“The Short-Timers?” We should be so lucky. …
A tip of the Mad Dog’s steel pot goes out to cozadjeff, who caught me up on the weekend’s news via comment. Any guesses as to how many grunts will suffer for a dumbass command decision?
Full metal jagoffs
“The Short-Timers?” We should be so lucky. …
A tip of the Mad Dog’s steel pot goes out to cozadjeff, who caught me up on the weekend’s news via comment. Any guesses as to how many grunts will suffer for a dumbass command decision?
Mad Blog Media 
What I want to know is who were the highest commissioned idiots that thought it was okay to agree to then accept this order from a former Faux News host with no practical experience when it was obviously dangerous. Those dudes need to be fired. Yes, from your comment it’s very likely those people won’t be the ones to suffer. These dudes are the reason much of our officer corps is more like an officer corpse.
The shit rolls downhill, as the fella says. And it sure sucks to be a prive living in the valley.
If you are not a NYT subscriber, I put a link to the LA times article about it under Jeff’s comment.
I got a feeling that pete and jd gave that order so they could get a woodie when the big guns went off. The real folks that pulled the lanyard are not to blame. Except for the one that grabbed the wrong timed fuse round. When they popped off one of those at fire base, we all got nervous ‘cause that meant bad guys were close to the perimeter. When the tubes drop, sphincters close up tight.
Yeh, this was the IRL equivalent of a couple of kids — one a not-terribly-successful major in the National Guard, the other a keyboard kommando — playing with their toy soldiers in the back yard. I’m sure they threw a scare into Hamas, the Russians, and the Chinese.
Also, thanks for adding the LAT link, Hoss. I don’t go there too often.
I just looked for a piece about it not behind a pay wall.
Sheeeeyit, I thought I posted that as a gift link. Y’all was robbed. Try this’n:
Holy Socks! I decided that reading The Short Timers might be good. No joy in finding it in my local library system. So, I’m like I’ll see if I can get a copy via Amazon. The cheapest one is $94.95 in paperback on up to $2499.99 in hard cover. Who needs BitCoin.
Sorry about the paywalled article. I was thinking it was a gift article.
Yikes. Guess I’ll have to be happy watching the movie again.
Got any used-book stores in your neck of the woods? Might find a copy there. Or mebbe eBay. If you can find it, “Close Quarters” by Larry Heinemann is another good novel, about an APC recon platoon.
Gustav Hasford never got the exposure that Michael Herr, Philip Caputo, Tim O’Brien, and some of the other guys did. I recall Herr saying once that he had to run interference for Stanley Kubrick when he was making “Full Metal Jacket” because Hasford was a big ol’ dude with a ’tude and gave Kubrick the heebee-jeebies. Hasford, Herr, and Kubrick shared the writing credits. You’ll find some of Herr’s work in “Apocalypse Now” and “Platoon,” too.
In…coming…..
Well, at least it landed on J.D.’s motorcade. Poetic justice, I suppose.
Reminds me of the time our house in Hawaii Kai was hit through the roof by a AP 50 BMG round.
We came home one night from academia and on closing the front door, I saw a pile of drywall on the floor. Looked up, and saw a hole in the ceiling. I said to my gun-averse wife “someone put a round through the roof”. She being of disbelief, we called a friend up the street and we got up on the roof. Sure enough, an entrance hole. Sticking a stick through it, the trajectory was from the nearby shooting range. So we called the cops.
Cops brought in a detective who dug the bullet out of an interior wall. Um…about two feet from where my wife generally graded student papers. Sure enough, a tungsten cored 50 cal. They interrogated the range master, who after a bit of prodding, admitted he had let some USAF guys use the civilian range to fire off some excess 50 BMG, which we civilians were prohibited from shooting there. Not sure how they did that, unless the round careened off a rock or someone fired the rifle almost straight up. Whole thing was shady. Took a while for the military to fess up, which they finally did under threat of me calling my Congresscritters and the newspapers, and cut a check to fix the house. I wonder who took the blame for that one.
We sold the house and moved to New Mexico that year. I think our house was the only one in Hawaii Kai that on the seller disclosure form, had to have disclosed that the house had been shot up by the Air Force.
Did you two wear helmets and flak jackets until the house sold? Jeezo.
Level IV re-roofing, with ceramic plates….
I guess the flip side is that in New Mexico, it is just the punks doing drive by practice with 9mm or AK-47s putting holes in houses.
Well, I guess crime didn’t pay for this fine upstanding Duke City resident. First he gets cold-cocked, and then he gets used for potential body armor.
https://www.abqjournal.com/news/article_d07278a5-58f3-4540-9c4f-e35648355407.html
No honor among thieves, hey? They left their bro to face the music. Looks like the concert started with a ringing in the ears.
You can’t fix stupid.
Are you sure some Marine didn’t try to 86 the couch-fucker or maybe Patriarch Pete?
You gotta wonder. Nobody likes Major Mascara, and Sec’y Drop N. Gimmetwenny had better bring a food taster along if he ever gets a hankering for some mess-hall chow.
I had a colonoscopy this morning and was expecting them to find a polyp that looked like J.D. Weld or Hegsbreath. Luckily they found nothing which is exactly what those two add in trying to get “Merica” back up and running. Next I’m expecting them to order the Navy to bring battleships UP the Chicago River which a) isn’t much of a river and b) has a LOT of bridges that aren’t vessel friendly. Just so they could quell all that horrible rioting in Chicago. Wait…it was just 6 Bears fans celebrating a win over hapless Saints.
Oh, those guys were up there for sure. You just flushed them out the evening before with the Go Lightly, those stupidest name in the world for that stuff. Go Quickly would be more accurate!
“ The Tunnels Of Cu Chi” is a book that will give you the legit fear. Now, you can go tour them with transportation by luxury limo. Makes you wonder if a tunnel rat ever went back for a tour. I wanted to do the bicycle tour from Hanoi to Saigon but never found the money or time. Too late now.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/156160.The_Tunnels_of_Cu_Chi
I may have read that one … for sure I read something about the tunnel rats that scared the shit out of me. No thank you, please, and thank you some more. I did a little caving in my youth and that was hairy enough without someone down there trying to kill me to death.
Another interesting read is “Chickenhawk,” by Robert Mason, who flew Hueys with the First Cav. Also, “The 13th Valley” by John M. Del Vecchio,” about the 101st Airborne in the Khe Ta Laou valley.
I think I might have rode with him if his call sign was Chickenman. I was in the 1st Cav for all of 1970 and spent an air medal amount of time in Huey’s.
I caught a ride in a helicopter exactly once, as a kid, when the folks took us to Six Flags Over Texas. Little bubble copter for the tourists. Holy hell.
Later I saw the images of troops sitting in the open doors of Hueys, their legs dangling over the side, or jumping in and out of the beasts like they were vans parked at a downtown sidewalk, and thought that all the wild shit I had done up to that point was not all that wild.
That does look like an interesting read. I have to wonder though what you can do with a “piston” in a tunnel. Oohhh the Editor….!