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RINGING THE BELL
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A little prank can only last so long
before the victim returns the favor
Before
the crap hit the fan at LZ St George (See "War Stories" at top), they
sent the two 155 SPs & Tracks to St. George to reinforce the defensive
perimeter. They were situated right
in front of our parapet. Well, when
St George was built, the area of the gun pits was really messy from the red clay
that we were sitting on. That stuff
was everywhere…getting all over the guns,
the equipment, and everything else
for that matter.
Shortly
afterwards, we got lucky cause some higher ups had the idea to send in
truckloads of gravel to cover the red clay.
That worked well.
But,
no good deed goes unpunished. After
the arrival of the 155s (especially the one that was right in front of us), we
got the bright idea that it would be funny to throw gravel at the 155s while we
pulled guard duty. We could just
imagine that the guys inside were trying to rest or sleep and we were driving
them crazy by tossing the gravel and banging against that metal shell.
Every "hit" must have sounded like being inside the bell tower
of Big Ben in London.
Well,
after a few nights of this, our whole gun crew was sitting on the parapet wall
and we decided to throw gravel at the turret all at once.
Why ring one bell when you can ring a lot of bells? I guess that was the
final straw.
Next
thing we hear is them engaging the electric pump for the hydraulic system.
Then the gun tube lifts up a bit and the turret starts to turn toward our
parapet. We just sat there wondering what they were doing. Before
we realized it, the turret was no longer pointing downrange, but instead it was
turned 180 degrees directly towards us and our bunker. Then,
we see the tube lowering! Everyone
jumped up. Before we could move out,
they shot off a blank that was used for the main charge.
You've
never seen 5-6 guys haul ass so fast. We
were running and jumping into the next parapet or completely getting out of
Dodge. When we all realized what had happened, all of us got out of our holes or
wherever we had taken shelter.
The
guys in the 155s then popped the turret, got out, and were rolling around
laughing their asses off. They really got us good and then some.
Needless
to say, that was the end of throwing gravel at the 155s.
They got a "big bang" out of getting even with us.
submitted by
Sp4 Rick Ericksen