Back in Beaufort
An update on the russian chick first.... I think she got the hint and stopped writing me. If she was for real I'd feel bad but odds are she wasn't. My third and final, at least for this year, tennis lessons started this week. There are some people that haven't ever taken the class but they haven't really split the class up into new and old. So it's been a little annoying doing the stuff the first timers have to do / listen to. But at least there is younger women to look at this time :) I also have the family reunion this weekend. So I have to drive up to my home town which is 4.5 hours one way. And a dumb ass uncle forgot to schedule the park on Saturday so we have to do it on Sunday so I have to drive back on Monday and work that same day.
Beaufort:
I was not very impressed with the new Marines we got. It was a combination of people from defunct squadrons and new Marines. Some of them even spent time in the gulf during the war and got a nice 14K gold medal given to every soldier / Marine in country at the time. All they did was sit in Bahrain (Sp?) and fix jets there. Oh well.... anyway there were more than our fair share of annoying Marines with them. To top it off because we were starting to get a little low on people someone decided to combine the two Avionics shops. So I got to know more people this way. We also got our first WM's (Women Marines) in this time frame. I got along with the black girl in Electric Shop but the other two I didn't really get to know.
We went back into the routine of deploying alot but this time to less exotic places like Bogue Field. We were in "Field Duty" for several of these deployments. This meant they could pay us less and we lived in sub standard housing. For bogue field they had these Huts with screens on the top half of the walls. They had a field runway with an arrestor hook. This allowed the pilots to practice landing on a short runway. The only positive about this deployment was that my brother and sister were both in the area, North Carolina. So I called my sister and had her pick me up on the weekend. They had this dive of a bar across the street from the field with 25 cent draft beer which was also helpful. They also had a mini exchange to buy little things.
We also got a dick of a OIC in this timeframe. He had a policy of everyone of his Marines must do a first class PFT. Now I never had nor ever did get a first class PFT. I usually got a high 2nd Class one. So he once made me run another PFT with the overweight guys about a week after the official one. Here it is at 1pm in about 95 degrees heat in South Carolina and he wants me to run in that crap. Well I put maximum effort into the pull ups and sit ups but a little over half way through the 3 mile run I was running real slow (due to lack of motivation) the ambulance guy asked me if I was alright (I lied and said no). So I caught the ambulance the rest of the way. I then talked my way out of "Failing" the PFT because I just took the thing and only did this to please my OIC. Needless to say I disliked this prick... he also made his day crew at bogue field to a bunch of exercises he recommended. Luckily I got night crew and Sgt Bohorques didn't want to do them anymore than I did.
Sgt Bohorques (Sp?) was a easy to like guy. He came to us from the Blue Angels and was very knowledgable. He also like computer games the same as I. So we got along. I observed that if he didn't like a person that he wasn't afraid to show that either... as my friend Fay noticed. I'm pretty sure he joined us just before the first west pac. He was a dark haired guy, skinny with a mostache. He had scar tissue up both thighs from some child hood accident. He loved to joke around and play pranks on people. Definitaly not your typical Sgt.
I also managed to volunteer to go to Top Gun twice. I think once before West Pac and once after. I usually got what ever I volunteered for. I can guess that this was because I was knowledgable and also a CDI. It was one of the better deployments. We only had two aircraft to look after so we just did nothing all day. When we got bored we would help other shops get their work done. The second Top Gun we had an incident though. Two guys in Avionics were helping Ordanance drop a center line fuel tank. Since support equipment wasn't available we typically used a method were four guys would interlock arms under the fuel tank and another guy would turn the bolt to release the tank. The tank was drained first because it carried 2800 lbs of fuel in it. Empty it only weighed about 200. Well on this particular tank the guy turned the bolt and the tank came crashing down on top of the two avionics guys arms, breaking them. It turns out the fuel valve had failed and the tank was already half full by the time they got around to dropping it. I was close enough to observe it and saw it roll on one guys arms. The other guy just got hurt but no broken bones. The back end was high up enough not to impact those guys.
