FORT BRAGG 4

Kaiser

While we were working on rewiring the H-21's at Bragg, the army was testing a couple of Cessna side by side jet planes.  I don't know what the army wanted them for but they were around Simmons Field for a couple of weeks.  We had a guy in our team I will call "Jones" (Not his real name)..  Jones saw them park the "Jet Fuel" tanker near our truck one afternoon to leave it overnight.  He mentioned a couple of times about how great his Kaiser car would run on "Jet Fuel".  I thought that he was kidding.  He wasn't.  Sometime that afternoon, before we left to go back to the barracks, Jones swiped some "Jet Fuel" and put it in his Kaiser car.  Jones had someone else riding with him and they left first.  I was riding back in another car and Jones car made it a few hundred yards before stalling.  We stopped to see what his problem was and he told us that he had just added some "Jet Fuel" to his tank and it should be running great.  Well, "Jet Fuel" is basically kerosene but he didn't know that.  Again, ignorance is dangerous.  They took the rest of us back to the barracks and someone drove back to help Jones.  He had to drain the tank and the carburetor, buy more gas, and was not back until late that evening.

H-13

There was a lot going on at Bragg.  They were just starting to experiment on arming H-13 choppers with two 30 cal machine guns mounted to the skids.  They aimed roughly and watched the tracers to put the rounds on the target.
They had the first "Flying crane" chopper there for testing.  The crane had two pilots.  One facing forward as normal and another facing backward to operate the crane part.  The thing could lift a large tank or a "Pod" full of soldiers or equipment and drop it off quickly and go back for more.  From the looks of it they are still the same basic configuration now.

They had the army "Square dance" team there practicing. I guess it was the army equivalent of the Blue Angles. Well, sort of.  They had orange and white H-13 choppers with stripped rotors so that it looked like pinwheels spinning as they were flying.  No, it wasn't for looks.  It was so they could see each others rotor during their maneuvers.  They would do-se-do and spin around and do something like square dancing.  They must not have kept it long because I can't find anything on YouTube about it but I did find the link below.

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/do-si-do-in-the-sky-the-u-s-army-helicopter-square-dance-team

I owned the world that hour as I rode over it. free of the earth, free of the mountains, free of the clouds, but how inseparably I was bound to them.
Charles Lindbergh 
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FORT BRAGG 3

We were at Bragg a few times and actually got to do some level 3 maintenance.  That was mainly swapping boxes and antennas.  a few of us were looking at the inside of an H-19 or H-34, I don't remember which.  One of the guys was climbing up the inside stairs from the cabin to the cockpit and he spotted a relief tube.  That was a flexible rubber or plastic tube with a funnel like thing on the end and mounted below the pilots seats.  Yes, that's exactly what it is for. That's why they call it a relief tube.   Anyway, the guy pulled it over to his face and was talking into the funnel like thing and saying things like testing, testing, etc.  He said that with all the electronic intercom stuff he wondered why they had to use a rubber hose to talk....... We were all laughing so hard that it took a few seconds to tell him what it was used for.  He climbed out and spit for 10 minutes.  Ignorance is dangerous. 

I was fortunate that while I was at Bragg I was able to fly home for the weekend a few times.  I would go to operations on Friday and see what, if anything, was going from there to Atlanta and what may be coming back on Sunday.  They had an L-19 (Bird dog) going Friday evening and returning on Sunday night.  The Birddog was a hopped up two place Cessna observation plane.  I have seen them put full flaps and lock the brakes, and rev the engine to red line and just about jump off of the runway hanging on the prop.

 You could fly, space available, on any military aircraft at that time if you were in class A uniform (Dress Uniform) .  Some of our guys in the radar platoon were helping them install G.C.A. (Ground Control Approach) radar at Simmons Field.  They were telling us that it was not going well and was not reliable. 

L-19 Birddog

I caught my flight with no problem and my Father picked me up at the Fulton County Airport 3rd Army flight detachment that night and brought me back on Sunday.  All went well until we had some fog and the pilot said that we may have to land at Fort Jackson.  He was on the radio and said , no problem because they had the G.C.A. up at Simmons now.  I didn't say what the radar guys had been telling us.  It was socked in pretty good and you couldn't see the lights on the ground.  I knew what the instruments did and was keeping track of what was happening.  We passed the marker beacons at the proper time and altitude but I didn't trust it.  The pilot pointed the nose down and followed the needle on the I.L.S. (Instrument Landing System).  The G.C.A. operator was telling him "your azimuth is good, your altitude is fine, stay on glide slope, blah, blah.  You couldn't see anything.  I was sort of, .....tense!  The operator calmly said "4 seconds till touchdown.  Take over manually".  I still didn't see anything but then we broke out of the fog and it was clear as a bell near the ground and we were over the end of the runway and landed with no problem.

