Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Bad people in a position to do bad things will do bad things because they are bad people. End of story.

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

Those who are easily outraged are easily manipulated.

“Facilitate” is an active verb, not a weasel word.

If rights aren’t universal, they are privilege, not rights.

If you cannot answer whether trump lost the 2020 election, you are unfit for office.

The willow is too close to the house.

“In the future, this lab will be a museum. do not touch it.”

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

They were going to turn on one another at some point. It was inevitable.

Hell hath no fury like a farmer bankrupted.

A norm that restrains only one side really is not a norm – it is a trap.

Republicans do not trust women.

So many bastards, so little time.

Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

When you’re in more danger from the IDF than from Russian shelling, that’s really bad.

Fight for a just cause, love your fellow man, live a good life.

The fight for our country is always worth it. ~Kamala Harris

People are weird.

Someone should tell Republicans that violence is the last refuge of the incompetent, or possibly the first.

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

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There are some who say that there are too many strawmen arguments on this blog.

You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / Military / Here’s a Blast From the Past

Here’s a Blast From the Past

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My old CO from when I was in the 11th ACR just sent me this pic of us on the tank in Kuwait sometime in 1991:

I’m the skinny blonde covered in filth (basically, sand and dust sticking to oil and hydraulic fluid). Tank maintenance sucked. Especially in the desert, because if you forgot to put your gloves on and reached for a tool you would burn your hand.

Reader Interactions

142Comments

  3. 3.

    dr. bloor

    Look like Val Kilmer, circa Top Gun. Serious studnicity.

    Hard to believe that picture was taken on the same planet we’re accustomed to seeing around us.

  4. 4.

    Jewish Steel

    Can you come over and take a look at my tank? It’s making a funny noise.

  6. 6.

    jl

    @Jewish Steel:

    ” Can you come over and take a look at my tank? It’s making a funny noise. ”

    Is it a big ‘boom’ sound from the long thingee or a grinding sound down underneath? Might make a difference whether Stud Cole’s department.

  9. 9.

    Corner Stone

    “Arabian Knight” ?
    Jeebus. Looks like the cover pic of a DVD where male American military folk drive across MENA having adventures.
    If you know what I mean..*wink*..*wink*

  11. 11.

    Violet

    @dr. bloor:

    Look like Val Kilmer, circa Top Gun. Serious studnicity.

    Was thinking the same thing. You’re rocking the Ray Ban aviator sunglasses.

  13. 13.

    John Cole

    @Violet:

    You’re rocking the Ray Ban aviator sunglasses.

    Actually, I’m not. Those were prescription sunglasses I had made because you can’t wear contacts in the desert (for obvious reasons). I had another pair that changed colors but just did not get dark enough for the desert glare, and then another pair that was just clear, but I mainly wore those.

    Which led to the inevitable jokes, because I would always forget to dig out the regular glasses and find myself wearing the permatinted ones after dark. My nickname for much of the rest of the tour was Roy, because I looked like Roy Orbison. Anywhere I would go someone would start singing Pretty Woman. And, of course, there was the inevitable Sunglasses at Night jokes.

    Good times. What I would give to spend a week or two with all those guys again.

  19. 19.

    Stuck in the Funhouse

    You couldn’t get me in one of those things. Helloooo!! duh, BFT, Big Fucking Target. Though that is sorta what someone is floating down from the sky in a big green parachute.

  20. 20.

    suzanne

    Hawt.

    Of course, when that picture was taken, I was eleven. And when I think about it in that context…ew.

  21. 21.

    EriktheRed

    I was in the 2nd ACR, John. Never went to Desert Storm, though; by that time I was in the Reserves.

  22. 22.

    Violet

    @John Cole:

    What I would give to spend a week or two with all those guys again.

    Invite them all to West Virginia. You could have one of your weekly parties and stay up all night listening to Little Feat.

  23. 23.

    Litlebritdifrnt

    Can someone please explain to me the “recruits sawing off a goats legs with a tree trimmer” thing that is going on right now cause I am absolutely not going to go and watch the video if it is fucking true, because it would not only make me throw up it would make me want to kill somebody.

  24. 24.

    grape_crush

    @John Cole: there was the inevitable Sunglasses at Night jokes.

