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Where's AHAB ?

Floridianson

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AWOL is not allowed. Stop eating the TV dinners and who else is there I can argue with as I am not married anymore.
 
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Welder1

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Rusty,

I am sorry to hear of your struggles. I pray that healing comes quickly and you can recover and continue your work. Please keep us posted there are many here that look for your postings. Like a fan club so we await your return.



Eddie
 

Guyfang

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Well I might have to go "AWOL" again. I saw the Doctor today and the infection is back with a vengeance ! There is only one anti-biotic that will work now. If it fails I need to go into the hospital. Don't like hospitals very much, but as I've gotten older it seems I'm making more and more appearance's there. So if you don't here from me for a while you'll know where I'm at.
I will be rooting for you. As I have been ever more going to doc and krankenhaus, I feel for you, and know how it is. I would send you some of my hootch, but the post office gets mad at me if I do. Might not help, but you sure feel good when you sip it.
 

Tracer

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Well I might have to go "AWOL" again. I saw the Doctor today and the infection is back with a vengeance ! There is only one anti-biotic that will work now. If it fails I need to go into the hospital. Don't like hospitals very much, but as I've gotten older it seems I'm making more and more appearance's there. So if you don't here from me for a while you'll know where I'm at.
strong-you-are-hang-in-there-meme.jpg Rusty, will keep you in Prayer!!
 

Jbulach

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Well I might have to go "AWOL" again. I saw the Doctor today and the infection is back with a vengeance ! There is only one anti-biotic that will work now. If it fails I need to go into the hospital. Don't like hospitals very much, but as I've gotten older it seems I'm making more and more appearance's there. So if you don't here from me for a while you'll know where I'm at.
Don’t let them pussyfoot around with this, see if they’ll put a line in you, and send you home with an IV, some of the antibiotics are available in convenient pressurized balls that you can run them in on the go, then pump the saline to you at night while you sleep.
 

M813rc

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View attachment 769013Thought you all might like to see another satisfied customer for C-Rats. This was 1973, and we were getting a beer per C-Rat can. We shamelessly cheating the kids.
The rubber ball has zinged off the wall again...

As I recall, the kids in Norway loved getting them too. We were deployed there in 1980, the Marines were assigned the NATO role of assisting the Norwegians with security (their northern border is with Russia).

One incident stands out to me as a great experience -I was a machine gunner then and we had just completed a major NATO field exercise, Operation Teamwork 80. One of ordnance rules at the time was that if the seal on a case of ammunition, even blanks, was broken, the rounds had to be counted back individually on turn-in to the armorers. We had thousands of uncased rounds of M60 blanks, and neither side of that count was looking forward to the ordeal. The word came down the chain -shoot it all up, no counting.

We were encamped in a field near the small town of Rindal, so we lined all the guns up along one side that had an embankment to fire at (range safety, even with blanks). Pretty much as soon as we started firing, kids started to show up to see what was going on. We decided to let them do the work and shoot up the blanks! They were having a ball, and more and more of them kept arriving. Pretty soon the situation changed from having to fire up all the ammo, to wondering if we had enough to let them all shoot, so we started breaking off sections of belt and giving them to the kids, who would then line up behind a gun and wait their turn.
Eventually all the blanks were fired. We then got the kids to police up all the brass and links, divied them up evenly and showed them how to link the brass back up to take home as souvenirs.

Late that afternoon after the kids were done and had left, they started coming back with gifts and their families. Trinkets, small toys, food, beer, all kinds of stuff. I still have a pen and notepad from the Rindal Dairy, given to me by a boy who's dad ran it.
We ended up building a big bonfire out of ammo crates, c-rat boxes and anything else that would burn, and having a big feast in that field, of Norwegian food and c-rats. The kids started singing us songs. Most we recognized, and sang it back - nursery rhymes, kid songs, Christmas carols; they would sing it in Norwegian, the Marines would sing it back in English.

That evening is one of the fondest memories I have of my military time.
I wish I had pictures, but photography was expensive back then. I have a few from Norway, but not many. I do have one, doing road guard at the edge of that field earlier in the day before the exercise ended (I have the M60).

