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WIWAC

Started by ol'fido, November 17, 2011, 12:41:12 AM

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ol'fido

Our first "corporate" vehicle was a '59 station wagon we got in '82. We upgraded s year  later to a '64 Dodge super crew pickup that visibly bowed in the middle. They both "used" to be the dark navy AF blue,but had faded to a dull rust tinted blue. A little later we got an a M37 without the canvas cover on the cab.
Lt. Col. Randy L. Mitchell
Historian, Group 1, IL-006

Stonewall

Quote from: Mosbius on July 07, 2012, 10:51:19 PM
Our GT's handbook WAS the Ranger Handbook. We were ready to survive in the woods if Atlanta was nuked.

Both of these^^^

Ranger Handbook was SOP and had to be on your person when in the field.

6 hours southeast of Atlanta, we were preparing for the same thing.  And of course, Red Dawn was required viewing.
Serving since 1987.

NIN

Quote from: Stonewall on July 07, 2012, 06:27:33 PM
How about, as a C/A1C, me and one of my friends got our CC to write letters stating we were Public Information Officers for the squadron and we were doing a piece on the Golden Knights.  My mom drives us to the Lake City Air Show, don CAP flight suits, and climb aboard the Golden Knight's plane as the jump out for the air show.  We were maybe 15 years old.  And yes, I have pics to prove it.

I hate you, you know that?  I don't have a story nearly as cool as that one from my cadet days. :)


Quote
Man, the 80s were a good time in CAP.

I wish they still had the Drummond Island:  Declassified story on the old CadetStuff site.  That was literally the best CAP story I've ever read.

As a Drummond Island Ranger (and the guy who knows "Hannibal" quite well), I'm here to tell you that those stories are completely true. Well, most of 'em, at least. The parts that weren't embellished thru time.

The archives are down at the moment (thanks for pointing that out, UK) due to the new server and all that, so I just pinged the tech wonks and said "Hey, uh, I know this is a little demanding, but can we bring back the archives?" :)

Speaking of Drummond Island, here's a WIWAC story that will light up your day.. :)

I was a C/TSgt when I went to DI in 1982.   The story behind the whys and the wherefores of DI are best left for another time, but suffice to say, Group XII and Group III (my group) had competing "Ranger" programs (which were, at the time, quite extensive) and me wanting to go to this Drummond Island thing was considered a "defection" of sorts.  But my squadron commander, bless his heart, said "Well, if you want to.." and signed my CAPF 31 and off I went.

I had zero idea what to expect, and in a lot of ways it was like "CAP meets Apocalypse Now."  The field site at Drummond Island was almost 350 miles from Group XII HQ, literally on an island in the straits between Lake Superior & Lake Huron, between the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and Canada.   The convoy to get there consisted of two buses and several vehicles including a fire department surplused "rescue vehicle" that had been dubbed the "Ready Ranger Rick Rescue Recreational Vehicle," and just _getting_ to the island was an adventure of massive proportions.

The Drummond Island compound was primitive to say the least.  Those of us with overactive imaginations probably thought this is what a real live SF A-Team camp would have looked like in Vietnam, like Lang Vei.  It was about a 200m x 100m clearing in the middle of the woods, easily a mile off the main road (we were told.  It was really slightly less than a half mile) and what seemed to be miles from any kind of habitation.

There were a couple old house trailers butted up to the west side of the perimeter that served as the kitchen and camp HQ. Next to the trailers stood a primitive guard tower constructed of timbers, about 15-20 ft in the air complete with overhead cover and a beret-clad skull painted on the side (I am _not_ kidding) and a good sized fire pit. The camp trash dump and the rifle range occupied the southeast corner of the clearing, and the camp latrine (open pit, one ea) was located in the eastern treeline behind where the buses and RRRRV were parked. The rest of the camp was space for our team areas and GP Tinys.

We were there a couple-three days when somehow I got tasked to rig up a spot light in the tower. We had the searchlight off an old cop car, and someone had dug up a 12v power supply like you'd use for a ham radio, so I scrambled up the tower and started rigging power and light.  I had the search light working just as it was starting to get dark, and I showed C/Lt Bowers how to make it work, just in case they needed it.

Next thing I know, the alarm is raised across the camp "Bear in the trash dump! Everybody, stand to!" ("What the holy hell is a 'stand-to'?" I thought)  We're all out of our tents and around the fire pit in front of the tower, when I realized that now would probably be just the right time to put that searchlight into action.  I scampered up the tower and pointed the light at the trash dump about 100m away. Sure enough, there's a bear rooting around in our trash.   There were a lot of us city boys there, and I know for a fact that it was the first time I'd ever seen a bear outside of the Detroit Zoo.  All I could think was "Wait, what if that bear comes this way?"

