Urban Legend?

Factual Questions
21

Here’s two stories to add:

  1. A friend of mine I was in the National Guard with told me about a fellow he served with in the Gulf that tagged a camel with a TOW missile on their Hummer. They strapped the carcass across the hood, and headed back to camp. As soon as the locals saw it, they went ape. The troopers had to make up a quick ‘Saddam’s guys did this’ story to get out of it.

  2. My old college roomie went thru ROTC, and was in a National Guard Air Assault unit at Fort Lewis. One day, coming back from Yakima Firing Center (now Yakima Training Center), a Cobra pilot fired off some blanks at some livestock (sheep or cows, I forget). Some of them died of fright, and the farmer got the tail number of the ship. Fella was in a heap of trouble when he got back.

If you’re good, I’ll tell you the 101st Airborne cotton field story…
-sb

“This is going to take a special blend of psychology and extreme violence.”

22

A friend of mine was a helicopter pilot in the 101st. Tell me about the cotton field and I’ll pass it on to her! Pleeeeeaaaaase?

23

OK, no animals were harmed in this story, but…

(hijack mode on)

My old Sargeant Major told me this story about one of his stateside tours with the 101st (he was an E-5 or lower back then, prolly early 60’s). I guess they had some new S-3 Training officer at Brigade, and he was placed in charge of finding a drop zone for a Engineer (Heavy Equipment) Company. Well, he took a jeep out, and found a good soft dirt field to drop the troops on.

Couple of months pass, and the jumpmasters open the doors on the transports…and look down…and something looks wrong, but they can’t quite figure it out. As the troopers land, they realize that the dirt field is now filled with blooming cotton! A sharecropper comes out of his shack, happy as heck, because the Army has to pay for the whole crop, and he doesn’t have to pick any! As he’s shaking hands with all the troops, everyone turns towards a whistling sound. Turns out one of the graders’ (remember, this was an Engineer unit) chutes did not deploy correctly…and BLAM! lands right on top of the house. Sgt. Major said it was just like the cartoons-walls all blew out and everything. Now, this old fella is twice as happy, cuz he gets his money for the cotton, and a new house!

He didn’t say what happened to the Training officer, but one can only assume…

-sb

“This is going to take a special blend of psychology and extreme violence.”

24

Here are two stories I can’t confirm or debunk:

  1. The lake beds at Edwards AFB fill up with water every year, up to a meter deep. A man was waterskiing on it, being towed by a UH-1. The participants faced disciplinary action.

  2. Someone accidentally activated an ejection seat in an F-4 while the plane was in a hangar. It blew him through the overhead, killing him.

This one is true:

After the lakebed filled with water, someone put a large plywood shark’s fin into it just off of Rosamond Blvd. A couple of days later I brought my camera, but the wind had knocket it down.

25

I did a quick search of my Bloom County books and couldn’t find this particular strip, so it’s probably in one of the few I don’t have. I see the big Babylon book was published in '86; if one of the smaller books was also published that year it could be in there. I also don’t have any published before '84 or after '88.

“Age is mind over matter; if you don’t mind, it don’t matter.” -Leroy “Satchel” Paige

26

Am I the only one who sees a problem with this? TOW’s are anti-tank missles. Wouldn’t it blow the camel all over Saudi Arabia?

–It was recently discovered that research causes cancer in rats.

27

Here’s snopes on the penguins (attributes it to Bloom County).

And, yeah, Diceman, I wondered how much camel was left also.

28

I wondered about that meself, so I quizzed further. What happened is that it hit the poor camel before the minimum safety doodad was armed. So, you essentially have a four-foot long hunk of telephone pole going really fast in one direction. That would leave enough to strap to a hood.

And, for the record, TOW’s are really cool. I saw my unit fire some in practice, using dumpsters for targets (why dumpsters, I don’t know). As they say down south, ‘they blowed up real good’. But, considering they were old, old TOW’s (mid-70’s vintage-it was either let the Guard fire 'em or destroy 'em) we had a couple break their guide wires and do funny things, which was…interesting.

I wondered why the first sgt told me to stay in the command track, a ways back from the firing line…g.

-sb

“This is going to take a special blend of psychology and extreme violence.”

29

Here is the Straight Dope on the kangaroo story mentioned earlier. It was forwarded to me be the Corporate Public Relations Officer of Australia’s Defence Science and Technology Organisation in reply to my information request. Bold print was added by me.