When I served as the Commander of the 305th Supply and Services Company in the 227th Maintenance Battalion At Yongsan, Seoul, Korea, the company passed several major tests and milestones. And the company picked up new missions without skipping a beat. My company was currently participating in the Team Spirit field exercise, and it had deployed the following elements: the company headquarters, the company mess hall, the Class II & IV supply warehouse operation, packaged POL, water purification operations, transportation operations, delivery of palletized meals forward to the combat elements during the Team Spirit exercise, the laundry and bath unit and clothing exchange operations, a field Self-Service Supply Center (SSSC), and the Graves registration operations My unit mess hall had just finished an evaluation for the Department of the Army Philip A. Connelly Award for Food Service Excellence. I wasn’t sure if we had won the competition, but I do know that I heard a lot of ‘very good’(s) from the evaluation team. The phrase ‘very good’ seemed to be their way of saying outstanding or superior. I am not sure why that was, but I didn’t question their methods. Shortly after the Connelly inspection team left our area of operations, I received a distress call from my Battalion headquarters. It seemed that somebody had buried themselves up to their ass in mud just a short way from my area of operations, and they wanted me to go and assess the situation to determine if we could render assistance. All that my Battalion Operations could give me to go on were some grid coordinates to locate the soldiers in need of assistance. After I got off the radio, I called for my driver, Kato. I asked Kato to bring up my vehicle, the Black Beauty. Before we took off, I asked Kato, “Kato, do you know how to engage four-wheel-drive on this vehicle?” He looked at me kind of funny and said, “I think so, sir. I just shift to neutral and input to transfer case in either four-wheel-drive high or four-wheel-drive low-lock.” “Okay. That’s almost right. Do you know why four-wheel-drive low-lock is called low-lock?” “Uh, no Sir. I am not sure, Sir.” “The reason that it is called low-lock and the reason that I said that you are almost right is that you also have to lock the front hubs to the axles in order to get true four-wheel-drive. If you neglect to lock the front axles and you get buried up to your ass in mud, you just might find yourself in a world of hurt. Cuz you ain’t gonna push that vehicle out of that mud. And what are the odds that most people have a shovel with them inside their vehicle?” “Uh, I guess if I had to guess, Sir, I would guess not many.” “Well, if you had guessed not any you might have been closer to the truth. Case in point, do you have a shovel in the Black Beauty?” “Uh, no Sir.” “I rest my case. Perhaps we should get one. You know. Just in case we find the poor slobs and they need one.” “Why did you call them poor slobs, Sir?” “Well, the message I got said they were buried up to their ass in mud. That begs to the very definition of slob. The reason I called them poor slobs is that they need our assistance. I just want to make sure that we don’t become like them and bury our own asses in mud. You know what I mean, Gene? I’m a poet and you didn’t even know it.” “(Laughing and chuckling), You know Sir, that really is pretty lame.” “Yeah? Then why are you laughing?” “Cuz I sort of like my job.” “Now who’s lame? Anyway, get a shovel and a log chain from the motor pool just in case. Then we will hit the road.” “Yes Sir.” We drove for about 20 minutes before we found the soldiers in need of our assistance. They apparently were not familiar with this sector of the Team Spirit exercise box, and they had missed their turn off to head left by about 150 meters. The trail that they had turned onto led up a hillside down the road, but that trail was virtually impassable after the recent rains. We found their vehicle buried in mud at the base of the hill side where the trail dipped just before it started up the hillside. Where the trail had dipped, water had pooled from all of the recent rains. And that pooled water had formed one helluva huge mud puddle, but apparently those poor slobs didn’t know that. So, they went charging down into the dip and up the other side and lost traction. They lost traction when they started the abrupt climb out of the huge mud puddle up the muddy hillside. It became obvious to me that the driver of that vehicle didn’t know that he needed to lock his hubs either. I asked Kato to stop our vehicle long before we got to the dip in the trail so that he could lock the hubs on the Black Beauty. After he dismounted and locked the hubs, we drove over to the near edge of the dip in the trail. Then I called out to the soldiers in need of assistance, “Have you guys lock the hubs on your vehicle?” One of the soldiers called back, “Lock our hubs? How do we do that?” “Get out and look at the front hubs of your vehicle. There are little switch knobs that you turn to the locked position. Go ahead and do that now. Once you have locked the hubs, you will have to place the vehicle in reverse to try to back up this way. Check to see if that works.” The soldiers tried, and they got their vehicle to move a little ways, but it was still stuck. I informed them that we had a log chain and that I would radio back for a five ton tractor to come out to pull them out. I was not about to attempt to pull them out with my vehicle and I was not about to get my ass muddy walking over to them. I asked them if they wanted to come over to me and fetch the log chain, but neither of those soldiers felt like swimming through the cold ass mud. I guess it was bad enough that they had to get out of their vehicle just to lock the hubs in an attempt to free it. The five ton tractor arrived from my field site about 25 minutes later and had them pulled to safety within ten minutes after that. Then, I sent the five ton tractor back to the field site. Finally, Kato and I showed the soldiers where they should have turned, and then we returned to the field site. I radioed Battalion and reported that we had successfully accomplished our rescue mission to save the soldiers who were buried in mud. And we had done so without burying our own asses in mud and without running into any other exercises in futility.
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