THE ARMY YEARS 10

If you think that all this army stuff is getting old, better leave now.  I hate to run off my many reader but there is a lot more army stuff to come.  When I started this Tome, I didn't realize how much stuff there was to tell.  Especially if you add in the made up stuff to the reality.  This will not be a chronologically arranged as I need to skip around from time to time.  Uh, like now....

Back to Basic Training time for a moment.  We had a guy who was from WEST, BY GOD, VIRGINIA.  That's the way he would always say it.  Anyway, he was called to the orderly room because he got an emergency phone call from home. ( We weren't allowed to have phone calls.)  That usually meant that a family member was sick, injured, or had just died and that was just what had happened.  His dog had died.  He asked to see the CO and requested a leave to go home because his dog had died and he was refused the leave.  (I guess the CO didn't like dogs.)  The next morning he was gone and we didn't see him anymore.  He had gone AWOL.  (Absent without leave.)

From Google.  Troops on the Rifle Range.

That reminds me of this other guy we had.  He wasn't in my barracks but we all heard the shot.  He was on the upstairs floor of the barracks and sat on his footlocker, put the muzzle if his M1 to his boot and purposely shot himself.  It was lucky that there wasn't anyone below him because the bullet went through the floor and into the downstairs floor.  We found out later that he had gotten a "Dear John" letter from his girl friend and thought that he could claim it was an accident and get to go home to patch things up with her.  Nope, he got to go to the hospital and then to the stockade (jail).  (I assume that destroying a GI boot was illegal.)  That was one thing that the army did well.  They had a tight control on the number of rounds issued and shot on the range so I don't know how he managed to steal a bullet.

CLICK HERE-Singing Jodies in the barracks. Not us. From Youtube.

Something else that may not be common knowledge are the "work songs" called "Jody Cadence".  They were originated during WWII by a black army sergeant to help troops stay in step and make the march easier.  Many of them were about a factious guy named Jody.  Jody was always back home, partying, driving your car, taking your job, and making time with your girl while you were slogging through the mud.  Some of that was sometimes true.  Many were R or X rated and were made up on the spot.  Some songs would fit perfectly like "Around her Neck she wore a yellow ribbon".  Also changing some words was sometimes done like "around her leg she wore a purple garter............"  I guess I'll stop there.

The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure, when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them.
Patrick Henry 
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/p/patrick_henry.html#LJQpS75SQ2dSC32L.99