From the Citizen Soldier side: Sorry for keeping you all in such suspense, but I had to go away for a few days and do some more Army training. I better finish my Riot story, huh.
So, there we were, sitting around doing all this crowd control training, explaining the Rules of Engagement and stuff in preparation to go to L.A. to help with the riots. We knew that they already had Army National Guard MP (Military Police) units responding to the area to help, but what we didn’t know until weeks later…was they had no issued ammo!
The California Army National Guard only stores live ammunition in a few key locations. The location the MP units were told to pick up ammo was not open. It “appeared” that the assholes who worked at the ammo point full time, went home instead of waiting to issue the live ammo to those who needed it.
So, when I talked to my buddies who were there with the MPs, they said that they stopped at a sporting goods store and the commander purchased the ammo with his own money. The MPs were going to arrive with live ammo no matter what.
(You see, many of us who’ve been in the National Guard for a long time, know that sometimes the only way we were going to get the mission done, was to pay for the fuel, food or whatever we needed out of our own pockets.)
Meanwhile, back at our armory, we continued doing the training so everybody would be ready to go…. Our line company was ordered to remain at the armory over night, while the Headquarters company was allowed to go home and come back the next day. When we heard this, some of our troops got a little pissed off--- after all, if we were going to the riot, wasn’t everybody going?
Since California State Law requires that anytime you eat pizza for dinner, you must have beer with it, a few more of our sergeants snuck out and grabbed a few six packs of cold beer to go with then pizza.
After we had dinner, the company Executive Officer (XO) began walking around and checking on the troops. When he got to our platoon room, he found lots of empty pizza boxes and empty beer cans. He became very upset (as most pencil heads do) and began to get mad.
Then he walked to the next platoon room and found that they had picked up a giant keg of beer and most of the Joes were pretty drunk.
The XO then walked in to the company Command Post (CP) to tell the company First Sergeant (AKA “TOP”) and found the Top and other senior NCOs and the Company Commander drinking a bottle of Scotch. At that point the XO just said “fuck it, I forgot this was the National Guard.”
We hung around until Sunday. Then we were told that the Army National Guard had the situation under control and we were no longer needed. There were a lot of unhappy soldiers who really wanted to go shoot a bunch of assholes in LA, but didn’t get the chance. A few of them later got a chance to go to Iraq and make up for the lack of excitement.
Those were the good old days.
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3 comments:
I remember seeing Rodney King on the TV crying and begging everyone to stop the nonsense.
Personally I think he got what he deserved, but the people of LA could of cared less. They just wanted an excuse to break things and steal stuff.
1. Was in Northern Indiana in April of '68 when Dr. King was killed.
2. Major rioting took place in the ghettos in Chicago, Gary and Hammond.
3. Our Jr. ROTC detachment maintained an armory that also contained rocket launchers and Colt A4 machine guns -and ammo.
4. Some bright light figured out that the Black Panthers or some such were going to caravan down 90 miles and rob our pathetic armory.
5. Response: picked six members of the football team who were also in ROTC and had us guard the place in shifts.
6. We were issued our M-1 rifles and one eight round clip which we carried in a first aid pouch on our belt.
7. About 3AM my partner asks me, "When do you think they'll get here?"
8. Hadn't thought about it like that. Answered: "They aren't coming. Most of those SOBs can't drive and they've never heard of this place."
9. Fast forward to Germany, late 1972 -a month after the Munich Olympic massacre. Am guarding a motor pool full of gasoline tankers. One troop mans a radio at the gate, the other walks between the vehicles.
10. Get a frantic call from the SOG. Arabs in the wire, coming up the hill, lock and load.
11. Grab the handset and ask for the OD. Ask if he's coming up the hill. Yes. Does he really want to front a couple locked and loaded troopies? Decides no.
12. Same story. No Chicago badasses. No Arab terrorists. Just superiors in panic mode.
13. Never been within a country mile of serious rioting. Thank god.
V/R JWest
Coffee,
Yep. One thing I tell the public. Police work is like making sasuages...everybody likes the end result, but nobody wants to see how it's done.
Mr. West--- speaking of "Panic" and stupid shit...that's what a great deal of my police and army time has been spent on.
How about New Years Eve 1999... we had so many extra cops on duty because we were all told that at midnight, the world was going to end because of something called Y-2-K. But nothing happened....never does when we're prepared for shit.
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