SwiftVets.com

[pelican223]

Sojers & Gals,

Just some thoughts for an Sunday Evening; my good friend and previous Cobra driver Steve Shepard jogged my memories this morning.

When I was a young troop in Army Basic Training at Fort Ord, California our Drill Sergeant, a massive Hawaiian pineapple Sergeant First Class, trained my Platoon in the use of the knife stuck on the end of our M-14 rifles. Up the road in San Francisco, the dopers were burning American Flags.

“What is the Spirit of the Bayonet?”, said he.
“TO KILL, Drill Sergeant!!!!!!!”, shouted we.

He wore a square patch with blue and white diagonal bars on his right fatigue shirt shoulder. He never bragged about it, never even mentioned it.

He wore a blue and silver tin badge with a musket in a wreath pinned above the pocket of his starched fatigue shirt. He never talked about that either.

We knew that the blue and white 3rd Infantry Division patch was for serving our Nation in Combat against European Axis Forces in the Forties. Why, you ask? For the ‘militaristically challenged’, a soldier wears his combat patch on the right shoulder of his uniform. The 3rd ID had not fought in combat since the Second World War. Ergo…..

NOTE: "Ergo ", I may be wrong; My friend Sergeant Major Bob Gilbert (L/75th Rangers 1st Sgt in RVN) just posted to inform me that the 3rd ID also saw more combat in Korea than any other Unit, so perhaps that is where he got the patch. :END NOTE.

What he did talk about was that if we didn’t kill the enemy with our bayonet, then our enemy would kill us. That put his lessons in perspective. It gave us a reason to stay awake during his lessons.

We knew that the blue and silver Combat Infantryman’s Badge above his pocket was really for surviving and winning in Combat; for killing his enemy before his enemy killed him.

Nope, he didn’t talk about those things. He didn’t have to. And the scared teen aged kids standing under his wooden platform knew that the Sergeant First Class had been there and done that. He didn’t have to talk about that part of it. He was our “Training Aid”; teaching us that we could gain the confidence to do the unthinkable; to kill our fellow man before he killed us.

Folks show who and what they are by their acts, by their deeds; and how they carry themselves and how they look & treat others; not just during one hour, one day….. or four months. They don’t have to talk or brag about them, because one just knows by looking at them, and listening to them talk about life that they are the real deal. Somehow a few of us have forgotten that.


Regards,
Mike
_________________
Michael McCormick
Major, AD, AUS (Retired)
Pelican 223

West Bend, WI US

[Redleg]

I also have a little stoy regarding the bayonet.

Before going RA, I was in the Maryland National Guards '60-'64. In '63 my unit was mobilized by the Governor of the state to police the racial unrest in Cambridge, Maryland. The civil rights organization C.O.R.E. had mobilized sit-in demonstrations within the city, namely a coffee shop that refused to serve black patrons. Needless to say the event turned into a daily full scale riot that the local and state police were unable to control.

On a daily basis we would be required to seperate the demonstrators and the anti-demonstrators by use of the bayonet and the Flying Wedge formation in the middle of the main thoroughfare, ironically named; Race Street. As we were not authorized to lock and load our M-1 weapons, we had to depend on our bayonets and gas masks.
Flying Wedge formation works well in practice, but going up against 500 hostile rioting folks, the Wedge quickly broke down as the demonstrators turned their backs on the first wave and stalled the Wedge. The second wave ran into the first, the third wave into the second and my fellow Guardsmen were wacking me on my steel pot from behind. What a clusterpuck!
Within minutes the demonstrators and the Guard were all intertwined, when the teargas was set off probably by the mucky-mucks.
The tear gas and a few vertical butt stroke series saved the day as most of the rioter's quickly un-assed the AO. Unfortunately, we had to do it all over again the next day.
This is probably one of the few cases that one should not kill with the bayonet, but the verticle butt stroke worked real well.

Our unit even voted not to receive a commendation ribbon for the 30 days we spent cleaning up the mess.
_________________
FIRE MISSION: Kerry campaign in line of sight.