"David R. Birch" wrote in message
...
On 1/4/2015 8:50 AM, Jim Wilkins wrote:
"David R. Birch" wrote in message
...
On 1/3/2015 11:00 PM, John B. Slocomb wrote:

I think that you are confusing "needs" and wants. Needs are food,
clothing, lodging and medical care. And the Air force feed,
clothed,
and housed me and supplied free medical care when necessary, and
demanded that I perform "work" in compensation.

Which is, amazingly, just how communism worked in the so called
"Eastern Block".

If you were like many in the military, you did as little as
possible
to to get those needs supplied.

Which is also much like the Eastern Block version communism:

"They pretend to pay us, we pretend to work."

David

My situation was unusual, the on-call repairman for a computer
network. I could only be assigned extra duties that I could drop on
a
moment's notice to hop on a helicopter, like post photographer and
USO
and chaplain's assistant, or helping in the motor pool. I was the
obvious choice for odd assignments like meaningless special classes
to
show we were taking action against problems like drug abuse, and
meet-the-locals visits around the area. I did enjoy being the token
enlisted man at a banquet the officers held at Heidelberg Castle. I
was almost the only enlisted GI who could be trusted to operate
independently and not cause trouble out alone among the Germans.
-jsw

When were you there? My brother was a JAG captain who said he spent
most of his time defending enlisted men for drug abuse or fighting
with the locals. That was in the mid '70's.

I visited him in '75 and ended up visiting the Heidelberg Schloß
four times! The exploded gunpowder donjon was impressive.

http://www.panoramio.com/photo/5685814

David

I left in early 1973.

The drug situation I saw in Germany then was strange. It was mostly
"ethnic", and severely aggravated by ambitious congressional staffers
etc who tried to inflate any criminal accusation into a racial
incident. The first response I saw was to dump enforcement onto black
NCOs, then to simply ignore the problem and relax discipline. Barracks
inspections stopped so the officers wouldn't have to see but ignore
the punchbowls full of hash.

The effect of uncontrolled drug use was surprisingly small. It lost
its cachet of rebellion and fell back to the habitual users who hadn't
been contributing anything anyway, so the usual 10-20% who make
everything run smoothly just continued to, and life proceeded as
before without major problems other than unmourned drug-dealer
murders. We knew not to assign any tasks to a guy who carried his
heroin works in his shirt pocket.

After they introduced beer vending machines, I noticed that the milk
machines always ran out first.

The "Drug Education" class I was stuckee'd to attend was part of a
grad student's thesis project on the effects of various substances on
blood circulation, with films of red cells moving (or not) in the
transparent capillaries of frog feet. Somehow he had sold the Army on
its value and gotten them to fund his European vacation trip.

He was very surprised to find a GI who knew chemistry better than he
did among the class of sleepy people who could be spared to attend. He
happened to be holding it next to an old airstrip we often used so I
was as available for a mission there as anywhere else.
-jsw