01-29-2009, 05:58 PM
As for my own service, I served as an Infantryman (11Bravo) starting in 1982 in the 3/161st Infantry (Mech) of the 81st Brigade, Washington Army National Guard. I was an RTO and grenadier, but sometimes humped the M60. I then transferred to a mechanized infantry company with the California Army National Guard (40th Infantry Division) in the same capacity for 2 years, and went active duty in 1985. I requested and was sent to West Germany, and was stationed with the 74th USAFAD (United States Army Field Artillery Detachment), 59th Ordnance Brigade as a nuclear warhead custodian attached to a German Pershing missile battery. With the adoption of the intermediate ballistic missile treaty, all that is long gone now.
I finished my time after active with the reserves, serving in a couple of reserve bands as an oboist. I had blown out my knee, and was reclassed out of the combat arms, which is the single biggest reason I didn’t re-up. Having to take the blue cord (a unique uniform item only for grunts) off my service greens was a bitter day.
I did 9 years total, and would not trade any of it for anything. Sometimes I do miss it, but am beyond the age I can re-up, even if my life was structured to allow it. I think spending time in the field is what I miss the most, the squads I served in, even some of the unpleasant things like being bitterly cold and soaked after a river crossing or pulling security in a pouring rain, and the ways we managed to have fun and get through it in spite of our circumstances.
I recall vividly some scenes, little vignettes through those years; covered head to toe in road dust and joking around by a long line of APCs during a road march through the silent vastness of the Nevada desert; a site recon patrol with live ammo in Germany around the missile site and having one of us almost perish in a nasty bog, but laughing our butts off as we tried to pull him out of the quagmire; heating up c-rats in an open fire and having one guy not bother to vent the can, and blamo, the frank and beans exploded in a spectacular fashion, going straight up in the air; keeping each other’s spirits up during really grueling foot road marches; being on lone guard duty one night in the desert and hearing coyotes answering each other’s calls in the far distance; hearing a far-off church bell through the pre-dawn darkness during a field problem in Germany; low crawling through stinking Georgia mud in boot camp and thinking how great this would have been if I were 8 years old.
; examining a case of c-rats with my buddies, noting how really old the dates were on the box, and philosophizing on the possibly true rumor that they were full of salt peter.
Maybe you feel the same way, but Roman reenacting gives me a very tiny sense of what real life service was like. The hard to describe shared feeling of duty to unit and the mission was something I have never really felt since I got out, and I miss that as well. I wonder sometimes where my old NCOs and buddies have ended up, and wish them all the very best, wherever they are.
I finished my time after active with the reserves, serving in a couple of reserve bands as an oboist. I had blown out my knee, and was reclassed out of the combat arms, which is the single biggest reason I didn’t re-up. Having to take the blue cord (a unique uniform item only for grunts) off my service greens was a bitter day.
I did 9 years total, and would not trade any of it for anything. Sometimes I do miss it, but am beyond the age I can re-up, even if my life was structured to allow it. I think spending time in the field is what I miss the most, the squads I served in, even some of the unpleasant things like being bitterly cold and soaked after a river crossing or pulling security in a pouring rain, and the ways we managed to have fun and get through it in spite of our circumstances.
I recall vividly some scenes, little vignettes through those years; covered head to toe in road dust and joking around by a long line of APCs during a road march through the silent vastness of the Nevada desert; a site recon patrol with live ammo in Germany around the missile site and having one of us almost perish in a nasty bog, but laughing our butts off as we tried to pull him out of the quagmire; heating up c-rats in an open fire and having one guy not bother to vent the can, and blamo, the frank and beans exploded in a spectacular fashion, going straight up in the air; keeping each other’s spirits up during really grueling foot road marches; being on lone guard duty one night in the desert and hearing coyotes answering each other’s calls in the far distance; hearing a far-off church bell through the pre-dawn darkness during a field problem in Germany; low crawling through stinking Georgia mud in boot camp and thinking how great this would have been if I were 8 years old.
; examining a case of c-rats with my buddies, noting how really old the dates were on the box, and philosophizing on the possibly true rumor that they were full of salt peter. Maybe you feel the same way, but Roman reenacting gives me a very tiny sense of what real life service was like. The hard to describe shared feeling of duty to unit and the mission was something I have never really felt since I got out, and I miss that as well. I wonder sometimes where my old NCOs and buddies have ended up, and wish them all the very best, wherever they are.
Dane Donato
Legio III Cyrenaica
Legio III Cyrenaica
