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This & that & Everybody’s Danish – U. S. Army 1948
By fred | March 9, 2010
THIS AND THAT – AND ‘EVERYBODY’S DANISH’
U. S. Army Fall of 1948
Time for another couple of chapters from my family history book “Everybody’s Danish,” however I would like to sound off about a couple of subjects first, unfortunately political ones. I have to get a few things off my chest.
It totally pisses me off to hear Republicans pissing and moaning, constantly sending me stuff about the Democrats spending money, my God the greatest spender on foolishness and waste just left office a year ago.
One fact, just remember one simple fact that gives you some idea of the waste of spending of Bush.
Bush, Cheney and their fellow criminals (my opinion) spent over three times, remember THAT – THREE TIMES the amount of money invading Iraq, the couple of days war, took just a few days THAN ROOSEVELT SPEND IN THE ENTIRE 2ND WORLD WAR. Of course, once in Iraq we stayed and are still there.
Three times as much money – remember that – was spent by Bush, than all the money spent in fighting wars in the South Pacific, the European theater, and Africa – this fact alone is almost impossible to comprehend.
Billions of dollars spent with little and in most cases NO ACCOUNTABILITY, BILLIONS OF DOLLARS LOST AND NO TRACE, – folks have no idea where it went, in whose pockets it ended up. Do I hear bitching about that? No I do not!
Do I hear the Republicans asking for accountability from the Bush / Cheney bunch? Hey, I don’t even hear the Democrats asking for it. BUT the Republicans are bitching now about Obama spending money that is documented and some already returned to the treasury. All spending for a purpose to help our nation recover, yes there is waste somewhere, but nothing like the complete rape of our nation by the Bush administration.
Bush and his gang created all the problems Obama is attempting to overcome – do you hear anything about that?
Did any of the Bush spending get back to the U. S. Treasury — hell no.
Hearing a Republican bitch about Obama spending money frankly makes me want to vomit! SO PLEASE DON’T SEND ME MORE OF THIS CRAP!
THE OBAMA SPENDING IS TO HELP OUR ECONOMY RECOVER – MY QUESTION IS – WHAT IN THE HELL WAS THE BUSH SPENDING FOR??? – ANSWER – A LOT OF PEOPLE GOT A HECK OF A LOT RICHER WITH THE EXCUSE OF A TINY WAR TO HIDE BEHIND. If I was the mother or father or wife of a United States service member that died for their greed I would literally want to kill.
Next thing I have been hearing about – a bitch of a problem.
I also got a letter from a very close friend related to the Mexican problem in Los Angeles and California in general. They are having a bitch of a time. When reading the following article, remember the word “CASH” or payments by cash.
A copy of the L. A. Times Newspaper article follows –
QUOTE
From the L. A. Times
1. 40% of all workers in L. A. County (L. A. County has 10.2 million people) are working for cash and not paying taxes. This is because they are predominantly illegal immigrants working without a green card.
2. 95% of warrants for murder in Los Angeles are for illegal aliens.
3. 75% of people on the most wanted list in Los Angeles are illegal aliens.
4. Over 2/3 of all births in Los Angeles County are to illegal alien Mexicans on Medi-Cal, whose births were paid for by taxpayers.
5. Nearly 35% of all inmates in California detention centers are Mexican nationals here illegally.
6. Over 300,000 illegal aliens in Los Angeles County are living in garages.
7. The FBI reports half of all gang members in Los Angeles are most likely illegal aliens from south of the border.
8 Nearly 60% of all occupants of HUD properties are illegal.
9. 21 radio stations in L. A. are Spanish speaking.
10. In L.A. County 5.1 million people speak English, 3.9 million speak Spanish. (There are 10.2 million people in L. A. County.)
(All 10 of the above facts were published in the Los Angeles Times)
Less than 2% of illegal aliens are picking our crops, but 29% are on welfare. Over 70% of the United States’ annual population growth (and over 90% of California, Florida, and New York) results from immigration. 29% of inmates in federal prisons are illegal aliens.
UNQUOTE
I am a great believer in money, both for good and evil. It does no good now to do much bitching after all the mess the area of my birth is in, in fact I have no idea how California will get out of the awful fix they are in from the above.
GUILT??? Again follow the money. Who is paying out or who started paying out all that cash to illegal persons? THAT IS WHAT STARTED THE PROBLEM — All of the good citizens in California did that, or a great number of them did and are still paying cash for cheap labor – paying cash under the table and still paying it out to get cheap labor.
So—whose fault is it – you got it! — The problem was the greed of not wanting to pay wages, union wages or minimum wages – lawful wages. Follow the money and you have the folks responsible — that have caused and is keeping this problem alive. Except now you have Mexican illegal folks that have kids, kids born here. Now there is one hell of a problem.