We fear things in proportion to our ignorance of them.
Christian Nestell Bovee 
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FORT BRAGG 2

We had been working on the conversion for a couple of days when the warrant officer in charge came by the shop van one afternoon and asked us if we would like to take a training hop with them that night up to Raleigh Durham airport and back.  I said sure and Sgt Glasscock said that he thought that we all would like to go.  We were suppose to get chow and be back by 7 pm. Err, that's 19:00 hours in army time.  We all were back on time and waiting to board the chopper.

There was only one set of headphones in the back cabin and the engine was in the rear with two drive shafts and universal joints in the top of the cabin.  When it was running you could not hear the guy next to you scream at you.  Our Sgt had the headphones on and passed word to buckle up because we were ready to take off.  They revved up the engines and engaged the rotors and you could not hear yourself think.

Even though a chopper can take off vertically, they usually followed the same procedure as the fixed wing airplanes by rolling down the taxiway and using the runway to take off.  The pilot told our Sgt. on the intercom to tell everyone to stay buckled because they were going to give us a thrill by doing an auto-rotation.  (An auto-rotation is when there is an engine failure the pilot can keep the rotors spinning like a windmill by reversing the pitch of the rotors and while you drop like a rock and pulling positive pitch just before you become a greasy spot on the ground and, if done right, settle lightly to the ground. 

The Sgt passed down a motion of patting the belt and hooking his hands together and screaming to keep the belt on.  Klumb was on the end seat across from the door and he thought that it meant that it was okay to take off his belt.  As we were lifting off the sun was going down and Klumb wanted to take a picture of it from the air.  He unbuckled his seat belt and stood up by the door.  The door had a large Plexiglas panel in it and was designed to be easy to kick out in case of emergency.
 (Notice the Plexiglas panel in the door in the picture below.)

We were a few hundred feet in the air when the bottom dropped out.  Klumb was about half floating  in air and half dancing like a ballerina as we dropped.  We were afraid that 
Klumb  would hit the Plexiglas panel and go right through.  Luckily someone was able to grab him and pull him to a seat as we touched down and headed to Raleigh Durham.  Klumb kept his belt fastened all the way after that.  I don't know if he ever got that picture.

A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.
Mark Twain 
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FORT BRAGG, NC

As I have said before, we didn't do much useful work when we were at Fort Mac and most of the time when we went somewhere we would go to Fort Bragg, North Carolina.  We loaded up our shop van, power unit, and deuce and a half (2 1/2 ton) truck and headed out on our first TDY (temporary duty) trip to Ft Bragg to help convert H-21 Helicopters from VHF to UHF com radio systems.

H-21 Helicopter

We were working for a Warrant Officer (H-21 pilot) and with the chopper's manufacturer, Vertol, and with their tech reps on the installation.  I was working in the shop van with Chuck Hannen most of the time building junction boxes and wiring up cannon plugs to make the cables that would connect the equipment by using the wiring harnesses supplied by Vertol.  (Chuck later was my best man at our wedding.)  We had a few other guys with a couple in the ship running cables to the radio rack and a couple of others staging the components in the truck.  I thought that we were working well and making good time but the army thought that we were behind schedule.  Obviously, the army's solution was to send our other avionics team up from Ft Mac to help.

Inside view of H-21.

The radio rack is on the left side just behind the pilots position.  As you can see in the picture at the left, there ain't much room.  One guy barely fits in the aisle and one other helping push the cables and lash them down are a crowd by themselves.  Of course, some brass hat behind a desk at 3rd Army HQ thought, One team, one month.  Two teams, half of a month.  The other guys came up and we got in each others way and we got farther behind.  (Also notice the luxurious seating in the chopper.  It doesn't recline but it will fold up to make room for cargo.)

It became obvious that that was not going to work.  Our team chief, Sgt Glasscock (Yes, that really was his name.), and the Warrant Officer in charge of us decided that we would work in shifts.  That is team "1" Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.  Team "2" on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.  It worked great and we all had a 4 day weekend.  Everyone was happy and we finished in a reasonable amount of time.

“ There are two ways to conquer and enslave a nation.

