April, 2010
SFC HEADQUARTERS DOCTRINE
"Read by Thousands Round' the World!"
30 April 2010. Combat Centric Talk Forum...Down!
Just a heads up and to cut off some emails to me about this. Our Combat Centric Talk Forum has been "attacked/raided" last night and is down, and our hosts try to repair the mess. The Geek Squad is working on it and also improving security. More on this, either on the repaired talk forum or in the May, 2010 Blog.
Adios Amigos
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26 April 2010 Where of the Ws and the H
As a proponent of using the Who, What, Where, When, How and Why as a master plan to attack and counter attack problems in life - some points on the "where." Simple geography. Your best defense is simple geography. If for one example, what if they picked you up right now and placed you in northern Pakistan? You would be raped and have yout throat stabbed and cut open like an animal. Instead, in our place in space and time, we worry about the about the amount of cream cheese on our bagel. Simple geography. Ever hear of the expression, "right place, wrong time." "Wrong place, right time?" Geography. Where are you? Where are you going? Where the enemy hide or stand? Where will you? Placement. Positioning. Where?
Adios Amigos
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22 April 2010: The Dead Baby
In Dallas, TX, the city has started a Baby Moses program, where unwanted babies can be dropped off at fire stations and safe havens, no questions asked, rather than be abandoned or killed. As I watched this news feature about the program on television, my mind flipped off into the various dead baby cases I had worked in the past years. All have a snapshot stain on my brain.
One case involves what is the most ironic moments of my life, as it is intertwined with the law, races, friendships, death, abortion, poverty, education...well, so much it is too hard to typecast it all. I will just have to tell you, and I promise you won't know what to do with it either.
I will start by recalling Sam Till for you. Many or our officers knew a Sam Till. Sam lived in one the projects or "poor" parts of our city, and yes, it was the black part of town. Sam was Vietnam vet and a retired, high-ranking, Army NCO. He was a hard working, ambitious, person and ran two successful businesses, one a large, city-wide, sanitation company, and the other, a well-established, funeral home. On any given day, you might spot Sam supervising a garbage truck, even loading one on a route, or giving a sermon at a funeral, or driving the limo to a graveyard. He often came to crime scenes and collected the murder victims, or scrapped together the suicides. Sam pitched in and did it all.
One day, he and two workers saw a crazed man beating one of our officers and trying to take his pistol. Sam and the men jumped on the criminal and saved the day. Sam was one of the locals who renovated his house and remained in the projects as many successful people did. It was where he grew up! Where he wanted to be. He was even mildly involved in city politics and become involved with various good causes.He had several good sons that stayed out of trouble.
Through the years as a patrolman or a detective, Sam supplied me a lot of information about people he knew and suspected of crime. I could go to him anytime for intell and gossip. He, in turn would give me a phone call if he thought he'd discovered something. I think he knew I meant well for the community. He also knew that one of the most influential people in my life was a black NCO and therefore I mustn't have been much of a racist. But, racism was a problem back then, not as bad as before the 50s and 60s but still bad in the 70s and 80s. I would hope things have improved some as we walk about our sorry lots in life today.
I was a brand new detective (technically new for Texas, as I had been one in the Army), in 1980 and I was dispatched one chilly evening to meet a patrolman about a "family" problem in that part of the city. When I arrived to this sprawling, older home, a patrolman introduced me to a mother and father in the living room. The parents had become burdened with a problem and neither they, nor the patrolman, knew what to do about it.
"Hey Hock," the patrolman said,"We got a promblem here. I don't know." The officer opend the front door and steered me in.
What is there not to know? I asked myself. Then I found out. "Sandra has not been well, and her friends have told us something," the mother spoke up. "Sandra was pregnant. And we had no idea..."
Pregnant? No idea? Yet, I saw the family, color portrait on the wall. The parents were big people and Sandra, who looked to be 12 years old in the picture, was a very, very big girl. We all sat in the living room.
"Her friend told us she was pregnant and she had the baby," the father said. "She has not been to school in a week. She's been throwing up...we just thought she was sick."
"Where is the baby?" I asked. "Is there a baby?"
"No one knows," the officer added.
"Sandra's friend says she had the baby last night," the mother said.
"Where?"
"In there," the father said, pointing to a bedroom.
"Have you looked yet?"
"No, Mr. Hock, we are afraid to look."
"Any...crying?" I asked with trepidation.
"No. Sandra is in there now. She won't open the door."
"Well, Mrs. Rankin, this is your house and you can go anywhere in it. Lets go," I said. We all stood and the mother announced to Sandra that we were coming in. The room was quite large, yet it was stacked and cluttered with...with just about everything you'd find in a house, times ten. Clean clothes. Dirty clothes. Furniture. Just stacked and gross, all atop a dirty carpet.
