Got together at Ft. Knox last weekend with guys from my first unit, the 13th U.S. Cavalry. Mostly re-telling old stories of fights and drunken shenanigans and people and places now gone.
The 13th Cavalry was the Army's very last horse cav regiment.
One of my two best Army buddies, Mitch Stein, and me in front of an M60A3 Patton tank, the ones we were on in 13 Tank, at the Patton museum, Ft. Knox. Remember the story from my bio about almost shooting my best friend? This is the guy.
The barracks where we took basic training together. Now abandoned. Fort Knox has been the home of Armor since the very beginning, 1940, when they switched from horses to tanks, but now they've moved it to Fort Benning, Ga., and combined it with the Infantry center. When we arrived for training in April 1985, we stayed first in the original wooden barracks from WWII. Pretty sad to see it all go.
Reliving memories of basic, in the spot where we and hundreds of thousands of men experienced untold hours of pain and misery from 1967 until last year. When we went to basic, it was still HARD, especially for combat arms soldiers, who trained separately with guys from just their own branch. Ft. Knox has three lovely hills which drill sergeants just loved, quaintly named "agony," "misery," and "heartbreak".
Notice how I look normal-sized amidst my comrades-in-arms? There's nothing light on a tank.
On the way home, I passed the spot where I wrecked my truck. Back up at the top of the pass, there are now signs all over instructing truckers to pull over for mandatory brake inspection before going down the pass.
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