Huge injuries at DB for both teams could turn tide of game

The leap matters more than the height

I really hope the kid does well considering what he’s been through.

He and I actually got along very well, probably because He kept forgetting that I was from NC (and I stopped correcting him after the first several times), and thought I was from his hometown in Florida (his brother was still the local high school football coach there) where my sister and her family lived. He wasn’t a bad guy, it’s just that being in a system (military, business,etc.) people sometimes do things that they normally (personally) wouldn’t do. It turns some people into weaslely, backstabing, kiss ups, but maybe that was a part of them all along.

We just had different views on leadership. For example, one time a sargent (E-6 I think) came upto me shaking his head, just after his welcome to the company meeting with the CO. The sgt. just couldn’t believe what he’d heard, saying the CO told him he was not a hard man, but a fair man, that he’d now been commanding the company for around 9 or 10 months now, and he had only given out 216 Article 15’s. Well, my jaw hit the floor as well, and I told the sargent that I’d be ashamed to say that, not proud of it like the CO seemed to be, because that only told me that you couldn’t control your troops.

I really only have 2 things that I can’t forgive him for, his conduct while we were on a training exercise in Alaska during December, and his vendita against one of my best friends an E-7 who had won the Medal Of Honor in Vietman that followed it. It was in Alaska that he made the same mistakes that he repeated during “Blackhawk Down”. In mid December we only had around 3 to 4 hours of daylight (I believe it was around 10:30 am till 2:30 pm), but fortunately it wasn’t total blackness, because the snow reflected the moon and starlight. The CO sent our company to the rifle range to qualify under winter warfare conditions one day, and we were all told (officers, NCO’s, everyone) that we would be bused back to base when we finished. The CO showed up around 2:00 pm, and then told us we would be marcking back to base (around 15 miles or more). So, we all put on our snowshoes and started walking, after around a mile over an open field. We lost the light at the same time we reached the base of a very steep hill, took off our showshoes and started climbing. The hill was so steep that Sgt. Bondsteal and I only made it up by standig on the base of trees and pullling each other up. Unit coheasion was destroyed, with troops spreadout all over the face of the hill (or mountain, it was sort of in between). As we reached the top a blinding snow storm started, so the company reformed and started marching. We were following a trail, but in no time you couldn’t see the trail under the rapidly falling snow, and the trailing 1/3rd of the company became seperated. (the CO didn’t know, and kept the company marching). Sgt. Bondsteal quickly realized how dire our situation was, and ask the instructors to see their maps, but they didn’t have one, so he then asked to use their radios, only to be told that the radio’s hadn’t been working all day, that they thought the batteries were dead. Sgt. Bondsteal seized control of the situation, shouting “We’re backtracking, double time!”. We were very lucky, Sgt. Bondsteal found where the trail had cutoff though the footprints were now burried under fresh snow, and after double timing through the snow for another mile or so, we finally caught up with the company. After another mile or 2 we reached a highway, and started following it. After only a few hundred yards the 1st man passed out, dropping to the ground. Even though it was only in the teens or low 20’s at best, he had developed heat exhaustion from having to run. As toops tried to help the fallen soldier, the CO ordered (shouting it out), “Keep moving leave him for the medics”. Well, arond 100 yards later the 2nd man passes out, falling to the ground, and the CO repeated the same order. At that point the instructors, Sgt. Bondsteal, and some of the officers had a talk with the CO, and it was decided to send a runner forward toward the the post along the highway, in the hope he could flag down a passing car. fortunately he did, and we were saved. As it turned out, the company was lost, and around 15 miles from the post main gate. These were the same problems, no maps, no dependable communications, not keeping his subordinate commanders informed of his current plans, and not preparing properly before the mission started, that were what went wrong 12 years later during “Blackhawk Down” when his convoy got shot to peices by running a re-running the same gauntlet of fire, because they were either lost, or kept running into roadblocks that they hadn’t reconed before the mission started.

A few days later the company went on a 3 day long FTX, when it was breaking cold records for Alaska. The weather report I will never forget during this time was 57 below 0, with a wind chill of 112 below. Before the FTX started, my platoon had already lost 7 of it’s 28 men due to injury (mostly cold injuries), and only 2 days later, just 9 men were left uninjured. My platoon was the weapons platoon, and on the 2nd day we went to the mortar firing range. It was other worldly, the impact area was obscured by ice fog (when it gets cold enough the moisture in the air will freeze form something resembling fog), it was so cold that the oil on our weapons had frozen (M-16’s and mortars) making them unsafe to fire, and the ground was frozen so deep and hard that you couldn’t have seated the mortars base plates, so that if they were fired the might just go sliding backwards into the crew at high speed. Some of the NCO’s found a large fuel tank, and just started pouring fuel on the ground, and setting it on fire to try to keep warm. The instructors then said this is crazy, we’re going to contact your CO, and get permission to take you all back in, and loaded us back onto the bus. Around 20 to 30 minutes later they returned, saying that The CO had overruled these cold weater training expert’s opinion, saying to just let use stay out all night, and maybe the weather would be better the next day, and to get off the bus. That’s when the command structure almost fell apart. My best friend Ralph, the sgt. commanding the FDC section, ran off the bus shouting “Those GD SOB’s” a threw his M-16 as far as the could (it’s understandable, he already had a cold weather injury, with his upper lip split all the way up to his nose, from before the FTX even started). Next We tried to set up our 10 man tent’s, but it was hopeless, as we tried to drive the tent pegs would only break the frozen ground into little chunks as we tried to drive them in, and even if we did get the tents set up, we had no fuel for the stoves (they only used karosene, and the fuel we had been burning to stay warm was gasolene).The instructors sent out an emergency call for help, and a group of majors and col. showed up with food and fuel for the stoves, then helping us drag the tents off into the woods, so we could tie them off onto trees. By that time were were down to only 10 men, 11 had been sent in with cold weather injuries that day, and 1 of those 10 remaing health soulders got 2nd degree frostbit during the night. we had no water because it froze so quickly, and it was so cold that my canteen got a little too close to the stove during the night, melting it’s top, but none of the ice.

An investigation was held when we returned to Ft. Benning, but the CO had ben the Post’s Commanding General’s aide while he was the commander in Korea, and the findings were that all the injuries (many hushed up, and classified as something other than frostbite) were the entirely the result of a lack of motivation by the troops. The CO reminded me of the WWI French Generals that believed in “elan” (I hope I spelled that right , a soldiers ability to overcome any obstical) so much that they sometime felt planing was unnecessary, and marched troops in formation into machine guns.

After Alaska the CO tried to have Sgt. bondsteal thrown out of the army because he was over weight, when he was clearly the best sgt. in the company, and had save the CO’s skin in Alaska. Personally, I dont care if a soldier is over or under weight, only if he can perform his duties, and can pass his PT test, and sgt. Bondsteal did all that with ease. The CO even went so far as to have this Medal of Honor Winner confined to the hospital for 2 months with his mouth wired shut in aa attempt to lose weight. While I can’t say that the CO in effect murdered sgt. Bondsteal, the damage done to his heart by this was probably responsible for his dying of a heartattack less than 3 years later.Sgt. Bondsteal was one of the best men and soldiers I’ve ever know, and I have no doubt that he saved many lives while or company was in Alaska.