Grandpa’s War – Part 20 – Homecoming – Sort of. . .

We liked being with our Company.

But the 1st Armored Division Battle Central was our home away from home. We all knew what it meant. It meant hot meals, showers, and friends.

We worked closely with a lot of the people who ran the place. We’d all built friendship among them and we all worked well together.

For some, such as the Estrada’s in the photo below, it was a family reunion.

It’s odd that I don’t have a lot of pictures of the Battle Central or the people around it. I was starting to run low on film and wanted to save what I had for Iraq. I didn’t plan that part out well.

It’s really too bad. I had some good friends there.

One was a Sgt. Richard Mooney, Satellite Communications Expert. Mooney and I had traveled together some in Germany and was just a really nice guy.

Another was a young lady named Erica. She was a cook at Headquarter Company. A pretty girl, she had done some modeling work. We made some money in Germany doing photographs for sale ads. I hadn’t thought I’d see her here.

We arrived at FAA Garcia a little before supper time. As we rolled in, we smelled something we hadn’t smelled in a long time. Food cooking. Almost instantly our mouths started watering.

“Not so fast,” SFC G said. “We need get squared away first.”

That meant fueling and checking the vehicles out. If we had to move in a hurry, they were the way we’d do it. It would be nice to be able to do so.

Next came the tents.

We had the GP Large tent we’d lived in at TAA Thompson. But we weren’t about to set it up. We’d live in our regular everyday tents, one per team. We’d done this so many times we could have one set up in a few minutes.

I can’t say the same for the cots. Those things were supposed to just unfold and go up 1-2-3. Truthfully, a NASA engineer would be stumped by those things. Anyone who get one up and ready in less than five minutes had no doubt also mastered the Rubik’s cube.

Once we got everything squared away, we were ready to eat. We walked into the mess tent and standing behind the serving line was Erica.

“What are you doing here?” I asked in surprise.

“Hey,” she said. I’m a U.S. Army soldier. I’m one of the good guys!”

Good is right. She fixed us up proper like. We were each issued a mess kit as part of each of our TA-50 gear. I don’t recall our ever using them. Instead, we used paper trays. “You guys might want to double up your trays,” she warned.

She dished us each a more than generous portion of spaghetti and meat sauce. And I sprinkled on Parmesan cheese. The bread was MRE bread but then you can’t have everything. We had regular salad and three bean salad (I’ve been a fan of three bean salad since the Army). And we had cookies. Not Ranger Cookies. Not the Arab take on cookies. Not cookies from a box. Real live, honest to goodness, Chocolate Chip cookies in all their hot gooey glory!

And milk! Granted, it was in a small cardboard container, but it was real cow’s milk. And it was cold!

Like I said. She fixed us up real good.

After such a glorious meal, I got a shower. Then we all took out the chairs and sat around in front of one of the tents. Coffee was made and we caught our breath so to speak. If we’d had any wood, I’m sure we would have taken out our pocketknives and whittled.

There was still a lot of work to do. We still worked the perimeter. We checked equipment and waited to go.

But we did manage to get some baseball in.

This is one of the few times we’d take off most of our gear. To be sure, it was never far away and we could have it back on in seconds.

The umpires were dressed in full combat gear. Since arguing with a man carrying a loaded M-16 is a rather stupid thing to do, the umpires calls were final.

We also got caught up on much needed personal hygiene such as haircuts.

The downside was, once again, our mail had no idea where we were. We waited patiently for it to catch up to us.

Battle Central would be a target the enemy went after and protecting it was a big deal. Losing it would basically decapitate the division. At least for a little while that is. The brigade level commanders could take over and run their piece of the battle, but it would be an adjustment.

Problem is that some of the higher-level coordination would be gone for a bit. That would increase the chances of friendly fire incidents.

We had a lot of help to defend the place.

The perimeter around it was protected by us. We had one quarter of the perimeter. The boys and girls of the Headquarters Company took a second. A team of engineers, and the 1st Armored Division Band handled the last two quarters. The headquarters folks were the only ones we’d actually worked with. It did take some getting used to coordinating with everyone else.

When we first learned that the band had a piece in the defense of the Battle Central, it caused us a little concern. We shared the barracks with these guys and knew all of them. Most of us didn’t think in terms of the band being combat soldiers. Yet they were. And they were heavier armed than we were.

The Band had a couple of 50 caliber machine guns mounted on big trucks.

The Engineers were equipped with trucks and  M113s. They were also armed with 50s and M60 machine guns.

Something that surprised me but shouldn’t have was we had a small Anti-Aircraft contingent.

These were tracks armed with Sidewinder missiles, the very same missiles the fighter jets use.

At 1st Infantry, we had a couple of tracks with Vulcan cannons mounted on them for air defense. I don’t recall seeing any at 1st Armored.

One thing we weren’t supposed to have were SAWs (Squad Automatic Weapons). This is basically a light machine gun and fired the same round as the M-16. We had a CONEX (shipping container) mis-delivered to our company and these were in it. We never did find out who they belonged to, so each squad leader ended up carrying one.

We did have one big surprise for the defense of the Battle Central. Two M1A1s had been assigned to us to help with its protection. In a worst-case scenario, their firepower would have been a huge asset.

As it was, they mostly ended up babysitting. I wonder how our tankers felt about being left out of the last great tank battles of the 20th Century.

So we worked.

We ran patrols.

And we looked north waiting to be unleashed.

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All photographs Copyright – Richard L. Muniz