tag:www.thedonovan.com,2012://1/tag:www.thedonovan.com,2008://1.10082- 2012-03-24T15:25:03Z We're the Military and Airpower Guys of Jonah Goldberg of National Review Online + a stray we found wandering around looking lost. All original material JHD, BHD, JR, WT, and KA 2003-2010 Movable Type 4.12 tag:www.thedonovan.com,2008://1.10082 2008-11-30T16:06:19Z 2008-11-30T20:24:37Z

The Armorer http://www.thedonovan.com
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?]]> tag:www.thedonovan.com,2008://1.10082-comment:81110 MAJ Arkay
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...

]]> 2008-12-03T02:05:59Z 2008-12-03T02:05:59Z tag:www.thedonovan.com,2008://1.10082-comment:81102 Dave 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


]]> 2008-12-03T00:46:31Z 2008-12-03T00:46:31Z tag:www.thedonovan.com,2008://1.10082-comment:81040 Dennis Morehouse http://www.fix-bayonets.us
Now, the smell also pulls back memories of Afghanistan; primarily Bagram, where burning diesel seemed to be the entire mission.......]]> 2008-12-01T19:26:00Z 2008-12-01T19:26:00Z tag:www.thedonovan.com,2008://1.10082-comment:81029 TWS 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. ]]> 2008-12-01T18:19:07Z 2008-12-01T18:19:07Z tag:www.thedonovan.com,2008://1.10082-comment:81016 Bond Diesel and cold triggers those flashbacks...bacon and eggs on bread fresh from the mermite can....answering nature's call thru multiple layers in a snowy (West) German forest, so cold you could feel the moisture in your nose freezing and crackling..the burning diesel smell is another one, but bad memories there as too reminiscent of other things that smell similar.. 2008-12-01T15:24:28Z 2008-12-01T15:24:28Z tag:www.thedonovan.com,2008://1.10082-comment:81014 RetRsvMikeMike ]]> 2008-12-01T14:45:32Z 2008-12-01T14:45:32Z tag:www.thedonovan.com,2008://1.10082-comment:81001 Argent http://insanityblog.com/

]]> 2008-12-01T03:28:26Z 2008-12-01T03:28:26Z tag:www.thedonovan.com,2008://1.10082-comment:80996 SangerM http://www.canted.com 2008-12-01T00:40:33Z 2008-12-01T00:40:33Z tag:www.thedonovan.com,2008://1.10082-comment:80995 SangerM http://www.canted.com
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.]]> 2008-12-01T00:33:33Z 2008-12-01T00:33:33Z tag:www.thedonovan.com,2008://1.10082-comment:80993 Bob ]]> 2008-12-01T00:15:22Z 2008-12-01T00:15:22Z tag:www.thedonovan.com,2008://1.10082-comment:80990 FbL http://www.fuzzilicious.blogspot.com
Sometimes I think there are civilians who should receive Purple Hearts, too.

*hugs*
]]> 2008-11-30T23:44:57Z 2008-11-30T23:44:57Z tag:www.thedonovan.com,2008://1.10082-comment:80987 Hunter Odd timing on this entry... Last night, walking back to the house, Debi and I passed by a fire truck and an ambulance on a call-out. As we rounded past them, I stopped and stood there long enough that Deb asked what I was doing. "Nothing really, just traveling back in time. Idling heavy diesels, the mutter of radios, the scent of exhaust, the vibrations of the engines. Bulky figures moving in the darkness...Seems like a lifetime ago that this was normal, not different." Sappers in front, Hunter 2008-11-30T21:58:35Z 2008-11-30T21:58:35Z tag:www.thedonovan.com,2008://1.10082-comment:80985 Martin Morehouse Diesel smoke, dirt, and sagebrush. I spent my time training in Yakima with a mechanized brigade, so those smells still remind me. I still go camping out that way, but I don't crush nearly as much sagebrush as I used to. The memory that takes me all the way back to Germany would have to be something like the sound of a dialing a rotary dial phone, forever trying to get a connection through the Rheinau exchange. 2008-11-30T21:18:14Z 2008-11-30T21:18:14Z tag:www.thedonovan.com,2008://1.10082-comment:80981 John of Argghhh! http://www.thedonovan.com 2008-11-30T20:21:33Z 2008-11-30T20:21:33Z tag:www.thedonovan.com,2008://1.10082-comment:80978 BillT http://www.thedonovan.com
I have fewer liable to set something off since I've been coming here, though.

Thanks, John. Thanks, kids...
]]> 2008-11-30T19:11:05Z 2008-11-30T19:11:05Z tag:www.thedonovan.com,2008://1.10082-comment:80976 MaryAnn http://www.soldiersangelsgermany.org
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.]]> 2008-11-30T17:58:55Z 2008-11-30T17:58:55Z tag:www.thedonovan.com,2008://1.10082-comment:80975 Cpl Mongo
]]> 2008-11-30T17:46:36Z 2008-11-30T17:46:36Z