RETREAT HELL, WE JUST GOT HERE

Blog number seventy-four                                08 Feb. 2007

You know what I don't get?  No, not "Cats."  I don't get good looking shoes.  I  hear, "Oh, what beautiful shoes."  They're shoes.  The go on the feet.  A sole and two straps.  Beautiful!  A sole and two straps.  Ugly!  What's the criteria?

I was getting my teeth cleaned one afternoon and the cleaning lady says to me, she says, "When I first saw your shoes I thought they were the ugliest things but now I see they really look nice."  What's that all about?  Ugly shoes?  Can you imagine a conversation, "When I first saw her I thought she was ugly but now I see she's a hotty."  

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Back in the day, I changed a lot of brake shoes.  The hardest part was hooking that spring to the two shoes.  I finally used a grip lock and a strong screwdriver, but even then it was a chore.  The shoe kept slipping while I tried to pull the grip lock and lever the screwdriver.  The grip lock often slipped off, banging knuckles some times. There was a tool for this, but I never could find out how it was used.  It was kinda like a reverse pair of scissors. None of my friends knew how to use it either.  Last night I'm watching a program on hydraulics and lo and behold they used this tool and it was so simple.  Hook the spring, place the other end of the "scissors" onto the brake shoe (thus holding it steady) and squeeze and pop!  It's in.  Damn

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I've often heard (and read) that a large percentage of men in battle don't fire their guns.  This was always attributed to man's natural inclination to not kill, but then I read a guy that said, since people always shoot at whoever's shooting at them, these people hold their fire so that they don't get shot at.

I remember reading of on horrendous battle where the Americans almost got wiped out, but managed to hang on and win.  The Louie had noticed a tank sitting where it could have fired right into the attackers and made it an easy victory.  After the battle he went up to the tank commander and asked him why he hadn't fired.  The reply was , "I didn't want to give away our position." 

I read this before I read about not firing for self-preservation, so I thought the commander was just being overly cautious with the tank, so that it could be used in a worse battle. 

I had already read of several cases of this sort.  Once, when this happened to a group of tanks when The Japs overran the Philippines, the infantry general told the tank battalion commander to take his damn tanks and to stay the hell away from his boys, that they weren't worth a damn in a battle anyhow.