I was in Charlie Co. of the 4/17th. 7th Infantry Divison based out of Ft. Ord, CA from 1988-1990. I was a Specialist E-4 mortorman, 11-C (High Angle Hell!). I qualified Expert at Ft. Benning with the rifle hitting 37 out of 40 human sized targets that flipped up over ranges from 25 - 300 meters,open sights. I later qualified expert with the Beretta and mortar, only Sharpshooter with hand grenades.


1989 was a big year in my life. We went to Jungle Operations Training School at Ft. Sherman, Panama in January of 1989. I liked it. I liked the humidity, the birds and butterflies. The people were nice. I didn't like the monkeys. They pooped into their hands and threw it at us from the high limbs above. They must've known we didn't carry live ammo. I proposed to my girlfriend over the single outdoor telephone that all of the soldiers waited in line to use.



Once home, we got married on April 14, 1989.


Back in the states we went to Ft. Bragg for a huge field training exercise. That was when Hurricane Hugo hit. It was impressive. It was the most damaging storm in some time and I was in the teeth of it, outdoors when it hit. I remember swallowing a live toad whole, just to try and out-do some buddies while we waited things out. Infantry does that kind of thing.

Once we returned to Ft. Ord, it wasn't long until the big San Francisco earthquake hit (it's epicenter was actually in Watsonville, much closer to Ft. Ord than San Francisco). I remember the concrete walls bending like a sheet, thrown across the bed, rippling energy surging along the whole length of the barracks, bending it like butter.

Things heated up down south. Ft. Ord was known as the "Gateway to Central America". We were always on alert, ready to be anywhere in the world within 24 hrs. I had to miss both of my sisters' weddings because we were on alert status.



We were sent back down to Panama. We had to go through Jungle Operations School again, just 6 months or so after the first time. I saw the 350 lb. pet anaconda in the swimming pool at Ft. Sherman. I never saw it eat goats on Tuesdays though.






the Canal and some local Indian art I bought:



Me, getting ready for a training mission, waiting on a Blackhawk helicopter:







We lived in Christobal High School (an active high school, with part blocked off for us) in Coco Solo. We monitored Noriega's Navy that was located right near us. We watched them.






We landed in Chinook 47 helicopters at the Gamboa Golf course.... old dudes scattered, towing their clubs. We marched to a PDF (Panamanian Defense Force) road block, testing their resolve to not let us pass.... the half dozen of them locked and loaded their .50 and .30 cals and pointed them at us..... 120 of us trained our M-16s, M-60s, M-203 grenade launchers and M249 Squad Automatic Weapons (SAWs), Dragons, AT4s & LAWs at them (anti-tank recoiless rockets). They blinked. We walked through.

Things heated up. We messed with their guys, they messed with ours; some died. Noriega declared war on the U.S. The next night, Captain Rizzo, commanding officer of Charlie Company had us assemble in the hallway. He said "Tonight men, you are going to make history". He laid out our plans to attack.

It was December 19, 1989.

We had three hours to kill. Back at our bunks, Sgt. Daniels turned on "Sympathy For the Devil" by the Rolling Stones as we daubed on the green and black war face paint and cleaned the weapons one more time. We hadn't got mail for a week but it came that night. Grodziak got a care package from his mom. It had a plug in Christmas tree about a foot high. We all liked that. I got a letter from my new wife of about six months. She said she felt our baby move for the first time. That is heady news for a first time father and a soldier about to go in to battle. Some guys wrote their will. I got ready. Beretta 92, LAW (light anti-tank weapon) M16 A-2, hand-grenades, kevlar helment and flack jacket were standard equipment for me on patrols. I weighed my gear once. I never carried less than 72 pounds. This is the photo I thought might be my last, a strong soldier named Fred Butler took it. Grenade and Law in plain view.

I took one of Fred too. We wrestled once. It didn't work out for me very well. He was a great guy.


We lined up across the soccer field from the PDF barracks. We saw they had a beautiful Christmas tree all lit up by their Command Post entrance. The 2 vulcan guns were ready as well as all of our armament. 1st Platoon was in position out by the docks to ambush them if they tried to mobilize to their boats. We attacked for two minutes. The guys by the tree were the first to go. Sgt. Ortiz got on the bullhorn and told them to surrender.... they returned fire. We hit them again and again offered a chance to surrender.... they did not. We swept through the building. Fighting got intense on the docks.





Grodziak, my mortar buddy. The girls would say "oooh, azul oho!!!" (oooh, blue eyes).