The mother started to explain why we were there. Sandra was now about 15 years old and still quite a large young girl. It was possible to live around her and not detect a pregnancy. Possible. As they talked, as she denied, I started prowling the room, lifting and looking. There, pushed against the wall, buried in towels and clothes, was a newborn baby. Dead.
The parents knew I'd spotted something and in an instant they charged over to look. They moaned and screamed as I left the house for my sedan radio. I requested our crime scene man, Russell Lewis, to come, as well as my supervisor, Detective Sergeant Howard Kelly. Kelly would contact the Juvenile detective to take over any investigation. The girl, would be charged for something back then that would be impossible to prove. Stillborn? Starved? Killed? Not to sure what the prosecutors would do.
Now, none of this is really why I am telling you this story. I am trying to keep these details brief. Kelly came and left. Russell came and left. What came next...is why I write this. A funeral home was called to handle the dead body after we processed the crime scene. Sam Till took the call and drove right over as soon as he could...in his garbage truck! Not the Till Funeral van, as Sam was out delivering a truck to his yard and was already nearby. Sam came in and was greeted by the parents as long friends. He listend to them. Sympathized with them. There would be a proper funeral. The family left the house for the police station.
Sam had a towel in his hands and we walked to the bedroom and up to the baby. He was talking about something to me the whole way. He grabbed this black baby by the ankles and we went back out on the street. While we discussed whatever it was, he laid the towel down on the passenger floorboard of the sanitation truck and laid the baby atop it. We said goodbye.
He roared the gabage truck engine as I walked to my car and unlocked the door. As he drove away in the garbage truck, I stood rather dumbfounded on the city street, as I knew I had just witnessed a most ironic, twisted, odd, social statement/situation. I mean how can I describe this? How can I convey what I thought? What I felt? I don't know myself. I have a vivid memory of that moment in my head. I just don't know what to do with it.
Adios Amigos
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18 April 2010: Hacking the Hammer
I have been called many differing things in my life (I have been married three times) ….but especially with a last name like Hochheim. Broken up, it is Hock. Hock is the first half of Hock-heim. The “heim” part rhymes with time. Heim/time. Don't let the two "hs" in the middle fool you. It is way-back, German, but the scores of people one meets - those of varying degrees of education, have various pronunciations and meanings to the name. Citizens have come to the police department lobby asking for me in variety of versions.
“I need to see the Iranian detective…that feller Hock-heem.” Asked one.
I had to work a case of burglary and vandalism on a Jewish synagogue, once. The Jewish Anti-Defamation League was thrilled that they actually had a Jewish detective on the case. But, I am not Jewish. No one in my family has ever been Jewish. I guess the "heim" part fooled them? After all, didn't one of the great racial instigators and hypocrites of our time - the Reverend Jessie Jackson-call New York City, "Heimy town?"
Or, we'd hear, “is Detective Hokum in?”
And some misheard the name and called me Hawk- which I have to correct immediately. I am simply not that cool to be called Hawk.
“I am here for Detective Hog Head,” said another. That name brought many laughs and to this day and if I bump into Steve Camp or Walter Keen, they will yell out to me “Hog head!”
Probably the best was Detective Handcuff. Like I was some kind of logo, or…a cartoon character. This was given to me by one Thomas “Redbone” Reed- a tall, black feller' with a deep voice. He just couldn't seem to wrap his vocal cords around saying Hochheim, and always called me - Handcuff. His brother Doug called me Detective Hockmans.
Which leads me to a quick Redbone story...
Redbone was a guy in the hood and always in some kind of low-running trouble. Years back, he was messing around with a much younger girl in the girl's house and her daddy came home early. Dad heard the grunts and groans over the Barry White "love music," got his shotgun and surprised the duo. Redbone stood up, yanked up his pants and bolted out the window, with the Dad in hot pursuit. The dad was shooting like hell right after him, as he too stumbled out of the window. Redbone was shot in the knee and the blast tore off most of his left kneecap. It actually went skipping across the street like an Tupperware bowl.
Well, we the police were called. Russell Lewis and I were dispatched to the crime scene. I was a detective then in a squad that worked all crimes. Russell picked up the kneecap and put it in a paper bag. We didn't know what else to do with it. Myself and a patrolman arrested the dad, collected up the shotgun, etc. and I took the old man to the station. I got a statement/confession from the angry father. Russell put the knee cap in the evidence room, refrigerator freezer after wrapping it in clear plastic. I went to the hospital to see Redbone. Took some notes for a statement. Needless to say, Redbone declined prosecution, if only the daddy would help him with surgery. I returned to the station with this deal and the daddy said he would help pay for a new knee. I put all this down on paper and in place, and shipped the shooting case off to the DA's office. The dad made bond the next morning, and was released. But, quess what daddy lied to us didn't pay for the new knee cap. The good ol' State of Texas eventually did. Your tax dollars at work.
