Un altro racconto di guerra; questa volta l’utente Disgruntled_Veteran scrive:
This Ruckle story will have four parts. In Ruckles first year and a half, Ruckle had a several accidents. The kicker is that he NEVER had a drivers license in his life. He lied about being able to drive.
#1
Ruckle arrived on Post in mid 2000. As was the policy with our unit, after orientation, new MPs rode around with a patrol for the first few weeks to get to know the layout of the post. Makes sense. So Ruckle is on his first night of patrol. He is riding with a Sgt. we will call Lutz. Lutz was pretty cool. One of those NCOs who followed the rules, but wasn't a dick about it. He let the new guys drive around to get the lay out. This was a Friday night and Lutz and Ruckle are driving around one of the housing neighborhoods when a call comes over the radio of a disturbance at the Enlist Club. As anyone can tell you, Enlisted clubs are loud and rowdy. Not like the gentlemanly NCO and Officer’s Clubs.
Lutz told him there was no hurry to get over there, but Ruckle flipped a bitch on the spot and hit the gas. Unfortunately he didn’t have total control and scraped a car parked along the curb. No dents, but a massive scratch on the sides of both cars. Now hitting someone’s car with your cruiser is a big no no. The owner apparently overheard the commotion and came out. Unfortunately for Lutz, Ruckle hit the car of a brand new Butter Bar who had been on post less than a month. I believe he was with supply, but not 100% sure. He went off on Lutz and Ruckle. My unit and our MSgt were called in because of the commotion. Ruckle, being Ruckle and not wanting to look bad tried to tell the Lt. that had he not parked in the street, it wouldn’t have happened. I swear I thought Lutz was going to punch Ruckle. He went redder than a ripe tomato. Now Lutz, the butter bar, and a Msgt. are yelling at Ruckle to shut up. Eventually we had our Lt. come out and smooth everything over and Ruckle admitted that he didn’t have a license. He was then banned from driving until he got a license by our First Shirt.
But would an order from our First Shirt deter Ruckle from driving again? What do you think?
#2
Fast forward a month. Ruckle is on gate duty and everyone who has ever worked the gates knows how much it sucks. When relief comes everyone tries to pile in the transport and wants to turn in their gear and hit the rack. Well, Ruckle, decides that he can drive the Tahoe being used to move people around. No one seemed to know or remembered that he was not supposed to drive. So he drives them back to the armory to urn in their gear. However, his parking job was flawed. I syou not he hit another car. And not jus t anyone’s car. The First Shirt’s Mustang. I swear you can’t make this sup. He apparently tried to back up into the parking spot and hit the front, passenger side of the Mustang. No real damage, but a fed up paint job. He was relieved of duty and put on a cleaning detail (SWAT) for a month. I wish I could have been a fly on the First Sergeant’s wall. I’m sure he had to have gone ballistic.
It is around this time we think Ruckle was picked up for altering his military ID to change his DOB to make him appear to be 21. The idiot gave his ID to someone who altered other soldiers IDs. The forger was caught and Ruckle's ID was amungst those confiscated. What we didn't know was that he made a deal to be Investigation’s tattle tale.
#3
So now we get to Ruckle’s fourth accident. I know he had a third one at some point with someone’s personal vehicle about a month or two after the second accident but I don’t know the details. So now we are in early 2001. It is monsoon season in the area and at this time of year we get a lot of mud pits and flooded areas. Ruckle is on patrol again doing perimeter security with newer a soldier we will call Kang. Kang was a PFC. He doesn’t know about Ruckle yet. So that night Ruckle convinces Kang to let him drive the Tahoe they are in. They are patrolling the fencing along the perimeter of the post. (The same area where Ruckle lost the M249.)
So Ruckle is going a bit fast for the muddy area and then hits a dip in the road that turned out to be a pit of mud. The Tahoe was up to the bottom of its doors in mud and stuck to boot. So instead of calling for help from one of us, Ruckle convinces Kang to let him call his buddy with a truck to pull them out. He tells Kang that they’d get in huge trouble they are found like this. Kang is nice, but not bright. He goes along with it. Ruckle calls SPC Alabama. Alabama brings his Dodge Datoka to the mud pit. He backs into it so he can get the rope he had to reach the Tahoe. Can you guess what happened? Now both vehicles are stuck in the mud. Kang, in a bit of a panic calls it in that they are stuck and need help. I was riding in a Humvee patrol near by so we were one of the three units that arrived.
I syou not, I was laughing so hard I actually feel on the ground laughing. I thought I’d piss myself. I wasn't the only one laughing. There is Ruckle and Kang, knee high in the mud, two vehicles stuck and the look on our MSgt’s face was priceless. He was the only one not laughing and had a look like “this must be a bad dream”. Before Ruckle even opened his mouth, our MSgt. yelled “Don’t say a fing word Ruckle!”. All he asked Kang was, “Who was driving?”
Kang starts to say “It was…”
Ruckle interrupts and says “It’s not my fault”.
So we spend the next 30 minutes using the Humvee to tow Alabama’s truck out, but can not get the Tahoe out. The motor pool had to come out the next day to fetch it. Ruckle is reassigned to gate duty for the foreseeable future.
#4
So it is now the fall of 2001. Post 9/11 and anyone serving then knows how security is boosted on all military bases. In all this chaos, Ruckle gets assigned back to patrol. The BDU Gods must have forsaken us. Around Halloween Ruckle is on a two person team assigned to an up-armored Humvee. Ruckle is assigned to the M60 and there is a driver with him we will call SPC NotSo because he was Not So bright. They are supposed to stay near the gates and provide additional support incase of an emergency. I’m sure anyone serving saw these kinds of additional units post 9/11.
So Ruckle somehow got NotSo to switch places with him and let Ruckle drive. (When will Ruckle or anyone else learn?) Ruckle is driving and take the Humvee outside their AOR to the desert area for a little joy riding. Sure enough the call comes over the radio around midnight that there has been a vehicular accident. We all know who it had to be and were not disappointed. Ruckle had been driving on some pretty uneven terrain and somehow got the up-armored Humvee to lean over at enough of an angle to empale it on a metal fence post. He must have driven it with the driver side up at almost a 45 degree angle on a dirt mound next to the post for it to be able to pierce it the way it did. The fence It was the damnedest thing I had seen yet. I mean there it is, a Humvee, tilting at an angle, with a metal post plunged into the rear storage area, and part of the old barbed wire fence still attached and ripped out of the ground.
Do you know how hard you’d have to hit that to punch though the sides? Well, Ruckle tried to blame the night time driving conditions on the accident, but no one cared. The next day he is on SWAT and stays there for a month, yet is STILL not kicked out. Part of his punishment is to replace the fencing with new C-wire. They gave him an Article 15 and took his one stripe. Again, we didn’t know he was a Narc. We just could not understand why the brass wouldn’t drum his ass out. From that day on No one ever let him drive again.
I hope you enjoyed is Ruckle story. My next Ruckle story will be the time Ruckle lost a 40MM during a training exercise. After that, it you like, I tell a story about how we got revenge on Ruckle for trying to seduce with a SSgt's wife in front of him at a company BBQ.