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Well, Good Morning all, its Stream of Consciousness guy again and today's (yesterday to you) Stream of Consciousness is taking place in Portland Airport, aka PDX. Sitting here waiting for my $10 Breakfast Burrito to arrive.
(update: it arrived with---no eggs!)
boy, traveling on airplanes sure has changed since your boy was peeling spuds in defense of our country. Useta be a lot more fun and easy untill airplanes started crashing into skyscrapers. Now you get inspected, detected and seelected.
I miss the days when you could stand at the gate and greet your arriviste or wave goodby to your departee. Now its drop em off and split or wait for them in the endless loop. people Useta dress to travel---now its whatever gets you by the Walmart greeter.
OK, i bet you want to know where I'm going and what I'm doing. Its off to Denver CO and then a drive to Colorado Springs. Time for the annual E Company Old Lrrps Reunion. Once more those jolly boys that once patrolled the Cambodian border of II Corps will be gathering to hook up one more time. (hook up--hook up----get it? its a paratrooper joke)
Been trying to think of what brings me here to meet these guys again, and do it every year.I guess it was because these were the most exciting, gamest people I ever knew. They would do anything If ever I wanted to get a crew of paratroopers who would jump into Hell itself, these are the guys I would pick.These are the guys to sic on your landlord.
I know youre thinking its just a bunch of nutty old guys, some of who have really weird looks in their eyes, carousing and chortling over narrow escapes and old murders but I'm here to tell you----youre absolutely right! You betcha! Well--What did you do when you were a teenager?
I served in 4 units during my 3 years in the army, all airborne. I collected jump pay the whole time. But this is the only unit I was in I'd go to the reunions of. I think its because we trained together, then went into combat together. In my other Vietnam unit in the 101st, I was just a replacement, as were all 101st vets.
they formed Easy Company (E Company (LRP) 20th Inf (Airborne) out of a bunch of 101st grunts like me and some cherries (new guys) and put us all through Recondo School, a 2 1/2 week Ranger school. We were a recon unit, basically heavily armed spies, but we did things besides recon. Thats why they dropped the 2d R in "lrrp"--- no longer stated the full case. Long Range Patrol---that was us. I still use the double r lrrp because its the most common spelling
I was in Team 4-7 which was the last team in the last platoon in the company. Being a short man with a last name that starts with "W" I figured that made me the last man in the company. So If ever I was told to "fight to the last man" I'd have some wiggle room. (you think of these things for long hours while waiting to kill someone on ambush patrol) (its what I was paid to do)
Anyway, after I left the unit they changed the name to C Co , 75th Ranger Regiment. Then they grandfathered all the old lrrps into the Rangers. So now I'm a US Army Ranger and here I never knew it all those years. I only think of it as Ranger With An Asterisk---fck it, I was a lrrp, but I'll still come around for the free barbecue and whoopdedo when the Ranger Reunion happens in Ft Benning (next year.) Anyhow, in the course of 6+ months, I parachuted out of planes with these guys, rappelled up to 120' down from helicopters with some of these guys, was pulled out by Maguire rig with one of these guys and stood back to back and delivered the Bad News with some of the others.
Lots of shared adventures, and some of them were incredible adventures. Like the time they dropped my team (5 guys) almost right on top of a platoon of NVA. or the time my friend D---- woke up with a tiger standing over him roaring. And there was the time the heavily armed hostile peasant weeweed on yours truly, self being then quaking in the underbrush. It could get stressful sometimes, patrolling down the Ho Chi Minh trail. (think I'm kidding? there's books about it)
but I still can't tell you what really happened---not that I need people's approval for this----but I'm not into the backblast. You can only tell it to people who can get it, who have the same frame of reference
So I went all my life having had this incredible adventure.... and not being able to tell anyone about it. Because nobody would get it. With these guys I don't have to fake remorse. Take that you sonsofbitches, the US Airborne was here.
anyway, the common experience among us was trying to forget it all for decades then having it resurface along with the advent of the internet. And now we can get together and share the memories. Guys I once was side by side with in a firefight and now were're trying to two putt on some fine course. Its an eerie feeling but a good one. A completion, seeing the whole manhood process from start to finish.
A very unusual unit. Glad I survived it.
Update #2: Palmer Lake. Got here, fought my way out of Denver International, spent an hour in traffic on 225 through Aurora (yes, that Aurora) BOy has Colorado changed since I was here last, now its solid Megalopolis. Just like LA. I have pictures of I25 at Arapahoe Rd with 6 lanes of traffic at a dead stop----each way!
I'm here now in a Starbucks in a Safeway (again!) because I left the paper with directions at home, naturally, and I had to stop and collect my bearings.
Bombing down the Ronald Reagan Freeway at 80 (speed limit 75) is really cool, made up for all the traffic. Wheeeeee! In OR the highest speed is 65. they gave me a Dodge Charger-----makes one feel all Highway Patrolsy
Update 3
Just a roomfull of old lrrps late at night talking story. I remember when I was a little boy listening to my Dad and uncles telling stories about WWII and me saying YEAH! That sounds really cool. I wanna do that! Guess I really did grow up to be what I wished to seem.
thats where exlrrp was last night.....where were you??
Morning Open Thread will comence in 5....4.....3.....(don't jump the gun)...2.....1...NOW!