THE ELECTRICAL TAPE WARS
by Lonnie Heidtke
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.