Military memory

It was about 15 years ago when I saw my first Soviet Rifle Regiment up close.

I was stationed in Vilseck, Germany with 1-6 Infantry, 1st Armored division when I got there. I moved around that little post for the duration of my stay, from 4th platoon Delta company to headquarters 1-6, back to supply in my old Delta company then a lateral transfer to HHC 1-37 Armor across the street. All these moves were caused by my superior skills in dealing with electronic hardware...I was THE man in the entire brigade for computer hardware and software problems. Operating system and architecture were irrelevant to me, I felt at home with our company clerk's monochrome Wang POS as I was with my roomate's Commodore 128 and my IBM PC. (I left my own Commie 64 at home, picking up the PC so I could play a wonderful game called Tank Platoon, which made me a hit when I moved to the armor battalion.)

My abilities in bending hardware and software to my own will got me into some trouble, but also proved my salvation for the last year of my tour. It became apparent that my skills were known by various people when the 1-37 battalion sergeant major picked me out of a roomfull of grunts to see him after a meeting...a meeting everyone present was viewing with dread, because we had all "volunteered" for the task of transporting all the crap 1-37 was needing for Desert Storm to and from Germany, and that meant weeks of driving, heavy lifting, and zero fun for all involved. So when a sergeant major points at you and says "come with me", you feel a sense of panic.

I hadnd't raised my hand to volunteer for this work, I had been selected by my first sergeant, and individual who never liked me from the beginning and didn't like me at the end. Which was fair, I didn't exactly conform to the ideal soldier ethic, I found I had a flair for making the Army's byzantine supply system work for me, and I enjoyed dealing with matters of supply, but I was an infantryman foremost and I couldn't play both roles at the same time. For a fuller disclosure, I happened to mention to 1Sgt Gengalo that I found working in supply a more immediately rewarding endevour, whereas being a line grunt at the bottom of the food chain limited personal initiative somewhat. I saw it as a simple problem of rank and responsibility...working as a supply clerk, while not providing a great deal of authority, gave me immediate returns in responsibility...while carrying about the SAW or the '60 didn't tax my mental abilities quite so much.

Objectively, these are true and simple facts. Top didn't see it that way, he interpreted this as a diatribe against the entire concept of the infantry soldier. Since he had more stripes than I did, his opinion is what mattered. He was, simply an asshole, but an effective asshole, and assholes appear in any career you undertake...it's just that in the Army an asshole can make life a living hell. He made me3 a supply clerk all right, putting me under the supply sergeant (SSgt jackson, if I recall correctly) so that I wouldn't contaminate an infantry platoon. (His words.) Fair enough.

I suppose the prospect of having me play truck driver and supply hauler for a bunch of tankers amused him. Lots of things amused him, (from my young snot viewpoint, why else would he be raggin' on me?) like telling me to have the company truck ready to go to deliver chow to troops in the field, when I just told him that the damned thing is down with a major fuel leak at the fuel filter, and we need new tires but I can't get anyone to sign off on that particular request, and the otehr truck is still down with a bad front differential and the new one is still on order, yes first sergeant, I'll get right on it. Naturally I did the impossible, bending rules here and there and outright breaking others because, after all, I can't let my old platoon go unfed. The XO thought that Gengalo ran me a little too hard from time to time, but I assured him that really, this was a conflict of personalities, I'm the private, he's the first sergeant, and besides...i did ask for what he gave me. Plus, it was a challenge...how in the hell can I get the deuce up and running before the chow line closes tonight, how can I get these tires past inspection, and can I steal the new differential that just came in over the weekend?

I'm an infantry soldier. I improvise.

Anyway, Gengalo thought he had a master way of making me miserable by turning me over for a hellish job, but the sergeant major of 1-37 knew who I was, which was frightening at the time, and determined that I would be best person available to drive Major Vinson's HUMMV. Vinson was the battalion S-3, operations staff, and that was the most slack job I ever had in the Army. On paper, I was to make the HUMMV ready in all respects for the Major when he needed to go places, and unofficially, my task was to make all the computers in the battalion function! What a blast!

And to top it off, we get this huge...THING, six armored boxes containing a puny system running a base operating system of HP-UX on, wow, a 286! I was told that this was to be my baby, me, Private Mathews, and I would grok the workings of this Maneauver Control System, or MCS, some new tech that the battalion level operations would carry with them all the time. I have no idea if such a beast is still in service...I doubt it, since the hardware has long since left this ugly beast in the dirt, but who the hell cared at the time? Two boxes were for storage, another box held the shielded power supply, one housed the CPU, another held the huge tape drive, and another housed this monster array of communication ports. It had EVERYTHING, from attachments that plugged right in to our PRC-11 (is that it? can't remember) radios, with hardware encryption! There were two posts to plug the damn thing into field telephone wires if we had to, plugs for this and that, plugs for stuff I never recognized or figured out what the hell they talked to, but the idea was quite obvious...it was meant to communicate by whatever means to the rest of the net.

