THE ELECTRICAL TAPE WARS by Lonnie Heidtke |
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COPYRIGHT (c), May 1998, Lonnie R. Heidtke, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED The Great Electrical Tape Wars It seems that everything that we got in C Company came in large quantities. One time we got canned hot dogs, they were great the first couple of times we had them, but after a couple of weeks of hot dogs morning, noon and night, they got a little old. The hot dogs and powdered eggs were especially gross. But I digress. We got this shipment of electrical tape in; you know the black plastic kind. Well, everyone had more rolls of tape than we knew what to do with, and boys being boys, we started coming up with unique and wonderful ways to use up all the fricken tape. One afternoon my gunner fell asleep in his lawn chair, (did you guys each have your own folding lawn chairs?) so a couple of us snuck up and started taping him to his chair. He was one of those people with lots of body hair and as it was hot he didn't have a shirt on So we gave it several wraps around each fore arm and then as many wraps as possible around his upper body. I think that we got his legs tied down as well and pretty much finished up his chest as he was waking up. I don't remember what he did to get even with me but I walked away and let him get out of it himself. The next sortie was Jesse; the guy that bunked next to me was out drinking or what ever, probably what ever. Well he was a lot of fun when in that state, so we decided to see if we could freak him out. Being as we were the Black Widows, we took the electrical tape and made a giant web in front of his bed, sticky side out. Then we unscrewed the light bulbs on both ends of the hooch so that it was dark and he wouldn't be able to see it. In his state it probably wouldn't have mattered. So we all layed back and waited for the victim to arrive on the scene. Well at slightly before O'dark thirty he came, dragging his ass into his bunk and walked straight into the trap. He screamed bloody murder, and woke up everyone that wasn't in on the trick while he just stood there frozen, screaming something like, get this off me. Now it was time to get the pilots in on the fun. All the crew chiefs and gunners were sleeping with one eye open and they had their own supplies of tape. So one night (early evening) a couple of us snuck into this one Warrant's hooch and very carefully so as not to wake him, taped him to his bunk. Then it was off to the operations hooch to bribe the guys on watch to set off the alert siren. It was great fun to listen out side his door as he tried to get free. A great crowd gathered so when he did get outside everyone was standing there laughing their asses off. The last battle was the same poor soul. He was kind of short in stature so I knew I could out run him. I went and told him that I had done the deed on his bunk, he started chasing me and I led him down a chosen path way were there were two poles about 3 feet apart. On these poles we had wrapped several wraps of tape about chest high. I looked back in time to see him fall flat on his back after bouncing off the tape. I turned back around and ran and hid till he cooled down. Once again my memory fails me as to how he got even, but I'm sure he did. So while all you guys were wondering why you couldn't get any electrical tape, we were playing games with it and eating those damn hot dogs. |