Anderson came into the room one evening and we got to swapping tall tales and I told the 2-tiered joke about the brick layer who  made a brick wall and when he was done with it he had a brick left over, so what did he do with it? Anderson says he sold it, and a couple more things and I'd just shake my head and told him, no, he threw it away!

Anderson says, that's not funny and I say OK, OK - I'll tell a funny one, I know a real funny one but he insisted that he could do it better and wouldn't let me finish up. So he told his story and when he'd got the punch line out, Fair and I just sat and looked at him, never cracked a smile. Fair, of course knew what was coming.

So I said again, OK now I got a funny one and the kid says OK. So I tell him well, there was this drunken bum that got on this bus and sat down by this fat woman who had a dog in her lap. The drunk had a cigar butt he'd picked up and was smoking and the little dog started snorting and the woman complained to the drunk and she said "If you don't put that cigar out I'll take it and throw it out of the window." The drunk says, "If you do I'll throw that dog out the window, too."

So, she did and he did, they both did what they said they'd do. They came to the next stop where both got off and here came the little dog running up to them and guess what he had in his mouth?  'Course Andy says "the Cigar."

And, of course, I say, "Nope, he had the brick the brick-layer threw away."

And so help me if the kid didn't jump up and leave the room without saying a word! But we all remained friends.

Along in here I transferred to D Company. Not because I disliked C Company but because D Company had a open slot for an E-5 instrument man. Promotion was available.

I arrived in D Company and went to the shop where they had this kid who was not an instrument repairman and knew next to nothing about ordnance. There were questions about some equipment that seemed to be missing so the company asked me to do an inventory of the equipment that was supposed to be in our shop.

Now we are talking about the infantry TOE that the combat units bring to us for repair. Some of it couldn't seem to be found. Particularly 5ea 7x50 Binoculars and 3ea .45Cal Pistols.

I did really close check on the paperwork and got it down to 2-3 pair binoculars and 2ea pistols. The Infantry units were raising Hell and wanted their stuff. Now I had seen this before over in Germany, where new, green people don't keep good records and pretty soon lose control and wind up with some stuff they do not know who it belongs to. They can't find out then later someone else takes over and says, hmmmm - surplus stuff - and they don't turn it in. Normally they trade it for something they need BUT there are those who just up and sell it for whatever they can get out of it.

I think that was the case here. I think someone in the section thought it was surplus and no one would ever know so just sold it down town. Everyone had a pretty good idea about it but nothing was ever proven.

Anyway, having gotten the inventory straightened out, then went on to other things. The whole platoon was in bad shape, actually as far as job efficiency went. We were short help in the Small Arms area as well as the Fire Control end of it. It seemed not many F.C. Instruments came our way but we had a heavy load of small arms work. So, I helped all I could in that regard as I was somewhat familiar with most of the stuff.

I'd never been around the Grenade Launcher M79 and they apparently did not have 3.5 Rocket Launcher either but had a shoulder fired Recoiless Rifle that they used. Otherwise I knew something about the rest of it so wound up doing just as much small arms as instrument work and maybe more.

And then they transferred a guy into the section who was E-5 F.C. Instrument Repair - there went my promotion - couldn't believe it. Then, to top off everything else, the guy didn't know the first thing about Instruments! He said he was small arms repairman and I asked well, how the world did you get the Instrument MOS? And he said, "oh, that was the only slot available in his previous unit so they promoted him into it but I kept working in small arms ........" I was really ticked about the whole deal.

I tried to continue my studies in things Russian and signed up with a Russian language class. It was ran by a Russian woman who had married an American Officer over there in Russia, I think. Anyway, she was at Ft Carson with her husband. We no more than got started and that big maneuver in S. Carolina came on the scene and I never went back when it was over.

The only word I remember she taught us is "vilka" which means a fork that you eat with. But I already knew some words, yet today when some one says "Can you speak Russian?!" I smile and say one word ...... "Da" which is yes. 

We did our best to do P.T. but it was not organized P.T. - we ran the 1.7 miles to the shop in the mornings in lieu of the regular thing. Not necessarily every day but at least 2-3 days a week.

And I started looking at the Vietnam thing out of the corner of my eye and so I went to the post library looking for books on guerrilla warfare and there was hardly anything there. They had 2 books on the warfare in Yugoslavia during WWII and they had Lawrence's "Seven Pillars of Wisdom" so I read'm all. Lawrence was mostly social stuff and the Yugoslavian stuff was generally of a tactical nature.

None of it applied to what I'd seen so far in Indo-China. So I just kept reading my geopolitical stuff and the divide and conquer, the instigations, the stirring up of populaces to achieve merchantilistic advantage, etc became ever more apparent as I studied the causes of guerrilla activity.

Along in here we got a new M88 Retriever, a really nice looking, solid vehicle. It was parked next to the fence separating us from a little building next door and I went out into the motor park to get a picture of it and when I raised my camera to take the picture a guard of the little building next to us yelled "No pictures." Well, I figured what the heck and raised the camera again and the M14 Rifle flew off his shoulder and he jacked a round in and said, "I said no pictures!" And I said, "yes sir!"

I asked if it would be OK if I moved to the side so the building wouldn't be in the background and he said that would be all right so I did and got the picture which I have since lost but here is a picture of a M88's likeness.

We had seen gun-jeeps come down the road and take up a position on the hillside overlooking the little building and our shop and then a 3/4 ton truck with the canvas on would come flying down the road with a gun-jeep in front and another in the rear. All the gun-jeeps had ammo belts loaded into their guns.

The 3/4 ton with the canvas top on would back right up to the building, right against it, so you couldn't see what was going on. They were obviously loading something into the vehicle, then they'd take off out of the little compound and off down the road they'd go under the heavy guard.

