No sunbeams. How apt.
However, that brings up something else.
Earlier this week I did a post about the things we warriors do to newbies as a part of the assimilation process.
This morning, SWWBO asked me to step outside to take a picture of her in her winter Farmer SWWBO outfit. You should check out her new farm blog (good pics of Buffy the Coyote Slayer and Gunner) and the pics from San Juan on her original blog, btw.
It's snowy. And cold. And the back looks out over rolling hills and forest with a fence in the distance, across a cleared field. Which triggered a memory, of a very cold and snowy day in January 1981, when young 2LT Armorer peered at the Border during a stint of border duty. Cold. Snowy. The forest was all evergreen, vice the elms, oaks, maples and beech we have 'round here.
Another thing that will always trigger a reverie is the smell of diesel exhaust on a cold, nose-hair-crinkling morning or evening. The smell that I always associate with the sleepy words, "Lariat Advance" which would blat from the telephone at zero-dark-thirty in the morning as your unit was alerted, probably for a drill. But I remember a couple of times in those early 80's when the words "Lariat Advance" came during tense times when Reagan and Brezhnev were having a staring contest. That was always a sphincter-tightening moment.
You always hoped that when you arrived at the kaserne, the message didn't specify picking up your PNL, your Primary Nuclear Load. Those were *bad* alerts. Then if you moved to your wartime positions, that was a *really* bad alert - not only because it was all part of the message being sent to the Other Side, but it meant you were compromising your GDP, or General Defense Plan, positions. That was a real pain, because it meant you were going to have to do a new GDP once the current excitement was over. Unless you *executed* the plan. But then, we never had to do that. Neither we nor they were suicidal, but thank heavens for Colonel Petrov at the missile warning site in the Baltic who chose to not start WWIII when his radars showed missiles inbound.
We did move out to it once, for a different reason. It had already been compromised by Clyde Lee Conrad, a NCO in the 8th Infantry Division who had provided the GDP to the Hungarians via the Szabo spy ring. though at the time Conrad wasn't known as the culprit. Since we were going to re-do them anyway, we decided to go have a CPX (Command Post Exercise) using the old plan. Heh. Nice to know, if we ever had gone to war, we were well and truly screwed by one of our own. I hope that when he had the heart attack that killed him in prison, they took their time responding to his distress, telling him, "Sorry, we can't find the plans, apparently they were stolen."
There's also a certain smell I will forever associate with Kuwait and Iraq. The same one that many vets have for Vietnam. Oddly enough it involves diesel, too.
So - what are your triggers?
However, that brings up something else.
Earlier this week I did a post about the things we warriors do to newbies as a part of the assimilation process.
This morning, SWWBO asked me to step outside to take a picture of her in her winter Farmer SWWBO outfit. You should check out her new farm blog (good pics of Buffy the Coyote Slayer and Gunner) and the pics from San Juan on her original blog, btw.
It's snowy. And cold. And the back looks out over rolling hills and forest with a fence in the distance, across a cleared field. Which triggered a memory, of a very cold and snowy day in January 1981, when young 2LT Armorer peered at the Border during a stint of border duty. Cold. Snowy. The forest was all evergreen, vice the elms, oaks, maples and beech we have 'round here.
Another thing that will always trigger a reverie is the smell of diesel exhaust on a cold, nose-hair-crinkling morning or evening. The smell that I always associate with the sleepy words, "Lariat Advance" which would blat from the telephone at zero-dark-thirty in the morning as your unit was alerted, probably for a drill. But I remember a couple of times in those early 80's when the words "Lariat Advance" came during tense times when Reagan and Brezhnev were having a staring contest. That was always a sphincter-tightening moment.
