Ok......so I got ahead of myself on this story. May be old age or memory lapse but after Mexico City, we hit Guatemala next and then Nicaraqua second before going on into El Sombrero. This was a roudabout way of getting there but as I understood the purpose of this, it was to fly over certain areas to impress somebody somewhere with our unarmend airplanes. All that stuff was above my paygrade but I was wondering who was being impressed with our little unarmed tweety birds lollygagging around over central america. We did fly over part of El Sombrero on our way to Nicaraqua but the funny part is....we were not going to be allowed to take the tweeties with us when we went into El Sombrero to pick up our airplane. Nothing of note had happened in Quatamala so now we were in Nicaraqua and were ready to double back into El Sombrero. Go Figger.
Picking up where we left off.....Riley and I were dragging the mighty mite...El Squeaky...back toward the hotel when we ran across Major Jackson coming to meet us. I sensed trouble. Squeaky had let up a little bit in his tirade against me for messing up his love life and had settled down to saying....over and over again...."Damn Right, Damn Right."
The Major took a close look at Squeaky and just shook his head. "Sgt Riley," he said, "Take that," that meaning the squeak, "back to the hotel, throw it in bed, slap a cold wet towell in its face, and put a guard on it so it dont sneak out of the hotel." Then he turned to me and said, "You and I need to talk." My sense of forboding increased because it looked like Stomp was mad enough to stomp a mudhole in somebody's rear end. Namely......mine.
"You should have checked with me before leading this little revolt against those Washington dips$$ts." He said. I agreed. He said he had been briefed in on me before he left Hurlbert (Hurlbert AFB, headquarters of SOF) and I had a record of antaganism toward State department types. I was shocked to know they were keeping such records on me. But I didnt even try to deny it because I had been involved in some controversy with State Department types the previous year up at Langley AFB, Virginia. He continued, "the word at Hurlbert is that trouble sticks to you like flies to a dead dog." That hurt but he gave me no chance to answer. "Maybe you are causing your own trouble, like tonight, you just had to follow that Washington bunch out to this damn bar and cause trouble, didnt you."
"That wasnt my intention." I said.
He fired right back, "The hell it wasn't." Then he gave out a sort of disgusted snort and demanded to know where that damned bar was. I told him and he said, "Come on, I will buy you a beer." As we walked to the bar, I had mixed emotions. I had just had a good a$$chewing but couldn't think of any good explanations and be damned if I was going to try to make any lame excuses so I just kept my mouth shut.
There was no one in the quality lounge but the bartender and Little Red. She pouted and chastized me for taking her squeaky lover away from her. Jackson asked me to tell him about Squeaky's amorous exploits but the bartender took up the story and told it much better than I could. That guy could have been a stand up comedian. It was hillarious when he got to descibing Squeakys smooching techniques and little red got embarrased and was leaning over the bar and swatting at him as he finished his story.
So we loaded up the next morning. We said so long to our Tweety bird pilots and crew chiefs who were going on down to Panama that day as they were not allowed to go into El Sombrero with us.
We had one more briefing from the Washington types where we were once again impressed about how important their diplomatic mission was and that we should please not do anything to create any incidences. We didnt care much about that stuff, we just wonted our airplane.
When we landed the transport and taxied to a stop and looked out the windows, it looked like they were expecting a head of state. Some troops lined up in formation, even a band playing. We had to stay in the airplane as all the diplomatic crap was taking place and then all the political types disappeared into a large building. We off loaded all our equipment into some trucks they provided and rolled down the ramp to our crippled bird. It looked kind of lonesome sitting down there all by itself with a formation of El Sombreroan troops standing beside it.
As we were off loading our equipment, A Sombreroan officer with a big mustache approached us, looked us over and I guess he counted stripes and since I had one more than anyone else he approached me. He had very little english and I had no spanish so it didnt work out too good. The mustache wonted to poke and punch around through all our equipment and I didnt have time to humor him so I just told the guys to keep off loading while I started hammering on him to get us some maintenance stands and a power unit, etc, etc. I could see the stuff we needed further down the ramp and insisted on him going there with me while I pointed out the stands and other equipment we needed. We finally got all that straightened out but it was a mess because of the language problem.
The mustache positioned his gun toting troops all around our airplane. Just as he thought he had them where he wonted them some of my guys would would go blasting right thru their positions pushing maintenance stands into the area. We had to go way down the ramp to find a couple of big fire extinguisher bottles but we were getting close to engine starting time.
Like a good sargeant, I was walking fast, cutting circles, breathing hard and yelling out unnecessary orders.
The mustache was trying to maintain his dignity while staying hot on my trail. I was beginning to wear that sucker down, had him huffing and puffing.
Major Stomp was in his element, which means he was up in the cockpit waiting impatiently for us to get everything in order so we could fire up the old Providers engines. His flight engineer was busy as a bee, giving the old bird a good visual inspection and checking stuff. The bullet holes had proved to be no big deal, hitting nothing but sheet metal. The co-pilot had maps and charts spread out on the cargo deck. I had heard Stomp tell him to go over all the alternate routes out of that #$%^@%$ place one more time. The co-pilot said they had already done that over and over again. Stomp said do it again.
I told the flight engineer I was a little worried about them old batteries after they had been setting for so long and in case he didnt know it I was a hotshot aircraft electrician by trade in my normal day time job when I wasn't being required to be a loud mouthed A$$hole sargeant. He informed me he could take care of his own batteries thank me very much and if he needed an electrician he would call for me, thank me very much anyhow. That smart mouthed baxtard.
So far, so good, as I always say. We were off to a rousing good start.
We finally got the ground powered unit in place, fire bottles ready, and were ready to see if the old engines would burn and churn. We had to get old Mustache to move his gun toters around away from the engines. He just insisted in stacking his people as close to the airplane as possible and they were standing around with weapons at port arms right where we didnt need them to be. I couldnt convince him to remove them from the area. Stomp just sat up there on his throne glaring down at me while I tried to straignten out all this stuff.
Finally the big moment arrived and the propeller of engine #1 made its 15 wraps before Stomp gave her the ignition. She burped and snorted and blew raw burning gas out the exhaust pipes to lay burning on the ramp and the gun toting Sombreroan troops scattered in all directions. We got a kick out of that. But #1 was burning and churning and smoking.
#2 engine was balky but it finally got going anyway. Riley had an engine analyzer hooked up and he and the pilots ran the engines long enough to get them hot and ran them hard for awhile untill Riley decided there was some things he had to do to get the engines up to par. #2 was really bad, showing lots of spark plug and ignition coil problems.
We got the jack-up stands in place and Riley assigned his assistant engine man to #1 while he concentrated on #2 which was the worst.
The honorable Major Stomp Jackson deigned to venture down from his cockpit throne and stomp around with the rest of us. "I wish you would get this Mustache character off my butt," I said to him but he just grinned and said, "He is your buddy, he likes you, I can tell." It was then I realized that old Mustache didnt realize that Stomp was the ranking officer. Stomps little cloth gold majors leaves on his flight fatigues wasnt as flashy as the big silver stripes on my arm and I had been mistaken as the big co-huney. But I fixed that. I told everybody to start acting military, say sir a lot and say it real loud and to salute Stomp everytime he moved. Even if he twitched and eyebrow, salute it. There for a few minutes we just had a ball saluting and Siring Major Stomp and stomping our feet a lot and turning square corners and yelling YESSIR and NOSIR and RIGHTAWAYSIR. It didnt take the Major long to get enough of that stuff and put a stop to it butit really impressed the mustache and got him off my butt and he started nagging at Stomp with all his complaints about us.
Squeaky was really worried about all the gun toters scattered around us. It seemed like everytime I stopped walking, he would run right up my backside. "Are you following me, Squeaky?" I asked him. He said no. I asked then why he kept running up my backside. He said he didnt know. I asked how many bullet holes the airplane had. He said six. I said go count them again but dont worry about patching them, that they had not hurt anything, just passed thru. He said he had done counted them three times. I said oh yeah, I forgot, but tell you what, why dont you crawl around under the airplane and see if you see any kind of damage there and look for stuff like hydraulic leaks and things like that. Squeaky squared his shoulders and headed off on his mission. How was I to know that I was damned near going to get the little faXt killed?
A C-123 sits real low to the ground. To get under there we normally used "creepers" similiar to what car mechanics use to get under cars. But Squeaky was small and crawled under there with no problems. The gun toters evidently didnt see Squeaky crawl under there. But the problem showed up a few minutes later when one of the gun toters way down the ramp started shouting and pointing at the airplane and then all the gun toters squatted down and looked under the airplane to see this little subversive looking squirt crawling around under there and for some weird unknown reason must have figured they had caught us up to some trick.
I have never understood what happened next but a bunch of gun toters closed in around the airplane and started poking under there with ther gun barrels at squeaky. It is hard to describe this scene in words but just imagine these guntoters laying on their bellies around the airplane poking under there at Squeaky with their guns and a bunch of americans pulling the gun toters and their guns back out of the way and getting Squeaky out from under the airplane and gathering around him in a protective circle. Riley got down from his engine stand in time to accuse me of allmost getting Squeaky killed and calling me a Jinx. I popped him so hard in the chest that I snapped him right out from under his hat and put him back about 6 feet and was going after him before the co-pilot and some others jumped in to break it up and I was screaming at Riley that I had had enough of that Jinx crap and Stomp was stomping around yelling, "Alright, Alright, Alright," and trying to get things settled down.
I got Squeaky and walked him way out front of the airplane off by ourselfs. I put my arm around him and hugged him and said, "Gee, Squeaky, I had no idea something like that would happen." The poor kid was still trembling. "Im really sorry I got you into all this stuff Squeaky," I told him. Sqeaky said he knew it wasnt my fault. "And Sarge," he added. "Im sorry about all them names I called you last night." We decided to call it even.
Riley was easing out my way but I told him "You better stay the hell away from me, Riley," and he went back to his engine stuff.
When Stomp and I had a moment off to ourself, he was still swabbing sweat from his face and said he had never seen anything like that before and what a flukey thing that had been and what a disaster it could have turned into and thank God some crazy Sombreroan hadn't pulled a trigger. I said I damned sure didnt plan it that way in case he was wondering but maybe it was true that I was a jinx like some people were saying. He said not to start thinking like that and I needed to corner old mustache and get us some drinking water from somewhere and I said Ok and we setteled down to work again.
Picking up where we left off.....Riley and I were dragging the mighty mite...El Squeaky...back toward the hotel when we ran across Major Jackson coming to meet us. I sensed trouble. Squeaky had let up a little bit in his tirade against me for messing up his love life and had settled down to saying....over and over again...."Damn Right, Damn Right."
The Major took a close look at Squeaky and just shook his head. "Sgt Riley," he said, "Take that," that meaning the squeak, "back to the hotel, throw it in bed, slap a cold wet towell in its face, and put a guard on it so it dont sneak out of the hotel." Then he turned to me and said, "You and I need to talk." My sense of forboding increased because it looked like Stomp was mad enough to stomp a mudhole in somebody's rear end. Namely......mine.
"You should have checked with me before leading this little revolt against those Washington dips$$ts." He said. I agreed. He said he had been briefed in on me before he left Hurlbert (Hurlbert AFB, headquarters of SOF) and I had a record of antaganism toward State department types. I was shocked to know they were keeping such records on me. But I didnt even try to deny it because I had been involved in some controversy with State Department types the previous year up at Langley AFB, Virginia. He continued, "the word at Hurlbert is that trouble sticks to you like flies to a dead dog." That hurt but he gave me no chance to answer. "Maybe you are causing your own trouble, like tonight, you just had to follow that Washington bunch out to this damn bar and cause trouble, didnt you."
"That wasnt my intention." I said.
He fired right back, "The hell it wasn't." Then he gave out a sort of disgusted snort and demanded to know where that damned bar was. I told him and he said, "Come on, I will buy you a beer." As we walked to the bar, I had mixed emotions. I had just had a good a$$chewing but couldn't think of any good explanations and be damned if I was going to try to make any lame excuses so I just kept my mouth shut.
There was no one in the quality lounge but the bartender and Little Red. She pouted and chastized me for taking her squeaky lover away from her. Jackson asked me to tell him about Squeaky's amorous exploits but the bartender took up the story and told it much better than I could. That guy could have been a stand up comedian. It was hillarious when he got to descibing Squeakys smooching techniques and little red got embarrased and was leaning over the bar and swatting at him as he finished his story.
So we loaded up the next morning. We said so long to our Tweety bird pilots and crew chiefs who were going on down to Panama that day as they were not allowed to go into El Sombrero with us.
We had one more briefing from the Washington types where we were once again impressed about how important their diplomatic mission was and that we should please not do anything to create any incidences. We didnt care much about that stuff, we just wonted our airplane.
When we landed the transport and taxied to a stop and looked out the windows, it looked like they were expecting a head of state. Some troops lined up in formation, even a band playing. We had to stay in the airplane as all the diplomatic crap was taking place and then all the political types disappeared into a large building. We off loaded all our equipment into some trucks they provided and rolled down the ramp to our crippled bird. It looked kind of lonesome sitting down there all by itself with a formation of El Sombreroan troops standing beside it.
As we were off loading our equipment, A Sombreroan officer with a big mustache approached us, looked us over and I guess he counted stripes and since I had one more than anyone else he approached me. He had very little english and I had no spanish so it didnt work out too good. The mustache wonted to poke and punch around through all our equipment and I didnt have time to humor him so I just told the guys to keep off loading while I started hammering on him to get us some maintenance stands and a power unit, etc, etc. I could see the stuff we needed further down the ramp and insisted on him going there with me while I pointed out the stands and other equipment we needed. We finally got all that straightened out but it was a mess because of the language problem.
The mustache positioned his gun toting troops all around our airplane. Just as he thought he had them where he wonted them some of my guys would would go blasting right thru their positions pushing maintenance stands into the area. We had to go way down the ramp to find a couple of big fire extinguisher bottles but we were getting close to engine starting time.
Like a good sargeant, I was walking fast, cutting circles, breathing hard and yelling out unnecessary orders.
The mustache was trying to maintain his dignity while staying hot on my trail. I was beginning to wear that sucker down, had him huffing and puffing. Major Stomp was in his element, which means he was up in the cockpit waiting impatiently for us to get everything in order so we could fire up the old Providers engines. His flight engineer was busy as a bee, giving the old bird a good visual inspection and checking stuff. The bullet holes had proved to be no big deal, hitting nothing but sheet metal. The co-pilot had maps and charts spread out on the cargo deck. I had heard Stomp tell him to go over all the alternate routes out of that #$%^@%$ place one more time. The co-pilot said they had already done that over and over again. Stomp said do it again.
I told the flight engineer I was a little worried about them old batteries after they had been setting for so long and in case he didnt know it I was a hotshot aircraft electrician by trade in my normal day time job when I wasn't being required to be a loud mouthed A$$hole sargeant. He informed me he could take care of his own batteries thank me very much and if he needed an electrician he would call for me, thank me very much anyhow. That smart mouthed baxtard.
So far, so good, as I always say. We were off to a rousing good start.
We finally got the ground powered unit in place, fire bottles ready, and were ready to see if the old engines would burn and churn. We had to get old Mustache to move his gun toters around away from the engines. He just insisted in stacking his people as close to the airplane as possible and they were standing around with weapons at port arms right where we didnt need them to be. I couldnt convince him to remove them from the area. Stomp just sat up there on his throne glaring down at me while I tried to straignten out all this stuff.
Finally the big moment arrived and the propeller of engine #1 made its 15 wraps before Stomp gave her the ignition. She burped and snorted and blew raw burning gas out the exhaust pipes to lay burning on the ramp and the gun toting Sombreroan troops scattered in all directions. We got a kick out of that. But #1 was burning and churning and smoking.
#2 engine was balky but it finally got going anyway. Riley had an engine analyzer hooked up and he and the pilots ran the engines long enough to get them hot and ran them hard for awhile untill Riley decided there was some things he had to do to get the engines up to par. #2 was really bad, showing lots of spark plug and ignition coil problems.
We got the jack-up stands in place and Riley assigned his assistant engine man to #1 while he concentrated on #2 which was the worst.
The honorable Major Stomp Jackson deigned to venture down from his cockpit throne and stomp around with the rest of us. "I wish you would get this Mustache character off my butt," I said to him but he just grinned and said, "He is your buddy, he likes you, I can tell." It was then I realized that old Mustache didnt realize that Stomp was the ranking officer. Stomps little cloth gold majors leaves on his flight fatigues wasnt as flashy as the big silver stripes on my arm and I had been mistaken as the big co-huney. But I fixed that. I told everybody to start acting military, say sir a lot and say it real loud and to salute Stomp everytime he moved. Even if he twitched and eyebrow, salute it. There for a few minutes we just had a ball saluting and Siring Major Stomp and stomping our feet a lot and turning square corners and yelling YESSIR and NOSIR and RIGHTAWAYSIR. It didnt take the Major long to get enough of that stuff and put a stop to it butit really impressed the mustache and got him off my butt and he started nagging at Stomp with all his complaints about us.
Squeaky was really worried about all the gun toters scattered around us. It seemed like everytime I stopped walking, he would run right up my backside. "Are you following me, Squeaky?" I asked him. He said no. I asked then why he kept running up my backside. He said he didnt know. I asked how many bullet holes the airplane had. He said six. I said go count them again but dont worry about patching them, that they had not hurt anything, just passed thru. He said he had done counted them three times. I said oh yeah, I forgot, but tell you what, why dont you crawl around under the airplane and see if you see any kind of damage there and look for stuff like hydraulic leaks and things like that. Squeaky squared his shoulders and headed off on his mission. How was I to know that I was damned near going to get the little faXt killed?
A C-123 sits real low to the ground. To get under there we normally used "creepers" similiar to what car mechanics use to get under cars. But Squeaky was small and crawled under there with no problems. The gun toters evidently didnt see Squeaky crawl under there. But the problem showed up a few minutes later when one of the gun toters way down the ramp started shouting and pointing at the airplane and then all the gun toters squatted down and looked under the airplane to see this little subversive looking squirt crawling around under there and for some weird unknown reason must have figured they had caught us up to some trick.
I have never understood what happened next but a bunch of gun toters closed in around the airplane and started poking under there with ther gun barrels at squeaky. It is hard to describe this scene in words but just imagine these guntoters laying on their bellies around the airplane poking under there at Squeaky with their guns and a bunch of americans pulling the gun toters and their guns back out of the way and getting Squeaky out from under the airplane and gathering around him in a protective circle. Riley got down from his engine stand in time to accuse me of allmost getting Squeaky killed and calling me a Jinx. I popped him so hard in the chest that I snapped him right out from under his hat and put him back about 6 feet and was going after him before the co-pilot and some others jumped in to break it up and I was screaming at Riley that I had had enough of that Jinx crap and Stomp was stomping around yelling, "Alright, Alright, Alright," and trying to get things settled down.
I got Squeaky and walked him way out front of the airplane off by ourselfs. I put my arm around him and hugged him and said, "Gee, Squeaky, I had no idea something like that would happen." The poor kid was still trembling. "Im really sorry I got you into all this stuff Squeaky," I told him. Sqeaky said he knew it wasnt my fault. "And Sarge," he added. "Im sorry about all them names I called you last night." We decided to call it even.
Riley was easing out my way but I told him "You better stay the hell away from me, Riley," and he went back to his engine stuff.
When Stomp and I had a moment off to ourself, he was still swabbing sweat from his face and said he had never seen anything like that before and what a flukey thing that had been and what a disaster it could have turned into and thank God some crazy Sombreroan hadn't pulled a trigger. I said I damned sure didnt plan it that way in case he was wondering but maybe it was true that I was a jinx like some people were saying. He said not to start thinking like that and I needed to corner old mustache and get us some drinking water from somewhere and I said Ok and we setteled down to work again.