Putting this and that together I finally surmised the building was a storage facility FOR DUMMY TRAINING ROUNDS AND OTHER EQUIPMENT FOR THE T.O.W. MISSILES.

There is more info on the things later in this page. I found out the gun/missile/tube wasn't necessarily secret but the control elements for the system and the ammo was. I can't imagine anyone storing secret ammo in such a flimsy building with only one walking guard and one of the crewman told me once they used "dummy" rounds to train with and that they were secret, too (I think there was only one building but not sure).

Anyway, it was something watching those jeeps zipping around there and everyone all business.

And of course, I was glad to get my picture of the M88 - our guys were sure proud of it.

Along about this time, they put me on the division's inspection team as a Fire Control Instruments inspector. At first there was a couple of us I think, a Fire Control Instrument guy and a Small Arms guy. Then it wound up just me.

One day I was at a critique in support command where some of the Armament problems we had in the division was discussed. One involved the M14 Rifle's malfunctioning when it was fired on full automatic - the bolts came apart (the M14 could be fixed with a bipod and selector switch and was supposed to take the place of the old BAR). They were really pounding that subject and I couldn't understand what the problem was, we'd never seen anything come into our company like they were describing. There were a couple LTs blaming the ammunition.

They didn't act too crazy about it but I think they did it. Now, I was an instrument man, not small arms, so that may have had something to do with their tepid response.

In any event, when I got out of the meeting I went to our shop and knowing our spare parts came from Harrington and Richardson's, went right to the small arms work bench and grabbed the drawer that had all of the M14 extractors and dumped it on the bench and the fake Instrument guy said, "What's the matter with you, are you crazy?"

I just ignored him and as they spilled onto the bench top I saw them right away, it was obvious as hell in some of them, not all, but too many. And when examined closely no reasonably knowledgeable person would miss in the die-cast extractors a swelling at precisely the point where they come flush with the bolt when assembled.  The extractor "stem" holds the bolt together which is under load from the firing pin and ejector springs. The swellings at the shoulder of the stem where it connects to main body of the extractor caused the extractor to work it's way out of the bolt especially during automatic fire and then the bolt flew apart because of the load on the springs. It was that simple.

I had that figured before I dumped the drawer of parts.

For cryin out loud, if the extractor is the part that holds the bolt together and it comes apart ....... then the extractor didn't do it's job of locking the parts in the bolt, period.  Find out why the extractor came out and you got it.

See the picture to the right of what appears to be some "healthy" extractors, no swellings here but "X" marks the spot where I found the swellings.

Considering what I found it's entirely possible there was a problem with the total outside length of the "stems," also. This could cause the outside of the extractor to hit something and jar things loose, I don't know.

So, I got some of the fatter stemmed ones, cautioned the guys about using them and took off for our orderly room. I got up there and got ahold of some Lt and told him about it so he could take them to battalion and make himself look good. I waited a few days and when nothing happened gave some to the people in support command hdqrs - never heard a word from anybody and I just kept working on the inspection team. Next thing I know I'm doing the small arms and the instruments both, for the inspection team.

As you might have guessed, I kind of checked this little story with the internet and boy is there a bunch of info on the "extractor problem" but you'd be surprised at how few identified the extractor's stem as being the problem where they were flying apart. Here are a couple excerpts from blogs I ran across that zeroed on the "stem."

have the following from GUS:(excerpt) There was an official Marine Corps Modification Instruction that was dated in the late 1960's about rounding the bottom edge of the extractor like this for the M1 Garand. That's right, the Garand and not the M14. I was taught to perform this modification on the extractor for both the M14 and M1 in 1972. We also modified the top slightly by sanding/grinding a hollow on top of the extractor so it would not jam against the shoulder of the barrel.  Finally, we were taught to grind the post of the extractor so they would all be a little above the bottom plane of the bolt. Now, so that doesn't get confusing, it means you grind it so it doesn't stick out from the bolt and a little too short is better than being just even with the bolt, or worse, sticking out from the bolt. This last case is where the trouble comes from. The cartridge case can hit it that way and pop it upwards loose or out of the bolt during loading.  Once these modifications were done, we considered the extractors interchangeable between both rifles. Oh, yes, even "M14" extractors occasionally had posts that stuck below the surface of the bolt. Not many and it would be hard to say what percentage, but enough that it was on the checklist for building NM M14's. HTH 3-29-10

M14 Rifle Extractor Departure Problem (excerpt) There have been cases where commercial manufacture extractors have flown out of the bolt while the rifle is cycling. These extractors can usually be made serviceable by further machining of the divot where the extractor spring plunger rests on the extractor, or by replacing the extractor spring plunger. An alternate solution is to replace the commercially-made extractor with a USGI extractor. Often, the commercial extractor spring tension is incorrect, the extractor spring detent is too large or the extractor stem is too long. M14 Rifle History and Development Author Lee Emerson Link for his book http://www.lulu.com/product/hardcover/m ... on/6319147 Last edited by Gutkowski on Sat May 01, 2010 7:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Now I did my thing in 1963 and people are still struggling with this thing. I don't really know what to say. I wasn't even a Small Arms Repairman and was right on it. Maybe I should have gone to the Colonel myself and presented a really solid case but I was thinking hard about getting out and was out of time, I guess.

I apologize for not pushing the thing harder, especially to anyone in 'Nam that may have had problems with the weapon.

Then, my company up and promotes me to E-5. I wondered how they did that with no slot and when they gave me the orders, there it was, MOS 421.10 Small Arms Repairman! Now I was pissed off! They had just screwed me out of any chance to get my Pro-Pay back. Small Arms didn't have pro-pay 'cause those guys were a-dime-a-dozen, Hell, everybody was a small arms man. They thought they were, anyway.