Army Flashback

• My old Kaserne in Bad Hersfeld Germany. Nothing will make you feel quite as old as when such important parts of not only your life, but world history are either gone, re purposed or commemorated by a museum.
• My first thought when I saw pics of the old K Troop building? I recalled standing in formation in front of it at 0600 in the morning getting our hurray for us speech and safety briefing before leaving for a big multi national maneuver in the northern part of Germany and seeing R. Tatum come staggering by in his civvies. He had the day off the day before, got insanely drunk and passed out in a ditch near the park. He stopped and stared at us as he passed the formation with the most genuinely puzzled look. He thought it was 6 o'clock the night before and he was coming back to post with plenty of time to get some good shut eye before we left the next morning. Loading weapons and rail heading your Bradley Fighting Vehicles is tiresome while sober and not hungover. That must have been one miserable day for him.
• During a stint as a COs driver I drove the entire trace of our sector to rework our battle maps. Some of my best friends were in Border Ops. Add these to the fact I had a decent camera and loved taking pictures and you can guess I had some pretty awesome pics- night life, concerts, historic architecture, battlefields and lots of East German scenes. There must have been hundreds of loose photos and two albums of the better stuff.
• A woman I was involved with went through them and finding two pics of women she knew to be old girlfriends threw it all away.
• Makes sad Kevin sad.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Turkish thugs who were called Gypsies were prone to carry screwdrivers and assault people during those days. One of my friends was walking to a club with a friend when the friend made a couple of long strides toward a Gypsy nearby and smashed him in the face. As they looked down on the guy whose faced was obviously rearranged and covered in blood Marcus said,  What did you do that for?! The other guy pointed down to the screwdriver still in the Turk's hand.
• Oddly/interestingly Marcus would later be stabbed 3 times by another Turk in a scuffle shortly before he returned from Germany.
• When I'm in a good story telling mode I might say, I was in this whorehouse in Germany once...
• Good times.