(no subject)
I just finished reading a letter my grandpa wrote to my brother years ago about his army times. While he didn't get sent overseas until the war was over, there is some seriously interesting and hilarious shit in there.
Like one time, he got a sunburn in El Paso so bad he passed out, fell on the ground and fucked up his face, and would have been court-martialled for self-mutilation if he hadn't woken up in the ambulance and told them to take him back to his barracks. And another time, he tried to light the Aggie bonfire before the Aggies could (apparently people used to fly planes over the bonfire and FIREBOMB IT just to fuck with Aggies... makes you feel like a pussy, right?). And then when he got to Europe, there were anti-occupation former Nazis who strung piano wire across the roads at night, and he had to track down missing files on Nazi doctors from Dachau. And he got shot at by a band of renegade black US soldiers that went AWOL, stole a bunch of contraband to sell on the black market, jumped off a train and fled into the Bavarian mountains. And AND, a carton of cigarettes went for $250; take a minute and calculate what that means in today's money. AND AND, for a while he was a VD Control Officer (as in Venereal Disease). aaaaaaand for a while he was the youngest lieutenant in the US army.
Reading this letter, I have already conceived of eight or so awesome movies. Or maybe just one SUPER awesome movie. I'm thinking I'll call it: Bud Dixon: Cleanin' Up Yo Shit, Europe.
Or something else probably, because he didn't approve of cuss words.
Like one time, he got a sunburn in El Paso so bad he passed out, fell on the ground and fucked up his face, and would have been court-martialled for self-mutilation if he hadn't woken up in the ambulance and told them to take him back to his barracks. And another time, he tried to light the Aggie bonfire before the Aggies could (apparently people used to fly planes over the bonfire and FIREBOMB IT just to fuck with Aggies... makes you feel like a pussy, right?). And then when he got to Europe, there were anti-occupation former Nazis who strung piano wire across the roads at night, and he had to track down missing files on Nazi doctors from Dachau. And he got shot at by a band of renegade black US soldiers that went AWOL, stole a bunch of contraband to sell on the black market, jumped off a train and fled into the Bavarian mountains. And AND, a carton of cigarettes went for $250; take a minute and calculate what that means in today's money. AND AND, for a while he was a VD Control Officer (as in Venereal Disease). aaaaaaand for a while he was the youngest lieutenant in the US army.
Reading this letter, I have already conceived of eight or so awesome movies. Or maybe just one SUPER awesome movie. I'm thinking I'll call it: Bud Dixon: Cleanin' Up Yo Shit, Europe.
Or something else probably, because he didn't approve of cuss words.