I'll have 40 Happy Meals, please

Sergeant Humphrey served a couple of years in a mechanized infantry company in the 40th Infantry Division, California Army National Guard. He was a specialist fourth class when transferring to my mech infantry company in the Texas Army National Guard. As a native West Texan, he knew how things were supposed to be done. He was placed in a leadership position in my platoon and soon promoted sergeant.

One summer at Fort Hood, my platoon was attached to a tank platoon from the Kentucky Army National Guard. The attachment worked well, since the tank company commander knew what he was doing, and he expected his soldiers to do their jobs.

Late one afternoon the tankers and my platoon occupied an assembly area. Some of my sergeants gathered at my armored personnel carrier (APC) while we waited for the chow truck to arrive. The day was hot and dusty, as are all summer days at Fort Hood.

Sergeant Humphrey said his California platoon one annual training was attached to a tank company. After a long day of cross-country movement, formation training and training on react to contact, the company went into assembly area operations, just as my platoon was doing.

“When the chow truck got there,” Sergeant Humphrey said, “the tank company executive officer told our platoon leader that the tankers would eat first, and then our platoon.” That is not an altogether unknown arrangement. Somebody has to eat last.

“When all the tankers had gone through the line,” Sergeant Humphrey said, “the tanker XO came back to our platoon and said all the food was gone, that they had brought only enough for their soldiers, so we would have to find our own food.”

At that point, I said, “If that ever happens to us, I’ll tell everybody to load up on the APCs, and we’ll drive to the nearest McDonalds.”

Sergeant Humphrey said, “The nearest McDonalds was more than 20 miles away.”

“I don’t care how far it is,” I said. “We’ll load up and drive out of here, on the highway, up to the drive-through window, and I’ll order forty Happy Meals and tell ‘em to charge it to the National Guard.”

Sergeant Humphrey said his platoon leader managed to contact the infantry company executive officer, who contacted battalion headquarters. Cooks managed to scrounge up enough food to put on a mess truck and sent to the infantry platoon.

Somebody should have taken the tank company XO behind a tank and beat some sense into him. And the company commander, and especially the tank company first sergeant.

You just don’t allow that to happen. One of the main rules in the Army is, don’t mess with soldiers’ pay or their food. Ever.

And, yes, I would have done just what I said. Nobody would have done anything except lock my heels and chewed me out to a fare the well. Anything else, and they would have been looking at headlines about “National Guard platoon drives to McDonalds when unit runs out of food.”

I didn’t have to do that, but you always want to be prepared when something stupid or dangerous happens.

Grenade

On a Friday afternoon before weapons qualification at Camp Maxey, the battalion S4 NCO walked up and handed to me a pineapple grenade.

“This is what we used in Korea,” he said.

The grenade appeared to be live. It was OD, with a yellow stripe. Training grenades are blue and hollow and have a hole drilled into the bottom to allow gasses from the fuse to escape when the fuse detonates. That pineapple grenade did not have a hole in the bottom. And, it definitely was as heavy as a live grenade.

The S4 sergeant had the reputation of being a bit squirrelly. He didn’t always follow rules of safe operation. All soldiers do dangerous things now and then, beyond the normal dangers of soldiering. But that sergeant carried things a bit farther. There were rumors and tales that he had a goodly amount of ammunition and explosives at his farm. You will hear that sort of thing about every company supply sergeant and S4 sergeant. But that sergeant … He would not have been my first choice as the man in charge of ammunition.

I looked at the grenade. I studied the grenade. I looked around. The field in which we stood was 75 meters by 40 meters. I thought, “I probably can pull the pin and throw this thing far enough to be out of the frag radius.” My thought was to make sure the sergeant never brought another live grenade to training.

But … “I probably can …” Except when real bullets are flying around, “probably” does not figure in when you are dealing with fragmentation grenades. And then there was the certainty of an investigation and, oh, maybe two courts-martial – his for having the grenade, and mine for causing the thing to detonate in an area not designed or designated for explosives.

I returned the grenade and went somewhere else.

The sergeant was relieved a year or so later. His relief had nothing to do with the grenade incident. People in charge decided he had been S4 NCO too long. And, a younger, more astute, soldier wanted the job.

The old sergeant shot himself not long after he lost his job. He used an M1911A1, of course.

No one ever said if lawmen found an arsenal at his farm.