One is by the sword, the other is by debt”

John Adams

FORT MAC 2

While I was stationed at Fort Mac, Nancy and I were married and Debbie and Donna were born.  They were 7 month preemies and we lost Donna.  Debbie spent her first 2 months in an Isolette in the hospital.  It had the temperature and humidity controlled.  We were waiting on her to weigh 5 pounds so we could bring her home.  

Dining out.

We played soldier once a year when we would go to Fort McClellan, Alabama for an army tactical training test.  We had to qualify with our weapons.  We had M1 carbines issued to us and this was the only time that we were able to shoot them although we did have the privilege of marching with them on a regular basis.

We didn't march with the bazooka.

We dined on "C" rations and also had some hot food.  The c rations had cigarettes in them and they were obviously left over from WWII since some had "Luckies go to war" on them and a green wrapper.  If you lit one of the cigarettes it would burn like a dynamite fuse.  As Sherman said, "War is Hell". 

Our cleverly camouflaged machine gun nest.

 I thought that I was about to get into trouble because some guy burned his tent up with this homemade stove he had inside it.  Well, it was cold in the foxholes that we dug and I showed some guys how to make a stove out of a tin can, dirt, and gasoline to heat a little coffee or to have some heat in the foxhole.  The gas tanks on the trucks had a little drain so it was easy to get some gas.  Soon, the foxholes were glowing at night and then the guy burned the tent.  Busted!  They called a formation and said for the ones with stoves to dump them in a trash can and they filled the can.  The CO was not happy and they were afraid that they would not have enough gas to get back to where they had to refuel one of the trucks.

A promise must never be broken.
Alexander Hamilton 
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EVEN MORE ARMY STUFF- FORT MAC

Army Deuce and a Half

The 589th had radar, radio, wire, and avionics teams and we all had vehicles in the motor pool.  As I said earlier, when we were at Ft Mac we did very little that was useful.  We had classes, marched, and did PM on our vehicles and test equipment.  We were in the motor pool doing PM on a very cold and windy morning.  I was in our shop van and was fairly comfortable and some of the guys were in the back of their trucks to get out of the weather.  We had a power unit in each team and some were running the unit for maintenance.

     

Shop Van

  The power units were basically a jeep engine connected to an alternator to make 110/220 volts for electrical power.  It was warm in the power unit trailer and ,one by one, guys got in and sat along the side of the engine to warm up.  The problem was that nobody had put down the support leg in the back.  All was well as long as the weight was all in the front.

PE-95 Power Unit

Somebody stuck their head inside the canvas flap of the trailer and said that the CO was coming!  Everyone headed to the back at the same time to get out and look busy when the trailer tipped back, dumped them all out in a pile, and dropped back down with a thud.  The CO was standing right there over them and knew just what had happened.  One guy, while lying flat on his back on the pavement, saluted and said "Good Morning Sir".  The CO said "carry on" and turned to the first sergeant, smiled, and said that we needed some safety classes.  The first sergeant got everybody back to "work".  As far as I know that was all that happened about it.

A few of us were standing around before a formation one day and a guy came up to talk to one of our sergeants.  He said that he had orders to go to Greenland and he had heard that the sarge had served there and asked him how the duty was.  The sarge told him "You're going to love it.  There are women behind every tree".  The guy smiled, turned, and walked away and the sarge quietly said "There aren't any trees". 

Not Us.  Just shows the Gideon.

As I have already said, we did a lot of retirement parades for the brass.  Fort McPherson was 3rd Army headquarters and there were always plenty of Colonels and Generals retiring.  I was chosen as the Gideon Bearer for the company.  That is that little flag on a pole with a spear point on the end that has the name of the company on it in case we forget our name while we are marching around.  I did get to march right at the front.  Well, you are marching in the right front of the company and the CO is suppose to be one pace to the left and three paces ahead.  

Ukrainian army.  Uh, not our outfit but I decided to leave it in.

One day we had a parade for some brass and as you go by the reviewing stand the CO gives the "Eyes right" command and the CO salutes for the company.  I raised the flag up on the "eyes" and dropped it straight out front on the "right" command like I was supposed to do.  I felt a couple of good bumps on the Gideon and looked out of the corner of my eye to see the CO was getting jabbed in the rump by the sharp point of my flagpole.  Oh well, I guess I'll never make E-5.

The CO was a good guy and knew it was his fault and he was in the wrong place.  I still made E-5 in less than 2 years in the army with a waver for time in grade.  My buddy, Weyman, spent 4 years in the navy and came out as an E-3. 

  (All pictures from the internet.)

The people who cast the votes don't decide an election, the people who count the votes do.
Joseph Stalin  
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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 
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