97th Signalman
04-16-2010, 01:04 PM
I remember the culmination of my bayonet training back at Fort Hood in 1960. At the end of our infiltraiton course (you know where you crawl under barbed wire while they shoot tracers over you and blow up things all around you) there was a trench. While in the trench were were to fix bayonets and then jump up out of the trench and charge at a couple rows of parry dummies. We were to parry and thrust at each of two dummies while ripping the sawdust stuffing out of their burlap thoraxes.
It went OK on my first two daylight runs. However, our last time through was at night after the course was hosed down to turn the sandy dust into a gritty mess.
Having completed my brave crawl in the face of the ''enemy" I was in said trench struggling to fix my bayonet. The lock stud groove in my bayonet was jambed full of the mud-n-crud from the course and I couldn't get my bayo to lock on to the stud. My DI was screaming enthusiastic advice that focused on my ineptitude and my questionable ancestry until I became so motivated that I jumped up and charged the first dummy while screaming the expected bloodthirsty oaths to demonstrate my ferocity. When I made my devastaing thrust I managed to plant my unlatched bayonet firmly in the to the wood backing for of the burlap gut of my hapless opponent, where it remained as I withdrew my Garand and charged the second dummy with my now naked rifle. Without a moment's thought, I parried the arm of the second dummy and gave it one horrendous horizontal buttstroke, snapping the dummy inhalf. My DI yelled "Watch trooper Dalzell, he's a real killer." I spent the next half hour trying to figure out how to retrieve my bayonet without attracting anymore attention from any of the training cadre. While climbing back up into one of our deuce-and-a-halves for the ride back to the barracks, I was paralyzed with fear about what might happen to me when it was discovered that I had lost my bayonet.
Later that night while trying to get to sleep in my bunk I saw a shadow approaching my bunk. I heard the unmistakable gritty whisper of my DI as he approached me in the darkness. He said, "you might need this sometime later trooper" as he laid the bayonet on my bunk in the dark. For the rest of our training cycle all of the cadre addressed me as "young killer."
At the end of my basic training cycle I went to radio school and spent the next three years in the Signal Corps. Everytime I used my bayonet to pry something open, or chop up some insouble stuff in my canteen cup I thought of that night on the infiltration course. I really valued M1 with its nine and half pounds of walnut and steel. I think that If I had attempted to smash that dummy with one Stoner's six-pound plastic pop guns that whole night might have been an entirely different experience.
Anyway, we won the cold war so it all ended well.
It went OK on my first two daylight runs. However, our last time through was at night after the course was hosed down to turn the sandy dust into a gritty mess.
Having completed my brave crawl in the face of the ''enemy" I was in said trench struggling to fix my bayonet. The lock stud groove in my bayonet was jambed full of the mud-n-crud from the course and I couldn't get my bayo to lock on to the stud. My DI was screaming enthusiastic advice that focused on my ineptitude and my questionable ancestry until I became so motivated that I jumped up and charged the first dummy while screaming the expected bloodthirsty oaths to demonstrate my ferocity. When I made my devastaing thrust I managed to plant my unlatched bayonet firmly in the to the wood backing for of the burlap gut of my hapless opponent, where it remained as I withdrew my Garand and charged the second dummy with my now naked rifle. Without a moment's thought, I parried the arm of the second dummy and gave it one horrendous horizontal buttstroke, snapping the dummy inhalf. My DI yelled "Watch trooper Dalzell, he's a real killer." I spent the next half hour trying to figure out how to retrieve my bayonet without attracting anymore attention from any of the training cadre. While climbing back up into one of our deuce-and-a-halves for the ride back to the barracks, I was paralyzed with fear about what might happen to me when it was discovered that I had lost my bayonet.
Later that night while trying to get to sleep in my bunk I saw a shadow approaching my bunk. I heard the unmistakable gritty whisper of my DI as he approached me in the darkness. He said, "you might need this sometime later trooper" as he laid the bayonet on my bunk in the dark. For the rest of our training cycle all of the cadre addressed me as "young killer."
At the end of my basic training cycle I went to radio school and spent the next three years in the Signal Corps. Everytime I used my bayonet to pry something open, or chop up some insouble stuff in my canteen cup I thought of that night on the infiltration course. I really valued M1 with its nine and half pounds of walnut and steel. I think that If I had attempted to smash that dummy with one Stoner's six-pound plastic pop guns that whole night might have been an entirely different experience.
Anyway, we won the cold war so it all ended well.