Really bad weapons...

[dragoon500ly]

Originally Posted by Panther Al

WPPA and daddy was a general, and he was being groomed for stardom. This is the joker that had a hard rule that only troopers with assigned rifles could have ammo, and a max of 210 round less any expended without prior clearance from an officer- top couldn't even give it. Got pulled from my tank because I was caught stealing ammo from hq platoons stash and put on mid to 8 radio watch in the TOC an the assigned bitch for every patrol that came along (here- you get the radio and the 240...). Thankfully about two-thirds through the tour we got a new CO who fixed the ammo problem, got us some more M4's and told us there was no such thing as too much force. He heard about what I did to get in the doghouse and promptly got into a fight with top to see which of them got me as a driver, but wound up being his gunner.

Why am I not surprised...

I guess I was just lucky, most of my officers were mustangs, ROTCs or Citadel/VMI grads. Didn't run into many WP and going by the couple that I did run into Thank GAWD!!!!!! Both were "moved" over to Armor, the first was a Engineer and the second was a Judge Advocate. Both were notable in that everyone in the unit was carrying a calander and counting the days until they rotated out of the unit.

[Panther Al]

In fairness I have to make a point to his credit and one to another grad of WP, the previous CO's attitude may have sucked but it did work out for us in fallujah very well. All the locals liked us and while they never helped us they didn't hinder us nor shoot at us. (They all thought the G on the sides of our tanks meant that we was the good guys) It was very nice to be able to do a raid and not have the local version of the cop alarm going off.

As to west pointers: 1Lt (at the time) Hertling (Imay have jacked the spelling, its been a while) was another daddy was a general type, and was aware that he came from the point. When he arrived at the troop fresh as grass he did the usual speech and dismissed all the men but the senior NCO's (and I wasn't one of them but I was close enough to hear) "Sergeants, I'm a green as grass officer who doesn't have a fucking clue how to run a tank platoon outside the classroom, please help me out."). Dude rocked. He wasn't afraid to goof and he always gave credit to who deserved it, yet never caved in when people screwed up. Next to the definition of outstanding officer in Webster's should be his picture.

[Legbreaker]

Sounds like he was a man who had some quality instructors.