Quote:
Originally Posted by Ducimus
I could share some stories, but contrary to what Platapus would say, most of my "battles" involved heavy equpiment, metal forms, arc wielders, hammers, sheet metal, lumber, concrete, skill saws, other misc power tools, and the like. Not nearly as interesting.
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Ok, then I will do it for you!
When I was in EOD, one time I was working with this heavy equipment operator civilian who was about 400 years old. He was combat construction troop in Viet Nam so he had some pretty good stories of which some of them might have been true. ... like this one
Back then he was a bulldozer operator and his job was to scrap up expedient fire camps for Special Forces.
The normal routine would be for SF to deploy to the area and clear the area of bad guys, then they would set up a perimeter in the brush. Then my guy and his dozer would be airlifted to the camp location, he would scrap a berm. When he was done, the Helo would pick him and his dozer up and the SF would fall back in to the new fire camp. Normally he would never see the SF troops.
Well there he was no Shi...He said this was a true story.
He was transported to the camp site one day and he scraped the berm. When he radioed that he was done and ready for a pick up, he was told that the area had not been secured and that no helo could be sent until the SF cleared the area. Since he normally did not see the SF troops he did not know anything had gone wrong. Gulp!
Evidently the mission to emplace the SF was canceled, but no one coordinated with the construction people so he had been spending the last few hours scraping berms completely alone in enemy territory.
WTF
The only reason he was not killed was because either there were no bad guys in the area (unlikely) or the bad guys, knowing our procedure assumed that the bush was full of SF so the baddies kept their heads down.
The Army did not want to send in a Helo until the SF could make the area safe. Evidently those helos are more important than a D-5 and its operator. The eventually they sent in a helo to extract him but not the dozer, but for many hours he was really alone out there.
Yikes! Knowing what I do know about the military, I can totally believe this story.
In aside, he told me the real reason they did not pick up his dozer was that he threatened to drive it through the HQ building. I don't believe that part.