Horseplay Or, what young men in uniform do when women aren’t around to provide essential shame. By George Nehls If you corral a score or more of young men into forced close proximity for any length of time, their irrepressible energy will express itself as either fractious behavior or horseplay. There are no other alternatives. This is particularly true if there are no females in proximity to moderate the young men’s actions into a façade of adult behavior. Such an environment was often found in military service up into the mid-1970’s. As an enlisted Army service member from 1971 through 1974, I both witnessed and participated appropriately. This brief memoir is a recollection of events that primarily took place at “Team 1:” an administration platoon stationed at Ayers Kaserne in Kirsch Goens, Germany. At Team 1, our youthful energy was directed primarily into horseplay. At first just a release of tension, it eventually became an essential feature of Team 1’s group personality. There were times when Team 1’s primary mission seemed not the pedantic bureaucratic administration of an armored regiment, but the exploration of gestalt juvenile behavior. Overlaying the cacophony of twenty or so manual typewriters in chaotic chatter, bedlam was normal office procedure. I do not pretend to have a monopoly on the stories. I’m sure each Team 1 alumnus has their own portfolio of memories that could compact more substance onto the clattering background. But presented here are some of my own recollections from this experience. Some of the following are humorous stories and some are just whimsical memories. The common thread to all is horseplay. Also, the period of the early 1970s will be remembered as the time of counter-culture and widespread drug use. Unfortunately, the military at that time was no different. For better or worse, smoking hashish (“smoking a bowl”) was common practice among the enlisted cadre in Germany in the early 1970s. Looking back through the bifocals of age and wisdom, it’s a miracle any of us survived. It’s earnestly hoped that this destructive behavior was expunged from military culture soon after this epoch. Yet if nothing else, the period makes for entertaining memories. This is the unabridged version and here’s to horseplay. Fishing for a Six Pack In autumn 1972, the admin unit called Team 1 was created from the 530 Administration Company of the 3rd Armored Division, stationed in Frankfurt, Germany. To better assist the needs of the Division, Team 1 was “forward deployed” to Ayers Kaserne, Germany in October of 1972. Team 1 had been at Ayers Kaserne in Kirsch Goens for only a couple days when this event happened. We had just moved in to the upper floor in our newly assigned barracks. The entire group of perhaps 25 enlisted men was originally housed in a single large bay dormitory. It was extremely crowded. It was like being part of a nuclear sub’s crew. As a quick aside to this story, let me mention that yours truly was responsible for enabling many of these same enlisted personnel to live off-post in apartments and get paid for it. As Team 1’s Personnel Actions Specialist, I had a full set of Army Regulations, and was trying to read quickly through them so I could hasten my On-the-Job-Training. Why was I hastening with OJT? Upon entering the Army, I had originally been trained as an “armored reconnaissance scout,” a deadly profession. When I arrived in Germany, the military was momentarily in greater need for one who could type letters instead one who stealthily destroys things. And since I could do both with alacrity, I was reassigned to an Administration Unit. I wasn’t about to complain. While poring through my set of Army Regulations, I happened to run across a housing reg that established the minimum allowable square footage for permanent enlisted billeting. The billet provided for Team 1 was exceptionally undersized for the number of people crammed in there. So Sp4. Chambliss and I put together a request (as allowed under the reg) to receive payment for off-base quarters: renting an apartment. The officer in charge of Team 1 was a young first lieutenant, 1LT John G. McLinn (who, by the way was a fine officer and individual). 1LT McLinn didn’t want to sign our request. He was new to the job, and he was probably afraid of “rocking the boat.” Eventually, Sp4. Jeffrey Wallace and I drove back to Frankfurt to get some anonymous major to sign the authorization. That alone was kind of an interesting little affair. From our earlier residence at Drake Kaserne in Frankfurt, we both remembered this young major who was friendly to the grunts. This guy had no chain-of-command responsibility to us when we moved to Kirsch Goens. For all practical purposes, the guy was a stranger. When Wallace and I went back to Frankfurt, we were both worried that this guy would just boot us out the door. I mean, we just walked in and said, “Excuse us Maj. Smith, we have a severe housing overload up in Ayers Kaserne, and could you sign this authorization as permitted under Army Reg 230-15?” The guy just laughed and signed it. We were in and out of there in a couple minutes. We then carried the orders to finance and HQ to get them processed and that was it. It was our first experience with managing “Army Doctrine” circa 1970. When we got back to Kirsch Goens, we showed 1LT McLinn the authorization orders and he had to let us move out. I’m sure he was actually a bit embarrassed by not doing it for us. On our next paychecks, amounts were included for rent and also a food allowance. From then on, it was Standard Operating Procedure for anybody who wanted to move off-base. There were probably times when the barracks went “undermanned.” I actually only lived in the Ayers Kaserne barracks for about a month. The rest of the time I was in Germany, I lived in an apartment. I was nineteen years old and ready for anything. Back to Ayers Kaserne: we’re settled in the barracks. We’ve got all the double bunks set up. We also had to individually assemble the metal personal lockers (that was fun, let me tell you) and had just completed that task. The whole group was together. The time was early evening. The sun had just set and I opened up a window to look out over our new domain and just take it all in. I looked out over the Hessian countryside, and the concrete barracks across from us; just pleasantly ruminating. Then I looked down. On the window sill immediately below me sat a completely fresh six-pack of beer. I stared at it for a minute or two. It WAS getting dark out… Within a couple of minutes I had assembled a strike force. (After all, I was still Recon) PFC Kermit Crockett ran down the hallway to find something to put the beer in. (One can only wonder what the established troops on that floor thought when Crockett ran by screaming, “I need a big bowl, NOW!”) PFC Sam Samarron located a ball of string. I quickly fashioned a coat hanger into a hook. This all took maybe five minutes. We carefully lowered the hook down and easily secured the six-pack of beer. Plastic ring holders had just come in, and the beer cans had pull tabs. Rather than just “steal the beer,” which would have invited investigation from the Artillery Unit downstairs, I had a different plan. We quickly punched two small holes in the bottom of each can with a pocket knife awl (so that’s what that tool is for!). Crockett finally made it back with his big bowl (“they kept pointing me to the men’s room!”), and we emptied the cans into it. As each can was emptied, we carefully refilled each can with water through the little holes we had punched. We then sealed the holes with melted candle wax. We had a real production line going. Within fifteen minutes of the heist, we were lowering the converted six-pack back down to its perch. The excitement was electric. Had the original owners missed the six-pack in that brief time? Would they see this mysterious six-pack being lowered down outside of their window and assault us in platoon force? We were brand new on the block, and this could have been a rough start. We got away with it. Perhaps it had become dark enough outside for glare from the room’s interior lights to block the appearance of the six-pack slowly being fidgeted into position. Then the hook was lowered free and stealthily withdrawn. We all sat around and enjoyed our prize. Team 1 had accomplished a fast action under duress, and we hadn’t wilted. (“So where did you finally find the big bowl, Kermit?) No doubt tap beer was better than our “imported” six-pack, but it tasted great with the sweetness of victory. (“…it was in the men’s room, after all.”) I kept a periodic eye on the ersatz six-pack below. It was pulled inside about an hour after we had robbed the nest. It reappeared about ten minutes later – as a five pack. And it wasn’t set on the window sill – it was tossed out into the grounds below. Then the five-pack disappeared not too long later as some passerby in the dark thought they had found a prize. It probably migrated all around the base, losing one can at a time. -------------------------------------------------------- Fork Here One day in the office there was a big meeting of Divisional Top Brass in a room across the hallway from our office. They were discussing sensitive issues and so closed the door to their meeting room. Sp4 Dave Ramsey was walking down the hall and noticed that there was one of those fold-over locking hasps on the aforementioned door. And it was the only door in and out of that room. Now, Ramsey didn’t simply close the hasp over the lock ring and walk away. That would have been too easy. He went back into the office and found the first thing that came to hand to slip through the lock ring, which turned out to be a dinner fork. Realizing that inserting the dinner fork through the lock ring would only invite some passerby to pull it back out again (this was, after all, the Army), he did what any admin troop would do: he made a sign. An official looking sign: replete with lettering in military stencil and black paint. He did this all in the space of about fifteen minutes. Just goes to show what inspiration can do. The sign read: “Fork Here →” and there was an official looking arrow on it. It was about a foot wide and six inches high. So then, and only then, did he go back and lock the door with the dinner fork. And he quickly installed the sign so that it pointed at the fork, and made it convincingly military looking. The meeting went on for what seemed like hours. And everyone of our gang wandered by and chuckled at that sign and the locked door, just thinking about what was surely going to happen. And of course it did happen. Soon the door began to rattle. Followed by a pause, and then some more rattling. Realizing that they were trapped, the bigwigs next door probably had to figure out who was the lowest on the rank totem pole to climb out the window. It was probably some major who ultimately would be decorated for his initiative. The rescue was effected: the door was unforked, and nothing more was said of the incident. But it is still funny to imagine the look on that officer’s face after he climbed out the window and walked back around to unlock the door. And saw the dinner fork securing the hasp, and that official sign that read: “Fork Here →”. Water Sports Summer arrived in 1973, and with it came warm weather, and the need to clean up the office building. It was a beautiful summer day and a group of us volunteered to wash the windows. Pretty soon we were outside, in our tee-shirts sloshing water around and having a grand time. It didn’t take long before things escalated and I sort of tossed a half pail of water on by buddy Sp4 Ron Pardekooper. He chased me around the building four or five laps. In the quid pro quo of horseplay, I knew that I was going to have to let him soak me in return. So I resignedly went back into the office to “take care of some necessary paperwork.” I sat with my back to the window, expecting the gusher at any moment. It arrived. As I stood up and turned around with water running down my back, there was Pardekooper grinning with a big empty pail of water. I just stood there grinning back at him until he realized that I had put on HIS fatigue shirt when I came back in the office. Ron had a damp ride home that day. One day during that same summer while I was at the PX, I happened to notice a pack of party balloons. Say no more. Within an hour I was back at the office planning a suitable assault. I had to plan carefully to achieve the full surprise effect. About ten minutes later, Wallace walked out of the office and towards the men’s room. His body language said that he was heading for some quiet time in a closed stall. There is a time for planning, and a time for action. Silent feet padded behind Wallace and entered the men’s room within seconds after the stall door clicked shut and locked. Wallace could hear soft sounds of activity – a faucet being turned on, but no water running in the sink, then the faucet being turned off again. He must have been curious. No voices, just the sounds of birds chirping in the trees outside the open window. Perhaps there was a faint wind to rustle the tree leaves on this fine summer day. The assassin turned and faced his target. No small “one hand” water bomb this: this was a ten pound two-hander. It was so full that it would be impossible for someone to catch it with cushioned hands. Without a moment’s hesitation, the assassin heaved it unerringly high enough to clear the stall. It arced high enough for Wallace to stare upward and see his doom. It achieved the desired effect: Wallace went: “WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!” The water bomb went: SSSSPPLLAAAAASHHHH!!! The assassin went: padpadpadpadpadpadpad, hehehehehehe, padpadpad, hehehe Nothing was said when Wallace returned after a rather lengthy time out of the office. It was understood that nature sometimes can’t be hurried. But the assassin knew. And he knew that Wallace knew. And he knew that Wallace knew he knew. And it was only a matter of time before it all evened out. The next day, in fact. The assassin realized that it was time to become the victim. He walked courageously towards the men’s room: head high, shoulders back. He quietly closed the stall door, and waited. Through the foot-high gap below the stall’s wall, he could see the army boots silently enter the room. But the victim was ready. He quickly but quietly unpacked the small umbrella that he had carried disguised inside his fatigue shirt. He soundlessly opened it, and held it over his head. And waited. He was ready. He didn’t have long to wait. A hand suddenly shot up under the stall door, and the garden hose that it held was turned on full force. The umbrella was completely effective at deflecting the unexpected upward spray of water back down on to his body. The victim said: “SBPPSAALLPSTOOPPITIMDROWWWWNIIINGGAIIIEEEEE!!!” The remaining party balloons stayed unused in a drawer until the move to Giessen the following year. But then they came