So many of those screaming about the crime – the exploiting of the services by the Mexican population; unfortunately are the ones that created the mess in the first place. Just saving a few bucks on labor – that is coming back to haunt the Californians unfortunately a true fact of life.
I am just identifying the problem here I haven’t a clue how they are going to get out of it!
Sorry, just wanted to get those two things off my mind.
EVERYBODY’S DANISH – We are back in the fall of 1948 – when my cousin Richard (Dick) Petersen died. Just reading this over again I had tears in my eyes. I guess I am becoming a silly old fart, a bit too emotional at 80 years of age. Richard was a super guy, most of my buddies knew him well, we were all friends, we all had football as a prime interest and there Dick was one hell of a super player. The good die young – so many of my friends did – I wish I could tell all of those that are gone how much we miss them and how much they are still remembered.
During that same period, fall of 1948 I was still in Basic Training in the U. S. Army at Fort Lewis the state of Washington——————
A SAD GOODBYE TO MY COUSIN RICHARD
One day as we stood in formation late in the afternoon in front of our company building waiting to be dismissed. The company clerk came running out the front door and went over to Sgt. Jungbooth and gestured inside. The Sergeant looked over at the First Platoon, and said, “Eckard take the Guide On, Nielsen you have an emergence phone call inside, move.”
Now this scared the hell out of me, nobody in the company had been called like this, out of formation, and he said it was some kind of emergency. All kinds of weird thoughts go through your head.
When I got in the company office our old Master Sergeant gestured for me to come into his office. He got up from his desk and handed me the phone, he said, “It’s your mother, I’ll be in the hall,” as he quietly walked out and shut the door to the office.
Now I was scared, I was sure that something had happened to Dad, had to be, I know Mom would never, ever have called me unless something terrible had happened.
“Hi Mom, what’s the matter?” I said. “Honey, I’m sorry to call you, but Richard died this afternoon,” Mom was half crying when she told me. I felt like someone had kicked me in the gut, how in the hell could anything have happened to Richard. I could not think of anyone as full of life as Dick, he was indestructible, a best buddy, that red headed son of a bitch just couldn’t be dead. Dick was so full of life, she had to be wrong.
She said, “Dad will tell you.” Dad came on the phone and said, “Fred, Richard drove Neil’s motorcycle around the block and a dog ran in front of him, he swerved and hit a tree, he died instantly.’ Neil’s was my uncle, Richard’s father.
“If you can come home, the family would like you to be here for the funeral. Mom will call you in a day or so and let you know when the funeral will be. I’m sorry we had to tell you this, Neil’s and Evelyn is awful broken up. Just wanted you to know,” Dad said. I think I said something like, “Thanks Dad, it would be better if I called you, I’ll call tomorrow night.”
I remember just sitting there; I just could not believe that big freckled, red head wouldn’t be waiting for me when I got back to L. A.
Eventually our old Master stuck his head into his office and said, “You O. K. kid?” “Yea Sgt, sorry I just got a shock.” “I know I talked to you Mom before you came in.”
That was on a Monday, the next evening I called after the evening meal. I got Mom, and could hear in the background that the family was all there. I don’t know of another family in those days that was as close. Mom’s other brothers and their wives we all there to rally around. Mom said, “The funeral will be Thursday morning, do you have enough money to fly down?” “Mom, don’t worry about the money. I have find out if I can get a pass, we are in basic training, let me call you back in a half hour, I have to talk to my Company Commander first.”
I walked from the pay phone to our Top Kicks office and told him about it. He said, “You know we are only supposed to give emergency passes for immediate family members like a brother, Mom or Dad, cousins don’t qualify. I did talk to Captain Skelton after talking to you mother, it sounds like you are a close family. Go on into the Captain’s office and talk to him.”
I knocked on the Captains door, he said to enter. “Captain, I need an emergency leave.” He said, “I know Fred, the First told me about it. We just aren’t supposed to give passes unless it’s the immediate family.” I said, “Captain, I don’t need a leave, just give me forty eight hours, I can fly down and be back in that time. Maybe, I can do it in twenty four hours.”
“Forty eight hours, you will get home, go to the funeral, and have to start back almost immediately,” he said. “Yes sir, I just want to be with the family until it’s over.” The Captain looked at me and said, “Damn, if it means that much to you, we will squeeze out a seventy two hour pass. Make your arrangements, and tell the First when you want to start. Give my regrets to your family.” He got up and instead of answering my salute, he stuck out his hand. I will never forget that hand shake from an officer that I will always consider one of the finest guys on the face of this earth.
A telegram came for $200; I guess the family wasn’t taking any chances. I had enough already. I had about a $100 and Eckard and Dan had both leant me $50 each.