So after 10-15 minutes of this, I happen to glance down, and there is LT Bowers standing at the base of the tower with an M-1 Garand on his shoulder.  I leaned over, cleared my throat, and asked the LT very nicely if he would mind not pointing the muzzle of the rifle in my direction.

The Garand was the only weapon I'd spotted at the moment, but I knew one of the seniors, WO or LT Hughes, was a sheriff's deputy and had his duty piece with him. (I honestly cannot recall if Hughes was a WO at that moment or an LT, but when I first saw him at Gp XII HQ, he was a C/Lt Col, and he was hastily made a senior member "for the duration," so I'm guessing he was around 20.. I can't rightly remember, since it was 30 years ago, if they'd just hung LT bars on him, or had him wear WO)

After 45 minute to an hour, the bear got bored of rooting around in the trash and ambled off into the woods to the SE of the camp. My team's area butted up against the western edge of the compound, so I was convinced all night laying in my tent that this big brown or black thing would eventually leap out of the woods and eat me first.

Several nights later, we marched to our first bivouac away from the camp at a place called Meade Island.  Each team created its own area just back from the beach with our own fire pits, etc.  The next AM, we were all woken with a "Get your fires going, get by your fires! There's a bear in the area!"  Let me tell you: I never got a fire going so fast in my life.

So here we are, teams huddled around our fires trying to get warm (for August, it was [darn] cold), and the word goes around that LT Hughes is out in the woods, looking for the bear. (Wait, what?)  A couple minutes later, to our left, on this point of land that our beach extends out onto,  the woods lights up and we hear the distinctive report of a firearm a second or two later.  Oookay, can we make this fire any bigger?  How about we grab all our crap and start heading back to the camp, mmmkay?

The school's 2nd bivouac was held during the 2nd week. We'd returned from the trip to K.I. Sawyer AFB that helped make this a "type B encampment," and the word was afoot to prepare for the "death march to Marblehead."  Marblehead was the far eastern point of the island, where natural cliff faces afforded us a great place to rappel.   The scuttlebutt was that Marblehead was a hard 12 mile march, and that there would be no lollygagging.  Anybody who fell out was definitely not cut out to be a ranger.

In retrospect, I should have taken much of what I was told about distances with a grain of salt. It *might* have been 10 miles, and that is accounting for all the twists and turns on the route.   

Following the experiences gained on the previous week's bivvy to Meade Island, what was really a short hike of maybe 2 miles, all of us eshewed the crap we'd taken the first time like sleeping bags and canned food.  We were traveling "Ranger-light", with just LBE & buttpacks.  Food was distributed among the teams. Each team had  gotten a ziploc bag of Bisquick, a big can of Dinty Moore, and some other sundries for the overnight . And of course, whatever pogey bait the rest of us might have been carrying (Granola bars, etc).

While on the hike, I noticed the guy who had started as the Cadet Commander had a 12 gauge shotgun rigged into his ARVN rucksack (the muzzle and action were down in the ruck, the stock protruding vertically).

I asked "Sir, what's that for?"

"Bears!" he grinned.

So yeah, remember all those "firearms" rules in the regs?  I'm pretty sure most of them were in the regs, even in 1982. :)

Darin Ninness, Col, CAP
I have no responsibilities whatsoever
I like to have Difficult Adult Conversations™
The contents of this post are Copyright © 2007-2024 by NIN. All rights are reserved. Specific permission is given to quote this post here on CAP-Talk only.

NIN

Quote from: Mosbius on July 07, 2012, 10:51:19 PM
And there are stories whose statute of limitations hasn't quite run out yet...

You got those too, huh?

Darin Ninness, Col, CAP
I have no responsibilities whatsoever
I like to have Difficult Adult Conversations™
The contents of this post are Copyright © 2007-2024 by NIN. All rights are reserved. Specific permission is given to quote this post here on CAP-Talk only.

Extremepredjudice

Quote from: NIN on July 07, 2012, 11:48:45 PM
Quote from: Mosbius on July 07, 2012, 10:51:19 PM
And there are stories whose statute of limitations hasn't quite run out yet...

You got those too, huh?
Setting a good example for the cadets, aren't we gentlemen? >:D
I love the moderators here. <3

Hanlon's Razor
Occam's Razor
"Flight make chant; I good leader"

NIN

Quote from: Extremepredjudice on July 08, 2012, 01:14:50 AM
Setting a good example for the cadets, aren't we gentlemen? >:D

The example is: Don't get caught.  Or if you do, have a snuffy you can pin it all on.