A limping Redbone with a cheap knee replacement committed a series of burglaries over the next two years and Danny McCormick and I had to send him to the pen for a spell of some 6 years. There in Huntsville, Redbone got new teeth and a new knee. Redbone got out of jail , got a few jobs, fell in and out of much trouble. Each time we processed him to the city jail, or saw him, we would remind him we still had his kneecap in our fridge. Russel really didn't t know what to do with it!
“Oh, I…I'll come and get it next week, Handcuff,” he would tell me. AFter all these years, he would still call me Detectve Handcuff. This was just enough news to keep Russell from disposing of the knee. There it sat in the freezer for years. often right next to Russel's Lean Cuisine frozen lunches.
Then years later, at least nine years after the shooting, Russell wandered up to my desk and took a seat, with a big smile.
“Never guess what happened this morning. Redbone came and picked up his kneecap,” he said.
“What!”
“Yeah! Said he felt bad about leaving it.”
“What's he gonna' do with it?” I asked.
“He said he was going to take it home and put it in HIS refrigerator.”
"Another new meaning for term, knee transplant." I added.
Another great translation of my name came from a woman named Helen Shavers. Helen was a tough ol' gal from the projects. It all started when Helen elbowed her way into the middle of my Harold's Garden Center safe burglary case. There was once upon a time, a very successful garden and nursery store in my city at major intersection which bordered the more poor neighborhoods. And, one night it was burglarized. A safe job. Money was taken, but so too was a serious amount of negotiable bonds. These bonds were passable by the bearer, so ANY criminal could cash them. Harold was quite a colorful character and power-broker in this poor community. He would even loan money out and give money out to people in need. he wasn't always so good. One of his employees was murdered once and he paid a man to be a false witness to the crime. But that' another story. Harold spread the word in the area that he would pay a big reward in the recovery of those bonds.
This news put Helen Shavers and her close friend Louise on the case. Amateur detectives! But how amateur? I will tell you these women did a lot of "gossipy-justice work" in the area, both good and bad. These amateur detectives were nothing like an Agatha Christie story. Feisty Helen and Louise hit the streets passing out marijuana for tips and carried little league bats in large purses. While working the case, we would often pass each other in the projects and on the streets. Helen would yell at me,
“Hacken-Hammer! Who you got yet? Who you got?”
“I got nothing, Helen, who you got?” I yelled back.
And they would bust out laughing. “Listen here, motha-fucka, I'm getting that money. Don't chu' get in the way!” Helen would strut off and laugh.
Most safe burglars would be long gone, but elements of this one told me the criminals were local...
As an aside on safe-cracking...
Back in those days, safe crackers were an interesting lot. They worked in teams and usually traveled a multi-state circuit. There just weren't that many of them so they had to spread out. They seemed to worked in themes, like hitting KMarts, jewelry stores, or certain super-markets, whatever. Few, opened the safe on the premises like an "Ocean's 11 job," you see in the movies. Most burglars would take a small safe off the premises and spend days chipping, peeling, welding, burning with acid, drilling away or exploding them. More common criminals held a gun to an employee's head, or took their family hostage if the job was big, and get an employee to open the safe. But that becomes armed robbery or kidnapping. Different category and a different kind of cat.
If you were assigned a serious safe job, you make all the hotels and motels over a large radiance looking for a lead -like a clerk that saw a suspicious group in and out, in the am hours. (Nowadays, you need like a "supreme court warrant" to get a clerk to freely talk to you.) This takes a lot of time and work and can't be done from the coffee-shop. Anyway, we all tracked and traced these traveling thugs after the fact, and they were usually caught by some patrol officer who accidentally interrupted them in some way with a car full of evidence. One such midnight traffic stop or room raid in say - Florida, and we would clear tens and more of safe burglaries in Texas and all over the country.
Today, money is invisible, and stolen out of thin air with computer interception. The old safe crackers and check forgers of yesteryear, like those of us that fought against them...are kind of dinosaurs now.
The Harold Garden Center criminals were common, local thieves. They stole the whole, small safe. I located drag marks on the cement and ground all leading to the direction of our worst, city's projects. But, anyone with a car and two sets of hands would've had ample chance to load the small safe.