Glad to be alive with my best friend Robert Coulter, a Ranger:













I could hear Sgt. Daniels screaming he'd been hit in the leg. Later I saw him while the medics readied him for evacuation. He was doped up and laughing on morphine, showing me the ammo pouch that was shattered from the AK-47 rounds, only one of which hit him in the hip.



The following days we slept on concrete and patrolled Coco Solo and then Colon, the largest city of Panama on the Atlantic side. I shot the tires out of a bus to keep the loot it was loaded with from leaving the store where it had been loaded. At one point I was put in charge of the prisoners. We locked them in the high school tennis courts. Our "torture" was to give them the MREs (meals, ready to eat) that we didn't like - generally it was the dreaded pork patty or barbecue beef conglomerate.

In all of the patrols we made I only heard one negative comment "Yankee go home". Most of the Panamanians were glad we were there and glad to be rid of Noriega. I was at a guard post when a neighborhood official arrived and presented a Christmas Card to the U.S. Army. It was signed by over 300 people. I sent it up the chain of command. I was interviewed by some reporter and a relative heard it on the radio back home in the South. It was weird to watch Tom Brockaw of NBC news tell us how it was in Panama at night on the television. He was generally wrong.

The locals of Coco Solo liked us so much the school threw us a pep rally.






The inveterate Rolling Stones fan, I had to take a pic of this bus:











After the initial conflict, there was a lot of looting by the people there. I remember seeing refrigerators going by the street on skateboards.... kids with 50 Addidas around their necks. Everywhere we stopped families would send their young daughters to greet us.

On New Years Eve I snuck out and went to a party at a local's house, no uniform, no battle buddies, just me outside the wire with my civilian AMT .380 Backup pistol in my shorts pocket. It was a good party.

Here is an excellent, thorough review of the basics of Operation Just Cause.
http://www.history.army.mil/brochure.../JustCause.pdf
And here is the recounting of the Battle of Coco Solo by Lt. Huelfer (2nd Platoon's leader).
The Battle for Coco Solo Panama, 1989







On Christmas Day (6 days after the stuff hit the fan) I was able to get on a telephone and tell my wife that I was alive. We were the first U.S. troops there (arriving in October) and the last to leave. I remember soldiers kissing the cold tarmac at the air force base in Texas when we returned in March or so of 1990. I was glad to be alive.

Three of my friends were shot, one killed.





We were each presented with the Combat Infantry Badge, some medals and a real AK-47 bayonet captured from the enemy. The folding stocked Remington 870s were quickly assigned one per squad for our urban patrols. I got two bayonets somehow, and a Panamanian Flag, and some patches from enemy uniforms and two ash trays from Noriega's Headquarters. I like to think he used them. I still use them on occasion on my boat when I smoke cigars while salmon fishing.










A fancy brass plaque I ended up with:


Our company commander: Captain Rizzo, a West Point Graduate:





Clean Break

I fellow I worked with who was a LEO as well, served over there. I am not sure what Division he was in--and im SURE im way off base but--and im not even sure if im in the ball park but--I THINK he was in the Rock of the Marne Division (3rd I.D) Anyway, if I have the wrong ID listed-he was there. One item he brought back was a WWI 3rd ID-marked Bayonet.

I didn't expect to read a good book about Operation 'Just Cause' on this forum. You at least doubled any knowledge I might have had about that encounter and made it much more up close and personal.


Oh, that stuff about not getting involved with the school girls. What's the fun in that???

Wow. This is a great post, and I've voted it the maximum number of stars. Riveting reading, and terrific photos.

It was indeed a Just Cause, and you and your comrades in arms carried it out superbly. Bravo Zulu!

As to the photo of the patrol boat: they sink faster when the holes are punched below the waterline. (All in good fun)

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Ukraine -- now more than ever

I learned a lot! I had never read anything about that conflict.

Thank you for the well documented write up, really great.

Good job, and good written account of the action and the people...I had a friend that had been a US cop at the canel zone until we gave it back.... Probably a bad idea.....That is giving it back. He always said he loved it there.....Great story......Semper Fi

Great reading. Thanks for your service from an old dude who wore the Hour Glass patch fifty years ago.

Thanks for your kind words. Because I finally scanned those old photos and converted them to digital pics, along with some of the original captions I typed up a long time ago, I've got something here more modern and accessible to more people. I sent the link to this thread to some family and friends who, though they had heard what I'd been through, get a fresh look at it. My sons are now 21 & 23 and have a better appreciation for where I was when not much older than them (27/28 years old).