    “But when you’re cool, the sun shines on you twenty-four hours a day.”

    (line from some movie I don’t remember the name of)

  26. 26.

    Mnemosyne

    @suzanne:

    Of course, when that picture was taken, I was eleven. And when I think about it in that context…ew.

    We’ve been watching “Finding Your Roots” during lunchtime at work and they have a funny story in the Kevin Bacon/Kyra Sedgewick episode where apparently she met him once when she was 12 and he was 19 and he has no memory of the meeting. He only remembers meeting her as an adult and immediately falling for her.

  30. 30.

    JPL

    @Raven: The pictures will be fun. Since you are around, I uncovered a pretty vicious yellow jacket nest while attempting to dig out an old azalea. Any ideas on how to get rid of the critters. Last year another nest was uncovered and I was stung over a dozen times…not fun. Fortunately, I saw the warning signals and hightailed it.

  32. 32.

    Steeplejack

    Well, well, well. We got us a gen-u-wine war hero runnin’ this here blog.

    Outstanding, soldier! Carry on.

  40. 40.

    wvng

    Cover a yellow jacket nest with a large glass bowl at night and pile dirt around the edges. They can’t figure out how to dig around it and will starve. If you are brave you can taunt them by banging on the top of the bowl. Come piling out of their hole and can’t get at you.

  41. 41.

    SiubhanDuinne

    Between hawt Cole and hawt Raven, I’m coming over all patriotic-like.

  42. 42.

    schrodinger's cat

    @Raven: You look all young and innocent. Were you just out of high school?

    John Cole@top
    Great pic, thanks for sharing, also do you have a pic from that era without dark glasses on?

  44. 44.

    Raven

    @schrodinger’s cat: I was 17, I went in on my birthday at the behest of the local magistrate. Too young for the Nam so they sent me to Korea in time for the Pueblo and the Blue House Raid. Got my GED in Korea and actually graduated 2 months before the class of 67 did.

  47. 47.

    Raven

    @efgoldman: Spelling good. I came home in April and the stateside duty was so chickenshit I bought my way into a unit training to go. By October I was in the Nam.

  54. 54.

    JPL

    @Raven: BTW..did you watch last weeks Sherlock? Because of the special effects and cinematography, it scared the heck out of me.

  59. 59.

    Raven

    @efgoldman: I’m not sure if your pop is still with us but this website has a ton of pictures and unit listings that go back to his time in Korea.

    Tour of Duty

    The guy that runs it was a tanker officer but I don’t hold it agin him!

  65. 65.

    Elias

    Making that into album art right now. These days the Gulf War is retro, you know?

  66. 66.

    Elias

    Making that into album art right now. These days the Gulf War is retro, you know? And you standing provides a nice little box to the left to jam the band name into.

  71. 71.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    @Raven: Just about exactly the pic I would have expected in that period of the interim! My favorite I think is the shirtless protest shot.

    Mr. Q has a GED also. He was advised by the assistant principal to take it within the year of graduation date, so as to sit for it free of charge. The assistant principal got to tell him he couldn’t graduate due to some missing gym credits; apparently 1.75 years away from the campus caused only a gym deficit! At that time in NY, the top x% of scores on the GED get a regents scholarship for a full ride at SUNY schools. Many years later he got a full ride to get his masters at CCM. So you both are guys with GEDs and postgrad work.

  72. 72.

    Soonergrunt

    @Raven: Quite a bit of the bulk up top has fallen prey to sleeping in and gravity since I retired in 2010. I got promoted in country a couple of months after this was taken, so I managed to keep it.

  75. 75.

    Soonergrunt

    @Comradde PhysioProffe: That is a beret. The most useless piece of headgear the military has. No sun/rain protection, only keeps the top of one ear warm, anda royal pain in the ass to prepare and maintain.
    But if they’re prepaired and maintained properly, they do look good.
    I prefer the boonie hat, myself.

  78. 78.

    arguingwithsignposts

    Look at all these true keyboard commandos here.@Litlebritdifrnt et. al., there’s a documentary on Hulu called Guarding the Queen which is a pretty interesting look at the Grenadier Guards, and it’s not all furry hats and shiny buttons. (Litlbritdifrnt, you probably knew about it already, but anyway)

  83. 83.

