In September 1970 I spent a couple of weeks running around Germany in our colonel’s staff car trying to round-up doctors assigned to one of our medical group’s mobile hospitals, but subsequently reassigned for “temporary” duty to other facilities. I loved that assignment. I love driving, and here I was given an opportunity to drive a V-6 AMC Ambassador on Germany’s speed-limit free Autobahn. True, Army regulations prohibited driving Army vehicles in excess of 55 miles per hour, but I was confident that no right-minded MP would stop a colonel’s car, and therefore reached the century mark on the speedometer a number of times. In all, it took two weeks to coral all the doctors, and order them back to their permanent duty station. Rather a lengthy time for a certified combat-ready mobile hospital. But that is OK, because of our five headquarters vehicles, three were not operational, but we were nevertheless certified as combat ready since all paperwork was in order. I’m sure the Soviets would have been impressed by our skills. This was “Black September” a time where King Hussein and his Bedouin troops were butchering Palestinians in Jordan. Our troops were ordered to wear civilian garb and told to pretend that they were on a humanitarian mission for the Red Cross. Of course, it is questionable, how convincing it was to have, in 1970, few hundred clean-cut young Americans with identical windbreakers, baseball caps and khaki slack pretend that they were civilians. Have to give credit to our doctors: when the Bedouin troops tried to prevent them from treating Palestinian casualties they rebelled, and refused to operate on anyone. A compromise was reached—our doctors would treat the Palestinians and then turn them over to Hussein’s troops. They, on their end, would take these mended fighters, and at some distance from the hospital, would shoot them on the spot. And folks wonder: “Why do they hate us?” These event come to mind now, because there is ever-increasing number of reports of American mercenaries dressed in Ukrainian uniforms landing in Ukraine—up to 30 planeloads a day. Some information is as specific as detailing that they are from Greystone, a Blackwater subsidiary. True or not, past experience indicates that this is as likely as not.
Posted on: Tue, 11 Mar 2014 13:05:16 +0000
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