Shorty, my way in my day………
This is a post I did at SargeCharlie in December 2006, Please stop by and visit a spell. You will find a blog that the is fun and sometimes serious, especially if some one speaks ill of a soldier.
Short timer calanders have been a military tradition for the ages…. You see blogger soldiers today and they have an electronic counter on their sidebar. You know, the Old Sarge thinks that is just too easy, it takes very little effort for todays soldiers to have a short timers calender. A few mouse clicks and the countdown is running, not so in my day, we were creative……….
Even an old soldier like me can learn how to do the countdown calenders. Miss Bee showed me how to set one up for a young man in Bagdad. I found him through a package Miss Bee and I sent to anysoldier.com He sent me a thankyou letter and since then we have used e-mail back and forth. He is one of America’s Finest, I love communicating with him, it takes me back to my youth. I call him “T”, he is from a small town in Georgia, someday I will look him in the eye and say thank you for your service. We haven’t had much contact lately, he has been on “missions”, I do worry when I do not hear from him and he knows that, he will send me a note when he can.
Way back when I looked like this and really smelled bad….. circa 1968
I had one like this, you cannot see them on the picture but there are numbers all over the helmet……
A mark-off calander, simple but effective, most GI’s kept their calander on their wall locker…………..
The paint by the numbers, very effective and you had more lookers……….
Various types of Short Timer calendars were used by soldiers in Vietnam to count their remaining days left in country. These usually consisted of a sectioned line-drawing with “color in” blocks, numbered with a count-down of remaining days (similar to “Paint by number”), and began at 30 to 90 days. When a soldier had very few days left in-country, he was considered to be “short”
Another paint by the numbers, I am not sure but I suspect this one is WWII or Korea era…
You may notice the term “FIGMO” in the print. This term predates me, I believe it means “Finally I Got My Orders”, implying travel orders.
Ok folks, you know the rules by now, if you liked this little bit of information about my past leave me a little note and I will make up some more stuff…….
September 23rd, 2007 at 7:45 pm
yup! checked off one day at a time…
smiles, bee
September 26th, 2007 at 5:39 pm
Sarge, thanks for your memory. I was barely old enough to know what NAM was about, and that my only brother was always up for orders on some Navy ship to go over there, but was fortunate to not have to. I am a Chief Gunner’s Mate in the Navy, and will retire in a year, with nearly 30 years ( Active and Reserve time) I would love to get a FIGMO calendar, or even better, if there is a hot computer programmer out there who could design one for use as computer wallpaper. I do understand that the originals were often just drawn calendars, but there are some that were “pin-ups”, where each day was counted down by removing a numbered “tab” which uncovered a scantily clad ( or less) lady…This being the age of equality and “PC” ( said with tongue in cheek !) my imagination would run to a well muscled Guy in a hot tux..lol Again, Sarge - Thanks for sharing your experiences with us and thank you for your service and sacrifice. ladygunner