Cheers
 

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Another Ahab

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Don't like hospitals very much, but as I've gotten older it seems I'm making more and more appearance's there. So if you don't here from me for a while you'll know where I'm at.
Don't like to hear this about you, rustystud, but sometimes a hospital is the right place to be.

You think yourself well in there, and keep in mind there are plenty of us here thinking you well to get out of there soon.

God bless you, Man!
 

Tracer

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I will be rooting for you. As I have been ever more going to doc and krankenhaus, I feel for you, and know how it is. I would send you some of my hootch, but the post office gets mad at me if I do. Might not help, but you sure feel good when you sip it.
[FONT=Verdana,Arial,Tahoma,Calibri,Geneva,sans-serif]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehPV6QgD15w Rusty if you need some inspiration during your recovery. 75 year old Mick Jager had heart surgery 3 months ago, and on the 21st of June 2019, Mick and the boys were at Soldier Field in Chicago doing "Street Fighting Man", and all the rest. Mick has more energy at 75 than most people half his age.
[/FONT]
 

Another Ahab

Well-known member
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Alexandria, VA
Mama was at the show.

Her second Stone's concert.

Told me they played for 2-1/2 hours.

She said it was killer!! It was after all The Rolling Stones. Live!!!
 

rustystud

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Woodinville, Washington
AWOL is not allowed. Stop eating the TV dinners and who else is there I can argue with as I am not married anymore.

The wife hasn't allowed me to eat that stuff for years now. I actually lost 20 pounds on a KETO diet recently. Go figure, here I am trying to get healthy and I get a Kidney infection ! Maybe it's a secret plot of McDonalds. If you stop eating their burgers you will get sick ! Must be something in that "secret sauce" !!!
 

rustystud

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Woodinville, Washington
Don't like to hear this about you, rustystud, but sometimes a hospital is the right place to be.

You think yourself well in there, and keep in mind there are plenty of us here thinking you well to get out of there soon.

God bless you, Man!

I go in for a CT scan this Monday. We'll know more then.
The biggest issued right now is the fever sweats and nausea ! I'm down to my "skivvy shorts" and sweating like a stuck pig and feeling like I'm going to hurl chunks ! This latest anti-biotic is STRONG !

Just a shout out to all you guys here. Thanks for all the kind words and prayers. I know it sounds trite, but just knowing there is others out there who know what your going through and care, makes it more bearable.
 
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Guyfang

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Burgkunstadt, Germany
The rubber ball has zinged off the wall again...

As I recall, the kids in Norway loved getting them too. We were deployed there in 1980, the Marines were assigned the NATO role of assisting the Norwegians with security (their northern border is with Russia).

One incident stands out to me as a great experience -I was a machine gunner then and we had just completed a major NATO field exercise, Operation Teamwork 80. One of ordnance rules at the time was that if the seal on a case of ammunition, even blanks, was broken, the rounds had to be counted back individually on turn-in to the armorers. We had thousands of uncased rounds of M60 blanks, and neither side of that count was looking forward to the ordeal. The word came down the chain -shoot it all up, no counting.

We were encamped in a field near the small town of Rindal, so we lined all the guns up along one side that had an embankment to fire at (range safety, even with blanks). Pretty much as soon as we started firing, kids started to show up to see what was going on. We decided to let them do the work and shoot up the blanks! They were having a ball, and more and more of them kept arriving. Pretty soon the situation changed from having to fire up all the ammo, to wondering if we had enough to let them all shoot, so we started breaking off sections of belt and giving them to the kids, who would then line up behind a gun and wait their turn.
Eventually all the blanks were fired. We then got the kids to police up all the brass and links, divied them up evenly and showed them how to link the brass back up to take home as souvenirs.

Late that afternoon after the kids were done and had left, they started coming back with gifts and their families. Trinkets, small toys, food, beer, all kinds of stuff. I still have a pen and notepad from the Rindal Dairy, given to me by a boy who's dad ran it.
We ended up building a big bonfire out of ammo crates, c-rat boxes and anything else that would burn, and having a big feast in that field of Norwegian food and c-rats. The kids started singing us songs. Most we recognized, and sang it back - nursery rhymes, kid songs, Christmas carols; they would sing it in Norwegian, the Marines would sing it back in English.

