I'm not as well versed in history as a lot of you . Except the parts that involved me .
This is one of the things that forward bases do for you in " peacetime " when the generals in the pentagon ain't got enough to keep themselves occupied and some defense contracts are nearing completion :
In 1961 on Okinawa we put on a big demonstration/war game for some bigwigs from a pissant country that the State Department wanted to join the SEATO alliance .I was with a 155 howitzer battery , and we were supposed to show them how quickly we could respond to bail them out if they were attacked .
I won't go into all the details about how we " fudged " on the rapid response deal except that our guns were laid in and dropping rounds exactly on target a couple days ahead . Then the aiming stakes were left in place and the wheel positions were marked .
We rapidly responded before daylight the morning of the day of the exercise and the bigwigs were in helicopters observing all this .
What I remember most was dropping off my howitzer and hooking it to the staging area for the trucks where we already had camoflouge netting stretched . We almost hid too good 'cause a bunch of planes shooting napalm came screaming over the horizon right behind us .We probably were not in real danger 'cause they probably - I'm guessing they fudged ,too, since it's the military way - just happened to have flown the area prior to that morning and spotted our netting as being out of the ordinary .
Yep , that SEATO deal really worked out good for us didn't it . Couldn't have done it without that forward base .
