Fellow OC-504-68 candidate and graduate Russell Wheat of Canyon Lake was, and is, our resident funnyman. His last market report:
"…helium was up, feathers were down, paper was stationary, elevators rose, escalators continued their slow decline, Coca Cola fizzled, toilet paper reached a new bottom, diapers remained unchanged."
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Posted in Infantry OCS
Tagged Canyon Lake, Infantry OCS, OC 504-68, Russell Wheat
This snap of an ice-cream-and-soda-pop merchant selling to Israeli troops-in-training reminded me of the Pinky Dinky trucks at Fort Benning in 1968. The sergeants would tell us if we finished the next whatever-it-was in fine form, we’d have a Pinky Dinky break. Otherwise…
We usually got one, as they wanted a break, too. I tried Googling the P-D phenom for more, but no luck. OCS classmate Tom Ringwald recalls the Pinky Dinky man as being one of several such available then. "I know that they still operate down there," he said. I figured they did. Why stop a good thing?
But the Army did not, and does not, make commercials as good as this Marine one. As the H.E.B. checker-military brat joked one time when she saw my ARMY cap: "Ain’t Ready For Marines Yet?" Not on the recruiting score.
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Posted in Blogosphere, Infantry OCS, Texana, Troops
Tagged Army, H.E.B., Marine, recruiting commercials
Got an email the other day, at Scribbler AT Texasscribbler dot com, from an Infantry OCS grad from another class and a year earlier than mine. He was trying to track down his old classmates and unsure how to go about it. I hunted a little and found that the alumni association has a new site, which should help him and anyone else with the same aim.
OCS buddy Chuck Waldron reminds me that forty years ago today we were on standby to guard Richard Nixon’s inaugural as platoon leaders in the Sixth Armored Cavalry Regiment. We sat in an armory nearby in case we were needed in those times of periodic nationwide rioting which had little, if anything, to do with Nixon. We weren’t needed. Chuck remembers all of that much better than I do because he and his platoon had to stand in the cold while mine enjoyed the warm armory. He was reminded, he said, because he spent today out in the cold as part of an American Legion honor guard for the funeral of a Korean War veteran.
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”
Instapundit remembers hearing it on Armed Forces Radio as a teenager in Germany. I was twenty-four in 1968 when it was broadcast from the moon. I was duty officer that Christmas Eve night at squadron headquarters of the Sixth Armored Cavalry Regiment at Fort Meade, MD. The duty NCO and I were transfixed.
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Posted in Blogosphere, Infantry OCS, Science/Engineering, Scribbles, Space
Tagged Apollo VIII, Rand Simberg
The Veterans Day pix below caught my eye last night, reminding me that I’d fallen down on the job, so to speak, and failed to post anything about it back on the date of the event. The pix did that to me because of an email I’d gotten a few hours earlier from the wife of an old Army friend, Chuck Buchana, saying he is recovering from a serious heart attack and a stroke that has left him struggling to fully regain his sight. Chuck was the Signal Corps Vietnam veteran behind our OCS class’s reorganization in 2001 and subsequent first reunion at Fort Benning in 2003. There’ve been two more reunions since then and another is scheduled next summer. So we need you well, Chuck, to make it to the gathering. What would we do without the guy who started it all?
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Posted in Infantry OCS, Viet Nam
Tagged Chuck Buchana, Fort Benning, heart attack/stroke, OC 504-68, OCS
THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER 