Nothing Sir!

Submitted by: The Skyeye

Place: West Ft. Hood, Texas
Time: Early 1970

   Having been ordered to Ft. Hood from my cushy job on the Ft. Bragg
Marksmanship unit, I was not a particularly happy camper. But Uncle Sugar
always knows best.  At any rate, the 163rd MI Battalion was activated
and manned from the dregs of the Army to become an R&D outfit to test
the Gee-Whiz boys latest inventions.  I guess the various installations
tasked to assign men to the unit got rid of their misfits, malcontents
and broken trucks, which is how Willie and I got there.

   A few words about Willie:  He, like almost every enlisted man, or EM there, was
recently back from Nam and marking time till his ETS.  Willie spent his
year in Nam at the DMZ in the back seat of a Bird Dog, dodging SAMs and
radar controlled AA.  So, not much impressed him, least of all officers.

   We had been there six or seven months when word came down that we
were to be blessed by a visit from some high ranking officers to see
what we were accomplishing.  Since we hadn’t accomplished anything, our
officers were in a bit of a panic.  So we did what anyone would do; we put
on a dog and pony show.  After painting everything either OD or white,
we prepared for the great day by laying out hundreds of maps, photos and
“reports” for the show (we were a photo recon company).

   At exactly 0900, an entourage, consisting of a two star General and his
attendant gaggle of officers with an assortment of civilians, arrived at
our shop.  After wandering around peering at our stage set, the General
stopped in front of Willie and asked him, “And just what do you do here
son?”    If nothing else, Willie was honest.  Snapping to, his answer,
loud and clear was, “Nothing, Sir.  We haven’t done anything since we
got here and I don’t think we’ll ever do anything.”

   That brought the proceedings to an abrupt halt, while the General
turned to his hapless aid and demanded, “What does this man mean?”
Things went downhill fast, or became very amusing, depending on where
you stood.  After several harrumphs and passing the question down the
line, the group departed behind the fast moving General.

   It wasn’t a total loss though as when the General made another visit
to the Bn. several weeks later, he managed to avoid our shop.