Oh yes, these machines were networked. Primitive networking, and I'm not going to describe that in too much detail, quite simply because I cracked root in no time to see what was going on, and realized..well, this wasn't a very secure system. So it would be unfortunate to send out email on the thing to the rest of USAEUR, proclaiming that 2-37 Armor has lost a nuclear artillery shell somewhere in the Grafenwohr training area and needs help finding it. There were templates for all sorts of messages, and a nice and friendly menu system would help you classify each message. Is this FLASH traffic? Would you like to use the BROKEN ARROW message template? All manner of fun. (No, I never sent any such message. I would still be craving daylight today if I had done such a thing)

But other than keeping the various battalions in touch, which was what the messaging system was for, it also kept track of your units, and the S-2 intelligence folk had tapes for all over the world, and we could load them into this thing and it would present a detailed map of the theater on the monitor, and that was REAL FRIGGIN COOL. I could zoom in and out of topographic maps, and it would keep track of forces from other units that their MCS would upload across the net, and as the S-2 learned of threat units, those would appear in red (of course) on the monitor and the CO could see everything. Clunky, slow, prone to overheating and a cast iron bitch to move around, but it fit in the TOC track and we took that bastard everywhere. We got that thing up and running in no time, and when the folks came by to train us on it, I was showing everyone in the S-3 office how to use it already, and the S-2 was having a ball with his topographic tapes. We'd plug it into the divisional radio net and chat with other units that had their's online. Like I said, slack job.

Which brings me to a traffic investigation incident.

Some fool had driven his HUMMV over a German national's BMW on the highway to Berlin, squashing it really well. Injuries were involved, and taht made it an investigation. Such jobs are left for various lower ranking officers, and HHC 1-37 had to pick a couple to join the accident investigation team and drive deep into the former DDR (the wall had come down not all that long ago) to see the wreck and take statements and stuff. We'd take a day out there, spend the night in Berlin, then return the next day. I think we took three vans, little Volkswagen vans painted baby shit green for our purposes, and I drove the lead van because, well, I guess cos I was that cool.

I didn't know anyone for this trip, but that was okay, and everyone was laid back, even though I was the only private in this mass of officers. We drove down the huge highway that once was the only road that connected Berlin (West Berlin!) to the FRG, and I did a lot of looking at the countryside. All of the old DDR looked crappy and poorly constructed. In the distance you could see the smudge belching forth from giant factories, the housing was pathetically substandard for Germans...but there were lots of satellite dishes.

The highway to Berlin is very wide and very well kept. The LT in the passenger seat remarked on this, and I told him (truthfully, I think) that it was so Soviet Aviation could land cargo planes there. I noted that the center divider wasn't made of concrete, but instead appeard to be thick metal posts. I sumrised that these posts could be removed from some sections of the highway in case of conflict, and the posts would also serve as a deterrent from anyone trying to land their own stuff. Nice.

We turned off onto a crappy road, which led through the hills to our eventual destination, when I saw It, the entire reason for my being in Germany in the first place, a Soviet Rifle Regiment, sitting in it's laager. WOW.

We drove slowly past that. I later learned that we had to alert the Russians of our coming, and they had the gates closed, but I could see over them into a HUGE motor pool filled with tanks. Tanks, tanks, tanks, and a bunch of BMPs. There were four guards present, all in overcoats and brandishing AK-47's. I saw two officers walking along outside the perimeter, maybe going home, who the hell knows.

I was told to keep the windows rolled up, but we drove slowly by in any case, while our resident intelligence officer wrote down numbers and whatever it is he saw. I waved to the guards and drove on. I wanted to roll down the window and shout something, but I'm sure that too would have landed me in the stockade.

A few miles down the road we found the old DDR police station, a rather disreputable looking building with a bunker nearby. Inside, it was all one big room, kinda like a barn, with wood flooring and cheap furnishings. The lockers for policement were all along one wall, and there was a rack of Ak-47s on the wall for ready use. I was told to stay nearby and not wander around, which was hard for me to do. I saw that the East German officer uniforms were of low quality, and the officers I did see seemed to resent us being there. Tough shit to that.

We were led to a shed behind the building where the wrecked Beemer was, and it indeed was a wreck. I supposed the HUMMV drove over it with the passenger side wheels, crushing the car on the driver's side. It was a mess. Notes were written, pictures were taken, and then we drove the rest of the way to Berlin.

Berlin is a busy, busy city. We stayed at some hotel and I was allowed to take off after dinner, and I did, exploring what I could of Berlin before I had to leave. I rode the subway. I stood at Checkpoint Charlie, walked along the small mounds left behind where there was once a wall not a few months before. I straddled that wall, thinking of history, amazed that I got to see it after all.

I've been thinking a lot about my service recently, some bad, some good. I suppose in the end I really wasn't suited to be a good, ideal soldier. I don't play well with others, preferring instead to do things myself. Nonetheless I did serve, did my job as best I could, and I feel pretty proud about that. I still have my uniform istting in my closet, and from time to time I'll take it out and buff up the brass, align the ribbons properly and center the rank and other insignia, and making damn sure the blue infantry cord is clean. (That's important...that blue cord to me seperates the real workers from the playground supervisors, if you know what I mean..and I've been both) I wonder sometimes what it would be like if I were enlisted now, and what I would be doing. I try to eat healthier and get my blood pressure under control so that maybe, if I can do it, I'll go find out, because for some reason I still want to go there and eat the same crappy food all grunts eat (with lots of Tabasco) and breathe the same dust. I can't do the same things I used to, I'm 15 years older now, but still...I want to do something.

More on that later.