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View Full Version : Double Dumb (Pt 2)


Pete
03-12-2005, 06:20
In the late 70s and early 80s companies and teams spent a good bit of time in training when we were not on post support.

I was the Senior Engineer on our team and just had a Junior Engineer fairly new out of the Q course assigned to the team. I do remember his name but he will be known as "The Unknown Engineer Sergeant"

The Engineers were to given two weeks of general training to the rest of the company. As the senior engineer in the company I was in overall charge while the other engineers gave the classes. The first week was classroom instruction on things like concrete form design, basic house framing, basic bridge construction plus basic demolitions.

The first few days of the second week we built a simple span bridge, a house (a very small hut) and some concrete forms that we filled with cement. The last two days the guys got to blow up everything they had built.

Since our team was running the range most of our guys were involved in that. The few extras were spread out between the tables of the other teams. The engineers would oversee their own table and help when needed. The firing system would rotate between the tables with each team taking turns setting off the charges.

It was the last shot of the day on Friday and we were running a little behind. The teams were making up their final charges and to speed things up I told my junior engineer "Hey 'T.U.E.S.', make up a firing system with a 5 minute fuze". Simple request, right? He went over to where we we made up the firing systems and started to work.

Everybody got their charges and we went down range and placed them. TUES gave me the firing system and I tied it in, the company gave a lusty "Fire in the Hole" three times, I fired off both M60s, saw good smoke and gave "Burning" to the time man. We had been keeping track of burn times during the two days and "bragging rights" were on the line. This counted as one of our team's shots. Timimg works better if you get the same B team guy to run the Stop Watch all day and he starts it on the first "POP".

Well, we all go uprange, get in the bunker and start the countdown. 10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1---1-2-3-4-5- Nothing. After about 20 seconds I give a hard look to TUES. He comes out with "Hey, I haven't made a firing system in a while." He then asked if I wanted him to clear the missfire. I told him, none to politely, to pack up everybody and take them back to the company area, clean up the team equipment and go home. I told him I didn't want to see him again until Monday. The Team CO and I cleared the missfire with no problems. On Monday we had a little chat.

The whole company gave him shit over that. It was just about the only non-electric missfire the company ever had while I was there. He never lived it down and he volunteered for DLI and moved on shortly after that. I hope he did better in his next job.

Pete