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Gary Phaserman

Veterans-Most memorable experience?

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With Veteran's day approaching here in the US (Tomorrow) I wanted to pose a question to all Veterans. What was the most memorable experience of your service? What was the most fun? what was the least fun?

 

 

As for me...Well, being a reservist, Not a whole lot is memorable, so my Iraq tour would be the most memorable experience. the funnest part was driving a Rigid Hull-Inflatable Boat in the port of Umm Qasr. the least fun was probably being away from my family. Being away from home was the hardest part of the whole thing for me. The other fun thing was trying to identify flags being flown on ships coming into port. We'd have a pool on what country we thought the ship was from, and when they docked, we'd ask a crewmember where the ship was from. I was in the pools for the first few months, then I realised that I am not good with National flags, so I stopped throwing money in.

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I served during 'peacetime' so I too have no valiant combat stories to share but I do have a standout memory of serving.

 

The good part is sandwiched between one not so good and one truly horrible event. First bad part was: We were sailing into San Fran Bay when a tow line broke at the tow, the line sank and entangled on a forty ton anchor; took hours to free it up. That was inconvenient but it was an accident and not my fault.

 

Then the good part; we finally docked and shore leave was called, (from our dock the ENTERPRISE could be seen about a mile away :blink: ) it was a payday Friday and my next duty day was three days away! I hit the ground running. Saw all the sights I could and went broke. :unsure: What a time it was!

 

Well all good things... We were leaving port on Monday night, the sea and anchor detail was set and I was in the crows nest on lookout. I should have been looking forward but I was mesmerized by the city lights shrinking in the distance aft and daydreaming with my memories. All of a sudden a loud bang comes from forward; I spun around and watched in horror as a bay buoy scraped nosily along the port side.

 

The ship was not seriously damaged, nothing a few 5 gallon buckets of red lead would not fix and me being a deck-ape I was the one to eventually fix it. The real damage was the buttock chewing the CO gave me and razzing from shipmates I endured from that day on. Talk about learning my lesson to pay attention!

 

My Ship:

96abnaki.jpg

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One of my favorite memories was when we went to the firing range with my tank. we would blow stuff up while Led Zepplin played on the 8-track tape player we had installed in the turrent (It was the mid 70's after all! :unsure: )

 

My least favorite was when German terrorist attacked and blew up part of a motor pool at a nearby base. we went on high alert and my tank was the one postioned at the front gate. we were loaded, cocked, and ready to rock if any car passed a checkpoint without stopping or slowing down. I remember every time a car turned in towards our base we would all tense up wondering if we would be killing them in the next couple of seconds. We stayed that way for over a week when finally the alert was dropped and everything went back to normal.

 

Another funny thing we did was hang a sign on the back of the tank that said "Drive defensevly, buy a tank!

 

 

:tank:

8th Infrantry Division! "Go Pathfinders!"

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1) I PCS'd to Korea about a month before Iraq invaded Kuwait so I missed out on that action (which in retrospect was a good thing but I didn't think so at the time). However, when the infantry brigade my combat engineer company was supporting went through their annual DMZ patrol rotation they asked if any of us were interested in temporary assignment with them. I volunteered without hesitation. (They used to give combat patches for DMZ duty but, sadly, no more.)

 

We were on a night patrol and had a "Spot South". A "Spot South" is a North Korean infiltrator, usually a special forces candidate, undergoing a test to cross the border without being seen. We saw him, so he didn't pass his test, but the dangerous thing about the situation is you could count on a full company (about 150 men) of North Korean soldiers being somewhere nearby in support. We were an 8-man patrol. You do the odds of our chances if a firefight had broken out.

 

Anyway, I must have impressed the infantry unit because they offered to keep me in their squad while they went through training / testing to earn the Expert Infantryman's Badge, which is something non-infantrymen rarely get a chance to do. Sadly my home unit said no to that. (I think my NCOs just didn't want an E-4 who was better at soldiering than they were and had a badge on the uniform to prove it.) This was shortly after Desert Storm, which was the only major deployment since Vietnam other than pop-gun actions in Panama and elsewhere, so the combat-hardened soldiers hadn't been transfered to other units yet.)

 

2) A few months earlier, however, my unit was preparing for our annual inventory and discovered we had leftover explosives. We didn't want to report unused explosives because that would reduce our allotment for next year. So one day our Lieutenant took the platoon to the demo range and we just blew stuff up. Trees, rocks, tires, whatever we could find that looked like it wanted to be blown up. We didn't even pretend it was training, we just went to blow stuff up.

 

One rock in particular was asking to be blown up, so we set our explosives and moved to what we *thought* was a safe distance away. When we blew our demo I noticed a piece of the rock was shot pretty high up. My exact words were:

 

"Gee, that one fragment is climbing pretty high."

 

"It looks like it's headed right for us."

 

"HOLY (I'm trying to say a bad word but can't)!!"

 

That rock fragment missed my head by about a foot and a half. Even with my Kevilar on it would have killed me. I still have it somewhere. Something like that you just have to keep.

Edited by Lt. Van Roy

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Most memorable (and funnest, probably) was when I was on the Sub. We went under the Cap. Kinda spookie down there if you listen to the hydrophones. it sounds like a haunted house.

 

 

scariest time was the incident in which I got my Purple Heart. I've already told that story, though.

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No stories

ON This Day And Always.

As Americans We THANK YOU

 

Read mine Tilted Vetrans

Edited by tokar

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Too many to list them all but one that sticks out is from September 5th 1990, the day this picture was taken.

 

convoy.jpg

 

We were on convoy to Houston from Fort Hood to have all of our vehicles and equipment loaded on ships to go to the Gulf in preparation for the Gulf War.

 

I was following the lead vehicle as the Battalion Adjutant's driver (S-1) and Houston, as I recall was about 4 hours southeast of Fort Hood. All along the drive the streets were lined with people, the bridges were filled with on lookers and cars would speed up to "tag along" for a while all waving American Flags and cheering us on.

 

It's an experience I will never forget. I remember that I was going on pure adrenalin that day because I had been up for about 30 hours preparing for the convoy and the deployment. And trust me, after being up 30+ hours it's no fun to have to drive in a convoy for 4 more hours. Especially when the Battalion Commander is in the vehicle in front of you lol

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