Darin Ninness, Col, CAP
I have no responsibilities whatsoever
I like to have Difficult Adult Conversations™
The contents of this post are Copyright © 2007-2024 by NIN. All rights are reserved. Specific permission is given to quote this post here on CAP-Talk only.

Extremepredjudice

Quote from: NIN on July 08, 2012, 01:19:57 AM
Quote from: Extremepredjudice on July 08, 2012, 01:14:50 AM
Setting a good example for the cadets, aren't we gentlemen? >:D

The example is: Don't get caught.  Or if you do, have a snuffy you can pin it all on.
So lie. K, wilco.
I love the moderators here. <3

Hanlon's Razor
Occam's Razor
"Flight make chant; I good leader"

Garibaldi

Different time, different rules. If this was still the 80s or even the early 90s, we wouldn't be having this discussion. As immature as we were, we were pretty good at covering our butts. Except for one time. Maybe that one other time too. And that one time I was hog-tied and hung upside down one time on my first FTX and interrogated for two hours...
Still a major after all these years.
ES dude, leadership ossifer, publik affaires
Opinionated and wrong 99% of the time about all things

ol'fido

Quote from: Stonewall on July 07, 2012, 11:37:48 PM
Quote from: Mosbius on July 07, 2012, 10:51:19 PM
Our GT's handbook WAS the Ranger Handbook. We were ready to survive in the woods if Atlanta was nuked.

Both of these^^^

Ranger Handbook was SOP and had to be on your person when in the field.

6 hours southeast of Atlanta, we were preparing for the same thing.  And of course, Red Dawn was required viewing.
Red Dawn, Apocalypse Now, and Stripes: The holy trinity of movies WIWAC.
Lt. Col. Randy L. Mitchell
Historian, Group 1, IL-006

Stonewall

I hate that I don't have time for CAP these days.  This thread has made me miss it again.  My son will be eligible to join in a little over 5 years.  Maybe I'll be able to help him experience some of those good times that we're talking about here, without giving myself a heart attack  :angel:
Serving since 1987.

NIN

Quote from: ol'fido on July 08, 2012, 01:01:43 PM
Red Dawn, Apocalypse Now, and Stripes: The holy trinity of movies WIWAC.

Taps, man, Taps. The Four Movies of the Apocalypse :)

(Seriously, I was a C/A1C or C/Sgt, about 20 of us went to see it Taps.  Red Dawn came out, and we all went in jungle pants, boots, "Kill A Commie For Mommy" shirts, etc... )
Darin Ninness, Col, CAP
I have no responsibilities whatsoever
I like to have Difficult Adult Conversations™
The contents of this post are Copyright © 2007-2024 by NIN. All rights are reserved. Specific permission is given to quote this post here on CAP-Talk only.

ol'fido

Quote from: NIN on July 08, 2012, 06:23:23 PM
Quote from: ol'fido on July 08, 2012, 01:01:43 PM
Red Dawn, Apocalypse Now, and Stripes: The holy trinity of movies WIWAC.

Taps, man, Taps. The Four Movies of the Apocalypse :)

(Seriously, I was a C/A1C or C/Sgt, about 20 of us went to see it Taps.  Red Dawn came out, and we all went in jungle pants, boots, "Kill A Commie For Mommy" shirts, etc... )
Anybody know where I can get a "'Be a Man Among Men' Rhodesian Army" t shirt. :'(
Lt. Col. Randy L. Mitchell
Historian, Group 1, IL-006

Garibaldi

Quote from: NIN on July 08, 2012, 06:23:23 PM
Quote from: ol'fido on July 08, 2012, 01:01:43 PM
Red Dawn, Apocalypse Now, and Stripes: The holy trinity of movies WIWAC.

Taps, man, Taps. The Four Movies of the Apocalypse :)

(Seriously, I was a C/A1C or C/Sgt, about 20 of us went to see it Taps.  Red Dawn came out, and we all went in jungle pants, boots, "Kill A Commie For Mommy" shirts, etc... )

For us, it was Stripes at the '81 encampment, Star Trek II at the '82 encampment, then Red Dawn at the '84 encampment. On our own we watched whatever movies related to Viet Nam, WWII, or the Army that we could get our hands on. It got to the point that we were so gung-ho that we would wear our flight jackets, Ranger patrol hats, OD t-shirts, jeans and boots whenever we went places. Having about 15 of us descend on a movie theater in that getup got us a lot of strange looks. I'm guessing that we looked more like teen-aged urban terrorists than "dynamic Americans and aerospace leaders".
Still a major after all these years.
ES dude, leadership ossifer, publik affaires
Opinionated and wrong 99% of the time about all things

NIN

Quote from: Garibaldi on July 08, 2012, 08:38:32 PM
Having about 15 of us descend on a movie theater in that getup got us a lot of strange looks. I'm guessing that we looked more like teen-aged urban terrorists than "dynamic Americans and aerospace leaders".