out. One summer night two camouflaged figures crept out into the dark carrying a large heavy box between them. It was laden with loaded water balloons. The two figures carried the box onto a nearby soccer field, and set to work about fifty feet from one goal. They silently dug a number of holes and carefully placed a water balloon in each. Then they covered them up, and spread dirt over each. The disturbed dirt dried in the night, and by morning, the concealment was complete. The next day a certain admin group was performing soccer practice on this same soccer field when they found out the hard way that it had been mined. There were a number of squishy shoes and mud-soaked socks. There were loud curses. And there was also a pair of shadowy watchers chortling in a nearby stand of trees. Gruntled, they turned and then slipped quietly away. -------------------------------------------------------- The Wounded Moose It just so happened that the same men’s room where the water balloon event occurred had extraordinary resonance. It was like a super shower room. It had a fifteen foot high ceiling, and highly reflective walls. To make the acoustics even more pronounced, the fifty foot long hallway that connected the men’s room to the admin offices echoed with cavernous resonance. When the men’s room’s door was propped open, as it usually was, quiet discussions in the men’s room sounded like a rolling thunderstorm at the distant office-end of the hallway. The sound of a toilet flush was amplified out in the hallway into a sonorous apocalyptic flood. One day in the summer of 1973, I was washing up in the men’s room when I saw Wallace arrive in his blue VW hatchback. The building’s parking lot was at the same end of the building as the men’s room. With Wallace were two other poor souls: Huffy and Martin. As they walked in through the building’s door and proceeded down the hallway, I spontaneously closeted myself in one of the stalls. Then, timing it as closely as I could, I let go with a monumental “two hands over mouth fart.” I went for the full bravura performance: a three second jowl-flapping, deep guttural rising pitch creation. Out in the hallway it sounded like a tuba half filled with water attempting to mimic a wounded bull moose trapped in an echo chamber. I immediately followed up this virtuoso effort with a sullen anguished moan: “oooahhhhnnnnhhh!!!” For a second or two I thought that perhaps my sonic dart had missed the mark. Silence. Then arrived the sound of people stumbling into the walls as they struggled down the hallway, laughing too hard to make a sound: choking actually. I waited a reasonable period and sauntered back into the office, wearing my most contrite expression. Wallace was sitting next to Ron Pardekooper, still recovering his breath. Nobody said anything. I sat down. Then without prompting I quietly said: “I had a difficult moment.” Both Wallace and Pardekooper fell out of their chairs as if they’d been axed. Ron had of course, heard the wounded moose and its final despair. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the end of it. For weeks thereafter, the “wounded moose and its final despair” was the regular accompaniment to all business practices in the office. Everyone was doing it. You’d have soldiers in-processing from all parts of the globe, and before they’d leave the office, they would be subjected to twenty different variations on the theme originating from all points in the office. They must have thought we were all completely nuts. Maybe we were. -------------------------------------------------------- Flamethrowers Part of the essential kit of all soldiers at that time was a butane-lighter to ignite the omnipresent bowl of hashish. The lighters got to be something of a codpiece of status: the cheap throwaway lighter simply wouldn’t do. Most of the soldiers purchased rather fancy metal, refillable types. Then the status symbol became how large the flame could be made. Soon the soldiers were modifying the lighters to increase the flame size. Sp4 Randy Lindsey took a safety pin and used its point as a mandrel to enlarge the fuel port on one such lighter. When he was finished, the damn thing would throw an aggressive flame out three feet long. The guy had a pocket flame thrower. This of course resulted in everyone having to have one, and soon fiery sword fights could be witnessed that pre-dated the Star-Wars light saber by a decade. -------------------------------------------------------- Ink Rings SSG Billie made a grievous error when he set up a small printing station near his desk. He had a printer’s block smeared with printer’s ink and used a number of different stamps to mark correspondence appropriately: Confidential, Secret, etc. The problem was not the printer’s set. The problem was that he had a tube of printer’s ink. I have always thought that printer’s ink is one of the most amazing substances ever created. The stuff can be made to smear incredibly thin, yet retain its opacity. It is extremely durable – without a proper solvent, it is almost impossible to remove. It just keeps smearing thinner and thinner. A better material has never been invented for practical jokes. With such a material at hand I was helpless to resist. It started with the ubiquitous black military telephones: displaying a black ear smudge became so common around the office it was practically de rigueur. Then the printer’s ink just happened to have exactly the same patina and shade of black as military toilet seats. When spread thinly over a toilet seat, it was undetectable. Thirty plus years have now passed, and I might as well ‘fess up. I’m the one who blackened the asses & undershorts of the 1st Regiment, 3rd Armored Division during the summer of 1973. It was an epidemic. The German contract laundry must have made millions that summer. I used the same technique to get even with a pain-in-the-neck corporate executive in the mid-1980’s. The jerk didn’t know that I had received special training in the military. -------------------------------------------------------- Telephonies The military telephone system in Germany was notoriously lousy circa 1970. It was undoubtedly a left-over from the Great War. The transmission quality was completely unpredictable. You could call somebody in the next building and have to shout to be heard, and you could call to Munich and have an excellent connection. Then the conditions would completely change the next call. Sometimes a call placed to Frankfurt would ring in Bremerhaven. It was hopeless, and everyone just adapted to it as best as possible. The unpredictable phone quality and the strict dictum of “military phone etiquette” together created great potential for gags. Who’s THAT? – The three calls and you’re out trick. Military phone etiquette required that all people answering the phone immediately identify their unit, their rank, their name, and then deliver a greeting. This could be rather ponderous, and it was required for every phone call. For example, when answering the phone I would by-rote announce: “Personnel Services Division Forward – Kirsch Goens, Team 1, Specialist 4 George Nehls. How may I help you Sir!” I robotically intoned this greeting every time I picked up a phone. Luckily, telemarketers were a plague twenty years in the future. To make matters worse, after answering a phone with your full military regalia, the caller was expected to do the same thing. The honorifics could delay a sunrise. One slow day in Giessen (Team 1 moved to Giessen in 1974), our warrant officer, Mr. Lilly needed to contact a general somewhere. He asked his adjutant (something new, a female!) to place the phone call and told her the number. I overheard and was quicker on the dial. Before she made her way back to her desk and placed the call, I surreptitiously called the number; three times in fact. Each time I dialed, I waited just long enough for the general’s flunky (probably a major) to get well into his florid salutation, and then I hung up. I had just hung up for the third time when Lilly’s adjutant got back to her desk and dialed the number. I was close enough to hear the exchange over the line. She dialed, and then I heard it ring. Then I heard a muffled shouted: “WHO EVER THIS IS, I’M GONNA FIND YOU AND KILL YOU!” She responded in an exasperated voice, “Is this Gen. Smith’s office?” Answer: “YOU KNOW DAMN WELL WHO YOU’RE CALLING!” I forget the lady’s name right now, but she was married to a Captain and was pretty used to handling brass. The exchange rapidly escalated and then ended abruptly. After a minute or two Mr. Lilly called out of his office, “Did you get the General?” What’s her name called back: “I’ll have to try back in a few minutes, sir.” Mr. Lilly: “What’s the problem?” She calmly responded: “The phone line’s cursing at me, sir.” Mr. Lilly had no ready response for this, so he just let military nature run its course. Who’s THERE! – Stealing the microphone. The unpredictable phone quality was a tool to be used to advantage if you also knew that the microphone in the handset was simply sitting on contact rings, and not hardwired in. Sp4 Jim Embury and I used to do a tag-team job on 1LT McLinn with this one. McLinn would be away from his desk for a minute, and either Embury or I would quickly unscrew the microphone cover on the handset, pocket the device, and screw the cover back on. You could do the whole thing in about five seconds. Then we’d wait for McLinn to get a call. It was a curious characteristic of those telephones that, even without a microphone, if you shouted loud enough, you could actually be heard at the other end of the call: there was probably a low efficiency transmission through the handset’s earphone speaker. So McLinn would get a call, and he’s wind up shouting at the top of his voice to carry on the discussion, and be swearing under his voice at the lousy telephone system. Then Embury would distract McLinn for moment: call him away from the phone to provide some pertinent info (travel order number or something), and I’d slip in, and put the microphone back in. McLinn would return to the phone and start yelling into it. And you’d hear back over the ear phone: “YOU DON’T HAVE TO SHOUT FOR CHRIST’S SAKE!” Embury and I pulled this off at least half a dozen times, and McLinn never caught on. It cracked us up every time. It took the move to Giessen in 1974 to break up our tag-team. Who’s WHY? – The two-phone anonymous call stunt. The greatest phone gag of the era was pulled off by Ron Pardekooper and me. The timing of this gag depended completely on chance, and it took several failed attempts before we caught a winner. But when we did, it was hilarious. Ron and I would simultaneously call two distant admin offices that we had numbers to, say Bamberg and Wurzberg. Then we would quickly lay our phones down facing each other earphone to microphone. We depended on the poor phone quality and the ever present military phone etiquette to carry the joke past its initial critical moments. The idea was to get two completely unknown parties talking to each other without knowing what the phone call was for. The one time we pulled it off, the two parties simultaneously picked up the phones, and then launched into their answering speeches. There was a moment’s confusion as they verbally stumbled over each other, but then they started talking. The phone call went on for a full twenty minutes. You could have published a complete paper based on the socio-psychology of the discussion. First, having completed their military courtesies, they established common ground – they talked about the weather. “Well, how’s the weather in Bamberg?” “Not bad today, a little cloudy. How’s it in Wurzberg?” “Ya, about the same.” That went on for a few minutes, then the next safe subject was how screwed up the military was. That was good for another five minutes. Then they started comparing who they knew in each other’s location. Maybe another five minutes. About this time the curiosity of “why did you actually place this call?” began to intrude very cautiously and diplomatically into the discussion. Neither party was so bold as to actually say: “Pardon me there soldier, but WHY did you call me?” This is where the conversation became hilarious. Pardekooper and I, listening over the phone sets of course, could hardly hold back our laughter. The two guys on the phone very politely maneuvered around the subject for a good seven to eight minutes without ever finding out what the other guy wanted. Then they politely ended the call (hey nice talking to you Bill, keep in touch!) and both hung up. No doubt immediately after they hung up, they both shook their heads and wondered: “Now what the hell was THAT all about?” And went back to doing whatever they had been doing beforehand. Pardekooper and I chuckled about that one for days. The squeal – predating the fax machine by two decades. The telephones in Germany had another unusual characteristic: they had extremely high amplification at high pitches. If you placed a call to a fellow worker across the office, and waited for him to put the earpiece to his ear, you could bowl him over by holding your microphone close to your mouth and “squealing” into it. Without a doubt, the person who eventually invented the fax machine served in the military in Germany about this time. The inventor of the fax machine just figured out how to carry some meaningful information over the squeal and deliver it to an electronic ear that wouldn’t get furious at you for doing that. -------------------------------------------------------- Office Wars Anyone who has worked in an admin outfit knows that peace is never entirely at hand. A continuous low level combat between office participants is always present. While to a casual passerby it may look like a placid environment, there is ever the sullen rumble of the machines of war. The unheralded spit ball, the occasional direct sniper shot of a rubber band fired from a ruler into an ear at ten feet. Even someone working diligently will glance up from their paperwork to find their desk littered with rubber bands: someone has been mortaring them in from an unknown location. Occasionally the whole thing flares up and pandemonium rules for a while, then to tamp down, but never completely out. Always there is the dull smolder of admin conflict. And with it goes the constant evolution of the machines and methods. Fragging. During the 1970’s, “fragging” to an admin company meant not the tossing of a hand grenade, but surreptitiously dropping a handful of paper clips into an opponent’s typewriter. When the victim started hammering away at their keyboard, the paper clips would produce a most satisfying shower of metal ejecta from the machine, startling everyone within ten feet. It also had the secondary effect of immediately jamming the typewriter. Its owner had to stop everything and tip the wounded machine over and spend minutes ferreting out the jammed paper clips from its internals. Anyone who didn’t first look down into his typewriter