Milsurp After Hours

............to destroy in public Go get it Vern

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/thinking ... f-war.html

That's a pretty observant piece. Guess they read the book that is advertised at the end. A couple of thoughts... the shake-n-bake wasn't an officer so much as an E5 buck sergeant NCO. They were guys who were invited right out of Advanced Individual Training school that everybody attended, to an NCO school before sending them to Vietnam. The Army didn't believe in promoting up through the ranks after a while..when they could manufacture their own by school. Vern could tell you about it. The second lieutenants were the most dangerous and they were either OCS or ROTC. OCS was a Army training school that invited and accepted those who passed their tests and seemed to have a little aptitude to begin with, and then had to pass their school which was harder, and downright serious, and aimed directly at Vietnam unlike anything any ROTC guy had likely experienced. ROTC lieutenants were more likely to be lost in a fog longer in a combat situation. Not always...just more likely. And if anybody was likely to be an object for "fragging" the lowly lieutenant, that didn't know what he was doing, would have been a good candidate.

The rations were called C-rats, and more often C's than "rats".

Other terms were used often in some outfits and not at all in others. For instance, when I was with the 9th in the Delta we were at that time more air mobile than a lot of other Divisions. We went on Eagle flights all the time making combat insertions multiple times during the course of a day by Huey until we found a fight. So the term "sky up" became the words of choice for " leave" or to go some place by any means.

Phrases became common place and sometimes were said to reflect a disgust with just about any thing....." It don't mean , nothing".

My favorite , although not as frequently used, was one I learned from a friend who had just come back from Vietnam, just before I went. " No matter where you go. No matter what you do. There you are."

The article is just bits taken from the book at the end of the article, Tom Dalzell is credited with the
article because he wrote the book. He has written many books about slang language, it's what he does
for a living.
And I agree with Robert, he got most of it fairly correct. I do know a little about the "Shake & Bake" thing,
since I was one of them. There were S&B schools for artillery, infantry, armor, and I think engineers.
Viet Nam was creating a shortage of junior NCOs, and this was how they filled the ranks. After the
11 weeks at the academy, I spent another 10 weeks at Ft. Sill as a crew chief in a regular Arty unit
for some OJT before going to Nam. So we had about one week less training than the OCS guys and
it was just as intense. Just looked up my old records, 40 started the school and 27 graduated.
Damn, starting to ramble...............
Anyway, I also heard the plane going home called the "big-ass bird" or the "silver bird". And all
non-oriental women were called "round eyes", Hueys that carried troops were "slicks", and we
called any aircraft that fired down onto the ground a "gunship", whether it had wings or rotors.
But the fighter jets that dropped bombs and napalm were called "fast movers".