Law Abiding Patriot

While reading a post in a military forum a question was asked, “what song reminded us of our military service?”  That depends on who asked of course; a civilian would not get this answer, but former GI’s surely will and they would certainly understand the sentiment:  Kelly’s Heroes theme song, "Burring Bridges," always reminded me of some of my eight years in the Air Force.   https://youtu.be/HG7p3KHwS_E


 
 
 

Lee Greenwood's "Proud to be an American."


 

https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=on ... %26ghc%3d1


 

The movie theme songs I suggested, “Kelly's Heroes • Burning Bridges,” was about the Army and I was Air Force, but there are many similarities of funny, off hand things that happens to service people that only we can laugh about without being accused of denigrating the military.  Paper work in the 1960’s always made us smirk and smile because copies were either mimeographed or from the printing shop.  I was a flight simulator technician and assigned to the B-52 mobile simulator from right after the Cuban Missile Crisis for several years.  A B-52 simulator was housed in two railroad train cars, so they would be hauled on the railroads between three SAC bases so to train bomber crews at their base to keep them close to their alert facilities and to keep the number of expensive simulators out of the inventory.  

We usually stayed off base in a motel so usually got some cash in advance of each trip, so they would issue us a stack of travel orders about 3/4-inch thick.  The pay clerks at our primary base required 5 copies of our orders and would clip one on a typed out form, including our copy.  Then at each of the temporary bases we had to check in and see some clerk that required several copies of our orders as well.  You guessed it, after clipping an order to some form; we would get a copy with an order for our use, as if we didn't already have a copy.  Each time we needed to see some clerk for anything out came several sets of orders.   

Then upon return to the primary base the same clerks needed several sets of orders to clip to some form and, of course, our copy.  Most of the clerks we encountered treated us like “Oddball” and they resembled characters in Kelly’s Heroes, like Don Rickles.  So, there in lies the GI humor.