before using it had only himself to blame. Visions in Carbon. At Team 1 we experienced the epochal change from individual reusable sheets of carbon paper to those individual pull-away single-use carbons. When the first boxes of those single-use carbons started showing up, we thought we were living in a blessed time, indeed. It wasn’t too long before someone figured out how to turn them into a practical joke. I was sitting at my desk when SP4 Dave Morgan stomped into our office area, obviously furious. Why Morgan would immediately finger me as the culprit was beyond my ken. Why, I didn’t even work in the same office bay as him. Morgan was our travel order specialist and like most of us spent the day hammering away at his typewriter. Apparently someone had decided that his dull travel orders needed a little spicing up, at least on the carbon copies. “Someone!” Morgan declared, staring in a piercingly unambiguous manner directly at me, “typed a bunch of stuff on my carbons, and now I’m going to have to redo the whole damn lot!” “Well, why look at me?” I asked, wounded by the unvoiced accusation. “Because it’s got your name written all over it!” insisted Morgan. “My name? If my name’s written all over your carbons you know damn well it wasn’t me who did it.” I offered defensively. “You know what I mean,” countered Morgan. Venturing a diplomatic salient, I suggested that “maybe nobody had typed anything on them.” “Now, what’s that supposed to mean,” said Morgan in a tired voice. He was starting to suspect that he was being played. “Well, maybe it was some kind of divine message, you know, like the ‘Handwriting on the Wall’ story,” I speculated sagely. “What’s the message say?” “Jimmy eats ratshit!” Spat out Morgan, “about ten times on each sheet!” “Hmmm,” I mused philosophically, “that IS obscure. I wonder if there’s some hidden meaning. You know, kind of like the Delphic Oracle.” Realizing that the incident was spinning into nowhere, Morgan stalked out in a huff, but not before warning me something about “winding up a Jimmy.” From then on, everyone first checked their carbons, just like looking into their typewriters. It was SOP. Eventually “Visionary Jimmy” caught me too, once or twice. High Powered Paper Clips. I used to joke about my “marksmanship” with the soldier’s standard weapon: the M-16 rifle. I used to tell people that if I had one in my hands, the safest place was directly in front of it: I couldn’t hit anything with it. Now as to rubber band launched paper clips, that was a different story. I was a crack shot. I don’t know why, it was just a talent that I had. To my credit, I never once fired one in the direction of a person. The things were actually dangerous. With a good set of rubber bands, I could fire a paper clip through a wall calendar at a distance of about thirty feet. My good office partner Sp4 Scotty Martin sat on the opposite side of our small bay, about twenty feet from me. For a long time, Scotty had one of those little brass, rotating “tinkle” bell things. You were supposed to light the candle in its center, and then it would start rotating and make a musical bell sound. Kind of like an indoor wind chime. This thing was about five inches high by about three inches across. It was an absolutely irresistible target. When hit by a paper clip, the whole thing would explode like a gag car in an old Laurel & Hardy movie. I fired at it probably twenty times and never once missed it. Out of deference to Scotty, after blowing it up once or twice in his presence, I only shot at it when he wasn’t around. The problem was, every time I’d shoot it, I had to go and rebuild the thing. I always left it completely assembled. One weekend I was pulling Charge of Quarters in the office. Pulling CQ meant just occupying the office in case war broke out. It was a time to catch up on work, snooze, or twiddle your thumbs. The only other person there was SP4 Goody, who was catching up on some paperwork out in the large bay. I was sitting at my desk and idly shooting up everything that I could draw a bead on: just kind of a lazy day and killing time. SP4 Goody must have heard this steady, “whiirrr – BANG!” coming out of the smaller office where I was and got curious. He strolled in and we had a brief discussion about paper clip archery. I showed him just how powerful the dang things were, and put one through a wall calendar as a demonstration. “Not bad,” says SP4 Goody, “but are they accurate?” “See that fly?” I said. “Watch this.” There was a fly walking around on the ceiling. The ceiling was about fifteen feet high, and the fly was a good twenty-five feet laterally away from where I was sitting. Without a moment’s hesitation, I pulled the paper clip back and split the fly in two. SP4 Goody’s eyes got large, and he muttered, “Holy Mother” in a quiet voice. Then he walked back to his own office area. I will admit that was one heck of a shot. I’ve always thought that if I was ever trapped in a building with bank robbers, terrorists or that ilk, I’d scan around quickly to see if there were any rubber bands and paper clips. The bad guys wouldn’t stand a chance. Admin-Cannons. No one knows who first touched match to the prototypical Admin-Cannon. But just like their larger brethren, they changed life as we know it cataclysmically. The first Admin-Cannon I personally saw was a Sp4 Randy Lindsey construct. He had rolled a manila cardboard DA Form 20 into a tube, had pinched off one end, and had rammed a spitball onto a charge of several match heads. He poked a small touch hole at the charge end, and he was in business. The tube was set up in a typewriter with its spring loaded paper holder gripping it firmly against the typewriter. The tube was inclined at about 30 degrees. It was pointed in the direction of Sp4 Hooper’s desk. Hooper was nervously eyeing this development. It was, of course, regular business hours. Without fanfare, Lindsey touched a flaming match to the touch hole and there was a momentary sizzle as the charge inside the tube ignited, just like the old flintlock muskets. Then there was an immensely satisfying “TOOMPH,” and the spitball shot about fifteen feet and flew beyond Hooper’s desk. A curl of smoke floated out of the tube. The arms race was on. Everyone had to have one. By the end of a day or two, with the main office bay reeking of burnt match heads, Team 1 personnel had already perfected much of the essential design of the Mark 1 Admin-Cannon. There had, of course, been a few bumps along the way. The waste baskets contained the smoldering ruins of burst tubes along with the regular office detritus. Perhaps more importantly, the Code of Office Conduct now required that a spitball be delivered via cannon shot. And so they quickly got bigger to achieve greater range. Also, there were refinements in spitball design, wadding, and charge preparation. It quickly was recognized that instead of using the entire match head, slicing the charge off of it, and then grinding it slightly greatly improved its performance. Within a week or two, the standard Admin-Cannon was up to something like a Mark 3 design. And instead of rolled up DA Form 20’s, more durable tubes were being sought. All types of cardboard tubes were experimented with. Methods for reinforcing the tubes were attempted: tape, string, tape-over-string wrap. They kept getting bigger and more powerful. Curiously, the Admin-Cannon was almost exclusively the domain of the large office bay. This may have been due to the “Specialists” in the smaller bay being too physically close to 1LT McLinn to keep up with the torrid development pace. Randy Lindsey seemed determined to stay at the forefront of design. As I recall, it was his masterpiece that brought the whole cottage industry crashing back to earth. The zenith of Admin-Cannon design was achieved with a steel tube that somebody found lying around outside: obviously divine providence at work. The tube was about fifteen inches in length and had about a .35 caliber bore. It already had a welded closed end with a natural touch hole. Lindsey set it up in the standard cannon holder of that era: the typewriter. It was aimed at the far wall of the large bay about 50 feet away, and elevated at about 25 degrees. They obviously wanted to give the projectile the largest possible room to fly. The projectile was a quantum improvement over even the most advanced spitball design. It was a dart: the type of dart that is used in the typical dart board game: brass with a two inch long needle, and a plastic “tail feather.” The brass shaft of the dart fit perfectly in the cannon’s bore, but the plastic tail feathers had to be cut down to appropriate size. The technology of charge and wadding had advanced to the point where their performance could be assured, but nobody knew how much charge was appropriate for the new heavy projectile. In the spirit of the time, it was thought best to err on the side of more powder. Rather than have someone actually touch a match to the touch hole, it was deemed safer to make a rudimentary fuse using cigarette paper. Considering all of the untested features of this advanced model Admin-Cannon, one would have thought that the most appropriate testing time would be in the quiet of the evening. However, the minds of the designers ran contrary to this conservative position, and preferred to demonstrate it before the widest possible audience: during business hours, and with a whole platoon of soldiers in-processing from Vietnam. A brief description of First Sergeant (1SG) Robert Spence is noteworthy at this time. At Team 1, as the senior Non-Commissioned Officer (NCO), 1SG Spence was second in command behind 1LT McLinn. His wife called him Bob. He was just finishing out his service and he retired in place by the end of 1973. 1SG Spence was tall, very astute and fit looking, probably about sixty years old at the time, and wore the black beret of the Airborne Rangers. He had survived a couple tours in Vietnam, and really looked like the kind of guy you wouldn’t want to mess with. He turned out to be a pussy cat. He may have been spitting nails for much of his career, but by the time he landed in Team 1, he was just cruisin’ to the finish line. 1LT McLinn was of necessity absent: off at a meeting somewhere. 1SG Spence was occupying McLinn’s desk and chair – in the smaller office bay. SSG Roger Billie was in the large bay, but he was deemed extraneous to security concerns. All of the regular small-bay “Specialists” were diligently at work, including yours truly. Someone lit the fuse and set it off. The blast knocked everyone either directly out of their chair or survival reactions accomplished the same effect. It took about ten seconds for people to realize that they were on the floor and would eventually have to get up. The first to respond were the record clerks in the large bay. Survival skills took hold. They quickly realized that in order to minimize the trouble that was surely going to descend upon them, pretending that nothing had happened was likely the best opening gambit. I had just achieved eye level with the top of my desk when 1SG Spence heaved himself upright and dashed for the doorway connecting the large bay and small bay. I was staring straight at 1SG Spence’s back and into the large bay when he stepped two feet into the large bay and stopped to reconnaissance the situation. There was smoke swirling around the left hand end of the large bay – the end where the cannon had been discharged. About ten feet directly in front of 1SG Spence sat Sp4 Sam Samarron, gracefully sweeping smoke away from his desk as he fed a new DA Form 20 into his typewriter. Grinning broadly, Sam greeted 1SG Spence with a cheery, “Afternoon Top!” Sam then set to typing with fervor. I walked up behind 1SG Spence and peered around him. Every record clerk was typing away heroically, and someone had even turned the ever present boom box up a notch. Conversation was jovial and abundant. About that time SSG Roger Billie emerged from under his desk. SSG Billie’s desk was not more than ten feet from the epicenter of the blast, so “Rog” may have been a little hard of hearing at that moment. As one gazed out into the large bay, the record clerks were joyously operating at full capacity, while the smoke continued swirling around the left end of the bay. At the distant end of the bay, one of the large fluorescent light standards was swaying precipitously from its sole remaining stanchion (the other having been shot away), there was a foot diameter hole blown in the ceiling about ten feet from the far wall, and the entire ceiling’s collective dust of forty years’ accumulation was snowing slowly down in a haze. The scene was an insane contradiction. 1SG Spence was speechless. The platoon in-processing from Vietnam was nowhere in sight. The same went for the cannon and the typewriter that had been holding it: though debris was strewn everywhere. 