Memory

18 years ago, when I was a wet behind the ears navy officer, I went to a conference. (Not the last Tailhook. I coulda gone to that. There was a C130 with empty seats there. That might have been interesting.)

At this conference I sat next to this old guy. I was minding my own business, but he was chatty. And he talked funny.

Turns out he was talking funny because he was Dutch. And in the resistance in the war.

Their tactic against the Boche was to arrange with prostitutes. If a likely officer was using her services she’d place a candle at a certain spot at a certain window. ‘Likely’ meant ‘alone and WITH his service pistol.’ This old guy and buddies would then ambuscade the nazi on his way back to the barracks by shoving him into a canal. There was no way to climb back out of the water and in the winter the cold would overcome them soon enough. The trick was to get the pistol of the guy out of his holster before you dumped him in the drink. Then you’d have weapon for other operations later.

Kinda cool sitting next to the guy.

When guys DO talk about wartime escapades, they always seem so low key. Like they were discussing the weather.

Like the story my XO (a Marine Colonel) told about how he has to warn barbers not to touch this one spot on his temple because if they do he faints dead away. It was from the time an NVA soldier emerged from a bunker and stitched him up, abdomen, hand, head, with an AK. He always thought those shots weren’t fair because the guy was already dead from the .45 round to the forehead. When the Colonel (then a Lieutenant) woke up in the hospital he still had the frame of the 1911 attached to his hand. The round from the AK had hit the trigger guard and bent it in such a way that he couldn’t let go, so they stripped the parts off they could get to and left it there. The docs were more worried about the head wound to care about the hand injury at the time.