I was wearing my SF cap and had a card from the VA showing I get a discount on my tags. He said that I must be 100% disabled. I said "No-o-o."
Then he told me he was only 10% for agent orange. Then he went on to tell me how he was running two-man recon teams in Laos for the CIA while he was with the 101st. He said he spent 13 days in a tiger cage until the Marines came in and rescued them. He said the CIA wouldn't release his records to help him with the VA and he has been fighting them for the past ten years.
So I threw some of my own B.S. on him by telling him to join the Special Operations Association. They have access to all those top secret documents and all they have to do is stamp approve your claim and then the VA approves you for 100% plus an extra 2 grand a month for Special Operations with no questions asked. He just said "Oh," and didn't even inquire on how to get into the SOA.
Motto of the Secret Squirrel Division: "We Protect Your Nuts"
I told him about how I got fucked up during the latter stages of the Cold War. We used to do night HALO infils into Siberia to pull observation on the trains the Russians were moving their nukes around on. Living in a snow cave for weeks on end manning a bunch of radiac monitors, that whole area is such a giant frozen morass of industrial toxic waste and radioactive slime I'm still pissing chemlite juice.
It was no picnic either when the 3d Mongolian Motorized Spetznaz Division had us surrounded for six weeks and we were gnawing on tree bark and living off pine needle tea until they managed to airdrop a Fulton surface-to-air recovery system for us to ride tandem out of there . . .
Then there was all that time I spent in Odessa during our assassination campaign against the Black Sea Fleet maintenance personnel. Hanging out in those poorly heated Stalinist communal housing units took it's toll on my health as well; a guy can only breath so much coal dust and wash it down with bad vodka for only so long, that's why the tours were limited to 24 months.
When I told the man at the VA all this he looked at me like I had a dick growing out the middle of my forehead. He said there's nothing about any of that in your records. I said "Well, OF COURSE there's nothing in my records! That stuff was ultra-top secret classified at echelons above reality! You don't see anything in there about me being on the Space Shuttle Door Gunner program either, do you?" But I WAS and I showed him my SCUBA bubble to prove it. The CIA won't release my shit either so I'm in the same boat as Secret Agent Orange Man but at least he got a job at the DMV while I'm stuck out here in Palookaville . . .
Double Extra Ultra-Top Secret G-14 classified . . . which is even higher than 00-KNOT-SPY level 5 . . .
STORMBRINGER SENDS
for the life of me I will never understand why people feel the need to inflate their military service. my dad was a seabee. after he passed I heard all the stories from his friends about what he did..stuff he never talked about when he was alive..like horsetrading a dozen M14's for 3 cases of M3 grease guns..enough so every truck got one..after some guy jumped on the front bumper of a 5-ton and hosed the cab before anyone could get their M14's out.
ReplyDeleteor later, in argentia newfoundland using the truck-mounted snow blowers and blowing out every window on one side of the officer's quarters....
I guess the old saying is true...those who talk about it, probably weren't there. those who were there, probably don't talk about it.
Now there is nose sprayed tea all over the screen. motorized monglian spetznaz......how many hordes are there in a mongolian platoon?
ReplyDeleteIf I remember my Warsaw Pact TOE rightly there oughtta be bout 3-6 hordes per Mongolian Platoon.
DeleteSo you got your sinuses rinsed too?
Boat Guy
As a retired Master Sergent I remember the time when I was in the Marine RECON unit. They told me I should have turned right instead of left to get to the Class 6. They were very polite and escorted me off their compound and pointed me in the right direction.
ReplyDeleteSorry, I had to go there. I retired with 21 years and was in communications the entire time. I did nothing special, just my job. I have better stories as a civilian contractor in Iraq and Afghanistan.