Introducing "GONZO!"

J

Jamoni

Active member
We'll just call this gu GONZO, not his real name. He may still be in the army. Anyway, Gonzo was a wrecker operator/mechanic. In theory. For his first trick, the amazing gonzo will destroy a truck! Okay, that's pretty much EVERY trick, he destroys a truck. This time was special, though.

Gonzo is sent out to recover a 5 ton stuck in the mud, in his 5 ton wrecker. He gets there, pulls the truck out, and radios back. So far so good. However, on his way back to the motorpool, he sees a hemmet from another unit also stuck. Do the math: 5ton vs hemmet. Anyway, he actually succeeds in getting the hemmet unstuck (probably destroying the winch in the process). Well, there is a bunch of slack in the line, so Gonzo waves at the hemmet driver to go down the road a little to take it out. The driver takes this wave to mean Good to go. And Floors it. With the line from the turret mounted boom still attached. He YANKS the turret COMPLETELY off, and drags it about 30 feet. He of course destroyed the radio antenae.
The first I hear of this is when the CO is screaming at me in formation cause I can't find a whole truck and soldier. Here comes Gonzo rattling into the motorpool with his turret ratchet strapped upside down to his truck. The CO's eyes got about this :shock: wide. More from Gonzo later!
 
More Gonzo fun!
We're in NTC, convoying in the wee small hours. It's DARK. So I'm following gonzo, who is towing a disabled 5 ton in his wrecker. Now, theres two ways to do this: highway mode, which is just hook up a towbar and your gas lines, and off road mode, where you suspend the truck from your raised boom, and use towbars to stand the truck off. So it's dark it's dusty, I'm wearing NVGs, and I'm following Gonzo. He slows down, starts to veer a little, then swerves to the left and gains speed. OOOOKAAAAY... I follow cautiously, noting that the "road" isn't quite as smooth as before. After about five minutes of this, the blackout lights on the truck he's towing shoot up about 15 feet into the air and disappear. Needless to say I slam on the brakes and get out to see what happened.
How to explain? Gonzo has driven down into a huge ditch, because we are nowhere NEAR the road, because he forgot batteries for his NVGs, so he followed the LANDING LIGHTS OF A HELICOPTER about 2 miles away, thinking they were the blackout lights of the truck in front of him. Bad enough, BUT HE WAS TOWING IN HIGHWAY MODE, BOOM DOWN. When he hit the bootom of the ditch, the boom was shoved halfway through the eninge block of the truck he was towing, which pushed him down the ditch and up the other side, resulting in a bridge made of 5tons, in which NO WHEELS were touching the ground. It took a little while to dig that out.
 
BUT my FAVORITE has to be the time he made innapropriate comments about my wife!
He's arguing with a female private, I come around the corner and tell them to "At ease!"
Shoe does so, he turns to me, pokes me in the chest with his finger, and says:"You at ease, soldier!"
Oh....My....Gawd.
So I shove him up against the wrecker and kick his legs out from under him, and calmly explain to him the rules of the game. Then I let him down and walk away.
Well, later that day, he tells one of my buddies :"That Jamoni has a bad temper. HE PROBABLY BEATS HIS WIFE!"
OH....MY.....GAWD!
So I hear this (we're in the field), and I lose it. I find him, I grab him by his kevlar, skull drag him over to the captain, and have him repeat it to the capt.
Captain says "Did you say that? (spit)"
"Yessirbutididnt...."
"Shit, (spit) Gonzo, you're lucky he didn't kill you!(spit) Now keep your f@$$ing mouth shut and get out of my face! Jamoni, Don't bother me with this 5#!+ anymore. (spit)"
Gotta love the captain.
 
See, I used to stick up for the guy, until....
One of my buddies is complaining that Gonzo is the stupidest person alive. I'm all "No, man, hes okay, you just gotta give him a chance."
Well, we are waiting for gonzo to ground guide a 5 ton over to us for repair. Here comes the 5 ton, but no gonzo. My buddy goes off again:"See, he can't even guide a truck. He got lost or something!"
I start to make an excuse for the guy, when we see him, sitting on top of the 5 tons cab, kicking his feet like a toddler, and going "LALALA!"
I wish I was making it up.
 
I was gonna tell the story of Gonzo and Motley Crue. That'll have to wait. Instead I will tell you of Gonzos transfer, possibly the shortest special duty in history. We had (for obvious reasons) been madly trying to transfer Gonzo. He eventually got picked up on special duty... as.... you'll never believe it.... THE REGIMENTAL COMMANDER'S DRIVER! BWAAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAA!!!!!!!
Two days later he's back and we are replacing the hood and left front quarter panel of the Colonel's Humvee.
 