1SG Spence walked another five feet into the large bay and glared. What could he say? The office clerks were working harder than they ever had before. To do anything at this time could only reduce their productivity. It was probably at this moment that 1SG Spence began calculating the hours to his retirement. Also at the same moment, the soldiers from Vietnam, those who were actually in the room at the time, began to emerge from beneath the furniture. These guys were survivors: they had long ago learned that the last to surface was the most likely to walk away. Since the record clerks were so determinedly carrying the air of normalcy, the Vietnam soldiers were soon up and back to normal too. They might even have thought that they had over-reacted a bit. “Ah sure – happens all the time! You’ll get used to it.” SSG Billie and 1SG Spence were both so overwhelmed by the audacious stupidity of the whole event that neither was willing to broach the subject with 1LT McLinn. When McLinn got back, the light stanchion had “suddenly broken free.” No mention was made about the hole in the ceiling – it supposedly had been there unnoticed all the time. The exit hole in the building’s roof made by the projectile-dart was quickly patched. The heavy coating of dust on everything was cleared off before closing time. The demolished typewriter was discretely not ever seen again. The self-preservation response of the record clerks had carried the day. But it marked the glorious end of the Admin-Cannon. None was ever fired again. At least not at Team 1. ------------------------------------------------------------ Alien Abduction Germany is the Land of Exquisite Beers and Wines. But Jeffrey Wallace always maintained that a high quality sipping whiskey couldn’t be beat. Shortly after four of us (Wallace, Ramsey, Lindsey, and I) moved into an apartment in Rechtenbach, Wallace set out to prove his point. One Saturday about noon, Wallace returned from a shopping trip to the PX with a quart of some high quality hooch, probably Wild Turkey. Lindsey wasn’t around. It was just Wallace, Ramsey and I. Jeff poured shots all around. Dave and I had to agree that the stuff had a certain smooth character, between coughs. When Dave and I demurred from beholding any more of his generosity, Jeff felt obliged to pour himself a pretty good dollop of the stuff. Jeff went off for a little nap about 2:30 P.M. that afternoon. Ramsey and I were just sitting around, nothing to do, and probably feeling a little frisky from the snort we had had. We decided that if Wallace could go nappy-poo a bit tipsy, he would benefit waking up a bit stoned. So we crept into his bedroom. And while Jeff was gently snoring away, we carefully blew hashish smoke into his inhales for probably too long a time. (OK, so maybe we had each had a couple shots of whiskey, no more than two) Then we crept out again. Afterwards, we were sitting out in the living room trying to figure out what to do next. (I’m positive that the most we’d had was three shots each) We finally figured out that when Wallace woke up, it would be best if he was facing a couple of space aliens (it seemed to make sense at the time). So, with the wings of inspiration, we rapidly made up two space alien costumes from materials that were at hand. We had blanket cloaks, taped together cardboard alien helmets, bizarre aluminum foil antennae, cardboard tubes for eyes, and some sort of tridents made from broom sticks, dust pans, and foil or something. And then we waited for him to wake up. We got tired of waiting, so we went in after him. We positioned ourselves by the foot of his bed and started calling to him in suitable space alien voices: “Jeee-ffreeee Wall---aaaceeee! Weeee’ve cooooommmmeee fooorr youuuu!” He still didn’t wake up so we started prodding him with our tridents, all the while calling for him in our space alien voices. He took a lot of prodding. After what seemed like a half an hour (we were rapidly running out of space alien energy), Wallace started to stir. He was moving slowly and trying to get his eyes to open. Finally, he opened up his eyes and tried to focus them on us. The two space aliens went into spookydrive: undulating their arms, and telling him they were there for him and were going to take him back with them. Wallace tried to sit up, made it about half way, and then plopped back down on the bed. Out cold’ern a mackerel. Ramsey and I looked disgustedly at each other, and stalked out of Wallace’s bedroom. Around an hour later we were poking around, getting dinner ready when the door opened and in staggers Wallace. He was having a hell of a time staying vertical and was literally hanging on to the door to keep upright. His hair looked like he’d stuck a finger into an electric wall socket. His eyes were wild. Poor Wallace staggers in and then blurts out: “Oh geez guys, you wouldn’t believe the dream I just had!” Old Eagle Eyes One of the jobs that a Personnel Actions Specialist had was reviewing the “RA Applications” of officers who had decided to make a career of the Army. RA means Regular Army, and not every officer on active duty belongs to the Regular Army – that is, they possess a commission from Congress to uphold the Constitution. Soldiers who have gone through the U.S. Military Academy at West Point receive their commission upon graduation, but officers who become officers by graduating through “Officer Candidate School” do not belong to the Regular Army until they submit a petition to be accepted: the RA Application. Often the OCS grad makes it up to 1st Lieutenant (1LT) and then they make the decision whether to ETS like any regular enlistee, or apply for RA in anticipation of achieving promotion to Captain (CPT). It obviously is an important career decision, and the RA Application is assembled extremely carefully. It is meticulous, without error, and attempts to place the applicant in the best light. The PA Specialist carefully reviews the efforts of the applying officer, assists where possible, and screens the document for any potential problems with the appropriate Army Regulations. It is exacting work. There are zero typos allowed. The RA Applications are like a super resume, usually running to fifty pages or more. There is also the required photograph. The required photograph in 1973 was a black & white frontal portrait of the applicant wearing his/her dress uniform: shot from the waist up. Typically, the applicant would choose a facial expression that was rather severe. I don’t recall seeing a single “friendly” expression the entire time I was a PA Specialist. 1LT McLinn was an OCS officer who would eventually apply for and receive his RA status. But at the time of Team 1, he was just an “OCSer.” Partly because of the importance of the documents, and partly because he felt a camaraderie to RA Applicants, McLinn paid particularly close attention to every RA Application that passed over his desk for signature/forwarding. As the PA Specialist, I also paid close attention to them, because it was my job to insure that McLinn never received any flak from applicants. I took the RA Applications very seriously. They were Heavy Business. Having written all the above, one might assume that ultimately, the pressure of perfection proved to be just too great: a practical joke simply had to assert itself. And that’s just what happened. Personally, I didn’t go looking for it. There was a convergence of forces that made it inevitable. During the year 1973, change was coming to the modern army. In the admin office, this meant modernization such as an electric typewriter. Team 1 received one (1) IBM Selectric to upgrade its work quality. It was reserved for Extremely Important Work. All the regular functions of the admin office were still performed by a platoon of mechanical typewriters that clacked maniacally whenever an unfamiliar symbol of authority entered the office warren. Slightly after the arrival of the electric typewriter, Team 1 received an actual photocopier. This was a thing of marvel. Prior to the photocopier we had an early “thermofax” copier that actually burned shadowy images into a special “onion skin” type of paper. The photocopier produced amazingly high quality images; and on normal paper. As might be imagined, the novelty of the device produced the expected plethora of butt shots, paper money copies, etc. The photocopier was also used for real work: the old thermofax was unceremoniously dumped away in the storage room. One day in the fall of 1973, I was paging through some old National Geographic magazine lying around somewhere. I don’t even recall if it was at the office or elsewhere. There was a startling photograph of a bird of prey: a raptor. I think it was a goshawk. Maybe it was an osprey. The bird stared directly out of the picture at you with those stern eyes, that wide, domineering prominent beak. I looked at that photo for some lengthy time, thinking, “I’ve seen this before. How is that possible?” Back in the office, the déjà vu of the raptor photo came into focus the next time a RA Application sailed across my desk. It was the characteristic look of the RA applicant! That’s where I had seen that stern visage before! Ahh, now it all came clear. A short time later, the National Geographic magazine was short one photo of a raptor. And I was carefully cutting the image of the bird’s head out. With extreme care, one could size the bird’s head to fit perfectly into the uniform of an RA Applicant’s photo: properly clipped the head even fit under the cap of the dress uniform. It was perfection itself. I had trouble assembling it. Every time I looked at it, the damn thing was so funny that I couldn’t hold my hands steady enough to get it properly aligned. It was nearly unfeasible. I kept trying to use “averted vision” to get the parts to line up. The combination of that stern, commanding bird head looking straight out at you in that dress uniform was impossibly funny. To this day, conjuring up the image makes me reflexively convulse with a snicker. Eventually, I got it assembled accurately enough to photocopy the image. It came out perfectly. “Old Eagle Eyes” captured the stentorian character of the stereotypical RA Applicant in a lampoon of utopian proportions. It should have been destroyed, immediately. I slipped it into the next available RA Application, and pulled its actual photograph. It was a rare quiet day in the office. McLinn was steadily working his way through a stack of signing documents when he picked up the rigged RA Application. My desk was only about ten feet from his, and I observed as he leaned back in his swivel chair in that characteristic, “gonna take a relaxed gander at this” repose of his. McLinn paged contentedly through the document, checking the personal info of the applicant, probably comparing the ‘Applicant’s data against his own personal situation. He flipped past the “photo,” probably just catching the bottom half of the picture. Then he flipped back and really looked at it. He sat bolt upright, rigid. I thought for a moment that I was going to catch hell right then. John G. McLinn is a fairly robust person. He stands about six feet even, and in 1973, probably tipped the scales at two hundred pounds. Sandy haired, normal voice – it fit his physique. When he laughed, it was just a casual mid-American, “ha-ha-ha.” That was, until he saw the photo of Old Eagle Eyes. Up until that moment, McLinn may never have completely lost control and laughed hysterically. It started in his shoulders. They started to judder. Then his chest began to pulsate up and down. He couldn’t tear his sight from Old Eagle Eyes. And Old Eagle Eyes was staring straight back at him. Their eyes were locked together. Then he began to erupt. It came out as a high-pitched falsetto alarm repeating every six seconds or so: “BWAHAHAHA – BWAHAHAHA – BWAHAHAHA – BWAHAHAHA – BWAHAHAHA…” He didn’t stop. He just kept on making that gawdawful high-pitched falsetto noise. Inasmuch as no one had ever heard McLinn (or anybody) make a sound like that before; it immediately got the entire office’s attention. In fact, there had probably never been a sound like that emitted in the entire history of that building. And after a year of enduring Team 1, the building had experienced nearly every quack, howl, doink!, and flubbbbery sound that could be synthesized in the human vocal tract and other body parts. Sometimes it is hard to distinguish between a person laughing out of control, and a person wracked with extreme anguish. The main part of the office, the large bay that housed the twenty or so record clerks, as well as SSG Billie and 1SG Spence, must have come to the immediate conclusion that someone in the smaller office had just received news of a terrible tragedy. The entire large bay went silent. There was not a click or clack of a typewriter to be heard. My initial response to McLinn’s hysteria was joy (WOW!), followed hard on by terror. I’d certainly never heard a person make a sound like that. I experienced the Frankenstein Syndrome: the momentary thrill of creating something extraordinary followed by panic upon realizing that the lack of including a “stop button” in the design results in your complete loss of control over the situation. McLinn didn’t have a stop button, and his control stick was broken. SSG Billie and 1SG Spence immediately got up and together crowded into the doorway that formed the entry to McLinn’s (and the “Specialist’s) smaller office bay. It’s hard to not smile when somebody is laughing, and both Billie and Spence had smiles on their faces. But you could also see that there was a real look of concern. McLinn was helpless and the only thing holding him upright was the arms of his chair. He was already about thirty seconds into his falsetto car alarm act, with no indication that a reset button was within reach. “BWAHAHAHA – BWAHAHAHA – BWAHAHAHA – BWAHAHAHA – BWAHAHAHA…” SSG Billie was the first to speak. He tried to edge in words between the falsetto BWAHAHAHA’s: “Sir! Is every (BWAHAHAHA) thing alright!?” Between leg kicks, McLinn looked like he was about to go into a fetal curl. But he managed to lift an arm high enough to point a finger at the RA Application lying on his desk. Between the “BWAHAHAHA’s” convulsing his body he was able to squeeze out a single word. It came out strangled, high-pitched, and sounded almost like a little girl whispering: “picture…” Neither SSG Billie nor 1SG Spence took a step towards McLinn. They were probably concerned that he was demented and might become violent. They looked over in my direction, and I was torn between the desire to attempt a look of cherubic piety or to dive under my desk. Pardekooper, Martin, and the other guys in our small office didn’t have a clue as to what was going on. We all just sat there trying hard not to look at each other. I doubt that I had ever before found the ceiling so interesting. McLinn slowly began to exhaust himself back into control. The falsetto convulsions diminished to every fifteen seconds or so, like hiccups that were on their way out. He was sweating profusely and was now able to wipe the tears from his eyes. He then weakly waved SSG Billie and 1SG Spence back to their desks, accompanied by an affirmative nod of his head. They complied. McLinn was going to live. He might be damaged, but he would live. I approached cautiously. I spoke to him gently, as someone does to a person who has experienced a great shock: “You gonna be OK, sir?” He was able to nod and give a little wave of his hand. Greatly relieved, I carefully placed the real photo on his desk. I quietly said: “You’ll be needing this, sir.” Then I went back to my desk. I figured I was a goner. I knew McLinn would need a few minutes to collect his thoughts, so I took a little powder and did a quick walk around the building. When I came back, McLinn was not at his desk – likely down at the men’s room. He was probably considering his options: “kill Nehls now and they’ll have to display that picture at my trial…” In the end, community won out. McLinn walked back into the office and said to me quietly as he walked by: “I’d like a word with you Specialist Nehls.” “yessir.” We both walked out into the hallway. We stood there without a sound for a moment or two. McLinn was obviously weighing his words. Then he simply said: “Don’t ever do that again.” Apart from hating me, from that point on McLinn and I were tightly bound to a unique fraternity. We were the only two people to have seen Old Eagle Eyes and lived to tell about it. And we both knew it. After my service time was completed, we kept in touch for several years as I attended engineering school. Then we drifted away from each other into our own separate futures. George Nehls served in the US Army from '71 to late '74. Originally trained as an armored recon scout, upon arriving in Germany their shortage of "schooled" individuals resulted in his transfer into administration. Following his service term, George returned to college and obtained a degree in electrical engineering. A quarter of a century of engineering followed. Now retired from active engineering, he works primarily as a technical writer.