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I forgot to mention two guys that stand out. Their names were MacLemore and LeBlanc. These two guys were the definition of shit bird Marines. They came to us with an attitude, like they were still living in civilian life. They did everything reluctantly and were lippy to just about everyone. LeBlanc was a carbon copy, in attitude, as Vanilla Ice. He was a wigger through and through and was teased by the rednecks in the shop. They were both cool when you didn't have to work with them but the problem is thats all they cared about. Needless to say both were kicked out of the Marines shortly after West Pac.
Well that's enough for tonight...
Beaufort:
I was not very impressed with the new Marines we got. It was a combination of people from defunct squadrons and new Marines. Some of them even spent time in the gulf during the war and got a nice 14K gold medal given to every soldier / Marine in country at the time. All they did was sit in Bahrain (Sp?) and fix jets there. Oh well.... anyway there were more than our fair share of annoying Marines with them. To top it off because we were starting to get a little low on people someone decided to combine the two Avionics shops. So I got to know more people this way. We also got our first WM's (Women Marines) in this time frame. I got along with the black girl in Electric Shop but the other two I didn't really get to know.
We went back into the routine of deploying alot but this time to less exotic places like Bogue Field. We were in "Field Duty" for several of these deployments. This meant they could pay us less and we lived in sub standard housing. For bogue field they had these Huts with screens on the top half of the walls. They had a field runway with an arrestor hook. This allowed the pilots to practice landing on a short runway. The only positive about this deployment was that my brother and sister were both in the area, North Carolina. So I called my sister and had her pick me up on the weekend. They had this dive of a bar across the street from the field with 25 cent draft beer which was also helpful. They also had a mini exchange to buy little things.
We also got a dick of a OIC in this timeframe. He had a policy of everyone of his Marines must do a first class PFT. Now I never had nor ever did get a first class PFT. I usually got a high 2nd Class one. So he once made me run another PFT with the overweight guys about a week after the official one. Here it is at 1pm in about 95 degrees heat in South Carolina and he wants me to run in that crap. Well I put maximum effort into the pull ups and sit ups but a little over half way through the 3 mile run I was running real slow (due to lack of motivation) the ambulance guy asked me if I was alright (I lied and said no). So I caught the ambulance the rest of the way. I then talked my way out of "Failing" the PFT because I just took the thing and only did this to please my OIC. Needless to say I disliked this prick... he also made his day crew at bogue field to a bunch of exercises he recommended. Luckily I got night crew and Sgt Bohorques didn't want to do them anymore than I did.
Sgt Bohorques (Sp?) was a easy to like guy. He came to us from the Blue Angels and was very knowledgable. He also like computer games the same as I. So we got along. I observed that if he didn't like a person that he wasn't afraid to show that either... as my friend Fay noticed. I'm pretty sure he joined us just before the first west pac. He was a dark haired guy, skinny with a mostache. He had scar tissue up both thighs from some child hood accident. He loved to joke around and play pranks on people. Definitaly not your typical Sgt.
I also managed to volunteer to go to Top Gun twice. I think once before West Pac and once after. I usually got what ever I volunteered for. I can guess that this was because I was knowledgable and also a CDI. It was one of the better deployments. We only had two aircraft to look after so we just did nothing all day. When we got bored we would help other shops get their work done. The second Top Gun we had an incident though. Two guys in Avionics were helping Ordanance drop a center line fuel tank. Since support equipment wasn't available we typically used a method were four guys would interlock arms under the fuel tank and another guy would turn the bolt to release the tank. The tank was drained first because it carried 2800 lbs of fuel in it. Empty it only weighed about 200. Well on this particular tank the guy turned the bolt and the tank came crashing down on top of the two avionics guys arms, breaking them. It turns out the fuel valve had failed and the tank was already half full by the time they got around to dropping it. I was close enough to observe it and saw it roll on one guys arms. The other guy just got hurt but no broken bones. The back end was high up enough not to impact those guys.
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I forgot to mention two guys that stand out. Their names were MacLemore and LeBlanc. These two guys were the definition of shit bird Marines. They came to us with an attitude, like they were still living in civilian life. They did everything reluctantly and were lippy to just about everyone. LeBlanc was a carbon copy, in attitude, as Vanilla Ice. He was a wigger through and through and was teased by the rednecks in the shop. They were both cool when you didn't have to work with them but the problem is thats all they cared about. Needless to say both were kicked out of the Marines shortly after West Pac.
Well that's enough for tonight...
posted by Jason at 9:17 PM
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