Despite the fact I had no marijuana to hand out, and couldn't legally swing a baseball bat at a witness, I worked some contacts, ran down leads and in about three days, I cracked the case and recovered all the un-cashed bonds. The bad guys spent the cash, but the bonds were hidden in a black plastic trash bag, buried by a creek, until the thugs could plan on cashing them. They were indeed too dumb to understand the workings of bonds.
Harold was thrilled and of course, we the police cannot collect any reward so he was doubly thrilled he didn't have to pay a reward. Helen was not at all thrilled. For years since, every time she saw me anywhere, she would pitch a small fit, whether I drove by her or saw her in public,
“Mutha-fucken, Hacken-Hammer. You mutha-fucka. You tooks my money. I was on that boy's ass and in one more day, I'da had that money. You a mutha-fucka. You owe me some fucken' money, you mutha-fucka!!”
For years, I would get messages from Helen from patrolmen and other detectives, “oh, Helen said hi." Benny Parkey or Roger White would tell me, "She told me to 'tell that mother-fucking, Hacken-Hammer hello from Helen, and where's her gottdamn money?'”
Helen was hired to nurse an elderly woman years later. I would often see her push the woman in a wheel chair on walks. She would look harshly at me with wide eyes and whisper with exaggerated lips, "mutha fucka, Hachen-Hammer." So in summary, I'll just sign off now …
W. Hog Hoghead
W. Hawk Hawkheim
W. Hand Handcuff
W. Hack Hacken-Hammer
W. Hoke Hokum
Shiek Hock-Heeem
Adios Amigos
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13 April 2010: Fight Training? or Fitness Traning?
When you attended the FBI Defensive Tactics Course offered in the 1980s each day out of the 5-day week was 8 hours. I would venture to say that 3, maybe 4 hours of each day was defensive tactics. WHAT you ask was the other 4 hours? Exercising. We showed up in the morning and ran and did calisthenics. The we did some tactics. Lunch. Came back and more excercies. Then, a bit more tactics and a burn down session. Not much fighting tactics. So much to learn. So little time.
When I was in my thirties, I was working out 6 days a week. Maybe 7 if I could. So, these DT school runs and work outs were lame and I was obsessed enough back then to feel guilty about not properly exercising each day of the school as I was otherwise use to. Yes, some struggled a bit to do these lame daily workouts, but I immediately asked myself,
“WHY are we wasting time doing sit ups when we could be using this precious time
with trained federal defensive tactics instructors? Why?
I taught at the old Marine Corp hand to hand combat course at Quantico, VA., right before they changed it over to the newer Marine Corp martial arts program they have today. Hand to hand really meaning mixed weapon, close quarters battling. I discovered that much of this course was also about leadership and has a whole lot of PT - as in physical exercise in it. Quite a large ratio in fact. To me, I immediately asked the question,
“Why are they wasting time doing sit ups when they could be using this precious time
with trained military tactics instructors?” Why?
Now look, I understand that you have to be in good shape to fight successfully. Sure. But I came to the FBI course in good shape. And aren’t the Marines, in general in good shape? (I know many Marines scoff when I say that, as they know personally know Marines who are not in good shape.) When you ask to go to these courses? Come in freaken’ shape, will you!
Easy to say. My friends tell me that police officers show up for SWAT school not in shape. I recall stories going way back of attendees struggling to make their morning, SWAT school runs. Paul Howe in Texas, a former Delta Force NCO, teaches SWAT schools and you must pass a timed run and an Army PT that first morning or you cannot attend the week long class. Bye! I see these martial instructors now, of the Krav bend, as well as many other so-called “reality” courses have been and are now included a lot of P.T. in their training. In fact, some they are selling/advertising full “work out weeks.”
Are they trying to compete with trends like Cross Fit? Do they think that is where the next training money market is for martial artists? I see these guys going to Florida to train some form of Krav Maga black magic that includes a boot camp experience. A week?
You know...I went through Vietnam era boot camp in the Army. I don’t need that shit, that "man-up" experience. Been there. Done that. I guess some of the great unwashed want to experience a hint of the tribal passage? And, I will also warn these school heads that 99.9% of the market you think are attracting with Martial boot camps in the Florida Everglades or wherever? You are not attracting them. People who want to learn to fight? They want to learn to fight, not pay you count their pushups, curse and work a stop watch while they run. That is why your classes are tiny and you are slowly going out of business. People who want to get in “military” shape? Work out for that goal. We fighters have fighting to teach in a precious little time!
