Today is blazingly bright, clear, sunny, windy, cold. It is just above freezing, probably, and the air is unusually damp, not like the normal cold, dry wind that comes with such clear days. It was raining yesterday, and today, puddles sparkle and you hear birds singing, and you can smell the pines.
For some reason the smell of the pines brings back strong, vivid memories of December, 1990.
I had completed MOS (occupational, or “advanced”) training to be an Army mechanic, at Fort Jackson, South Carolina. But the top 15 graduates of the MOS class were retained for an additional month of “recovery specialist” field training, and I was one of them. As the first gulf war was winding up with terrifying speed in Kuwait, our little platoon lived in two tents in the South Carolina woods for that month of December.
It was cold and damp but often sunny in the afternoons, and we alternated between simulated infantry/combat type situations and vehicle recovery operations (basically, “how to drive and operate a giant green tow truck”). I was really bad at the infantry work… whenever I was in charge of my squad, I tended to make grave tactical errors and/or proved too cautious. But I was very good at vehicle recovery.
One day, our training sergeant had us lined up one bright morning, when the weather was exactly like it was this morning walking to work. As a reward for something I’d accomplished, he said, “Way [remember, in the Army, you have no first name], I want you to take that vehicle out into the swamp and get it stuck.” He gestured at one of the two HEMTT’s our training unit had. This was a rare privilege.
I climbed into the cab, the sergeant got in as shotgun. I fired it up, and we drove it out into the swamp. These are not easy vehicles to “get stuck.” They are 8-wheel-drive, with the first two pairs of wheels linked to the hydraulic steering system. The tires are at least 4 feet in diameter. We scooted it back and forth in the muck, and the sergeant yelled at me if I got too timid. “Don’t be too smart, Way. Think stupid. Get it stuck!”
Finally, the front end resting in the water to a depth that covered the top of the front tires and was seeping into the cab, we had it completely immobilized, all eight wheels spinning and throwing up massive quantities of mud. “Damn good,” muttered the sergeant.
And we spent the rest of the day with winches and two tow trucks, getting the thing out. Those were my best days in the Army.