    AA+ Bonds

    @Soonergrunt:

    That is a beret. The most useless piece of headgear the military has.

    I am really curious for insight about the proliferation of these, is it really so everyone felt like SF for a second or do they save money or what

  84. 84.

    Raven

    @Soonergrunt: Yea, 79. Carried it next to me in the truck with a 16 hung on that handle that adjusted the windshield on a duece-and-a-half. Most of the time I sat on the flack jacket.

  85. 85.

    Litlebritdifrnt

    @Raven:

    Actually Woman’s Royal Naval Service or WRNS (Wrens) prior to the totally worthless integration that took place in the 90s which wiped out our identification “Join the WRNS free a man for the fleet!” They started putting girls in sailors uniforms and sending them to sea and I was out of there after 14 years.

  88. 88.

    Soonergrunt

    @efgoldman: There’s more than a few days in that history that I’d like to forget. Sometimes I don’t sleep well. I talk to other combat Vets about that stuff. They understand. I don’t mean for that to sound as condescending as it does. You should thank whatever providence you believe in that you wouldn’t understand it.
    But for that, most days were pretty good. I was part of a very close group of guys. Younger brother to some, older brother to others, and I’ve never known anyone in my life that I loved like my brothers. We were part of something bigger than ourselves, and did good things. So many of the extremes of my life were in the Army. The happiest and saddest, the hottest and the coldest, the most exhilarated and the most exhausted, the most bored, and the most excited, and on and on.
    While I miss my brothers, I don’t miss being in the Army (which is different from Soldiering,) really. In the peacetime army there’s a tremendous amount of bullshit and boredom to put up with, and in the wartime army one can be paralyzed, maimed, or killed without warning or worse, watch those things happen to young men for whom one is responsible. I’ve never lost a Soldier of mine, in three combat tours as a leader. I’ll go to my grave wondering how that is. I’ve seen friends just emotionally and psychologically destroyed by losing a Soldier, and I thank whatever it is that I still believe in every day that my boys came home. A year long combat tour is days on end of mind-numbing boredom, punctuated by minutes to hours of mind-numbing terror.
    Some good and dear friends, many of whom are personal heroes, have died in horrible ways in the service of this country.
    I loved being a Soldier, and I loved being around Soldiers, and I’m proud of my service and that of my buddies and my troops, and I will always have more fond memories than nightmares. But I don’t miss it at all.

  89. 89.

    sagesource

    @Stuck in the Funhouse: That’s what my father thought too, when they tried to get him to join a tank crew in 1917 in France. Of course, things are a bit better now. They no longer run the oil lines on the outside of the armor for cooling purposes, lol.

  90. 90.

    Soonergrunt

    @AA+ Bonds: Well, GEN Shinseki, who had served in both Armored and Airborne Ranger units was of the opinion that when a large number of units wore berets in the beginning of his career in the 1970s that it was good for morale, and that when the Army restricted their wear to Airborne units, that it was bad for general morale, but good for esprit de corps in those units, and that the Army was becomming more and more expeditionary, like the Airborne units every day and that a good way to remind people that every Soldier in every unit needed to think of him/herself as an elite servicemember in the company of other elites was for the entire Army to adopt the black beret and for the Ranger Battalions, to whom it had been reserved since 1975, to adopt the sand beret, better reflecting their heritage.
    That’s what he said anyway.
    The whole thing was pretty mismanaged from the get-go.

  91. 91.

    Keith

    Is there a Youtube video of the four of you rapping or lip-synching Chumba-wumba?

  92. 92.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Soonergrunt:

    yeah, I know the thinking behind it, but it still rather ticked me off. Airborne, SF, and Rangers really are special outfits, with special requirements, and they need that distinction, I think.

    For the record, I was a “non-elite” but I understood the reason for them having that distinctive headgear.

  93. 93.

    Soonergrunt

    @Villago Delenda Est: I had been Airborne in Italy in the early 90’s before that whole thing, which was while I was in the National Guard. I remember thinking “beret? Really? They fucking suck” for all the reasons I lined out earlier.
    I have always thought that the best headgear was the boonie cap. While the new ACH helmet is better than the old kevlar PASGT, lighter and better protection, it’s still hot as hell and after a couple of days in the desert smells even more like rotting ass than the old one.

