I have another army story for you guys though this was more of a group plan.
We were on maneuvers somewhere in the hills around Fulda of the famous Fulda Gap. This was one of the inevitable routes the Soviets would have to take for geographic reasons so we trained there a lot.
It was a big training effort, reforger maybe. There were meetings among the wheels and they passed the info on down and since I was a private or pfc at that time we got a meeting with the sarge of our track who explained that as a mortar track our job would be to provide indirect fire, close indirect fire support if you will. The artillery were more stand off. The nice thing about our job was we were supposed to get away from it all and lay low until were got a call for a (simulated) fire mission. The Germans were opposed to us firing mortar rounds in their back yards. Or maybe they didn't like them landing in their back yards, I forget. Anyway these calls almost never happened as the on the line officers always called for artillery. More glam maybe, I dunno. So we took our tracks up a hill into a wooded area to wait for calls that almost never came and when they did come we were supposed to do almost nothing. Pretend we were firing. On the way up the hill we passed a sleepy little town with a bar and some houses... So we were a bunch of young guys going up a hill past a bar to a place where were were supposed to do nothing, and only a few sergeants who apparently had never been young to keep us on mission. What could go wrong?
So with the dark coming on we got set up. Put out aiming stakes and set up tents and exchanged knowing looks. One poor sod got stuck on the radio waiting for those important calls, a couple unfortunates got guard duty but knew what was up and the rest of us went off to our sleeping bags.
Things got really quiet.
So those of us that were of like mind got up in the quiet of the night, and almost a dozen of us hiked into town. The bar was small but the tender friendly. We set in to some serious drinking. Before too long a couple of girls walked by the window and I and another guy jumped up and invited them in. So I had a girl on my arm and a good German beer in my mug and all was right with the world. This lasted quite some time and the girl and I were, in our various languages, working out where we might consumate the relationship when a sarge burst into the place and wrecked our evening. He was really yelling and being rude to us and refused my offer of a beer and everything. Then the threats started, 'form up outside or you will lose rank (I didn't have to worry about that but there were a couple corporals among us) and get an article 15 which was money and some serious discipline crap that just seemed like more trouble than its worth. So we all got ready to go except Bernie. Now Bernie was a wild boy. He told that sarge in no uncertain terms what he could do with his rank and article 15 and ordered another beer, and that's where we left him as we stumbled back up the hill to our cold empty sleeping bags.
A couple days later Bernie rejoined us and before he was hauled off he said to me in his weird accent drawl, "Hey Lance, you know that girl you was kissin on?"
"Yeah"
"She was great."
In that moment I thought the sun rose and set for Bernie, he was the coolest guy in the world. However I was 17 and there were almost enough girls so I didn't care. Don't recall what happened to him for that bit of personal freedom, but I bet there weren't any girls there.