Horseplay

Or, what young men in uniform do when women aren’t around to provide essential shame.

By George Nehls

If you corral a score or more of young men into forced close proximity for any length of time, their irrepressible energy will express itself as either fractious behavior or horseplay. There are no other alternatives. This is particularly true if there are no females in proximity to moderate the young men’s actions into a façade of adult behavior. Such an environment was often found in military service up into the mid-1970’s. As an enlisted Army service member from 1971 through 1974, I both witnessed and participated appropriately. This brief memoir is a recollection of events that primarily took place at “Team 1:” an administration platoon stationed at Ayers Kaserne in Kirsch Goens, Germany. At Team 1, our youthful energy was directed primarily into horseplay. At first just a release of tension, it eventually became an essential feature of Team 1’s group personality. There were times when Team 1’s primary mission seemed not the pedantic bureaucratic administration of an armored regiment, but the exploration of gestalt juvenile behavior. Overlaying the cacophony of twenty or so manual typewriters in chaotic chatter, bedlam was normal office procedure. I do not pretend to have a monopoly on the stories. I’m sure each Team 1 alumnus has their own portfolio of memories that could compact more substance onto the clattering background. But presented here are some of my own recollections from this experience. Some of the following are humorous stories and some are just whimsical memories. The common thread to all is horseplay.

Also, the period of the early 1970s will be remembered as the time of counter-culture and widespread drug use. Unfortunately, the military at that time was no different. For better or worse, smoking hashish (“smoking a bowl”) was common practice among the enlisted cadre in Germany in the early 1970s. Looking back through the bifocals of age and wisdom, it’s a miracle any of us survived. It’s earnestly hoped that this destructive behavior was expunged from military culture soon after this epoch. Yet if nothing else, the period makes for entertaining memories. This is the unabridged version and here’s to horseplay.

Fishing for a Six Pack

In autumn 1972, the admin unit called Team 1 was created from the 530 Administration Company of the 3rd Armored Division, stationed in Frankfurt, Germany. To better assist the needs of the Division, Team 1 was “forward deployed” to Ayers Kaserne, Germany in October of 1972. Team 1 had been at Ayers Kaserne in Kirsch Goens for only a couple days when this event happened. We had just moved in to the upper floor in our newly assigned barracks. The entire group of perhaps 25 enlisted men was originally housed in a single large bay dormitory. It was extremely crowded. It was like being part of a nuclear sub’s crew.

As a quick aside to this story, let me mention that yours truly was responsible for enabling many of these same enlisted personnel to live off-post in apartments and get paid for it. As Team 1’s Personnel Actions Specialist, I had a full set of Army Regulations, and was trying to read quickly through them so I could hasten my On-the-Job-Training. Why was I hastening with OJT? Upon entering the Army, I had originally been trained as an “armored reconnaissance scout,” a deadly profession. When I arrived in Germany, the military was momentarily in greater need for one who could type letters instead one who stealthily destroys things. And since I could do both with alacrity, I was reassigned to an Administration Unit. I wasn’t about to complain.

While poring through my set of Army Regulations, I happened to run across a housing reg that established the minimum allowable square footage for permanent enlisted billeting. The billet provided for Team 1 was exceptionally undersized for the number of people crammed in there. So Sp4. Chambliss and I put together a request (as allowed under the reg) to receive payment for off-base quarters: renting an apartment. The officer in charge of Team 1 was a young first lieutenant, 1LT John G. McLinn (who, by the way was a fine officer and individual). 1LT McLinn didn’t want to sign our request. He was new to the job, and he was probably afraid of “rocking the boat.” Eventually, Sp4. Jeffrey Wallace and I drove back to Frankfurt to get some anonymous major to sign the authorization. That alone was kind of an interesting little affair.

From our earlier residence at Drake Kaserne in Frankfurt, we both remembered this young major who was friendly to the grunts. This guy had no chain-of-command responsibility to us when we moved to Kirsch Goens. For all practical purposes, the guy was a stranger. When Wallace and I went back to Frankfurt, we were both worried that this guy would just boot us out the door. I mean, we just walked in and said, “Excuse us Maj. Smith, we have a severe housing overload up in Ayers Kaserne, and could you sign this authorization as permitted under Army Reg 230-15?” The guy just laughed and signed it. We were in and out of there in a couple minutes. We then carried the orders to finance and HQ to get them processed and that was it. It was our first experience with managing “Army Doctrine” circa 1970.

When we got back to Kirsch Goens, we showed 1LT McLinn the authorization orders and he had to let us move out. I’m sure he was actually a bit embarrassed by not doing it for us. On our next paychecks, amounts were included for rent and also a food allowance. From then on, it was Standard Operating Procedure for anybody who wanted to move off-base. There were probably times when the barracks went “undermanned.” I actually only lived in the Ayers Kaserne barracks for about a month. The rest of the time I was in Germany, I lived in an apartment. I was nineteen years old and ready for anything.

Back to Ayers Kaserne: we’re settled in the barracks. We’ve got all the double bunks set up. We also had to individually assemble the metal personal lockers (that was fun, let me tell you) and had just completed that task. The whole group was together. The time was early evening. The sun had just set and I opened up a window to look out over our new domain and just take it all in. I looked out over the Hessian countryside, and the concrete barracks across from us; just pleasantly ruminating. Then I looked down. On the window sill immediately below me sat a completely fresh six-pack of beer. I stared at it for a minute or two. It WAS getting dark out…

Within a couple of minutes I had assembled a strike force. (After all, I was still Recon) PFC Kermit Crockett ran down the hallway to find something to put the beer in. (One can only wonder what the established troops on that floor thought when Crockett ran by screaming, “I need a big bowl, NOW!”) PFC Sam Samarron located a ball of string. I quickly fashioned a coat hanger into a hook. This all took maybe five minutes.

We carefully lowered the hook down and easily secured the six-pack of beer. Plastic ring holders had just come in, and the beer cans had pull tabs. Rather than just “steal the beer,” which would have invited investigation from the Artillery Unit downstairs, I had a different plan.

We quickly punched two small holes in the bottom of each can with a pocket knife awl (so that’s what that tool is for!). Crockett finally made it back with his big bowl (“they kept pointing me to the men’s room!”), and we emptied the cans into it. As each can was emptied, we carefully refilled each can with water through the little holes we had punched. We then sealed the holes with melted candle wax. We had a real production line going.

Within fifteen minutes of the heist, we were lowering the converted six-pack back down to its perch. The excitement was electric. Had the original owners missed the six-pack in that brief time? Would they see this mysterious six-pack being lowered down outside of their window and assault us in platoon force? We were brand new on the block, and this could have been a rough start.

We got away with it. Perhaps it had become dark enough outside for glare from the room’s interior lights to block the appearance of the six-pack slowly being fidgeted into position. Then the hook was lowered free and stealthily withdrawn.

We all sat around and enjoyed our prize. Team 1 had accomplished a fast action under duress, and we hadn’t wilted. (“So where did you finally find the big bowl, Kermit?) No doubt tap beer was better than our “imported” six-pack, but it tasted great with the sweetness of victory. (“…it was in the men’s room, after all.”)

I kept a periodic eye on the ersatz six-pack below. It was pulled inside about an hour after we had robbed the nest. It reappeared about ten minutes later – as a five pack. And it wasn’t set on the window sill – it was tossed out into the grounds below.

Then the five-pack disappeared not too long later as some passerby in the dark thought they had found a prize. It probably migrated all around the base, losing one can at a time.

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Fork Here

One day in the office there was a big meeting of Divisional Top Brass in a room across the hallway from our office. They were discussing sensitive issues and so closed the door to their meeting room.

Sp4 Dave Ramsey was walking down the hall and noticed that there was one of those fold-over locking hasps on the aforementioned door. And it was the only door in and out of that room. Now, Ramsey didn’t simply close the hasp over the lock ring and walk away. That would have been too easy. He went back into the office and found the first thing that came to hand to slip through the lock ring, which turned out to be a dinner fork.

Realizing that inserting the dinner fork through the lock ring would only invite some passerby to pull it back out again (this was, after all, the Army), he did what any admin troop would do: he made a sign. An official looking sign: replete with lettering in military stencil and black paint. He did this all in the space of about fifteen minutes. Just goes to show what inspiration can do.

The sign read: “Fork Here →” and there was an official looking arrow on it. It was about a foot wide and six inches high. So then, and only then, did he go back and lock the door with the dinner fork. And he quickly installed the sign so that it pointed at the fork, and made it convincingly military looking.

The meeting went on for what seemed like hours. And everyone of our gang wandered by and chuckled at that sign and the locked door, just thinking about what was surely going to happen.

And of course it did happen. Soon the door began to rattle. Followed by a pause, and then some more rattling. Realizing that they were trapped, the bigwigs next door probably had to figure out who was the lowest on the rank totem pole to climb out the window. It was probably some major who ultimately would be decorated for his initiative. The rescue was effected: the door was unforked, and nothing more was said of the incident.

But it is still funny to imagine the look on that officer’s face after he climbed out the window and walked back around to unlock the door. And saw the dinner fork securing the hasp, and that official sign that read: “Fork Here →”.

Water Sports

Summer arrived in 1973, and with it came warm weather, and the need to clean up the office building. It was a beautiful summer day and a group of us volunteered to wash the windows. Pretty soon we were outside, in our tee-shirts sloshing water around and having a grand time. It didn’t take long before things escalated and I sort of tossed a half pail of water on by buddy Sp4 Ron Pardekooper. He chased me around the building four or five laps. In the quid pro quo of horseplay, I knew that I was going to have to let him soak me in return. So I resignedly went back into the office to “take care of some necessary paperwork.” I sat with my back to the window, expecting the gusher at any moment. It arrived. As I stood up and turned around with water running down my back, there was Pardekooper grinning with a big empty pail of water. I just stood there grinning back at him until he realized that I had put on HIS fatigue shirt when I came back in the office. Ron had a damp ride home that day.

One day during that same summer while I was at the PX, I happened to notice a pack of party balloons. Say no more. Within an hour I was back at the office planning a suitable assault. I had to plan carefully to achieve the full surprise effect. About ten minutes later, Wallace walked out of the office and towards the men’s room. His body language said that he was heading for some quiet time in a closed stall.

There is a time for planning, and a time for action. Silent feet padded behind Wallace and entered the men’s room within seconds after the stall door clicked shut and locked. Wallace could hear soft sounds of activity – a faucet being turned on, but no water running in the sink, then the faucet being turned off again. He must have been curious. No voices, just the sounds of birds chirping in the trees outside the open window. Perhaps there was a faint wind to rustle the tree leaves on this fine summer day. The assassin turned and faced his target. No small “one hand” water bomb this: this was a ten pound two-hander. It was so full that it would be impossible for someone to catch it with cushioned hands. Without a moment’s hesitation, the assassin heaved it unerringly high enough to clear the stall. It arced high enough for Wallace to stare upward and see his doom. It achieved the desired effect:

Wallace went: “WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!”

The water bomb went: SSSSPPLLAAAAASHHHH!!!

The assassin went: padpadpadpadpadpadpad, hehehehehehe, padpadpad, hehehe

Nothing was said when Wallace returned after a rather lengthy time out of the office. It was understood that nature sometimes can’t be hurried.

But the assassin knew. And he knew that Wallace knew. And he knew that Wallace knew he knew. And it was only a matter of time before it all evened out.

The next day, in fact.

The assassin realized that it was time to become the victim. He walked courageously towards the men’s room: head high, shoulders back. He quietly closed the stall door, and waited. Through the foot-high gap below the stall’s wall, he could see the army boots silently enter the room. But the victim was ready. He quickly but quietly unpacked the small umbrella that he had carried disguised inside his fatigue shirt. He soundlessly opened it, and held it over his head. And waited. He was ready.

He didn’t have long to wait. A hand suddenly shot up under the stall door, and the garden hose that it held was turned on full force. The umbrella was completely effective at deflecting the unexpected upward spray of water back down on to his body. The victim said: “SBPPSAALLPSTOOPPITIMDROWWWWNIIINGGAIIIEEEEE!!!”

The remaining party balloons stayed unused in a drawer until the move to Giessen the following year.

But then they came out.

One summer night two camouflaged figures crept out into the dark carrying a large heavy box between them. It was laden with loaded water balloons. The two figures carried the box onto a nearby soccer field, and set to work about fifty feet from one goal. They silently dug a number of holes and carefully placed a water balloon in each. Then they covered them up, and spread dirt over each. The disturbed dirt dried in the night, and by morning, the concealment was complete.