  94. 94.

    Will Reks

    @Soonergrunt:

    I’m not sure if you got out before then but we now wear the pc instead of the beret in garrison. To the relief of pretty much all.

  95. 95.

    rikyrah

    @Mnemosyne:

    We’ve been watching “Finding Your Roots” during lunchtime at work and they have a funny story in the Kevin Bacon/Kyra Sedgewick episode where apparently she met him once when she was 12 and he was 19 and he has no memory of the meeting. He only remembers meeting her as an adult and immediately falling for her.

    been enjoying this entire series

  97. 97.

    Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason

    @sagesource: Re: tanks. There’s a classic Mauldin Willie and Joe cartoon where they’re looking at a tank go by and one says “I’druther dig. A movin’ foxhole attracks th’ eye”

  98. 98.

    Mike in NC

    Nothing looks shittier than seeing soldiers wearing that ugly black beret with the mint-green digital ACU and tan combat boots. What were they thinking?

    Mind you, the Navy’s latest uniform choices have been pretty horrible as well. Glad I’m retired.

  101. 101.

    Cassidy

    No one ever “misses” the Army. What you miss is the life and people associated with it and that’s really hard to replicate in civilian life. But “missing” the Army? No.

  103. 103.

    Ruckus

    @Soonergrunt:
    I’ve posted here before about being in the navy, joined end of 69, to avoid being drafted into the marines. Got nothing against marines, but I worked for an ex DI in high school and learned that I didn’t want that. Anyway on to the story. Towards the end of my time I found myself in a navy hospital for a couple of months and most of the patients were marines. I heard way too much about war and saw what it did to young men. One of my friends was a sergeant who could no longer send his men up hills in suicide missions. He was the most normal sounding/acting of all. I know why so many vets want nothing more than to forget. I was not sent to Nam, but second hand knowledge was more than enough to make me want to forget. But after 40 yrs I still see those men and hear their stories.

  110. 110.

    celticdragonchick

    @Cole…

    Were you guys running the heavy armor package M1A1’s at the time?

  119. 119.

    Soonergrunt

    @Will Reks: Guard units were always kind of “meh” about the whole thing. After I got back from Afghanistan, I think we wore berets in ACU once, and it was patrol caps after that.

  120. 120.

    Elias

    I’m mixed on the berets, but the digital camo you see army walking around in public these days is awful. It looks terrible. I know that the Army wants to recruit with a general message of “It’s Halo but you also get camo” but I couldn’t find a better reason to join the Army when I got out of high school than that I would be forced to wear that uniform in public. The fact that I’d have to shoot or be shot in Iraq came a close second (you know, you don’t really think about that part). The Army really needs to find some more attractive dress for when they’re interacting with the civilian half of society.

  121. 121.

    noodler

    Nice photo. I met an army maint grunt last year in Ramstein, he was enroute to AFG, and he had a stopover in “fukin’ it-ly. Super sharp soldier. I hope he had a good deployment and got home safely. We make plenty just like him too.

  122. 122.

    Mnemosyne

    @rikyrah:

    Have you seen the one with Wanda Sykes and John Legend yet? We just watched it this past week.

    Gates just gets this look when he’s about to break it to someone that their ancestor was a slaveholder. It cracks me up.

  123. 123.

    YellowJournalism

    I used to read a Hollywood gossip site that would refer to a formerly good-looking actor like Kilmer or Alec Baldwin getting old or gaining weight as “fighting the hotness.”

    Cole: quit fighting he hotness! Embrace your inner stud!

  130. 130.

    Omnes Omnibus

    Shit, I missed the post pics of yourself looking good in uniform thread. Oh well, maybe another time.

  138. 138.

    schrodinger's cat

    @Omnes Omnibus: Humility and good looks, that’s a winning combination! As a person with hair of the darker variety, I have to agree with you about brunettes.

  141. 141.

    Pseudo Irishman

    Great pic. Question for Cole: Why are some of the APCs still painted in the woodland (or jungle?) camo style? Did you guys have enough time to get everything painted in the desert colors or is there something I’m missing?

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