This is part of a series of nodes tentatively titled Sixteen Years Before The (Antenna) Mast: My Life In The Bush With SIGINT. The previous node in the series is tools of the trade. For once, your understanding of what the heck is going on in here will NOT be increased if you read Army Security Agency.
In the summer of 1982, when I had already come to terms with the notion that my time in the Regular Army would be coming to an end fairly soon, one of my hobbies intersected with the needs of the Army for a change. Our battalion had been tapped to send a team to the annual Nijmegen March, a four-day commemoration of the liberation of the Netherlands in general and Operation Market-Garden in particular. This year's march was particularly noteworthy since for the first time, the Dutch had invited teams from the Bundeswehr, and the Germans somewhat sheepishly accepted the invitation. In any event, the battalion was assembling a team, and my name came up since it was common knowledge that I spent a lot of weekends hiking through the West German countryside for twenty-five kilometers at a pop. Now, the Nijmegen march was a little more strenuous than that; it was a 100-mile march spread out over four days, and the march required us to wear our field uniforms and carry at least 10 kilos of gear including our weapon. I reckoned I could make it, even if the battalion sergeant major was openly skeptical - perhaps BECAUSE he'd had the poor judgement to open his mouth on the subject. Anyway, I was on the team, and one day in July we boarded buses and headed off to someplace on the Dutch border where we joined the other American teams and were herded into a theater to watch A Bridge Too Far so those of us who weren't into history or hadn't seen the movie would understand what this was all about.
And then we got to Nijmegen, set up our stuff in the military camp, and crashed. The next day we rose early so as to be on the road before the heat got to be Too Much, and marched out of the camp onto the streets of of Nijmegen. Surprisingly, there were plenty of Dutch of all ages lining the road to cheer us on. Even more surprisingly, one of our teammates didn't even make it through the first mile. About five blocks into town, he emitted a strangled cry, spun out of formation and went down on his face as if he'd been shot. We helped him to his feet, but he couldn't even stand, much less walk. The medics came and took him away on a stretcher, and we marched off. He'd been an extremely fit lad, a "super jock" who routinely maxed the PT test and lifted weights for fun. Turned out later that was what did him in: his hamstring hadn't been properly stretched out, and it had snapped like an over-tightened guitar string. That was the end of his marching.
The first two days of the march weren't too bad. The Netherlands are largely made up of flat farmlands or gently rolling hills, and the extra fifteen kilometers a day was no big deal for me, even with web gear, gas mask and rifle. I felt pretty damn good, to be honest. It usually took us four or five hours to finish each day's march, after which we got our blisters drained and sprayed with Tuf-skin at the medic tent, ate dinner, and proceeded to get hammered on cheap Heineken in the beer tent which the Dutch had thoughtfully provided for us thirsty soldiers. The third day, though, our march took us through the Groesbeek Heights. This was where the airborne troops of the 82nd Airborne had holed up during Market Garden, just south of the city of Nijmegen, and while they may not look like much on a map, marching through them really kicked our asses. It was hot, we were fatigued after marching eighty k in two days already, and our feet hurt enough that we were gobbling ibuprofen pills like M&Ms. As we struggled up one of the hills, we were passed first by an ancient Swiss militiaman, lugging an FN rifle and what appeared to be a full field pack; he was dressed in the Swiss camo uniform, which looked like someone had taken a set of khaki-colored fatigues and thrown up on them after eating a pizza. The old duffer passed us like we were just standing there, which was pretty embarrassing. Later, we were passed by a Canadian team from Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, which as they saw us burst into teasing song:
We must
We must
We must increase our busts!
We must
We must
We must increase our busts!
The bigger, the better
The tighter the sweater
We must increase our busts!
The Yanks are depending on us!
We must
We must
We must increase our busts!
It was too much. We'd been mooching along in a loose, theoretically road-march formation at best, and here came these Canadians marching along in parade-ground formation at a brisk 120 steps to the minute and singing. We fell out and sat by the side of the road, resting our aching feet, laughing our asses off and cheering the Canucks on. We eventually made it back to camp after having been out marching for about six hours, showered, had our feet seen to and retired to the beer tent.
This particular night the tent was filled with soldiers of every country in NATO and a few that weren't; the table next to us, for example, was occupied by a Swedish coed team from one of their civil defense units, there was a bunch of Austrians on the other side of the beer tent, and I've already mentioned the Swiss. The center of attention, though, was a table full of Brits just about dead center in the hall. Nobody drinks harder than the Brits, and by the time we got there they'd already built a ziggurat of beer cans in the middle of their table that would have stunned a Babylonian. After we'd been there for an hour or so, one of the Brits got up in response to a bellowed command from their sergeant major, saluted, and marched over to the Swedes' table. There he approached one of the Swedish gals who was massively endowed; her boobs appeared to be the size of basketballs. The Brit saluted her and roared: "Ma'am! The sergeant major requests the honor of posting your brassiere at the peak of the tent, Ma'am!" The Swedes found this hilarious, and to our amazement, she opened her blouse, whipped off her brassiere, and presented it to the British soldier. He saluted, and proceeded to climb to the top of the beer tent's wooden supports, where he fastened the bra to the rafters and descended.
This set off a mad scramble to recover the prize, with people shinnying up the supports while the Brits shook cans of beer and showered them with the frothy contents. Most of the contenders didn't even get close, being barely sober enough to climb in the first place, and clambered back down to jeers from the crowd. Presently, however, a French soldier decided to have a go at it. Now, what I didn't realize at the time was that while nobody particularly liked the Germans, especially after the Recent Unpleasantness, just about everybody hated the French, whose reputation for being a bunch of snobby assholes went back a lot farther than the Germans' bloody-minded urges to conquest. At any rate, when the Frenchman was within a couple of yards of the prize, the British sergeant major stood up and bellowed "FROGS UP!" in a voice that was probably heard in Dover. At once, the entire British table stood and began pitching full cans of beer at the French soldier. Naturally enough, he removed his hands from the beam he was climbing so he didn't get skulled with a flying can of Heineken. Inevitably, he couldn't hang on with just his legs, and fell off the beam...right onto the British table and its beer-can ziggurat. Cans went flying, an inarticulate scream of rage erupted from a dozen British throats, a boot party ensued, and the riot started as the Frenchman's comrades came to his aid. We beat a prudent retreat back to our tent.
The fourth day was almost literally a walk in the park. After the Golgotha of the Groesbeek Heights, the Cuijk march was nothing, and soon enough we were back in the beer tent, euphoric at having finished the march. We also took the opportunity to swap memorabilia with other marchers. I swapped my sergeant's stripes and battalion crests (along with my woobie ;_;) to a Luxemburger for his beret, which made me the proud owner of a beret from the Grand Ducal Guard. Hey, there's only eight hundred of those guys, and I could always buy another woobie.
Maybe someday I'll do it again, only this time without the rifle and the battle rattle.
IN2K11