Things drill sergeants said in basic training

I will be on you like ugly on a ape. (Yes, a ape.)

I will be on you like white on rice. (These days, using “white” in a disparaging remark would be OK; “rice” might have ethnic identity.)

I will be on you like stink on s**t.

You turdheads look like a monkey f’ng a football. (Visualization of the attempt brings no indication of why the act is remarkable in its ineptness.)

You turdheads are as f’ed up as a Chinese fire drill. (I have never seen a Chinese fire drill, and neither had any of the soldiers so addressed and am unable to understand the f’edupness.)

That was as f’d up as Hogan’s goat. (Again, I plead lack of education and know neither Hogan nor his goat.)

Regarding the monkey attempting sex with a football:

A soldier named Connelly was in the Aero Rifle Platoon at Fort Meade and in Vietnam. One night on ambush in a rubber plantation, Connelly was minding his own business, waiting for gooks to come down a trail and die, when a monkey jumped from a rubber tree and onto Connelly’s back. The monkey stated humping Connelly’s back pack**. When Connelly reacted in a negative manner, the monkey ran away and up another tree. That is the only instance I know of a monkey attempting sex with a back pack.

(**The back pack was the kind worn attached to a pistol belt and suspenders and generally known as a “butt pack,” since that was the part of the anatomy the pack bounced against when a soldier was running. So, more accurately, the monkey humped Connelly’s butt pack. However, I did not want to use the words “humping” and “butt” in so close proximity.)

Free fire zone 3

The last time I machine gunned the abandoned village was in the summer of 1967. I was door gunner on a UH-1D that day. The Huey went to Long Binh for some kind of delivery. On the way back to Blackhorse, the aircraft commander decided to give the crew chief and me a little gunner practice. He made three runs over the village at a higher than usual altitude. I emptied the ammunition can, firing every round from the M-60D machine gun. The crew chief had stoppages on all three passes.

By that date, the village was a mass of broken concrete blocks and red roof tiles. Not a single building or wall remained standing. Six months as a free fire zone target will do that.

Free fire zone 2

A couple of months after shooting up several roofs in the abandoned village, another gunship team went in to check gun and rocket sights alignment. The two ships made one pass each, and as the first ship went in for another run, some kind of smoke round streamed down about a hundred meters to the right.

“What is that?” the pilot of the trail gunship asked the team leader, who replied: “I don’t know, and we are not sticking around to find out.”

The two gunships quickly left the area and continued the assigned patrol.

Smart man, the team leader.

Free fire zone

An abandoned village sat in a large clearing northeast of Blackhorse base camp. The village consisted of half a dozen concrete block buildings with red tile roofs and a small Catholic Church building, also with red tile roof. The village was in a free-fire zone. That meant the area was so infested with Viet Cong that everyone had been suspect and relocated to a village under government control. Free fire zone also meant anyone could fire into the area at any time, no reason or approval required.

The village became a favored place to test helicopter machine guns and rockets following aircraft overhaul as well as evaluating new gunship pilots, and for registering artillery pieces.

One day in spring 1967, the gunship team leader in whose platoon I flew that day decided to test his two ships’ door guns and side mounted flex guns, six M-60 machine guns on each helicopter.

I learned that day: it is fun as hell, rolling into a number of concrete block buildings and firing a machine gun; and, roof tiles shatter when hit by 7.62mm slugs.