I don’t have time to get people in shape. I am not a fitness instructor. Nor are 99% of the martial people who think they are teaching fitness, or act like they are. I have too much valuable fighting information to teach. I feel it is waste of your money to over-emphasize fitness in amongst the precious fighting time we have. Nor should the FBI. Nor should the Marines Martial program. You won’t even get in substantial shape in one weekend seminar, or one full week at a Krav black magic program!
Being goal specific is important to fight training. You can do the specific fighting movements with tricks to increase and enhance performance. Yes, teach them so people can do them forever at home. It ain't gonna' happen in one day, one weekend or one week.
You don’t pay me to count push ups. I would feel like I was robbing you! I like the Paul Howe approach to fight training. Come in shape or don’t come at all. Or come out of shape and do what you can. Don't expect me (or anyone) to work fitness miracles. Dedicated, physical fitness training time takes away from fight training time, unless you are attending full-time academies or long military schools. Don’t waste my time or yours and your fight training dollars.
Remember this. If you do a workout once? You have to do a workout the 30th time. And the 100th time and 10,000 time. THAT is lifetime fitness. Not a weekend or even a week doing weird and unusual exercises.
Adios Amigos ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 9 April 2010: The Wallet
It seems that it is hard to escape what is called Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. It seems it manifests in many different ways. Can anyone truly escape it? With me, what's left that haunts me still? Is...a wallet.
Through the years, I have removed many wallets from the pockets and purses of dead people. People who have been blasted, decapitated in car wrecks, shot or stabbed. Some smothered in blood, or stinking, or crawling with maggots. Suicide victims, accident victims, murder victims and people who have just flat collapsed from natural causes.
You open the wallet and find the dead person's history. You find out who they were. Where they live. How they lived. You find out who you have to deliver the death message to. That difficult moment.
Sometimes when I open my wallet, I catch myself thinking about this act. All this comes to me, as if all this turmoil filters down into this one symbol - a wallet. I take out the money I need and I can't help but imagine an officer someday, later? Ten minutes later? Looking into my wallet, looking to discover who I am, and who call about my death, following the very routine I have had to do.
When this feeling comes over me? As I put the wallet back in my pocket, I think about the shortness of life. The tragedy. I can't help but wonder, who will be the next person to look in my wallet?
Adios Amigos
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5 April 2010: The Jailhouse Superbowl Ring
Saturday morning, 1970s. Patrol.
Our city boasted two Superbowl player residents. And the two of them were as different as day and night and as racially typecast as one cold imagine. One was a retired white guy in a very big house with many investments. The other was a black guy from what one might call our slums, or projects. He had no such investments. And no such home. He was older but still playing ball and every off season he would return home to Texas. And every season he seemed to get into trouble of some sort. Both wore the big brash and legendary Superbowl ring. I never met the white guy, but did meet the black guy. In fact, he kind of saved my ass one Saturday morning.
In one "hood" in our city we had a old drinking place called "The Wine Tree." It was a bar, but not a bar. It was an open house with a jukebox and the booze flowed (illegally sold) along with the drugs. An old, crippled man named Willie lived in the back rom and "ran" it. Through time you learn, either by emergency calls or by investigation that much of that area's crimes, at some point started, ran through, or ended up at the Wine Tree. Did Willie have a liquor license? A business permit? Who the hell knows? It was a house. An open house party 24/7. The neighbors didn't care. Hell, they hung out there, too. The attendees parked everywhere and the dancing and drinking and conniving and hustling spilled out onto the pounded-down and dry front lawn, and out on the streets.
The next mornings, especially after weekends, there were always stragglers still hovering about the Wine Tree. One morning a neighbor reported a fight in progress out front. I was a young turk back then and worked this district, once called "61," and was just as fearless as I was dumb. As I drove up that Saturday morning, I saw at least three men arguing and another two others interceding and peacemaking. The peacemakers weren't doing so well.
I got out of the car and and tried my hand at this peace-keeping thing, but these men were charged up on who-knows-what from the night before, in their thirties and pissed off. My Gestalt therapy training just wasn't working and two men crashed in on each other. I dove in trying to separate them. And wild fists were flying. The third jumped in and I'll tell you it was a free-for-all. Everybody against everybody, and I wasn't winning. I wound up half-wrestling, half-punching with one of them as the other two, struggled off a few feet and bumping into us. Then one of them pulled a knife. it was a switchblade. He was cursing up a storm and this whole event was going down hill very badly, degrading into a chaotic soap opera with some bloodletting on the ticket. One of the onlookers handed the unarmed man a knife! And now, it spiraled into a real mess.