The next day a certain admin group was performing soccer practice on this same soccer field when they found out the hard way that it had been mined. There were a number of squishy shoes and mud-soaked socks. There were loud curses. And there was also a pair of shadowy watchers chortling in a nearby stand of trees. Gruntled, they turned and then slipped quietly away.

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The Wounded Moose

It just so happened that the same men’s room where the water balloon event occurred had extraordinary resonance. It was like a super shower room. It had a fifteen foot high ceiling, and highly reflective walls. To make the acoustics even more pronounced, the fifty foot long hallway that connected the men’s room to the admin offices echoed with cavernous resonance. When the men’s room’s door was propped open, as it usually was, quiet discussions in the men’s room sounded like a rolling thunderstorm at the distant office-end of the hallway. The sound of a toilet flush was amplified out in the hallway into a sonorous apocalyptic flood.

One day in the summer of 1973, I was washing up in the men’s room when I saw Wallace arrive in his blue VW hatchback. The building’s parking lot was at the same end of the building as the men’s room. With Wallace were two other poor souls: Huffy and Martin. As they walked in through the building’s door and proceeded down the hallway, I spontaneously closeted myself in one of the stalls. Then, timing it as closely as I could, I let go with a monumental “two hands over mouth fart.” I went for the full bravura performance: a three second jowl-flapping, deep guttural rising pitch creation. Out in the hallway it sounded like a tuba half filled with water attempting to mimic a wounded bull moose trapped in an echo chamber. I immediately followed up this virtuoso effort with a sullen anguished moan: “oooahhhhnnnnhhh!!!”

For a second or two I thought that perhaps my sonic dart had missed the mark. Silence. Then arrived the sound of people stumbling into the walls as they struggled down the hallway, laughing too hard to make a sound: choking actually.

I waited a reasonable period and sauntered back into the office, wearing my most contrite expression. Wallace was sitting next to Ron Pardekooper, still recovering his breath. Nobody said anything. I sat down. Then without prompting I quietly said: “I had a difficult moment.”

Both Wallace and Pardekooper fell out of their chairs as if they’d been axed. Ron had of course, heard the wounded moose and its final despair.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t the end of it. For weeks thereafter, the “wounded moose and its final despair” was the regular accompaniment to all business practices in the office. Everyone was doing it. You’d have soldiers in-processing from all parts of the globe, and before they’d leave the office, they would be subjected to twenty different variations on the theme originating from all points in the office. They must have thought we were all completely nuts. Maybe we were.

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Flamethrowers

Part of the essential kit of all soldiers at that time was a butane-lighter to ignite the omnipresent bowl of hashish. The lighters got to be something of a codpiece of status: the cheap throwaway lighter simply wouldn’t do. Most of the soldiers purchased rather fancy metal, refillable types. Then the status symbol became how large the flame could be made. Soon the soldiers were modifying the lighters to increase the flame size. Sp4 Randy Lindsey took a safety pin and used its point as a mandrel to enlarge the fuel port on one such lighter. When he was finished, the damn thing would throw an aggressive flame out three feet long. The guy had a pocket flame thrower.

This of course resulted in everyone having to have one, and soon fiery sword fights could be witnessed that pre-dated the Star-Wars light saber by a decade.

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Ink Rings

SSG Billie made a grievous error when he set up a small printing station near his desk. He had a printer’s block smeared with printer’s ink and used a number of different stamps to mark correspondence appropriately: Confidential, Secret, etc. The problem was not the printer’s set. The problem was that he had a tube of printer’s ink.

I have always thought that printer’s ink is one of the most amazing substances ever created. The stuff can be made to smear incredibly thin, yet retain its opacity. It is extremely durable – without a proper solvent, it is almost impossible to remove. It just keeps smearing thinner and thinner. A better material has never been invented for practical jokes.

With such a material at hand I was helpless to resist. It started with the ubiquitous black military telephones: displaying a black ear smudge became so common around the office it was practically de rigueur.

Then the printer’s ink just happened to have exactly the same patina and shade of black as military toilet seats. When spread thinly over a toilet seat, it was undetectable. Thirty plus years have now passed, and I might as well ‘fess up. I’m the one who blackened the asses & undershorts of the 1st Regiment, 3rd Armored Division during the summer of 1973. It was an epidemic. The German contract laundry must have made millions that summer.

I used the same technique to get even with a pain-in-the-neck corporate executive in the mid-1980’s. The jerk didn’t know that I had received special training in the military.

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Telephonies

The military telephone system in Germany was notoriously lousy circa 1970. It was undoubtedly a left-over from the Great War. The transmission quality was completely unpredictable. You could call somebody in the next building and have to shout to be heard, and you could call to Munich and have an excellent connection. Then the conditions would completely change the next call. Sometimes a call placed to Frankfurt would ring in Bremerhaven. It was hopeless, and everyone just adapted to it as best as possible. The unpredictable phone quality and the strict dictum of “military phone etiquette” together created great potential for gags.

Who’s THAT? – The three calls and you’re out trick. Military phone etiquette required that all people answering the phone immediately identify their unit, their rank, their name, and then deliver a greeting. This could be rather ponderous, and it was required for every phone call. For example, when answering the phone I would by-rote announce: “Personnel Services Division Forward – Kirsch Goens, Team 1, Specialist 4 George Nehls. How may I help you Sir!” I robotically intoned this greeting every time I picked up a phone. Luckily, telemarketers were a plague twenty years in the future. To make matters worse, after answering a phone with your full military regalia, the caller was expected to do the same thing. The honorifics could delay a sunrise.

One slow day in Giessen (Team 1 moved to Giessen in 1974), our warrant officer, Mr. Lilly needed to contact a general somewhere. He asked his adjutant (something new, a female!) to place the phone call and told her the number. I overheard and was quicker on the dial. Before she made her way back to her desk and placed the call, I surreptitiously called the number; three times in fact. Each time I dialed, I waited just long enough for the general’s flunky (probably a major) to get well into his florid salutation, and then I hung up. I had just hung up for the third time when Lilly’s adjutant got back to her desk and dialed the number. I was close enough to hear the exchange over the line. She dialed, and then I heard it ring. Then I heard a muffled shouted: “WHO EVER THIS IS, I’M GONNA FIND YOU AND KILL YOU!” She responded in an exasperated voice, “Is this Gen. Smith’s office?”

Answer: “YOU KNOW DAMN WELL WHO YOU’RE CALLING!” I forget the lady’s name right now, but she was married to a Captain and was pretty used to handling brass. The exchange rapidly escalated and then ended abruptly.

After a minute or two Mr. Lilly called out of his office, “Did you get the General?” What’s her name called back: “I’ll have to try back in a few minutes, sir.” Mr. Lilly: “What’s the problem?” She calmly responded: “The phone line’s cursing at me, sir.” Mr. Lilly had no ready response for this, so he just let military nature run its course.

Who’s THERE! – Stealing the microphone. The unpredictable phone quality was a tool to be used to advantage if you also knew that the microphone in the handset was simply sitting on contact rings, and not hardwired in. Sp4 Jim Embury and I used to do a tag-team job on 1LT McLinn with this one. McLinn would be away from his desk for a minute, and either Embury or I would quickly unscrew the microphone cover on the handset, pocket the device, and screw the cover back on. You could do the whole thing in about five seconds. Then we’d wait for McLinn to get a call.

It was a curious characteristic of those telephones that, even without a microphone, if you shouted loud enough, you could actually be heard at the other end of the call: there was probably a low efficiency transmission through the handset’s earphone speaker. So McLinn would get a call, and he’s wind up shouting at the top of his voice to carry on the discussion, and be swearing under his voice at the lousy telephone system.

Then Embury would distract McLinn for moment: call him away from the phone to provide some pertinent info (travel order number or something), and I’d slip in, and put the microphone back in. McLinn would return to the phone and start yelling into it. And you’d hear back over the ear phone: “YOU DON’T HAVE TO SHOUT FOR CHRIST’S SAKE!” Embury and I pulled this off at least half a dozen times, and McLinn never caught on. It cracked us up every time. It took the move to Giessen in 1974 to break up our tag-team.

Who’s WHY? – The two-phone anonymous call stunt. The greatest phone gag of the era was pulled off by Ron Pardekooper and me. The timing of this gag depended completely on chance, and it took several failed attempts before we caught a winner. But when we did, it was hilarious. Ron and I would simultaneously call two distant admin offices that we had numbers to, say Bamberg and Wurzberg. Then we would quickly lay our phones down facing each other earphone to microphone. We depended on the poor phone quality and the ever present military phone etiquette to carry the joke past its initial critical moments. The idea was to get two completely unknown parties talking to each other without knowing what the phone call was for.

The one time we pulled it off, the two parties simultaneously picked up the phones, and then launched into their answering speeches. There was a moment’s confusion as they verbally stumbled over each other, but then they started talking. The phone call went on for a full twenty minutes. You could have published a complete paper based on the socio-psychology of the discussion. First, having completed their military courtesies, they established common ground – they talked about the weather. “Well, how’s the weather in Bamberg?” “Not bad today, a little cloudy. How’s it in Wurzberg?” “Ya, about the same.” That went on for a few minutes, then the next safe subject was how screwed up the military was. That was good for another five minutes. Then they started comparing who they knew in each other’s location. Maybe another five minutes.

About this time the curiosity of “why did you actually place this call?” began to intrude very cautiously and diplomatically into the discussion. Neither party was so bold as to actually say: “Pardon me there soldier, but WHY did you call me?” This is where the conversation became hilarious. Pardekooper and I, listening over the phone sets of course, could hardly hold back our laughter. The two guys on the phone very politely maneuvered around the subject for a good seven to eight minutes without ever finding out what the other guy wanted. Then they politely ended the call (hey nice talking to you Bill, keep in touch!) and both hung up. No doubt immediately after they hung up, they both shook their heads and wondered: “Now what the hell was THAT all about?” And went back to doing whatever they had been doing beforehand. Pardekooper and I chuckled about that one for days.

The squeal – predating the fax machine by two decades. The telephones in Germany had another unusual characteristic: they had extremely high amplification at high pitches. If you placed a call to a fellow worker across the office, and waited for him to put the earpiece to his ear, you could bowl him over by holding your microphone close to your mouth and “squealing” into it. Without a doubt, the person who eventually invented the fax machine served in the military in Germany about this time. The inventor of the fax machine just figured out how to carry some meaningful information over the squeal and deliver it to an electronic ear that wouldn’t get furious at you for doing that.

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Office Wars

Anyone who has worked in an admin outfit knows that peace is never entirely at hand. A continuous low level combat between office participants is always present. While to a casual passerby it may look like a placid environment, there is ever the sullen rumble of the machines of war. The unheralded spit ball, the occasional direct sniper shot of a rubber band fired from a ruler into an ear at ten feet. Even someone working diligently will glance up from their paperwork to find their desk littered with rubber bands: someone has been mortaring them in from an unknown location. Occasionally the whole thing flares up and pandemonium rules for a while, then to tamp down, but never completely out. Always there is the dull smolder of admin conflict. And with it goes the constant evolution of the machines and methods.

Fragging. During the 1970’s, “fragging” to an admin company meant not the tossing of a hand grenade, but surreptitiously dropping a handful of paper clips into an opponent’s typewriter. When the victim started hammering away at their keyboard, the paper clips would produce a most satisfying shower of metal ejecta from the machine, startling everyone within ten feet. It also had the secondary effect of immediately jamming the typewriter. Its owner had to stop everything and tip the wounded machine over and spend minutes ferreting out the jammed paper clips from its internals. Anyone who didn’t first look down into his typewriter before using it had only himself to blame.

Visions in Carbon. At Team 1 we experienced the epochal change from individual reusable sheets of carbon paper to those individual pull-away single-use carbons. When the first boxes of those single-use carbons started showing up, we thought we were living in a blessed time, indeed. It wasn’t too long before someone figured out how to turn them into a practical joke.

I was sitting at my desk when SP4 Dave Morgan stomped into our office area, obviously furious. Why Morgan would immediately finger me as the culprit was beyond my ken. Why, I didn’t even work in the same office bay as him. Morgan was our travel order specialist and like most of us spent the day hammering away at his typewriter. Apparently someone had decided that his dull travel orders needed a little spicing up, at least on the carbon copies.