^^^^ This. Totally.
Darin Ninness, Col, CAP
I have no responsibilities whatsoever
I like to have Difficult Adult Conversations™
The contents of this post are Copyright © 2007-2024 by NIN. All rights are reserved. Specific permission is given to quote this post here on CAP-Talk only.

NIN

Quote from: ol'fido on July 08, 2012, 08:00:43 PM
Anybody know where I can get a "'Be a Man Among Men' Rhodesian Army" t shirt. :'(

(I don't mean to come off as rude, man, but that took like 12 seconds on Google..<GRIN>)

http://www.zazzle.com/be_a_man_among_men_t_shirts-235627713807272630
https://www.sofmag.com/store/rhodesian-army-t-shirt-black

I had to discontinue my subscription to SOF when I went on Active Duty.  I didn't think it would reflect well on a clearance interview. :)

Darin Ninness, Col, CAP
I have no responsibilities whatsoever
I like to have Difficult Adult Conversations™
The contents of this post are Copyright © 2007-2024 by NIN. All rights are reserved. Specific permission is given to quote this post here on CAP-Talk only.

Stonewall

#75
Quote from: ol'fido on July 08, 2012, 08:00:43 PM
Anybody know where I can get a "'Be a Man Among Men' Rhodesian Army" t shirt. :'(

D00d!  I was reading this from my blackberry and thought to myself "when I get home I'm going to post a pic of the 'be a man among men' shirt."

You beat me to it!  I had that shirt and the one that said "Support your right to keep and arm bears".


Serving since 1987.

a2capt

Heh.. well, it rolls back to my WIWAC era, but not during an actual cadet activity.. (MCJROTC), but .. the comment of Red Dawn made me think of a silly activity ...

One afternoon whist visiting Palomar Mountain .. after a recent snowing. We found our way to the parking lot of the observatory, and there were all kinds of piles of snow, having large tires, it was fun running over them and such. Some were nice and puffy, so I took aim for one.. and blam! snow everywhere. That was fun, lets do it again!

The next one wasn't so forgiving. Jammed the push bar into the grille, which broke a radiator bracket and the fan bit the radiator.

Bought a bunch of Bubble Yum and tried to patch it... and then needing water .. the thought of the particular scene in Red Dawn, but it was kinda ruled out because .. well.. we were sure it wouldn't be enough. Turned out there was an Artesian Spring around the corner from where the main road heads down the mountain and using soda cups and such we managed to get enough water.

Silly kids..

ol'fido

Quote from: NIN on July 08, 2012, 08:43:19 PM
Quote from: ol'fido on July 08, 2012, 08:00:43 PM
Anybody know where I can get a "'Be a Man Among Men' Rhodesian Army" t shirt. :'(

(I don't mean to come off as rude, man, but that took like 12 seconds on Google..<GRIN>)

http://www.zazzle.com/be_a_man_among_men_t_shirts-235627713807272630
https://www.sofmag.com/store/rhodesian-army-t-shirt-black

I had to discontinue my subscription to SOF when I went on Active Duty.  I didn't think it would reflect well on a clearance interview. :)
It was more of a rhetorical question, my steely eyed auxiliaryman friend. ;)
Lt. Col. Randy L. Mitchell
Historian, Group 1, IL-006

ol'fido

Stonewall,

You me and NIN are going to have to get together sometime and kill a few brain cells and tell a lot more war stories.

Ol'fido
Lt. Col. Randy L. Mitchell
Historian, Group 1, IL-006

SarDragon

Quote from: ol'fido on July 08, 2012, 10:58:46 PM
Quote from: NIN on July 08, 2012, 08:43:19 PM
Quote from: ol'fido on July 08, 2012, 08:00:43 PM
Anybody know where I can get a "'Be a Man Among Men' Rhodesian Army" t shirt. :'(

(I don't mean to come off as rude, man, but that took like 12 seconds on Google..<GRIN>)

http://www.zazzle.com/be_a_man_among_men_t_shirts-235627713807272630
https://www.sofmag.com/store/rhodesian-army-t-shirt-black

I had to discontinue my subscription to SOF when I went on Active Duty.  I didn't think it would reflect well on a clearance interview. :)
It was more of a rhetorical question, my steely eyed auxiliaryman friend. ;)

One should generally avoid rhetorical Qs on here. They tend to provoke all sorts of smart-ass responses.  ;)
Dave Bowles
Maj, CAP
AT1, USN Retired
50 Year Member
Mitchell Award (unnumbered)
C/WO, CAP, Ret