In one of my previous articles, I mentioned that I was, at one time, a professional soldier. I still am a soldier, but since I only do it part time these days, it doesn’t seem right to call it my profession. My military background is probably responsible for much of my cynicism and sarcasm, since you have to have a decent amount of both to survive everyday life in the military. People often ask if my time with the Army has made me more disciplined. To which I always say, “No, not really.” Integrity is doing the right thing when no one else is watching, but discipline is doing the right thing when someone else (usually someone bigger and meaner than you) is watching.
When I made up my mind to join the Army in 1995, the only thing I didn’t want to be was average. So I went all the way. After basic training and advanced training, I volunteered to go to airborne school where I learned how to fall out of planes with an assortment of heavy, uncomfortable gear strapped to me. I was not fond of heights, (I’m still not), but this was a necessary stepping-stone to my ultimate goal.
After graduating airborne school, at a time when “blood wings” were still in style, I volunteered for and eventually, after a lot of pain and suffering, made it into one of the three Ranger battalions, which are anything but average. If you have the stomach to see what your fighting men go through for you, see “Blackhawk Down.” For those of you who don’t know, this is a film about the 3rd Ranger Battalion’s ill-fated raid in Somalia in 1993. A word of warning: don’t go expecting a shoot-’em-up action-adventure movie. It isn’t one, and you would just be cheapening both the message of the movie and the sacrifices made by the very real people this movie portrays.
Even though I was in 1st Ranger Battalion instead of 3rd and didn’t get to Somalia until two years after the incident, I knew many of the men who were there and met some of the family members of the ones who didn’t come back alive. So if you see the film, show some respect and maybe even a little reverence.
As with any other experience that lasts five years, life in the special operations community has provided me with lots of stories. Some are sad, and some are downright hilarious. Today, I am going to share one of the latter.
During my time in college, I have learned about a process known as natural selection. Apparently, nature weeds out those with inferior characteristics so as to improve the gene pool. We humans like to think that we are above this process, and judging from the amount of stupid people out there reproducing, maybe we are. However, sometimes nature gets the better of even the self-proclaimed pinnacles of evolution. This is one such incident.
Have you ever looked out the window of a plane when you were taking off or landing at an airport? If so, you might have noticed a large, white object near the center of the airfield that looks remarkably like a giant golf ball. This is a radar transmitter that sends out a signal to all the planes in the vicinity so they can look on their radar screens and realize that there is an airfield at a specific location. I don’t know how many watts of radiation field energy these things put out, but in order to reach a plane flying miles away, the wattage must be fairly significant.
One cold night in January, several years ago, yours truly, along with a platoon of rangers, parachuted into Hunter Army Airfield, right in the heart of Savannah, Ga. Before a jump, soldiers are given a rally point to go to after they hit the ground and gather up their gear. The assembly point that night was the “golf ball” in the center of the airfield since it was the most prominent and recognizable structure.
I always prided myself on being one of the first ones to the assembly point, but that night, several younger rangers beat me there. As I neared the golf ball, still numb from being kicked out of a warm plane into 150 mph wind and falling through the cold winter air, I noticed that there were about six guys from my platoon huddled around it. Now when I say “huddled,” I mean they were literally in contact with the outer covering.
Fearing the worst, I approached the little group and asked what they were doing. They replied, “Oh, Sgt. Hofmeister, you’ve got to come here and stand next to this thing. It’s so warm.”
My worst fears confirmed, I made them all move to a safe distance and explained to them that the energy being emitted from the golf ball, was in fact, very similar to the energy they used at home in their microwaves to warm food. “You morons,” I screamed at them. “It’s not warm because its giving off heat; it feels warm because it’s vibrating your molecules. Don’t you realize that you’re being cooked? None of you are going to have any children now!”
None of them seemed too upset, but one asked, “I can still have sex though, right?” I should have made the others tie him to the golf ball and leave him, but just then my commanding officer walked up. “Hey men, why are you sitting over there in the cold? You should come stand next to this thing where it’s nice and warm.”
The remainder of the platoon arrived, and even though I doubt it made a serious impact in the grand scheme of things, I think that natural selection won a small victory that night.