“Someone!” Morgan declared, staring in a piercingly unambiguous manner directly at me, “typed a bunch of stuff on my carbons, and now I’m going to have to redo the whole damn lot!”

“Well, why look at me?” I asked, wounded by the unvoiced accusation.

“Because it’s got your name written all over it!” insisted Morgan.

“My name? If my name’s written all over your carbons you know damn well it wasn’t me who did it.” I offered defensively.

“You know what I mean,” countered Morgan.

Venturing a diplomatic salient, I suggested that “maybe nobody had typed anything on them.”

“Now, what’s that supposed to mean,” said Morgan in a tired voice. He was starting to suspect that he was being played.

“Well, maybe it was some kind of divine message, you know, like the ‘Handwriting on the Wall’ story,” I speculated sagely. “What’s the message say?”

“Jimmy eats ratshit!” Spat out Morgan, “about ten times on each sheet!”

“Hmmm,” I mused philosophically, “that IS obscure. I wonder if there’s some hidden meaning. You know, kind of like the Delphic Oracle.”

Realizing that the incident was spinning into nowhere, Morgan stalked out in a huff, but not before warning me something about “winding up a Jimmy.” From then on, everyone first checked their carbons, just like looking into their typewriters. It was SOP. Eventually “Visionary Jimmy” caught me too, once or twice.

High Powered Paper Clips. I used to joke about my “marksmanship” with the soldier’s standard weapon: the M-16 rifle. I used to tell people that if I had one in my hands, the safest place was directly in front of it: I couldn’t hit anything with it. Now as to rubber band launched paper clips, that was a different story. I was a crack shot. I don’t know why, it was just a talent that I had.

To my credit, I never once fired one in the direction of a person. The things were actually dangerous. With a good set of rubber bands, I could fire a paper clip through a wall calendar at a distance of about thirty feet.

My good office partner Sp4 Scotty Martin sat on the opposite side of our small bay, about twenty feet from me. For a long time, Scotty had one of those little brass, rotating “tinkle” bell things. You were supposed to light the candle in its center, and then it would start rotating and make a musical bell sound. Kind of like an indoor wind chime. This thing was about five inches high by about three inches across. It was an absolutely irresistible target. When hit by a paper clip, the whole thing would explode like a gag car in an old Laurel & Hardy movie. I fired at it probably twenty times and never once missed it. Out of deference to Scotty, after blowing it up once or twice in his presence, I only shot at it when he wasn’t around. The problem was, every time I’d shoot it, I had to go and rebuild the thing. I always left it completely assembled.

One weekend I was pulling Charge of Quarters in the office. Pulling CQ meant just occupying the office in case war broke out. It was a time to catch up on work, snooze, or twiddle your thumbs. The only other person there was SP4 Goody, who was catching up on some paperwork out in the large bay. I was sitting at my desk and idly shooting up everything that I could draw a bead on: just kind of a lazy day and killing time.

SP4 Goody must have heard this steady, “whiirrr – BANG!” coming out of the smaller office where I was and got curious. He strolled in and we had a brief discussion about paper clip archery. I showed him just how powerful the dang things were, and put one through a wall calendar as a demonstration. “Not bad,” says SP4 Goody, “but are they accurate?”

“See that fly?” I said. “Watch this.” There was a fly walking around on the ceiling. The ceiling was about fifteen feet high, and the fly was a good twenty-five feet laterally away from where I was sitting. Without a moment’s hesitation, I pulled the paper clip back and split the fly in two.

SP4 Goody’s eyes got large, and he muttered, “Holy Mother” in a quiet voice. Then he walked back to his own office area. I will admit that was one heck of a shot.

I’ve always thought that if I was ever trapped in a building with bank robbers, terrorists or that ilk, I’d scan around quickly to see if there were any rubber bands and paper clips. The bad guys wouldn’t stand a chance.

Admin-Cannons. No one knows who first touched match to the prototypical Admin-Cannon. But just like their larger brethren, they changed life as we know it cataclysmically.

The first Admin-Cannon I personally saw was a Sp4 Randy Lindsey construct. He had rolled a manila cardboard DA Form 20 into a tube, had pinched off one end, and had rammed a spitball onto a charge of several match heads. He poked a small touch hole at the charge end, and he was in business. The tube was set up in a typewriter with its spring loaded paper holder gripping it firmly against the typewriter. The tube was inclined at about 30 degrees. It was pointed in the direction of Sp4 Hooper’s desk. Hooper was nervously eyeing this development. It was, of course, regular business hours.

Without fanfare, Lindsey touched a flaming match to the touch hole and there was a momentary sizzle as the charge inside the tube ignited, just like the old flintlock muskets. Then there was an immensely satisfying “TOOMPH,” and the spitball shot about fifteen feet and flew beyond Hooper’s desk. A curl of smoke floated out of the tube.

The arms race was on. Everyone had to have one. By the end of a day or two, with the main office bay reeking of burnt match heads, Team 1 personnel had already perfected much of the essential design of the Mark 1 Admin-Cannon. There had, of course, been a few bumps along the way. The waste baskets contained the smoldering ruins of burst tubes along with the regular office detritus.

Perhaps more importantly, the Code of Office Conduct now required that a spitball be delivered via cannon shot. And so they quickly got bigger to achieve greater range. Also, there were refinements in spitball design, wadding, and charge preparation. It quickly was recognized that instead of using the entire match head, slicing the charge off of it, and then grinding it slightly greatly improved its performance.

Within a week or two, the standard Admin-Cannon was up to something like a Mark 3 design. And instead of rolled up DA Form 20’s, more durable tubes were being sought. All types of cardboard tubes were experimented with. Methods for reinforcing the tubes were attempted: tape, string, tape-over-string wrap. They kept getting bigger and more powerful.

Curiously, the Admin-Cannon was almost exclusively the domain of the large office bay. This may have been due to the “Specialists” in the smaller bay being too physically close to 1LT McLinn to keep up with the torrid development pace. Randy Lindsey seemed determined to stay at the forefront of design. As I recall, it was his masterpiece that brought the whole cottage industry crashing back to earth.

The zenith of Admin-Cannon design was achieved with a steel tube that somebody found lying around outside: obviously divine providence at work. The tube was about fifteen inches in length and had about a .35 caliber bore. It already had a welded closed end with a natural touch hole. Lindsey set it up in the standard cannon holder of that era: the typewriter. It was aimed at the far wall of the large bay about 50 feet away, and elevated at about 25 degrees. They obviously wanted to give the projectile the largest possible room to fly.

The projectile was a quantum improvement over even the most advanced spitball design. It was a dart: the type of dart that is used in the typical dart board game: brass with a two inch long needle, and a plastic “tail feather.” The brass shaft of the dart fit perfectly in the cannon’s bore, but the plastic tail feathers had to be cut down to appropriate size. The technology of charge and wadding had advanced to the point where their performance could be assured, but nobody knew how much charge was appropriate for the new heavy projectile. In the spirit of the time, it was thought best to err on the side of more powder.

Rather than have someone actually touch a match to the touch hole, it was deemed safer to make a rudimentary fuse using cigarette paper.

Considering all of the untested features of this advanced model Admin-Cannon, one would have thought that the most appropriate testing time would be in the quiet of the evening. However, the minds of the designers ran contrary to this conservative position, and preferred to demonstrate it before the widest possible audience: during business hours, and with a whole platoon of soldiers in-processing from Vietnam.

A brief description of First Sergeant (1SG) Robert Spence is noteworthy at this time. At Team 1, as the senior Non-Commissioned Officer (NCO), 1SG Spence was second in command behind 1LT McLinn. His wife called him Bob. He was just finishing out his service and he retired in place by the end of 1973. 1SG Spence was tall, very astute and fit looking, probably about sixty years old at the time, and wore the black beret of the Airborne Rangers. He had survived a couple tours in Vietnam, and really looked like the kind of guy you wouldn’t want to mess with. He turned out to be a pussy cat. He may have been spitting nails for much of his career, but by the time he landed in Team 1, he was just cruisin’ to the finish line.

1LT McLinn was of necessity absent: off at a meeting somewhere. 1SG Spence was occupying McLinn’s desk and chair – in the smaller office bay. SSG Roger Billie was in the large bay, but he was deemed extraneous to security concerns. All of the regular small-bay “Specialists” were diligently at work, including yours truly.

Someone lit the fuse and set it off. The blast knocked everyone either directly out of their chair or survival reactions accomplished the same effect. It took about ten seconds for people to realize that they were on the floor and would eventually have to get up.

The first to respond were the record clerks in the large bay. Survival skills took hold. They quickly realized that in order to minimize the trouble that was surely going to descend upon them, pretending that nothing had happened was likely the best opening gambit.

I had just achieved eye level with the top of my desk when 1SG Spence heaved himself upright and dashed for the doorway connecting the large bay and small bay. I was staring straight at 1SG Spence’s back and into the large bay when he stepped two feet into the large bay and stopped to reconnaissance the situation. There was smoke swirling around the left hand end of the large bay – the end where the cannon had been discharged. About ten feet directly in front of 1SG Spence sat Sp4 Sam Samarron, gracefully sweeping smoke away from his desk as he fed a new DA Form 20 into his typewriter. Grinning broadly, Sam greeted 1SG Spence with a cheery, “Afternoon Top!” Sam then set to typing with fervor.

I walked up behind 1SG Spence and peered around him. Every record clerk was typing away heroically, and someone had even turned the ever present boom box up a notch. Conversation was jovial and abundant. About that time SSG Roger Billie emerged from under his desk. SSG Billie’s desk was not more than ten feet from the epicenter of the blast, so “Rog” may have been a little hard of hearing at that moment.

As one gazed out into the large bay, the record clerks were joyously operating at full capacity, while the smoke continued swirling around the left end of the bay. At the distant end of the bay, one of the large fluorescent light standards was swaying precipitously from its sole remaining stanchion (the other having been shot away), there was a foot diameter hole blown in the ceiling about ten feet from the far wall, and the entire ceiling’s collective dust of forty years’ accumulation was snowing slowly down in a haze. The scene was an insane contradiction. 1SG Spence was speechless. The platoon in-processing from Vietnam was nowhere in sight. The same went for the cannon and the typewriter that had been holding it: though debris was strewn everywhere.

1SG Spence walked another five feet into the large bay and glared. What could he say? The office clerks were working harder than they ever had before. To do anything at this time could only reduce their productivity. It was probably at this moment that 1SG Spence began calculating the hours to his retirement. Also at the same moment, the soldiers from Vietnam, those who were actually in the room at the time, began to emerge from beneath the furniture. These guys were survivors: they had long ago learned that the last to surface was the most likely to walk away.

Since the record clerks were so determinedly carrying the air of normalcy, the Vietnam soldiers were soon up and back to normal too. They might even have thought that they had over-reacted a bit. “Ah sure – happens all the time! You’ll get used to it.”

SSG Billie and 1SG Spence were both so overwhelmed by the audacious stupidity of the whole event that neither was willing to broach the subject with 1LT McLinn. When McLinn got back, the light stanchion had “suddenly broken free.” No mention was made about the hole in the ceiling – it supposedly had been there unnoticed all the time. The exit hole in the building’s roof made by the projectile-dart was quickly patched. The heavy coating of dust on everything was cleared off before closing time. The demolished typewriter was discretely not ever seen again.

The self-preservation response of the record clerks had carried the day. But it marked the glorious end of the Admin-Cannon. None was ever fired again. At least not at Team 1.

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Alien Abduction

Germany is the Land of Exquisite Beers and Wines. But Jeffrey Wallace always maintained that a high quality sipping whiskey couldn’t be beat. Shortly after four of us (Wallace, Ramsey, Lindsey, and I) moved into an apartment in Rechtenbach, Wallace set out to prove his point. One Saturday about noon, Wallace returned from a shopping trip to the PX with a quart of some high quality hooch, probably Wild Turkey. Lindsey wasn’t around. It was just Wallace, Ramsey and I. Jeff poured shots all around. Dave and I had to agree that the stuff had a certain smooth character, between coughs. When Dave and I demurred from beholding any more of his generosity, Jeff felt obliged to pour himself a pretty good dollop of the stuff. Jeff went off for a little nap about 2:30 P.M. that afternoon.