Since Gonzo was a mechanic, we managed to get him transferred to the Heavy Equipment Repair Section for "Crosstraining"(we wanted rid of him for a bit). So they have one of those big Company sized generators, in because the oil sending unit and about a yard of oil lines had been torn off during convoy. ON THE CONTROL PANEL is a large sign that says "DO NOT START THIS GENERATOR!" Gonzo starts the generator.
"Generators connected to the, oil pump!
Oil pumps connected to the, oil lines!
Oil lines connected to, NOTHING."
Out shoots about 4 gallons of oil, all over gonzo, all over the bay, all over the slick concrete floor. Gonzo tries to get to the control panel, slips and falls. Generator continues dumping oil. Gonzo tries to stand, slips again. Generator runs out of oil, and proceeds to tear its own guts up.
Every bit of dry sweep in the troop got used up. And Gonzo now has odds of 1 to 1 of contracting skin cancer.
 
Okay, I'm not sure how much of this one is Gonzo's fault, cause I only heard the "BOOM". Apparently, he and another soldier were hooking up the 5-tonnish tractor-trailer (I forget the model #) to the machine shop trailer. Well, it didn't LOCK. So Gonzo cranks up the legs on the trailer, and the driver starts to pull away. Did I mention this is a fully equipped machine shop, with dozens of highly intricate and precise machine tools, worth a WHOLE LOT of money? Did I mention that they hadn't hooked up the brake lines? So the entire front end of the thing falls about five feet and SLAMS into the floor of the bay. Bent the trailer, CRACKED the bay floor, and pretty much destroyed a bridgeport lathe/milling machine setup. THEY WOULDN'T LET US CHAPTER HIM! WE TRIED AND TRIED!
We ended up with a monstrous cast-iron WW2 era replacement lathe, which was too wide to operate in a normal trailer, so we had to find an expando-van, which didn't have any drawers or hardware, so we had to scrounge those up in a commando raid on the junkyard, which was a lot of fun, so it wasn't ALL bad. They didn't call us "Steal and Repaint" for nothing!
 
In this one, Gonzo actually got in on the winning team, for once. We are in NTC, and we are pulling guard duty at night. Well, our squad leader was pulling Sgt. of the guard, and she failed to show up at the 1 hour mark, as did our relief. Two hours, no Sgt, no relief. Three hours, same thing, and I'm pissed, so against orders I send Gonzo to find our sgt.
He finds her, ASLEEP in the cab of a 5 ton! This was not the first time she'd pulled this stunt. He comes back and tells me, and we devised a plan. So Gonzo went and gently opened the drivers door, gently turned the lights on, and gently raced back to our hole. :lol:
 
Actually, I'm just about out of stories. :(
OOH! OOH! I forgot one! Gonzo gets poison ivy in the field. His mother tells him to "bathe it in oatmeal". He hears "Bathe in oatmeal"! The only problem is the PX only had instant oatmeal. Peaches and cream instant oatmeal. So he takes a bath in 2 boxes of peaches and cream oatmeal. Imagine what this does to plumbing, not to mention the stickiness/smell!
 
This one isn't really a Gonzo story, but he's in it. The same POS Sgt. from the "lights at night" story had a habit of bringin a ton of stuff to the field. I mean, things like makeup, conditioner, pillows, CURLING irons, nail polish, hair mousse, huge bags of health food, CD player, CDs, blah blah blah. She ended up with like 5 duffel bags and a ruck, which she did NOT have room for in her Hummvee. None of us would le her put it in our vehicles unless it was on the load plan :twisted: , except for Gonzo. She had the habit of piling her 3 or 4 extra bags all over the back of his wrecker, (you know, where tools should go?). She never tied them down. So we're out in the field, my buddy Specialist "Horsefeet" and I are directing the convoy. Sgt Whatsherface has been giving him a hard time, and as she drives by gives him a dirty look and shakes her finger at him. The next truck in line is Gonzo's wrecker, and as it passes by, "Horsefeet" casually reaches up, hooks one of Sgt "Avon Ladies" duffel bags full of cosmetics, etc, and swings it right under the tires of Gonzos wrecker. 8)
 
No more Gonzo??? :?

It was a good one, even if Gonzo wasn't the main ingredient.. :lol:
 
Well, there WAS the time when Gonzo tried a little PsyOps on us. He rationalized that the three people giving him the most trouble (me as acting section sgt., spc. Kegstand as squad leader, and spc Horsefeet as all around A-hole, must be allied in an axis of evil. His plan was classic: divide and conquer.
So at the end of the day, over a beer, I told Horsefeet and Kegstand how Gonzo had come to me and said:
"You shouldn't hang out with Horsefeet and Kegstand. They make fun of you. You should hang out with me."
Apparently he told Horsefeet: "You shouldn't hang out with Jamoni and Kegstand. They make fun of you. You should hang out with me."
AND to Kegstand: "You shouldn't hang out with Horsefeet and Jamoni. They make fun of you. You should hang out with me."
Genius. Pure genius.
 
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