopped on a small road, the truck on one side, the car on the other.

In one shot, three people were standing directly in front of the truck talking. The camera angle changed and they were standing across the road by the car. Someone off-screen yelled at them and they looked startled and suddenly ran over to get back in front of the truck, resumed their positions, and started over.

In another scene, a character had to duck when the microphone dropped into the frame and almost hit him on the head.

On another occasion, we got the first and last reel of one movie and the middle reel of another. The projectionist had no way of knowing until the second movie started showing, and, once we figured out what had happened, just continued to show the odd reel to the finish and then put the last reel of the original movie on.

Oddly enough, it's fun to remember those strange movie nights.

Short Book Review: Money and the Meaning of LIfe

I am currently reading Jacob Needleman's book, Money and the Meaning of Life, published in paperback by Doubleday, 1991.

Mr. Needleman explores, from a personal point of view, the relationship between money, the inner self, and the outer world.

One of his points seems to be that, while money is an important, and sometimes dangerous, factor in our existence, it is also sometimes misunderstood and assigned either too much power, or the wrong role in lives.

Money, in Mr. Needleman's view, is actually an outgrowth of the need for man to create a better, more connected community but, in the modern world, often leads one astray.

A good read, though a little turgid at times.

I do recommend "Money and the Meaning of Life" by Jacob Needleman.

I also recommend the following for those interested in this area:

Magic, Myth, And Money: The Origin Of Money In Religious Ritual