When I got to Tacoma and got on the plane is was packed. It was one of those four motor planes. This was the first airplane I had ever flown on. We had just taken off, my seat was right over the wing, and I was looking at the two motors on my side, when flames started to come out of the outside one. A few seconds later the intercom comes on and the captain says in a very calm voice, “We are experiencing a motor problem and will have to return to the airport.”
I guess I was to dumb about flying to be to scared, there was a long three hour wait until another plane could make the flight south. The plane was almost empty. A young businessman I had been sitting with on the first flight and I had been hanging out together waiting for the next flight. He looked over at me and with a grin on his face said, “I guess a lot of people decided that they didn’t have to fly to Los Angeles after all.”
I was thinking I don’t blame them. I guess I never did care about flying much after that.
The next days are a blur; memories are like that, the truly awful things in life I think we all tend to want to block out. When I think of Dick, I think of his hair, his red hair. He had a square face with a bunch of freckles all over his nose and cheeks. When he was laughing his eyes almost closed so much expression. His hair was so thick, just like wire, after he took a shower he would try to comb it down, and maybe be partly successful. As soon as it would start to dry it would pop up just like wire. Why, I always think of this is probably kind of silly I know. It is just that his hair was so strong, so alive, like Richard, so strong, so alive.
The entire Washington High School football team was there to send Richard off. That year they were all everything, All- City, All Milk Bowl – no team was near or could touch them – likely that team could have given many college teams a tough time. Dick was first string right guard and linebacker. Hugh MacElleny the future great University of Washington and All Pro fullback was there; in fact the church was full of Washington High School kids saying their last goodbye to a super guy and teammate. I remember Dick and the whole team used to call Hugh MacElleny – “Hu-mac” for short, they all loved the guy, hell he scored so many times each game – made em all look good.
All of my best buddies of my high school days knew Richard – Hugo, Bighead, Brewer, Bravo, Jack – he was loved by all.
When I think of Richard, the cousin I loved so much, that he should swerve to miss hitting a dog with his Dad’s motorcycle, a split second decision that cost him his life, was so like Dick, in a game of football, or a game of chess that he never lost at, he would destroy you if he could, but to willfully hurt a person or an animal – no way!
Sally and I named our first son Richard, a mutual agreement, applauded by the entire family to honor a much loved member, a different person, a different life. Life goes on.
THAT MUDDY WET RIFLE RANGE
If you are in the Infantry you are expected to qualify with a rifle. The saying in the infantry that every man is a rifleman is certainly true. Cooks, clerks, all support personal had to quality.
We went through prolonged classes on our rifle and other weapons. We test fired pistols, the carbine rifle, the BAR machine gun, bazooka, rifle grenade launchers, practiced throwing grenades, and in general did everything the dough boy is supposed to do.
We could take apart our M-1 rifle in the dark; this is fact, because we practiced it. One thing I remember about that rifle is that before handing it to an officer during inspection, you opened the rifle up, slide the bolt back, so the inspecting officer could check that it was clean. After the inspecting officer was finished with the rifle he would hand it back. You had to immediately release the bolt and place the rifle at you side while you were standing at attention.
Anyone that has been in the army knows what a ‘M-1 thumb’ is, that is when you did not get your thumb out of the rifle fast enough and the bolt, under a high spring pressure, takes a whack at it, usually with a bit of your flesh taken off. Once you had an ‘M-1 thumb’ you were even in more trouble. The thumb would be swollen, wrapped in a bandage and a mound of tape. That compounded the problem, for the next inspection you had to stick this hurting, swollen mound of thumb, bandage and tape into the rifle to release the bolt, and move that wrapped thumb out quick. The bolt on an M-1 rifle is nothing to play with.
After all the classes we were finally ready for our trip to the division rifle range. The problem was the weather. The state of Washington is beautiful, green, pine and alder trees, everything is green. Of course, the reason it is green is because it always rains. Mostly just mist, but sometimes for weeks on end it pours, we are talking buckets here.
It would normally take about three days for a rifle company to qualify all the trainees. We spent well over a week out there. The Captain said it is good combat experience for the troops. Now the Captain was a good guy, but every night he and the Field First and all the Lieutenants would hop on the Mess trucks and disappear until the next morning.
We had set up our Pup Tents, and everyone had dug a shallow drainage ditch around the tent. We pounded in the tent pegs in that soft mushy ground. Fortunately my partner was Don Hastings, a short stocky guy, a good buddy. A six foot plus guy like me in one of those tiny tents is an almost impossible situation to explain, especially in the rain. If you even lightly touch the side or the tent is starts to leak, the material was canvass; it would take a while until the water would stop dripping in side. One night somehow I must have rolled around and the end of the sleeping bag got soaking wet. After that I had to sleep curled up.
Dressing had to be done lying down. Try pulling on your pants, putting on boots lying down. The only way to dry out socks or anything, the Sergeant said, was to sleep with the socks inside your sleeping bag, or inside your shirt next to your skin. This worked in a damp sort of way.
