I'm done ranting about politics for a while. I'm pretty sure you all get my drift.
Cold winds are indeed blowing. Literally. It's damn freezing cold outside. Ah, winter in the mountains is so spectacular. Looks as though Russia is getting it pretty bad with temps around -50 F. That's a cold day on Mars, for crying out loud.
Russian winters like that make me try to imagine what the German infantry on the Russian Steppe in 1941-43 must have felt like in the winters. Unimaginably cold, with little more than your wool uniform and a woolen greatcoat, if you were lucky. Fingers freezing to the steel of your rifle, frostbite, entire squads freezing to death at night, otherwise huddling together, trying desperately for any tiny bit of warmth. Fires were verboten, they only served to allow Ivan's artillery spotters and snipers to be able to get your range.
I've been cold, truly cold only a few times in my life. One time stands out, March of 1993 - two weeks before "spring break" at the small small Engineering School on the Hudson River in New York that I attended. I was a member of a club that went on occasional camping trips (some would call them Field Training Exercises). We road marched to an adjacent post - a lovely spot of rolling countryside called Camp Smith. It got brutally cold that weekend, a large cold front dropped in on us out of Canada. We loaded up into Marine Corps CH-53s (operation was firmly "Purple" - joint function with students from a small liberal arts and technical school from Annapolis, Maryland) and air assaulted into a remote airfield. Things unfolded nicely, some good training points, some excellent lessons learned. After the op we had a great AAR in a hanger, loaded back up into the 53's and headed back to Camp Smith.
We dropped into a nice LZ, and then road marched to a patrol base where we set up to laager for the night. For the day we had been the assaulting element. That night, we were OPFOR. The bad guys. There were about 50 of us, and our Platoon Leader got our squad leaders organized, while we got into a loose perimeter in the dark. Since we were supposed to be learning, we only six night vision devices for the whole platoon. Stumbling around in the freezing dark our squad leaders set up into our areas of responsibility, gave us sectors of fire, that we could barely make out in the dark, and told us to hunker down.
Once cooled off from the strenuous road march and the activity of setting up the patrol base, the cold really began to put it's fingers into us. I put on every bit of clothing I had. Fashioned a T-shirt into a hat, Wrapped up in poncho, poncho liner uniform, field sweater, field jacket, hell I then put on my wet weather gear hoping that the vinyl might reflect any bit of heat back towards my shivering body.
The PL began to send out patrols to harass some other organizations from our school, non-club members, some of the class company commanders had decided to field their companies out there. Our club members went out, a squad at a time to go agitate and create some excitement. A group of students from the small technical school in Maryland were attached to us. Great guys, intrepid and brave, sallied forth, executed a very nice probing action against one of the class companies, turned around to head back, and then got promptly lost.
As this was happening, I was so cold, I was almost convulsing from the shivering. My world shrank until all there was, a cold tiny cocoon of ice. Far away, movement registered to my ears, I became concerned that my chattering teeth would be a liability. Aside from the rusting of movement inf front of me the only sound I could hear were my teeth rattling. A Class company patrol was wandering, stumbling around right outside our patrol base about 100 meters from my squad's section of the line. Whispered instructions to hang tight and avoid detection were delivered. Soon, they passed. My squad leader and our Platoon Sergeant soon came up to me and told me to gear up. We had to go out and try to find our brave Marylanders. I thanked the two of them profusely.
Sweet Jesus, I was saved. Movement caused my body warm up. We went out into the cold night, ranged out into the night, looking - or should i say listening for our water-borne comrades. In order to allow our comrades to save face, we were told to keep out little patrol quiet, not be detected. I could have cared less, I was merely happy to be moving. Our comrades had a radio, we had a radio. They were unbelievably angry at themselves, embarrassed at being lost. They told us where they thought they were, we went there, no dice. We told them to remove their blank adapters and fire three rounds. An M16 firing a blank with no blank adapter is not a quiet thing. We, having taken a knee and removed our headgear to listen, could hear nothing, other than the distant chatter of small arms and artillery and grenade simulators from the other students. The must have been miles away. Finally our comrades were able to find a hardball road, outside the military reservation, and we were able to vector them back to the patrol base. Our squad leader asked us if we wanted to head back to the patrol base, or just hang out in the woods and see if we could mix it up a bit. I had no wish to go back and hunker behind the cold rock and enter back into the cocoon of ice. We patroled out until an hour or two before dawn, effectively conducting reconnaissance, identifying where the other patrol bases were, and even scouting ahead to find the LZ for the AM. Just as the sky began to lighten, the PL ordered us up and we headed to the LZ, to be picked up by NEw York Army Reserve UH1's for the quick hop back to school. Ah, school -where there were hot showers, and Green Girl Comforters, and radiators that put out loads of delicious heat.
It got below freezing that night. The water in my canteen had frozen solid.
I never want to be that cold again, but it was an experience that I will never forget, and I cannot imagine what those winters on the Steppe must have been like. I knew I was going home soon, I knew that the rifles of those arrayed against us projected nothing that could wound anything, save our pride. No one was trying to kill us, we were students, we were learning. I learned lessons that night, indeed.
Stay warm and toasty, friends.
Crazed American, OUT.
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