"Put down those knives!" I ordered, as I grappled with the guy still messing with me. HA! That command didn't work and I knew this would end with my gun out and six different kinds of bad, crazy. But, I couldn't get to my revolver because of this wraslin' match! The peacemakers and few onlookers bailed back about 15 feet when the knives came out. These two goons cursed a blue streak and started dueling as in like a comedy! Slashing and stabbing at each other in uncoordinated, wild lunges and swings. Wild enough to almost fall over.
Then suddenly a stout black man charged up. He hit the guy I was hooked up with, using his shoulder and we both pushed this pain-in-the-ass off of me. Without hesitation, he ran up to the knife party and belted one of them in the side of his head, with a fist, a forearm, or an elbow? I can't say which. It was a blind side, sucker shot as the man did not see it coming. Stunned, he dropped the knife on impact and stumbled off.
I pulled my Colt Python pistol and stepped before the other armed man and told him I'd kill him if he didn't drop the knife. The guy that was fighting with me shared my gun barrel time as I told them both to freeze on the spot. The guy with the knife stood there, tip of the knife aimed at me, his eyes all bloodshot and watering, his lip busted open and bloody. He was wavering like a heat wave, being all fucked up on booze and drugs. "Don't even think about it," I warned him. This citizen hero snatched up the knife from the ground and walked right up the man before me and took the knife from his hand. I ordered all three men on their knees. The hero stood there like my back-up.
Don't let your imagination run wild about this, like it was a cool, fight scene in a movie or something. The three guys were staggering, stinking, drugged jerks. Yeah, yeah, dangerous and all, sure, but a lot more low-key than it reads here. I had two pairs of handcuffs hung on my belt and three men to shackle them with! And, I wondered where my back up unit was - speaking of back-up. I cuffed the guy fighting me with one pair, figuring if he were damn fool enough to fight me before, I needed both of his hands linked up now. Then I split my second cuffs with the two so-called, knife fighters.
"Go on and beat yourselves to death now," I told the handcuffed slobs, catching my breath. "See if I stop you again."
One cuff to one's right hand, the other cuff to the other man's right hand. This way if they both ran off, it would not be too easy to run. In theory, one faced one way, one faced the other, but in actuality, one of them could cross their arm over for them to run. It did make an escape a bit awkward. But they didn't run. Code of the West back then was they'd be shot if they did, whether true or not. When in doubt, refer to the Code. Other units arrived and we carted the men away. Armchair, Sunday-morning quarterbacks would say that I should have waited in the squad car until this back-up arrived. But how do you do that? Imagine sitting in a police car like a timid, church mouse while men fought with knives for several minutes just a few yards away? Impossible. When in doubt? Refer to the Code of the West.
I had to get the name and address of this hero who charged in to help for my report as a witness. I thanked him profusely. He was all smiles and told me everything. I'll call him "Ray Wilson" here.
At the station, our Patrol Lt. Gene Green wandered into the book-in room and wanted the sitrep. After my report, he said, "Ray Wilson? He plays for the _____________. Ya' met Ray! Ya' see his big Superbowl ring? He comes home every off-season and stays with his momma. He gets into some kind of trouble every year."
"Well, he sure helped me out of a mess here!" I said. "He needs a medal."
"Just wait," Lt. Green added." You'll see him in here for somethin' er' another. He comes home every year and cleans up after his relatives and friends bad business. He has a helleva' family. Always in trouble."
About a month later we were on midnight shift and I walked though the station to the squad room. The old headquarters was situated kind of funny because you had to walk through the book-in room of the our jail to get from the front side of the station to get to the back squad room. There on the book-in room bench, sat a handcuffed Ray Wilson. My hero. He was arrested for assaulting some men with a baseball bat. Some kind of a family, revenge/vendetta. He nodded to me as I approached.
His possessions were laid on the counter, ready for safe-keeping collection. A worn wallet. Some pocket change. An old watch. A belt...and a golden, Superbowl ring.
"Take care of that ring," Ray asked cordially.
"We always do, Ray," the arresting detective said.
Adios Amigos
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1 April 2010: Buffalo Q and A:
Through the years, starting back with the inception of Close Quarter Combat Magazine, a series of questions asked of columnist Buffalo Nickels came into our offices. If you are easily offended, religious or otherwise sensitive, please do not read this. Here are some...
Question & Comment: Buffalo Nickels, or whatever your real name is, you are an unholy and disgusting representative of the US military, What you say and how you think are far from a positive role model. I think your disrespect for life and society and your constant gutter vulgarity is an utter disgrace! Buffalo Nickels: Fuck you. Next question.
Question & Comment: Hello, Mr. Nickels. You recenly wrote that the US Army has trained you in mountain and cold weather survival. We always hear a lot about jungle survival and hot weather. What are some of the problems high up in the mountains?
