Tough Schlitz
on 01/07/2006 at 04:11 AM
I’m surprised the Dutch haven’t tapped into the local speciality Kabul black hashish! I love the irony Spanish troops with cars full of Heineken. The cloggies must be furious!
Maybe the cloggies have tapped into the local hash, Lyndon. After all, they have more than enough sandpeople in Holland nowadays to warrant familiarity with the stuff.
In World War II, every army except the American army got an alcohol ration. Ivan got his vodka and Tojo got his sake. Froggie and Tony got their wine, Hans got his beer and some schnapps (if he was lucky), and Tommy got his whiskey and a little beer also. Toward the end of the war (according to Bill Mauldin in Up Front, the War Department finally got around to granting a liquor ration to officers (but not enlisted men, who had to scrounge for whatever local and/or homemade horsepiss they could find). Mauldin took up the cudgels on behalf of the doggies....
“Drinking, like sex, is not a question of should or shouldn’t be in the army. It’s here to stay, and it seems to us here that the best way to handle it is to understand and recognize it, and to arrange things so those who have appetites can satisfy them with a minimum of trouble for everybody....
“...Because drinking is a big thing in a dogface’s life, I drew many pictures of guys wrapped around cognac bottles. I showed Willie and Joe, stewed to the ears, telling their captain, as an alibi, that they were ‘jest a coupla red-blooded American boys.’
“Too many sharp-eyed people noticed that there were three men in the picture, and seven hands; therefore, they were convinced that I was stewed to the ears myself and disqualified as a sober judge of the drinking problem.”
--Bill Mauldin, Up Front (New York: Henry Holt & Co, 1945, p. 84-88)
Have a good day.
I made a NATO cruise once and spent some time drinking with the Cloggies {thanks for that laugh, Lyndon). They, the Limeys and the Krauts took pity on us for serving in a dry Navy and fed us beer while in port. The Danes (euphemism, please) and the Kipper Eaters(?) (Norwegians) not so much. The Canucks just laughed at us and drank their rum.
These particular Cloggies can’t be too resourceful (or friendly) if they’re not trading with the others for beer, booze, wine, etc. I think the Skipper has it right with the “whine”.
I’m trying to remember where we ran into that really gooooood red hash on that cruise… Oh well, it’s been a while since 1972. All I’m sure of is that one of the Quartermasters brought a quantity back stuffed inside the Captain’s bridge chair.
I never ran across any euphemisms for either Danes or Norwegians. Can’t help you there.
You’re right about these particular cloggies not being too resourceful. Maybe they need a little practice at scrounging. It’s a fine art that any serviceman should master.
Stin, my Danish pals are Danskers.
Only a bureucrat of the mosr perfidious and parsimonious sort would call on troops digging these schmucks out of the muck to “sacrifice” hooch or any other comfort just because some poor villagers got the snot kicked out of them my Momma “Don’t G’all Mess Wid Me” Nature. What, as Bugs would say, a maroon!
01/07/2006 at 09:43 AM