Ramsey and I were just sitting around, nothing to do, and probably feeling a little frisky from the snort we had had. We decided that if Wallace could go nappy-poo a bit tipsy, he would benefit waking up a bit stoned. So we crept into his bedroom. And while Jeff was gently snoring away, we carefully blew hashish smoke into his inhales for probably too long a time. (OK, so maybe we had each had a couple shots of whiskey, no more than two) Then we crept out again.

Afterwards, we were sitting out in the living room trying to figure out what to do next. (I’m positive that the most we’d had was three shots each) We finally figured out that when Wallace woke up, it would be best if he was facing a couple of space aliens (it seemed to make sense at the time). So, with the wings of inspiration, we rapidly made up two space alien costumes from materials that were at hand. We had blanket cloaks, taped together cardboard alien helmets, bizarre aluminum foil antennae, cardboard tubes for eyes, and some sort of tridents made from broom sticks, dust pans, and foil or something. And then we waited for him to wake up.

We got tired of waiting, so we went in after him. We positioned ourselves by the foot of his bed and started calling to him in suitable space alien voices: “Jeee-ffreeee Wall---aaaceeee! Weeee’ve cooooommmmeee fooorr youuuu!” He still didn’t wake up so we started prodding him with our tridents, all the while calling for him in our space alien voices. He took a lot of prodding.

After what seemed like a half an hour (we were rapidly running out of space alien energy), Wallace started to stir. He was moving slowly and trying to get his eyes to open. Finally, he opened up his eyes and tried to focus them on us. The two space aliens went into spookydrive: undulating their arms, and telling him they were there for him and were going to take him back with them. Wallace tried to sit up, made it about half way, and then plopped back down on the bed. Out cold’ern a mackerel. Ramsey and I looked disgustedly at each other, and stalked out of Wallace’s bedroom.

Around an hour later we were poking around, getting dinner ready when the door opened and in staggers Wallace. He was having a hell of a time staying vertical and was literally hanging on to the door to keep upright. His hair looked like he’d stuck a finger into an electric wall socket. His eyes were wild. Poor Wallace staggers in and then blurts out: “Oh geez guys, you wouldn’t believe the dream I just had!”

Old Eagle Eyes

One of the jobs that a Personnel Actions Specialist had was reviewing the “RA Applications” of officers who had decided to make a career of the Army. RA means Regular Army, and not every officer on active duty belongs to the Regular Army – that is, they possess a commission from Congress to uphold the Constitution. Soldiers who have gone through the U.S. Military Academy at West Point receive their commission upon graduation, but officers who become officers by graduating through “Officer Candidate School” do not belong to the Regular Army until they submit a petition to be accepted: the RA Application. Often the OCS grad makes it up to 1st Lieutenant (1LT) and then they make the decision whether to ETS like any regular enlistee, or apply for RA in anticipation of achieving promotion to Captain (CPT). It obviously is an important career decision, and the RA Application is assembled extremely carefully. It is meticulous, without error, and attempts to place the applicant in the best light. The PA Specialist carefully reviews the efforts of the applying officer, assists where possible, and screens the document for any potential problems with the appropriate Army Regulations. It is exacting work. There are zero typos allowed. The RA Applications are like a super resume, usually running to fifty pages or more. There is also the required photograph. The required photograph in 1973 was a black & white frontal portrait of the applicant wearing his/her dress uniform: shot from the waist up. Typically, the applicant would choose a facial expression that was rather severe. I don’t recall seeing a single “friendly” expression the entire time I was a PA Specialist.

1LT McLinn was an OCS officer who would eventually apply for and receive his RA status. But at the time of Team 1, he was just an “OCSer.” Partly because of the importance of the documents, and partly because he felt a camaraderie to RA Applicants, McLinn paid particularly close attention to every RA Application that passed over his desk for signature/forwarding. As the PA Specialist, I also paid close attention to them, because it was my job to insure that McLinn never received any flak from applicants. I took the RA Applications very seriously. They were Heavy Business.

Having written all the above, one might assume that ultimately, the pressure of perfection proved to be just too great: a practical joke simply had to assert itself. And that’s just what happened. Personally, I didn’t go looking for it. There was a convergence of forces that made it inevitable.

During the year 1973, change was coming to the modern army. In the admin office, this meant modernization such as an electric typewriter. Team 1 received one (1) IBM Selectric to upgrade its work quality. It was reserved for Extremely Important Work. All the regular functions of the admin office were still performed by a platoon of mechanical typewriters that clacked maniacally whenever an unfamiliar symbol of authority entered the office warren. Slightly after the arrival of the electric typewriter, Team 1 received an actual photocopier. This was a thing of marvel. Prior to the photocopier we had an early “thermofax” copier that actually burned shadowy images into a special “onion skin” type of paper. The photocopier produced amazingly high quality images; and on normal paper. As might be imagined, the novelty of the device produced the expected plethora of butt shots, paper money copies, etc. The photocopier was also used for real work: the old thermofax was unceremoniously dumped away in the storage room.

One day in the fall of 1973, I was paging through some old National Geographic magazine lying around somewhere. I don’t even recall if it was at the office or elsewhere. There was a startling photograph of a bird of prey: a raptor. I think it was a goshawk. Maybe it was an osprey. The bird stared directly out of the picture at you with those stern eyes, that wide, domineering prominent beak. I looked at that photo for some lengthy time, thinking, “I’ve seen this before. How is that possible?”

Back in the office, the déjà vu of the raptor photo came into focus the next time a RA Application sailed across my desk. It was the characteristic look of the RA applicant! That’s where I had seen that stern visage before! Ahh, now it all came clear.

A short time later, the National Geographic magazine was short one photo of a raptor. And I was carefully cutting the image of the bird’s head out. With extreme care, one could size the bird’s head to fit perfectly into the uniform of an RA Applicant’s photo: properly clipped the head even fit under the cap of the dress uniform. It was perfection itself.

I had trouble assembling it. Every time I looked at it, the damn thing was so funny that I couldn’t hold my hands steady enough to get it properly aligned. It was nearly unfeasible. I kept trying to use “averted vision” to get the parts to line up. The combination of that stern, commanding bird head looking straight out at you in that dress uniform was impossibly funny. To this day, conjuring up the image makes me reflexively convulse with a snicker. Eventually, I got it assembled accurately enough to photocopy the image. It came out perfectly. “Old Eagle Eyes” captured the stentorian character of the stereotypical RA Applicant in a lampoon of utopian proportions. It should have been destroyed, immediately.

I slipped it into the next available RA Application, and pulled its actual photograph.

It was a rare quiet day in the office. McLinn was steadily working his way through a stack of signing documents when he picked up the rigged RA Application. My desk was only about ten feet from his, and I observed as he leaned back in his swivel chair in that characteristic, “gonna take a relaxed gander at this” repose of his.

McLinn paged contentedly through the document, checking the personal info of the applicant, probably comparing the ‘Applicant’s data against his own personal situation. He flipped past the “photo,” probably just catching the bottom half of the picture. Then he flipped back and really looked at it. He sat bolt upright, rigid. I thought for a moment that I was going to catch hell right then.

John G. McLinn is a fairly robust person. He stands about six feet even, and in 1973, probably tipped the scales at two hundred pounds. Sandy haired, normal voice – it fit his physique. When he laughed, it was just a casual mid-American, “ha-ha-ha.” That was, until he saw the photo of Old Eagle Eyes. Up until that moment, McLinn may never have completely lost control and laughed hysterically.

It started in his shoulders. They started to judder. Then his chest began to pulsate up and down. He couldn’t tear his sight from Old Eagle Eyes. And Old Eagle Eyes was staring straight back at him. Their eyes were locked together. Then he began to erupt. It came out as a high-pitched falsetto alarm repeating every six seconds or so: “BWAHAHAHA – BWAHAHAHA – BWAHAHAHA – BWAHAHAHA – BWAHAHAHA…” He didn’t stop. He just kept on making that gawdawful high-pitched falsetto noise.

Inasmuch as no one had ever heard McLinn (or anybody) make a sound like that before; it immediately got the entire office’s attention. In fact, there had probably never been a sound like that emitted in the entire history of that building. And after a year of enduring Team 1, the building had experienced nearly every quack, howl, doink!, and flubbbbery sound that could be synthesized in the human vocal tract and other body parts.

Sometimes it is hard to distinguish between a person laughing out of control, and a person wracked with extreme anguish. The main part of the office, the large bay that housed the twenty or so record clerks, as well as SSG Billie and 1SG Spence, must have come to the immediate conclusion that someone in the smaller office had just received news of a terrible tragedy. The entire large bay went silent. There was not a click or clack of a typewriter to be heard.

My initial response to McLinn’s hysteria was joy (WOW!), followed hard on by terror. I’d certainly never heard a person make a sound like that. I experienced the Frankenstein Syndrome: the momentary thrill of creating something extraordinary followed by panic upon realizing that the lack of including a “stop button” in the design results in your complete loss of control over the situation. McLinn didn’t have a stop button, and his control stick was broken.

SSG Billie and 1SG Spence immediately got up and together crowded into the doorway that formed the entry to McLinn’s (and the “Specialist’s) smaller office bay. It’s hard to not smile when somebody is laughing, and both Billie and Spence had smiles on their faces. But you could also see that there was a real look of concern. McLinn was helpless and the only thing holding him upright was the arms of his chair. He was already about thirty seconds into his falsetto car alarm act, with no indication that a reset button was within reach. “BWAHAHAHA – BWAHAHAHA – BWAHAHAHA – BWAHAHAHA – BWAHAHAHA…”

SSG Billie was the first to speak. He tried to edge in words between the falsetto BWAHAHAHA’s: “Sir! Is every (BWAHAHAHA) thing alright!?”

Between leg kicks, McLinn looked like he was about to go into a fetal curl. But he managed to lift an arm high enough to point a finger at the RA Application lying on his desk. Between the “BWAHAHAHA’s” convulsing his body he was able to squeeze out a single word. It came out strangled, high-pitched, and sounded almost like a little girl whispering: “picture…”

Neither SSG Billie nor 1SG Spence took a step towards McLinn. They were probably concerned that he was demented and might become violent. They looked over in my direction, and I was torn between the desire to attempt a look of cherubic piety or to dive under my desk. Pardekooper, Martin, and the other guys in our small office didn’t have a clue as to what was going on. We all just sat there trying hard not to look at each other. I doubt that I had ever before found the ceiling so interesting.

McLinn slowly began to exhaust himself back into control. The falsetto convulsions diminished to every fifteen seconds or so, like hiccups that were on their way out. He was sweating profusely and was now able to wipe the tears from his eyes. He then weakly waved SSG Billie and 1SG Spence back to their desks, accompanied by an affirmative nod of his head. They complied. McLinn was going to live. He might be damaged, but he would live.

I approached cautiously. I spoke to him gently, as someone does to a person who has experienced a great shock: “You gonna be OK, sir?” He was able to nod and give a little wave of his hand. Greatly relieved, I carefully placed the real photo on his desk. I quietly said: “You’ll be needing this, sir.” Then I went back to my desk.

I figured I was a goner.

I knew McLinn would need a few minutes to collect his thoughts, so I took a little powder and did a quick walk around the building. When I came back, McLinn was not at his desk – likely down at the men’s room. He was probably considering his options: “kill Nehls now and they’ll have to display that picture at my trial…”

In the end, community won out. McLinn walked back into the office and said to me quietly as he walked by: “I’d like a word with you Specialist Nehls.” “yessir.”

We both walked out into the hallway. We stood there without a sound for a moment or two. McLinn was obviously weighing his words.

Then he simply said: “Don’t ever do that again.”

Apart from hating me, from that point on McLinn and I were tightly bound to a unique fraternity. We were the only two people to have seen Old Eagle Eyes and lived to tell about it. And we both knew it. After my service time was completed, we kept in touch for several years as I attended engineering school. Then we drifted away from each other into our own separate futures.

George Nehls served in the US Army from '71 to late '74. Originally trained as an armored recon scout, upon arriving in Germany their shortage of "schooled" individuals resulted in his transfer into administration. Following his service term, George returned to college and obtained a degree in electrical engineering. A quarter of a century of engineering followed. Now retired from active engineering, he works primarily as a technical writer.