You always hoped that when you arrived at the kaserne, the message didn't specify picking up your PNL, your Primary Nuclear Load. Those were *bad* alerts. Then if you moved to your wartime positions, that was a *really* bad alert - not only because it was all part of the message being sent to the Other Side, but it meant you were compromising your GDP, or General Defense Plan, positions. That was a real pain, because it meant you were going to have to do a new GDP once the current excitement was over. Unless you *executed* the plan. But then, we never had to do that. Neither we nor they were suicidal, but thank heavens for Colonel Petrov at the missile warning site in the Baltic who chose to not start WWIII when his radars showed missiles inbound.
We did move out to it once, for a different reason. It had already been compromised by Clyde Lee Conrad, a NCO in the 8th Infantry Division who had provided the GDP to the Hungarians via the Szabo spy ring. though at the time Conrad wasn't known as the culprit. Since we were going to re-do them anyway, we decided to go have a CPX (Command Post Exercise) using the old plan. Heh. Nice to know, if we ever had gone to war, we were well and truly screwed by one of our own. I hope that when he had the heart attack that killed him in prison, they took their time responding to his distress, telling him, "Sorry, we can't find the plans, apparently they were stolen."
There's also a certain smell I will forever associate with Kuwait and Iraq. The same one that many vets have for Vietnam. Oddly enough it involves diesel, too.
So - what are your triggers?
There are larger versions of pads like this. And although I guess you could say I've seen pretty much everything, nothing has ever grossed me out (for lack of a better expression). I dunno - hard to describe except that it's a person and when you care about people somehow you don't really see it.
But oddly, looking at those pads in a food preparation situation set me off.
Anyway, I had to step outside for a smoke. I stood in the twighlight and looked up at the black, leafless trees against the gray winter sky.
So many guys... just so many guys. They will always be with me.
I have fewer liable to set something off since I've been coming here, though.
Thanks, John. Thanks, kids...
Sometimes I think there are civilians who should receive Purple Hearts, too.
*hugs*
Wow!! Instant flashback. I hadn't heard or thought about those words together in at least 20 years, and yet, literally, upon reading them, my mind flashed through an image montage of controlled chaos at 2pm, usually on the Monday, AM, after a 3-day weekend, and the ensuing 7-8 hours of loading, moving, sitting, waiting, and etc. And as I read further, I recalled those few times we were called out on an unexpected day, and how really unnerving _that_ was until we got the word that it was an exercise.
Once we even deployed from the unit marshalling area to the Tennenlohe pre-deployment "get the ammo point" and the ammo teams had to go to the dump and load stuff on trucks and bring it back, and it was only then that we were told it was an exercise, but that we were being tested and would stay out for another day or so having all of our load plans and other stuff looked at.... I recall we did pretty well, considering, but then, we had one of the crazier Tank Bn COs in Germany, LTC Gary Bleidorn, whom I've mentioned here before I think. He was a 'serious' tanker and our Bn was actually pretty decent, as far as it went, I think.
T'anks for the memories... man, what a life that was.
Obvious memory ticklers are: The sickly sweet smell of "blue" water, burning trash, aircraft fuel, human waste, diesel, etc.
Familiar surroundings transformed by a smell to that foreign place was disconcerting the first few times.
My Grandfather was fishing on South Padre Island in the late eighties, he drifted off and was awakened by Japanese tourists chatting as they made their way down the pier. When he discovered the knife he carried during the war was missing, he realized the war was long past.
Thanks for giving me a place to ramble.
Now, the smell also pulls back memories of Afghanistan; primarily Bagram, where burning diesel seemed to be the entire mission.......
We had a a electrical panel being built at the place I work, it had a alarm inside it. The tech triggered it and it sounded just like the NBC alarms from the late 70's, For a moment I was looking for my mask,.
Walking by a diner in town in the am smells just like the messhalls.
Diesel also reminds me of the guns (155's) starting up in the motorpool in the early morning.
This time of the year sometimes I smell ghulwein and it takes me back to Nuremberg.
Dave
I've gotten two o-dark-early phone calls since returning from Germany many long years ago. In both cases, I was up and moving before I'd even answered the phone, and automatically answered with rank and name. My younger brother was a little startled...