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H. B. WORLD - SPAN: A Service of "The Weekly Roomer"


Our deepest Gratitude for the Sounds used on Hotel Bravo. See the H.B. Credits page.
 

A Metaphor

(The LINK behind the IMAGE to the RIGHT will take you to a wonderful site about the differences between bad science and good science. Also, while we highly value the scientific method, and even the trial by error method, and understand those trying to engineer the new Bridge Track were sincere and earnest and get our respect for their efforst under difficult circumstances, on the depicted, we only resented the Army continuing to screw with us. The ironies of that day are the point here, not a salute to or denigration of struggling designers.)

 
There Were Good Days & Not Such Good Days...
"Peaches" (caught here eating the evidence) could extract a can of peaches from a C-ration case without breaking the wire or apparently disturbing the cardboard, so that it was impossible to tell the case had been opened. Everyone familiar with the nature of C-ration cases will recognize this skill as superior and exceeding the skill level of mere mortals, a true example of US American ingenuity at its most efficient and effective, which came to be admired by those confounded by how he was doing it, whose admiration became so high, they forgave him their never having anything but Fruit Cocktail, Applesauce, and (yuck) Apricots to eat.

 

Mud and muddy shallow water, are serious impediments to the eleven ton Armored Personnel Carrier, M-113A1, and its two tons of equipment and men and gear. Consequently, bent on living up to its reputation for ingenious invention, the United States of America provided us with an innovative vehicle known as The Bridge Track. In July 1969, The Bridge Track made approximately its forth appearance in the field with us on an operation that required, if possible, that we cross a patch of ground and water, that was impassable for us, except with a piece of equipment like what the creative minds behind the clever Bridge Track intended it to do, which was an ingenious concept. Unfortunately, on each such occasion, The Bridge Track failed, never due to the same vulnerability, but never the less...it was too slippery and tons of track, equipment, gear, slipped unstoppable, sideways off into the water, or when treads were added to the bridge, it broke down and wouldn't extend or wouldn't contract, or, as on this day, it just simply didn't work, leaving us stranded for most of the day on a tiny island in a bombed out area where Charlie Cong could have slaughtered us without much trouble, because we just gave into the situation and had a picnic, and because Charlie Cong was probably laughing too hard to draw a good bead. Charlie Cong didn't have "Laugh In". He had us to entertain him and this must have been important to the morale of Vietnamese troops who would ordinarily be plotting to kill us, to have these little breaks from the war, a USO like Laurel and Hardy act to watch and be amused by. If he were bored he'd have shot us, so we were grateful we were funny. And there was humor in it for us, too, because we knew how it felt to be lab animals, while a concept was tried over and over, instead of being proven before it was brought to the field where it's failure could unnecessarily endanger men's lives. There was humor, because there was nothing else we could do about it but laugh. During all the years of Nam, the Pentagon developed many systems by using us as the Test Dummies. Maybe there should be an additional category of back pay allotted for this service, don't you guys think? And maybe some kind of special memorial bonus for the families of those "Dummies" who didn't survive field testing.



On the other hand, during that month, thirty years ago this month, as this page is being written, The United States Of America put two men on the Moon. So failing to get us across a crick seemed all the more absurd, but this was The Nam, and you had to have been there.
-- EA July 1999

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