Buffalo Nickels: The US Army has sent me to cold weather training and cold mountain climbing schools in the Rockies, England and the Alps. Not that, "Tom Cruise, MI-2, no-ropes, tight biker shorts-hanging off a cliff with one hand, bullshit. The other day, I saw the video cover of the movie "Cliffhanger" with Sly Stallone. Wanna-be is wearing a cute little ballet, stretch pant/tank top suit, hanging off some cable, damn near in outer space? Anything to show a deltoid, huh? Pretty boy bullshit. It's really tough up there. Not only is it cold, it's tough on your body and your mind in other ways. The thin air can cause balance problems, not a good thing when you're traipsing around on a jagged edge. Look up, look down and the white world is a blur. Your eyes have to get use to it all. Snow blind is a term that means blowing snow and just the sun reflecting off the snow that makes your eyes ache straight to the brain. Foster Grants anyone? I use to have a feeling of the water in my eyes freezing. Scary shit! You are also closer to the sun, so it seems brighter and at times it be hot in a funny, confusing way.
The lack of oxygen can give you a throbbing pain in your head and make your lungs ache. I heard stories that these thin air problems can crack a man's rib! This affects your sleep. Makes you restless. Causes you to puke. Then there is constipation. Who wants to take a shit in 20 degree below zero wind anyway? The family jewels become mere little trinkets that nobody will trade with back in the village. Condensation freezes on the inside of your tent. A cup of coffee quickly becomes some cold, yuppie, ice mocha java drink.
Body piercing and high-altitude climbing is out, by the way. The decorative metals become cold, and this travels into your skin, especially if you are like those real hip dudes that have their livers pierced, or their kidneys studded. I'd love to help out a body pierced, mountain climber dangling for his life on the edge of a precipice ... I'd reach out with a clip and say, "Here, can you grab this? ... oh, no? Can't let go? Well let me hook the ring in your nose, hardware-mutant boy .... "
Just kidding. I think body piercing is just fine, my fucking bayonet in your skin, hippy freak tattoo boy! Anybody that puts a stud in their tongue, nostril, dick, ball or otherwise needs to be deported to a place where they just invented fire. Someplace where they can play catch-up with evolution, you retro-grade, ooze-bag.
Helicopters can have trouble flying and lifting heavy loads in high altitudes. Being high up can jack up ALL your equipment. Imagine my disappointment at 20,000 feet when my Richteous Brothers tapes wouldn't play in my Walkman. My one piece of entertainment! Bill was singing you see ... then he startled slowing down, like he was drunk, like he was dizzy on the heights too, like I was! Then there came the garbled scratching sounds, like the talent less boob rap singers who spin their records in the reverse direction, to create those worthless screeching noises that entertain mindless, uneducated idiots - I wailed out "Bill" into the windy night. In my high altitude stupor, I saw Bill and Bobby being ambushed by Snoop, Doggy Style! I reached for my gun ... then got control of myself. Well, the cold can do that too, but the altitude alone can shut things down.
Glass and mirrors can break under the slightest pressure. If the glass in the hot sun, like a window ... if under the sun, glass can be hot even in the coldest weather. I never did sleep in one of those cliff bags that you hang in. Just can't get warm and cozy in a swinging sack. I need at least one cheek hooked on something that is connected to something at sea level. Swaying in the air like my left nut without a parachute does not turn me on...
Talking about cold? We were cold right up here in New England lst winter. Cold! The wind chill where I live was 40 degrees below zero last January. New record. No, it's not friggin' Alaska. It's the northeastern coast of the U.S. of A. Ordinarily the cold does not bother me because of the many cold places the Army has dropped me off. When you know that kind of cold, then you know cold and it ain't cold running from your preppy, family SUV to the nice restaurant door, or getting the newspaper 10 feet from your stoop. Cold is being out in it. A long time. Being hungry in it. Being wet in it. Hours in it. Sleeping in it. Bleeding in it. Living in it and with it. The Army taught me cold.
After my special forces training many a pale moon ago, I surprised my gombas back on the block at home (one was little Hock) by telling them little stories about my first assignment. When they first saw me back then they expected to hear some "Guns of Navarone" saga or a "Man from UNCLE" Spy story. Found them standing around on the same street comer bundled up in jackets, when I got back. Wimps. And I had on a light wind-breaker. Cold and I had become intimate friends.
"Where ya' been?" they asked.
"I was skiing." I told them.
"Skiing?" the skinny, little block-pounders asked. Vietnam was in swing and I was skiing.