It would be something to go back down there now and see how the Panamanians feel about it now and the changes it wrought.

It deepened my understanding for America's role as a police force on the global stage.

I left Ft. Ord eight days before the end of my Active Duty enlistment and I became a member of the Individual Ready Reserve (in the event of a National Emergency I could be re-called to active duty for two years). I took terminal leave and drove with my wife, 70 lb. bird dog and baby boy north to go to Washington State University. The day we left, Saddam Hussein rolled into Kuwait, taking it over and claiming it as part of Iraq.

That winter, while working on my Masters Degree, I got the famous "letter in the mail" - a telegram informing me of my re-activation for Desert Shield/Desert Storm. I returned to Ft. Benning and was being retrained and re-integrated into a unit just 9 mos. out of combat in Panama. It was a tough fit having Army Reserve Drill sergeants from Michigan yelling at us, trying to make their idea of soldiers out of us, when in fact we'd all served honorably and many in combat just months before. We certainly weren't raw civilian recruits. The E-7 Viet Nam vet amongst us helped them transition into their new roles as facilitators. We knew more about and had used the AT-4 and M16-A2 while these reservists had never held one, let alone used one. The ground war in Iraq went well, and they released me back to school just as we were getting ready to go to Berlin to be fit our desert fatigues en-route to Iraq.

My time as a soldier passed. It was an interesting experience and one I'm proud to have had.

I remember hearing from an officer that for every month a soldier has in combat, it can take 7 to come back from it. I'd agree and suggest maybe even longer. I remember driving crazy fast once back in the states, lots of times. Life seemed to move so incredibly slowly here. Wreckless driving and high risk behavior claims a lot of combat veterans. I heard on Veterans Day from a speaker working on his PhD in counseling last Friday that the U.S. has had more combat soldiers kill themselves through suicide than were lost as casualties of the Iran and Afgan wars....that's horrific.

Hang in there, and keep those combat veterans that are still just a short time out of the sandbox in your hearts as they make the tough transition back to being a civilian. They can be their own worst enemy.

CB

Thank you for sharing. Great and informative post!

Outstanding post! Thank you for your service, sir!


Sent from my iPhone 4s using Tapatalk

Great pics! Thanks for sharing. Brings back a lot of memories.

I definitely remember you and can almost remember your name. I was in the battalion mortars back then.

Funny story. I came back in as a lieutenant in 96 and was found at IOBC that during the ADA day, they still tell the story about how CPT Rizzo employed those ground-mount vulcans on the barracks.

I also ran into SGT Wolfe around 95 or 96 at Ft Bragg.

I imagine you've heard this recording.

https://youtu.be/retvFkgQYyE

Great story.

Thank you for your service sir.

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Isaiah 41:10

I was on one of the crews assigned to test and practice the formation flight of C-141s for the invasion. They didn't tell us the timeline so I went on Christmas leave and missed it. The Air Force expected to lose two C-141s but fortunately that didn't happen.

During one of the practice runs over Florida the entire formation flew into some thick clouds. When we came out the other side the formation was all over the place; that we didn't have a mid-air collision was blessing from above. The Station Keeping Equipment (SKE) would cut out and lose the other airplanes; the display wold just go blank. We wrote it up but maint told us that SKE didn't work in the clouds

Thanks for the great read!

Excellent! Thank you!

Thank you for sharing this.

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Jorge

excellent post!!!!
just cause was long after my time in the army but I remember that night/early morning very well as I was safely home watching tv.
david letterman's top 10 list that night was mrs. Noriega's top 10 peaves regarding her husband. ironically later that very early morning the networks preempted programs with live coverage of just cause began.
thanks for sharing your personal account of your experience!

I haven't heard that since December, 1989.... it sends chills up my spine. Those Vulcans chewed UP that concrete cinder block barracks...and the guys on the other side of the walls.

I'm glad you guys resurrected this thread. I don't post much on this S & W forum much any more.

CW

I've noticed, and have missed you. Hoped that you were okay.

Shot any more coyotes with that old .303? I remember how much work you put into refinishing the stock.

Bought any new ammo for it? You were using old Remington 180 grain RN cartridges the last we heard from you. Seemed to shoot to the sights, though.

Thanks for your account of that adventure.

1989 was a big year for me as well. Retired from the Air Force after 25 years. My first Air Force retirement. The second one came in 2006. Great post!

Clean Break,
You and many others like you made all of us here at home PROUD to be Americans back then. 'nough said...

The things we do and see as young men often bring smiles and tears to our older selves.

Thank you for a great post.