encore
Stay on Your Toes!
In front of a class of 75 new recruits, this butter bar fi nds
himself conducting a different demonstration than he’d
planned for — and learns you can never be too prepared.
S
econd lieutenants have a reputa- how a minefi eld should be
tion of not being leadership-orient- laid out on the ground.
ed when freshly commissioned. I After one of my classes, I
guess that is why “butter bars” are the vic- was on stage in front of my
tims of older enlisted soldiers’ jokes and class of about 75 new U.S.
challenges. I was a mustang and success- Army recruits. This was
fully had completed the Fort Benning, Ga., their fi rst month in uniform,
OCS. I proudly wore my enlisted Good and they either had no rank
Conduct Medal on my uniform to dem- or were privates fi rst-class
onstrate I was not one of “those” second (E1s). This also was my fi rst
lieutenants. Still, I was a victim of picking class. At the end of my in-
up a freshly charged capacitor from the struction, I asked the class
top of an M-38 Jeep carburetor and get- if there were any questions.
ting a nice shock in the motor pool, to the One recruit raised his hand
amusement of some enlisted mechanics. and asked, “Sir, can a soldier
My fi rst offi cer assignment was as walking across the minefi eld
an instructor at the U.S. Army Training set off the M-1 anti-tank
Command for inductees, Fort Knox, Ky. mine?” I responded that
I was assigned to the Small Weapons and only a tank could set it off, to which the
Tactics Branch as an instructor for mine recruit requested a demonstration.
warfare, which included how to booby- Because we had no covered mine to
trap devices and detect and defuse them. walk over, I proceeded to arm a mine on
I was chief instructor for training new re- the stage with a blue fuse. I then stepped
cruits to lay and breech minefi elds using on top of the mine and demonstrated
the M1 anti-tank mine and incorporate my weight would not set off the fuse. To
the anti-personnel mine known as the further prove my point, I used my heel to
“Bouncing Betty.” apply extra weight to the fuse.
Instead of using actual M-1 mines, Suddenly, the fuse exploded and
which were olive drab in color, we used caught my pants on fi re! There I was
an inert M-1 mine that was blue. To make — wildly dancing around the stage, now
training more realistic, we used a prac- demonstrating how to put out a fi re. The
tice fuse that had a fi ring cap and a small recruits certainly enjoyed the show. The
amount of fl ash powder. The M-1 mine only injury I suffered was that even as a
had a sensitive fuse that required the mustang, I was just a butter bar. MO
weight of a tank to activate the TNT in
the mine. The fi eld manual had pictures
— John R. Pretti is a retired Army lieutenant
and easy-to-follow diagrams showing colonel. He lives in Tallahassee, Fla.
8 8 M I L I T A R Y O F F I C E R M AY 2 0 0 8 ILLUSTRATION: ELWOOD SMITH
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