Everything we eat, sleep on, live in, work with, play in, drive, ride on or in, is delivered by a truck that is driven by a “Trucker”, who learns after just a few days on the road that the most dangerous thing in the world is an automobile driven by a “Humanoid” who more than likely hates trucks and truckers!
This I learned from personal experience. It's one more reason I DON'T LIKE PEOPLE. As a young boy I would look at trucks with wonder. Semis, tractors, diesels. Their low RPM growl, the black exhaust smoke spewing from their pipes, cab over engines, conventionals, single, double, tri-axle, Diamond Tees, REOs, Jimmys, Whites, Freightliners, Peterbilt, IHC's.
Dad had put me on a tractor at five. By eight, I was driving the big diesel IHC MD with TA (that's torque amplifier, not the other TA!). I plowed, mowed and baled hay, chopped silage ,there was nothing I couldn't do. I loved
it, but I didn't want to be a dairy farmer (or a cook, or crook, or sell things). I had a dream to someday own my own tractor-trailer and drive over the road.
That I wanted to be a trucker drove my Ma nuts. She had gone to college and was a registered nurse. Somehow she expected more out of me than “I want to drive a truck”. At 16, I had quit school. I found out I could get my Chauffeur's License. With the help of a bud who had his license, I would spend my free time studying the rules and regulations that truckers needed to know. The written part of the test lasted a little over an hour. I passed.
I co-drove with my bud, but at 16 there wasn't much chance of doing anything else. If after a year of co-driving with no accidents or tickets, then you could drive. This was a truck owner rule. By that time I was in the Marines and had been reassigned to the infantry after breaking my leg in a parachuting accident (I had jumped out of a perfectly good airplane). I now had a military drivers license for 1/4 ton.
Half my enlistment was spent in an infantry unit. The largest vehicle Marine Infantry has is a 1/4 ton Jeep, which was replaced by a smaller, air-cooled, aluminum 4-cylinder, Wisconsin-manufactured vehicle called a “Mighty Mite”, and a fat tired little platform without suspension (that's why they had fat tires) called a “Mule”. It would sometimes act like one.
“Mules” were capable of being overloaded with about 1000 lbs of cargo and were sometimes used as a platform for a 106 mm recoilless rifle. This created a bad situation because when the gun was mounted on the Mule, the grunts took it over, and grunts thought of it as a toy. They used it as a “MUD BOGGER”. They raced them and just generally put them through more abuse than a rental car.
After an early Nam tour, I was sent stateside to Bridgeport, California in the Sierra Nevadas. Beautiful Mountains. I was sent to Engineers, where an old Master Sgt that ran the outfit asked what I could drive. I told him the front end loader, any Cat they had and all the trucks. The Ol Top told the Sgt to check me out, to see what I could operate.
Within a week I had every tonnage license the Marine Corps had. I was assigned a dual-axle dump truck snow plow and I was happy. Some days I would load a Cat on a “lowboy” hooked to a Diamond T and off we went into the mountains where I'd fish a mountain stream for eight hours while the Cat operator plowed fire breaks. Man, it was rough duty. When it snowed, I was in my plow keeping the road open. It wouldn't last.
In 1967, I was sent back to Vietnam where I was assigned to the 1st Motor Transport Bn. We drove “Duece n a Halfs” (2 and 1/2 ton trucks that were commonly called “Six Bys”) attached or TAD to a Marine Infantry Bn. We hauled grunt Marines, ammo, arty rounds, concertina, sandbags, Cees, water buffalos, little Gooks, big Gooks, Dead Gooks, VC prisoners, dead VC, dead NVA, live NVA, P.O.Ws, a USO troop, one female Frenchie reporter, one General, a couple Cols., a buncha Captains, more Lt's.
Out of all them, the ones who thanked me and were the most grateful were the Marines who rode on the wood benches in the open bed of my “6 by” while dead-dog tired, wet, cold, hot, thirsty, hungry, raggedy-ass dirty, United States Marine Infantry! Semper Fi “Mud Marines” I never expected it. After letting the tailgate down, I would hear the “Thanks” as they offloaded!!
Well Thank You Marine, FFO! Ray
No comments:
Post a Comment