Several days on the rifle range, it rained so hard that it was impossible to even see the targets about a hundred yards down range. Laying in a Pup Tent, hardly able to move is not my idea of fun for hours and days on end.
The Mess would bring hot food three times a day. You soon learn how to eat in the pouring down rain. You have one mess kit. You walk down the line of food being served by the cooks under canvass tarps. The food was dumped into your mess kit; you would grab any biscuit, cookie, hunk of pie, and eat it first, before it could be soaked. The rest you could eat slowly.
I remember once eating scrambled eggs and sausage in the pouring rain. I would gently tip the mess kit so that the rain water would drain from the eggs, not quite like having a nice breakfast at home. You got a cup of coffee later after you had gulped the food down so you would at least have something hot in your stomach.
The rifle range was a mess. They had some mercy, and gave us some old shelter halves to put on the muddy ground. There are so many different positions you have to learn to shoot from, namely, standing, sitting, and laying. Each position has a certain adjustment. The rifle strap is not just to hold the rifle on your shoulder while marching, or standing, it is a very important part of holding the rifle in a study position while you fire at the target, to keep it from moving. Moving your rifle even a hair from a shooting position can make your shot ten feet off at the target a hundred yards away.
Let me describe the rifle range. There was a shed that the officers stood under (lucky bastards) and a long row of positions, one for each man firing. Down range beyond a long field of about 100 yards was a long bunker. A long raised mountain of dirt. Behind that was the pit for raising the targets, one target for each position firing.
The pits were all cement lined for safely. All of us, when taking our turn worked in the pits, raising and lowering targets. You would raise the target, a normal target with a series of circles, with a black bull’s eye in the middle. After the firing was done, you would pull down the target into the pit and look it over, then run it up, and with a long stick that had a large black marker point to the spots that were hit. This way the marksman knew where his shots were hitting. If he was hitting a group to high, to low or too much to one side or the other, he could make some ‘click’ adjustments to his sight on the rifle.
Sometimes the target was clean, not a mark on it. Then you had a red flag that you would push up to the lip of the pit and wave back and forth. This was known as ‘Magi’s drawers.’ A lot of laughs if you got the ‘Magi’s drawers’ too many times, missing the target was a not something you wanted to do often.
I had a few problems on that rifle range, firing in the rain. I just could not see the damn target, it was a blur. Another problem was that I was right handed, but it was natural for me to shoot left handed, which was somewhat weird. The M-1 is not really made for a left handed guy shooting. The ejection of the hot shell was to the right, so if you fired with rifle on your right shoulder, there was no problem, as the shells would eject up in the air and then drop to the ground. Firing from the left shoulder, you darn well had to keep your head down, because the shell would hit your medal helmet. Ping, ping, they would bounce off my helmet.
Our Field First, Sergeant Jungbooth came over and watched me fire, he adjusted my rifle strap so I would hold the rifle tighter, still could not hit the darn target. I told him about the target being a blur. He said, “Fred, you probably need glasses.” I sure did not want to hear that. When the days firing were over he had a target propped up about 50 yard down the range. “Can you see the bull’s eye,” he asked. “Yes sir,” I replied. After a few shots to adjust the sights, I could not miss the bull’s eye. “No more for you, Fred, I’ll send you out with Dog Company when they qualify, you need glasses first.”
I went out a couple of weeks later with Dog Company, with my new army glasses and fired expert from every position, couldn’t miss the bull’s eye if I tried.
Back to the mud, the company was finally just about finished qualifying, and another problem I was having got worst. Between my thighs were some huge funny looking pimples, they were getting ugly and red, about six of them. They hurt like hell, my thighs were always heavy, and with the marching, would sometimes rub together and get sore. I had taken an old white T-shirt and torn it up and wrapped that around each leg to protect them from the rubbing.
I started to walk like a duck – Don Hastings saw them one night in the tent and said that I should go to the Medics. I was damned if I was going to the Medics at least while we were in the field. I figured that the Captain did not like guys going to the Medics, remembering our record on the twenty mile marches. Finally it was taken out of my hands.
Sergeant Jungbooth asked why I was walking so funny, so I told him why. He gave me a funny look, asked if I had been visiting the ‘ladies’ on my weekend passes. I guess he figured I had some kind of sex thing. “Come over here,” he said, and walked to an overhang by the Mess trucks to get out of the rain. One look and he said, “You go in with the Mess trucks tonight. The Medics are probably not there so tell the company First to take you the hospital, those are boils, and bad ones.”
I won’t tell you the gory part, enough to say that they lanced them. Funny, they say some guys get boils all the time, those were the first and last I ever had. Too tell you the truth I really don’t want any more, painful, especially in a spot like that. At least I did not have to make the ten mile hike back to the company quarters the next day.
MORE NEXT WEEK –
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