That evening is one of the fondest memories I have of my military time.
I wish I had pictures, but photography was expensive back then. I have a few from Norway, but not many. I do have one doing road guard at the edge of that field earlier in the day before the exercise ended (I have the 60).

Cheers
Back in the mid 70's, we were on a maneuver. I was in charge of the RSOP. Advance Recon. We got to the next location, and it was a potato field, being harvested. But not close to being done. And the main part of the unit would be shortly arriving. I called back, and told the First Shirt the deal. He said he would "stall a while". I formed my soldiers up, detailed one man to guard the weapons, and we joined in. They had two harvesting machines. The whole family, from 10-12 years old, to Great Grand Ma driving a tractor pulling the potato wagon. Four hours later, we had the field more or less done, when a Hawk Battery moved in. Our 548 hulled launchers tore up the field, made it look like the back side of the moon. About 19:00, the farmer, with family showed back up with beer and brattwurst for the RSOP team. You could have knocked us over with a feather. We had a good LT, so he found something to do on the other side of the site for a while.
 
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Floridianson

Well-known member
Steel Soldiers Supporter
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Location
Interlachen Fl.
The wife hasn't allowed me to eat that stuff for years now. I actually lost 20 pounds on a KETO diet recently. Go figure, here I am trying to get healthy and I get a Kidney infection ! Maybe it's a secret plot of McDonalds. If you stop eating their burgers you will get sick ! Must be something in that "secret sauce" !!!
No matter what get well is the most important thing now.
 

M813rc

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Near Austin, Texas
Just watched Tracer's c-rat video, quite interesting. He is a braver man than I am, Gunga Din, no way I am putting 60 year old c-rats down the hatch!

I imagine those key-opening cans would make good coffee cups, on our later MCI c-rats which were opened with a can opener (John Wayne to Marines, P38 to Army), we jut didn't cut all the way around the lid, then bent it out to make a handle. We rarely used canteen cups, if we even had one. Washing it out in the field to be sanitary would be a real issue, so we just keep them for shaving after we went to kevlar helmets.

The B Unit cans reminded me that when I went to the Airwing later in my career, we used to safety wire those cans to the feed trays on the helo door-gun M60s, because it kept the slipstream from binding up the ammo belt.

While some of the contents of the B Units changed later, mostly to dehydrated coffee etc., we still had those foil covered chocolate discs which we called sh*t discs, even though they tasted pretty good. They came two to a can in some units, other units had a single double thick chocolate thing that was called a John Wayne bar, they were okay but tasted like they had soap in them.

For dessert you often got a can with Chocolate Nut Roll in it. I'd swear you could see tiny camels trekking across it when you opened the can, that thing was so dry it might suck every drop of moisture out of your body if you took a big bite. We used to joke that you could pour a whole canteen of water into that little can and the cake would absorb it all and still be dry.
The pound cake, on the other hand, was delicious. If you'd saved some canned fruit to go with it, it could be a near rapturous experience.

Cheers
 

Tracer

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DSCF2404.jpgDSCF2400.jpgDSCF2403.jpgDSCF2402.jpg Not a Military Vehicle, but consider this support equipment. I had been looking for a Coleman Model 520 Stove for some time, and found this one at the MVCC Meet at Plymouth CA. in April. This one is dated U.S. C.M. MFG CO. 1943. Most I have come across have been incomplete, the can missing, the feet missing along with other pieces. I scrounged up the Operating Manual off E-Bay, and acquired a 2 and a half cup coffee pot along with a gallon of new Coleman fuel. I haven't fired it up yet, but hope to take a run at it next week. The 2 bayonet lock utensils in which the stove is stored can be used for preparation of hot food. The larger utensil will hold two cans of "C" ration Meat Unit. By placing the two cans of "C" Ration in the larger utensil and filling with sufficient water, these "C" Rations can be heated in approximately six minutes. The smaller utensil can be used for the preparation of coffee. I think I'll do the honor of making the first pot using some C-Rat coffee!
 
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