Honduran Armor Student

[CavTroop]

OK, I know this isn't an infantry or Ranger story, but it involves dirt so here goes:

This one happened during my Armor Officer Basic Course 81-9 while we were out west of 31W at Ft. Knox on our 10-day "war". We had some Honduran officers in our class and they were aristocrats who didn't like to get their hands dirty. One, named Esteban, was in our crew. Esteban always found someplace else to be when it was time to tighten track, or change out broken torsion bars or do anything involving dirt. He was basically a good guy, but he had this in-trained aversion to dirt. In their army, the EMs did that stuff and he made it obvious that he felt it was beneath him.

Everything went along pretty much that way until 3 or 4 days out when he got his turn to drive the tank.

As some of the readers here will know, an experienced tank driver eases a tank slowly into a creek that has water in it and then, once he reaches the right point near the opposite bank, he guns the engine so the tank climbs out smartly. As long as he takes it slow going in, even if his hatch is open, he doesn't get wet.

Esteban didn't know this. He was aggressive, so with the hatch open he gunned the tank (we were in M60A1s) down into the creek bed and the water came up the front glacis so fast he didn't even get his mouth closed. And man, it was the filthiest, skankiest water on the base!

I was in the TC position, and our NCO instructor was in his jump seat behind the loader's hatch. Both of us knew what was going to happen from the speed of the tank, and the turret was traversed to one side, so all we had to do was lean over and watch him get it, right in the teeth! The NCO laughed so hard he would have fallen off of the turret if he hadn't had his seatbelt fastened!

A little while later, we stopped and Esteban climbed out of the driver's compartment, covered head to toe with reddish brown mud! He had it in his ears, in his mouth, in his hair, everywhere! It was even jammed into the mike on his CVC. And the driver's compartment was filled with it too. And yeah, he got to clean it all out.

We never heard much about dirt after that, and from then on he pitched right in when there was dirt work to be done.

CT Out

[Horned Toad]

One of my sergeants told me about a foreign student in his Ranger class. Bottom line guy was a fuck up and a chow thief. But state department won’t fire foreign students anymore. Well my sergeant then a private is hooking people in on the one rope bridge in FL during the winter. He come the chow thief near the back of the line. By then there is a lot of slack in the rope. So he pulls a lot of slack and throws a half hitch in the rope. Foreign student get to middle and current catches him and pulls rope tight. He stuck. They have to bring in the safety boat and by the time they get him unhooked he hypothermic and get medicaled or quits can’t remember which.