Skiing. We were training to fight a potential winter war, and I learned how to ski. Even to shoot while skiing. Then we blew old Army shit up in the snow. It was a real kick, but...it was always cold. Especially when they would drop us off in the snowy woods at night and tell us to find our way home. Oh yea by the way, they would hunt us with flares and baseball bats .. .It took about 27 hours to fight my way to a hot cup of coffee. Hot coffee. I wanted to stick my dick in it I was so cold. Ever get that cold? Cold enough to fuck heat?
They taught us how to survive and some of those lessons hit home hard. On one of those excursions we almost lost a man from New Mexico. He must have gotten snow blind and lost. After we made it in, they selected a search party to hunt for him. They found him way off the chart curled up in a ball and almost frozen to death. Sleep is the last stage of death by cold and it sneaks up on you like a rat-bastard, pinko whore. We heard he had frostbite, and we never saw him again! It was a risky exercise but part of the training. We shook hands with real, long term cold.
Now in the news the weather experts are telling us that the "wind chill" factor is not what they calculated. For decades they have been telling us wrong (are these the same linoleum-heads that have calculated the Ozone layer thing or Al Gore's warming fetish?)
I have worked off of a different "cold factor." My "eyes are freezing" factor is my invention. Or my famous, "my sinuses are ice cubes" factor. These are real events without equations. But things like wearing a hat, wrapping your neck, layering your clothes all help. And don't let clothing cut or hinder your circulation like tight sleeves at the wrist or tight pants at the ankles. The warm blood has got to flow, flow, flow. The feet go very early, the toes especially, and they need attention. Like the fingers. When you sit or lay down, you immediately start shooting heat out of your ass and into the ground.
Under certain unusual circumstances you stick to the cold ground! Like Staff Sgt. "Dingle Balls" Johnson. He is by far the most grievous cold related injury I have ever seen and it came the night me and my drinking buddies in Germany were pissed to the gills on that thick German jet fuel they call ale. If we turned our heads too fast.? Beer would lop out of our mouths. We left one tavern on our way to another hall and decided to, well, being dizzy, sit for a minute. It was of course very goddamn "mountain" cold. I backed up against a tree and passed out. When I woke up my ass and thigh were dead. They had passed on, and I didn't know whether I should try to catch up with them or not. I got to my feet and started to rub my ass and the back of my leg. It was like touching an ice block! I cussed and limped around until I took note of my two fellow elite, team members. Passed out on the ground as they were, I knew that they would be suffering the same dead body parts and I hobbled over to them.
"Hey wake up." I shook them. Smith got up, but Johnson didn't. (I've changed the names to protect the ignorant.) I shook Johnson's back violently. He was face down and his whole body moved ... but not his head! I got close to his head to see the problem. Johnson had thrown up, then passed out, and his face landed in the throw up. The vomit had frozen to the ground and then to his face. Sgt. Dingle Balls and the ground had become one.
"Johnson!" Smith and I yelled and kicked. "Johnson get up."
He mumbled, and we picked him off the ground, peeling his head off the turf. The skin on his face tore off onto the frozen puke. He couldn't feel it!
"Where's my hat? He mumbled.
"Your fucking hat?" I said," You drunk bastard, half your fucking face is gone! You should wonder where your face is." Smith found the cap and picked it up.
Smith and I grabbed Johnson and together the three of us all made one person so we could walk. We went to Smith's barracks and collapsed. I took a warm shower - had to - to try and coax my zombie leg to join up with the rest of me. Smith was okay. He just threw up, listened to some hippy, folk records and then wanted to drink more beer! But poor Johnson. Johnson's face looked like a mix between the measles, the mumps, cholera, road rash and South Pacific herpes. He got a new nickname that night, "Mr. Puke Pillow." It replaced his old "dingle balls" - which is a quaint little story I will have to tell at another time, because it has nothing to do with the cold.
Often, soldiers of other countries make fun of we Americans in the field. We immediately make tents, bathrooms, buildings, work out rooms, video arcades, ball fields, you know ... the creature comforts. They call us soft! Yet, their sorry asses are out there in the cold with bad food and bad quarters. It wears them down, takes their morale and their energy. We rest, rejuvenate and recuperate where and whenever possible! It helps us survive and win.
So the next time you see a news clip of GIs comfortable in some overseas place and call them pussies, think twice! It is those very comforts that make us stronger. Don't worry, shortly they will be out in the very cold, or they have just trained out in the cold. Remember the words of the great General MacPatike,
"That which does not chill you, makes you stronger."
Bye-Bye!
But Please don't look here! Buffalo Nickels . We are NOT responsible for anything the Buff says or does!
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