As always, lighted edited. Enjoy.

On a FTX in South Korea Spring of '90. The LT decides he wants us driving the APCs and Vulcans with our hatches down, using the glass periscope things that surround the hatch area, so we can practice driving the way we would in a real combat situation. Which by the way, I didn't do once in Desert Storm. We only lowered the hatch if the gunner needed to fire.

The problem is, and we told him, the glass is older than Jesus. It is orange with age, cracked, etc, we can't see a fucking thing. Finally his compromise was to "do the best we can and have your team chiefs poke their heads up and direct you." He also wanted them to stay as low as possible. Ya know - snipers. Ok then. FTXs are filled with a lot of pretend bullshit, but this was another level of stupid to me.

Being a high speed soldier NCO wannabe, I shut up and do my job. It is damn hard for me to see though, and my team chief is having a difficult time directing me without poking his head all the way up out of his hatch. About an hour into this, we come to a VERY steep hillside road, and the convoy begins to climb it. We get to the top, then start to go down. As I crest the hill and start down, I see the convoy stopped in front of me. The road was muddy enough from melted snow we had a hard time stopping - I slid for 15 feet or so. I missed hitting the APC in front of me by a foot or so when he stopped suddenly. The whole column was stopped. On a hill. I later found out it was because the LT was lost - he stopped to look at his map and the terrain. He was at the front of the column, which was no located at the bottom of the trail on the other side of the hill, so the entire battery was stopped on this fucking muddy trail.

A second later, the Vulcan behind us crests the hill, sees my APC stopped, but can't stop in time. He slides and hits us, Which pushes the nose of my APC towards the edge of the road, which is currently over a 50 ft drop to the bottom. How we didn't go over I'll never know. Momentum is conserved in a system, and we probably should have. I guess he didn't hit us very hard - just enough to give me a good scare. He still moved us a good five feet.

One of the KATUSA's was driving, and he was horrified that he almost killed us. (KATUSA's were Korean soldiers who lived and worked with Americans instead of being in the ROK military. It was better pay and conditions for them.) He kept apologizing after it was all over, thinking I was mad at him. Poor guy - he was one of the better ones we had.

I went apeshit ballistic about the LT. This retarded idea almost got me and my team chief killed. I jumped out, ripped off my helmet, and yelled "Where the fuck is that asshole!" and went running to the front of the formation. Just as I get within choking distance of the O-1, our platoon daddy (who was helping him orient the map and figure out where we were) grabs me and slams me to the ground. He won't let me up until I've chilled.

The O-1 is all like "What? What the fuck is wrong with him?" I unleash a string of cussing that the world has rarely seen, directed at him, along with many threats of bodily harm. Long story short, some NCO convinced him that I was just shaken up from the near miss, and that it was a bad idea. He suddenly changed course and let us drive with hatches up so we could see until the new glass came in so we could drive safely. I'll be the first to admit it wasn't the smartest thing in the world, but that O-1 was transferred to another battery about a month later, so he must have pissed off someone. Bastard.

The entire year I was there, we never did get new glass. Go figure.

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