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View Full Version : Who else served at Chocolate Mountain?



Garyius
11-30-09, 06:28 PM
For you younger guys, back in the middle older days the big operations in the State were CAX at 29 Palms, and WTI out in Yuma.

Arty and DASC got sent out to Niland CA the other side of Slab City to give the WTI students something to do in the mornings with the all helos and air. Along with us came waters guys and some equipment operators, each time.

Niland stories, anyone?

doc h fmf
11-30-09, 06:59 PM
What Do They Call The Exercise At The Stumps I Went To Cax At The Stumps. With 3/8 Some Time In The 80s

hussaf
11-30-09, 08:13 PM
Are you referencing Mojave Viper?

micarr57
11-30-09, 10:16 PM
when i was there with the first platoon of tracs to go in 77 first op we went on was operation braveshield lasted 30 days

Garyius
12-01-09, 06:53 PM
I will kick off, since no one else wants to. Niland, back in 90-92, had one bar, one store, a bunch of churches, and a fire station with a sheriff sub station.

Then it had Slab City and the hill that the religious of Slab City were turning into some kind of mural to God.

The Slab City residents, besides needing to blast music at night that we could hear a mile away where we set up the DASC every time kust north of siphon 8...also appeared to steal all kinds of crap before driving their crappy RVs to SC. Once there their offered their booty for trade. That, and begging, seemed to be how they lived.

The Seals also had a base down the road, but they had all white vans and SUVs then, and thought they were another level above everyone (based on the vans?).

Anyhow, all kinds of stories started in that bar...

Garyius
12-02-09, 09:32 PM
I don't know what the Seals are like now, but back then they had a few movies out, and Niland was one of their boot training bases....so they were pretty jerky.

First of all they would never hook a devil dog up with a ride, even though they each seemed to get issued their own van or SUV. That was small, but also small minded in the back end of nowhere

Bigger was their habit of driving dune runners or motor bikes at night through our camps or even under our antennas, sometimes on night vision

Worst of all was the way they would come into the system and start ordering our Os around like little *****es to move around WTI training (or have us enlisted work all night for some night drop they put together at the last second), and our Os would go for it because one whisper from the mighty Seals that they were mean might get them a black mark on their WTI record and undo all the nights of O drinking and ass kissing they were doing.

Anyhow, I won't watch movies with Seals in them since then.

MontezumaCpl
12-03-09, 03:03 AM
CAX 9-82, I remember the heat, the dust and the heat at 29 Stumps. Looking back was fun times, at least when the beer vans came out. :beer:

Garyius
12-04-09, 08:28 PM
Okay, so a good friend of mine was black, and I am white. Back in 91sh (after DS) we got stuck in Niland for two weeks with no time off---the zeros would be there in the morning for the students to fly in, and then would leave in our issued vans to go to debrief in the afternoon followed by O drinking.
<O:p
Anyhow, salty NCOs got stuck running things because transferred new staff 7242s wanted nothing to do with WTI, so we got stuck working all afternoon and night. There was a huge hole with E-8s and 9s 7242 who had been doing the job since Eagle Pull, and grunt staff NCOs who got tutored into a high enough GT to transfer over and get a promotion but were not man enough to actually work the system.
<O:p
We got out to town and hit the store, finally. I bought a miller, he got some malt liquor. Yep, we killed the bags sitting there staring looking across the lot at the bar, only to discover that I drank the malt and he the miller. We got new 40s and solved the crisis.
<O:p
We then started drinking at the bar. I woke up as the boots were putting the tent back up from the windstorm. Turns out I rode though Slab City throwing MREs at campers yelling “clean the trash up and you can eat” if you believe the boots.

Roger Shepherd
12-05-09, 12:13 PM
I was there in 04/25/1979 from Cherry Point NC. We was there from 04/25//1979 to 05/14/1979 We had a lot of fun out there some how.

Garyius
12-06-09, 03:48 PM
The bar itself. Dark and as crappy as any in America, but with a bathroom that was clean (oddly enough for back then, or for any dive bar ever).
Coors and Bud on draft, such exotic beers a Bud Lite and Miller in bottles.
Turns out a large amount of Mexicans would follow the all america canal until they saw the lights of the prison, and then turn northwest towards Desert Center to avoid the Bombay Beach roadblock and (then new) night vision BP checkpoint. The word on the street was that some ran drugs to pay for their families.
The locals would buy us lots of drinks because they love Marines, and just happen to mention they needed to know what night we weren’t dropping bombs or firing arty.
Of course, our motor T and utilities and com guys had no freaking idea what the answer was, so they made one up. Us ops guys would either lie, or tell the truth and the crew chief would then call la migra and tell them when the cross county trek was coming.