The 2nd/17th Infantry Battalion (Buffalo) deployed from Fort Ord, California to Camp Roberts, California on Sunday, October 5, 1980. We remained deployed At Camp Roberts until November 2, 1980. We deployed to Camp Roberts for a field training exercise. The Battalion had to bring me in out of the field twice during the field training exercise. The first time was so that I could receive my household goods from Korea. The second time was because the brigade had appointed me as a disinterested escort for a court-martial candidate who was being processed out of the Army under Chapter 10 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). That soldier’s name was Timothy Layton. Private Layton had an excellent music collection. He introduced me to the music of the B-52s. I shall forever be in his debt for that. While I was escorting Private Layton for his out processing, I ran into a couple of soldiers that I knew from the 5th Preventive Medicine Unit (PMU) in Korea. The first person I met was Master Sergeant Thorson. Master Sergeant Thorson had recently been promoted to Master Sergeant. He had been offered the job as the First Sergeant of the 5th PMU. But he chose to turn it down. The second person I met was Staff Sergeant Norris. Staff Sergeant Norris was one of the public health nurses in the unit. They talked about getting me out of the division, but I did not see what difference it would make. Because I was only going to be at Fort Ord until December 1980. With out-processing and PCS leave, I would start processing the week before Thanksgiving. There was absolutely no point in trying to change my assignment at Fort Ord. My Platoon Sergeant was a cocky little Sergeant First Class by the name of Billy Stills. He stood 5 feet 2 inches and weighed a mere 105 pounds soaking wet. He reminded me of a drill Sergeant I had once upon a time at Fort Lost in the Woods (Leonard Wood), named Staff Sergeant Bobby Farmer. SFC Stills did not like to be called Billy, which is exactly why I made it a point to call him Billy. He was a cocky little sonofabitch and I didn’t like him. I don’t think he liked me much at all either. He was always offering me Army FM’s and technical manuals. But I always beat him to the punch. I would say, “Oh. Gee Sergeant Stills, already have that one. Wait-a-minute. I think I have that in my car.” Then I would disappear to the parking lot. A few minutes later, I would return with the exact book he was holding in his hands. I would walk up to him and say, “I have the entire collection of books from the Second Infantry Division Advanced NCO Academy course. But thanks for offering me a few of your books.” That would usually frost his Froot Loops and chap his lips all at the same time. SFC Stills hated to be bested at anything. He told me that if I stuck with him, he would make a great NCO out of me. I informed him, “I hate to break it to you Sergeant Stills but I’m already a great NCO. In fact, I’m a legend in my own mind.” While we were in the field, SFC Stills decided to test his platoon on the land navigation course. He thought that his old-timer squad leaders would shine on the land navigation course. The only problem was that they had never been on the land navigation course at Camp Roberts. As a result, the playing field was leveled so to speak. Thus, everybody had to rely on skill to navigate the course. When I was in the infantry brigade at Fort Benning and in Korea, I was known for my prowess with a map and a compass in the woods. When I later attended Officer Candidate School (OCS), I even earned the nickname Daniel Boone (again). SFC Stills had all of his squads compete against each other on the land navigation course. He set the rules at the starting point for the land navigation course and gave each team an hour and a half to complete the course. Each team received the same materials. We all received a map, a compass, and a set of 10 instructional points. When he called time to start, all of the other squads proceeded to negotiate the land navigation course. I held my team back at the bleachers area. A couple of my privates pointed out, “Hey Sergeant Masters, those other teams are getting a head start. Aren’t you going to do anything about it?” I replied, “I am doing something about it. We’re going to sit here and calculate the landmarks that we need to navigate to, first. Then, we will orient the map and take off on the land navigation course. But we are going to do everything the smart way, not the hard way.” So, we sat there in the bleachers for about 15 minutes. And we calculated the points that we could just from the information we were given and the landmarks that we were given. We looked for obvious trails that we could take to save time. Once we were finished, we oriented our map to the ground and headed out. We finished the course in about an hour and five minutes. We were the first team to finish. My team was astounded that we finished first. But I told them, “You all saw how we did it. We planned our entire course before we ever walked it. We plotted where we thought each stake might be, and then we went out and verified those coordinates. We looked for landmarks to use as navigation points to help us navigate the course. We also looked for an obvious trail that we could walk on, rather than walking through the woods. In short, we planned every step of the way before we ever took a step. Then, all we had to do was execute the course. That is the key to success. SFC Stills came over to grade our land navigation sheet. We had all of the information for all 10 points marked correctly. He was surprised. The next team to finish the course, finished about 15 minutes after we did. However, they did not have all 10 points marked correctly. The last two teams didn’t finish in the allotted amount of time. Both teams took more than two hours to finish. As a result, SFC Stills did not grade their land navigation sheets. Two days after that, it started to snow. It kept snowing through the night into the following day. The temperature dropped, and the snow stuck to the ground. By the morning of the second day following the beginning of the snowstorm, we had a total accumulation of about six inches of new snow. There were also fresh pig tracks going through our field site. A few of us NCOs formed a hunting party to track the wild pigs. By noon we had located the herd. We isolated two of the pigs and killed them. We field dressed the pigs and took them to the mess tent so that they could be prepared for the pig roast. So, what do you suppose a bunch of soldiers do in the field when there’s nothing else to do but play in the snow? Do you give up? Come on. I’ve already answered the question. You play in the snow. You have a Buffalo snowball fight. What is a Buffalo snowball fight, you ask? Well, it’s a regular snowball fight among soldiers with one exception. Whenever a soldier gets ready to throw a snowball, that soldier has to yell, “Buffalo!” Sounds pretty simple, right? Believe me, it is. And nailing the senior NCOs and officers that you hate the most is the most satisfying. However, the only downside is the fact that you give yourself away by yelling, “Buffalo!” Every time you get ready to toss a snowball. That kinda gives everybody else a warning. However, there is an upside. When you have 50 or 60 people yelling that same phrase all at the same time, you never know who’s catching hell from who. So, the snowball fight wound up being a glorified free-for-all. That worked for me. Finally, it was time to deploy back to Fort Ord. That field training exercise for the 2nd/17th Infantry Battalion had been just another exercise in futility.
by 
by 