Frontier Justice
Bathing With The Water Buffalo
Soldiers have some of the coolest toys. However, you have
to suffer a great deal to really play with them.
A dear friend was once a grunt with the 173rd Airborne Brigade posted in Vicenza, Italy. The 173rd is a storied paratrooper unit whose origins date back to 1917. Its members are called the Sky Soldiers. I’ve heard the 173rd described as, “The most fit group of alcoholic sociopaths in the known universe.”
Any healthy society venerates its warriors. Failure to do so is a great way to become conquered. However, along the way, sometimes reality gets a bit blurred.
If you shape your opinions from movies and the media, you could be forgiven for believing that American soldiers are all like John Rambo — rock hard super troops with chiseled physiques and ice water for blood. That was not my experience.
For the most part, even our elite special operations forces are really just souped up kids. They are indeed fit and exquisitely well-trained. They also have some of the neatest toys. However, even the new O-6 full Colonels are typically not yet 40 years old. The actual trigger pullers are often just teenagers.
As an aside, my wife’s grandfather fought in North Africa, Sicily and Italy during World War II. He once told me that a soldier should never remain in combat for more than a year. He said that, after about 12 months under fire, a man gets mean and is no longer afraid of anything. You cannot threaten him with court martial, peer pressure, or any other such vapid corporeal stuff.
I would actually assert that 19-year-olds make the best soldiers. Anything younger and you lack the requisite self-confidence. Much older and you start to question things. If the Big Green Machine was populated by old guys like me, we would, to pirate a phrase from the classic sci-fi opus Aliens, “Just nuke the site from orbit … it’s the only way to be sure.” It is that extraordinary teenaged sweet spot about which we will concern ourselves today.
Communal Suffering
Soldiers are subjected to corporate hardship for a variety of sound reasons. One is that sleep deprivation and hunger are combat analogues. Going without food and sleep reliably ratchets up the stress without a great deal of unnecessary risk. As a side benefit, it is those ghastly road marches and protracted deployments that give you bragging rights with your grandchildren decades later. If you use a little poetic license describing how horrible it all was, they’ll never know the difference.
My buddy’s platoon was deployed to the field for a month. During this time, they conducted patrol base operations and ran tactical missions like recons and raids. As they were living in the field, that meant MREs for food and no showers for a full 30 days.
I’ve done that before myself and didn’t much care for it. However, over time you reach a sort of dirt stasis. Old dirt has to fall off to make room for new dirt. Once you find that filth balance, you attain a sort of unhygienic Zen. Most folks are good with it. And then there was this one idiot guy …
The M107 water carrier consists of a 400-gallon aluminum
water tank mounted on a military trailer.
Details
While my friend’s unit was living tactically, they still required support. The easiest way to keep these guys in fresh water was to give them a dedicated water buffalo. The military designation was the M107. This was a giant 400-gallon aluminum tank mounted on a military trailer all painted camouflage. Everybody everywhere called them water buffaloes.
The M107 is pretty simple. There’s a big hatch on top to make them easy to fill, and spigots on the side so several soldiers can get water at once. The design is pretty stupid-proof.
In this case, they parked the water buffalo in the middle of the patrol base and just cycled by as needed to recharge canteens and get water to shave, brush their teeth, and so forth. Four hundred gallons should be enough to last 30 guys for a good while. However, over time, they began to notice something weird about the taste.
He said at first, they all assumed it was just that obligatory dearth of hygiene. However, late one evening, my friend dropped by the water buffalo to top off his canteen. While there, he heard something sloshing around inside. Producing his red lens flashlight, he carefully climbed up on top of the water buffalo and cracked the hatch.
He was shocked to discover one of his fellow grunts happily bathing inside the thing. This flaming moron was scrubbing down with soap and a dishrag, effectively ridding himself of his accumulated grunge. My buddy shouted for assistance and unceremoniously dragged the slippery miscreant out of the tank.
The platoon leader placed the young man under arrest and remanded him to their higher headquarters. Part of that was due to the rank stupidity he had shown in bathing in the unit’s drinking water. More importantly, however, it was to prevent my buddy and his fellow paratroopers from, no kidding, murdering him.
When I think back to my time in uniform, I remember being dirty a lot.
Ruminations
The unit scored a fresh water buffalo, and the guys all had the willies for a few days. My buddy had no idea what ultimately became of the mad bather. He never came back. I somehow doubt he had a long and productive career as a soldier. I imagine, given his simply breathtaking proclivity toward poor judgment, that he eventually ended up incarcerated someplace. Wherever it is, I do hope they have nice showers.
