RE: [OFF] Re: Blanding, Palmettos, and the 53rd

This is getting OT.  Having been on exercise in Camp Blanding a couple
of
times, let me tell you Yanks that you wouldn't know thick brush if you
saw
it.  For the non-blanding members of the list I'll describe Camp
Blanding:
Palm Trees and Sand.  It's in Florida, us Cannuks went there and it was
like
a vacation  (nice town, you guys have the best kit).

If you boys want to see rough terrain, come up north, the Great White
North
with Summers hotter than Florida and Winters colder than your
airconditioners on full blast.	;-)

Please send all Flames to my personal address.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: jatkins6@ix.netcom.com [SMTP:jatkins6@ix.netcom.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, August 26, 1998 8:50 AM
> To:	FTGZG-L@bolton.ac.uk
> Subject:	[OFF] Re: Blanding, Palmettos, and the 53rd
> 
> You wrote: 
> 
> ><< Ever since delightful Camp Blanding, FL, my definition of heavy 
> > underbrush includes terrain MEN can't get in or out of. >>
> 
> >When were u at CBTS? I've spent many, many miserable nights there.
> >
> >and you're right..there are areas on the north post that are far
worse 
> than >jungle.
> 
> Summer of 1997, I got attached to 2/C/229 EN since 70% of my company 
> was at various schools and they needed some warm bodies to fill it
out. 
>  So we got attached to support 2 BNs of MdARND infantry, which 
> designations I cannot recall, and we played OPFOR for a bunch of 
> third-rate pogues from the 53rd (minus a BN which was elsewhere).  
> Those guys (no offense intended if you're one of 'em--the rot is, to
my 
> guess, at the higher levels than your average squaddie) were really, 
> really bad.  For example, the first attack we went on, us Engineers 
> went up to breach the wire that the Infantry had seen, and we sorta 
> accidentally overran the company CP.	Complete with entire HQ section.
 
> This was the first warning this unit had that we were attacking.  The 
> worst terrain was when I was on a recon patrol that  went around the 
> 53's positions, which were anchored on this big open area across which

> some heavy junk outfit was digging a massive AT ditch.  Why they were 
> digging an AT ditch in a light infantry scenario I do not know.  Their

> security was so bad that when I wanted to know what kind of mines were

> in the boxes they were unloading, I just walked up and read the boxes.
 
> Anyway, we went all the way around behind the entire batallion, and
hit 
> some palmettos from HELL.  I mean we couldn't physically push through 
> this stuff.
> 
> John M. Atkinson