From The Hedge: Spangdahlem Airforce Base.

The dreams of a young man growing up in no where U.S.A are simple, at least mine were. Go to school, nail some pretty girls, get decent grades and hopefully make an honest name for yourself through lying and learning to not set your balls on fire when trying to light a nasty morning beer fart. So, I did what any reasonable,under-educated Hill Billy would do, I joined the Army.

I was a dedicated seventeen year old boy, fresh off the boat from Sand Hill-Army training headquarters for Infantry Units, I became a bullet catcher. My dreams were vast and my imagination was unlimited, until I received my first orders. "Report to Spangdahlem Airforce Base, Germany" Holy crap, this was the real deal! (Failing to realize at that point in time there was no conflict in Germany, I was a handful of decades off).

Myself and a few others showed up some days later, in the middle of farm country-Germany. An old Colonial (who we called old Bird) from the USAF was our handler.Our orders: Grow Beards.

14 Fucking weeks of hell in Basic Training and my job is to grow a beard.

I shit you not.

(...There was a method to the madness, which I learned later on down range-but that is another bed time story.)

We did our daily physical training, hours before the AirForce crows woke them up. The AirForce guys  would step out of their hooches, wearing robes and slippers, sipping hot coffee and ask each other "Why are them Army boys always running around in the morning?" Besides dicking around with the AF guys, we mainly did push ups, drove to Luxembourg to use the internet, and grew fucking sweet beards, which were inspected for length every so weeks by the Old Bird.

This mundane process continued for months, before we learned a valuable nugget of wisdom. The Germans did not give a damn about us drinking and we could do it...legally.

The Rise of "Operation Blue Falcon"

The term, "Blue Falcon" is a widely accepted military term for fucking your buddies over, or "Buddy Fucking"

Fucking your buddies over = Buddy fucking = Blue Falcon....Go figure.

We collectively chose this term for our outings to drink beer and grow beards because it often led to one of our buddies being lost for morning formation, which was basically consisted of  us standing around, in no discernible order, scratching our necks, or leaving for Luxembourg to use the Internet.

The night before "formation" we would get so pissed drunk and do what any young guy would do in a foreign land. Fight the locals, tip cows, try to nail a local (which is the reason we usually fought) or go on hunts for hidden Nazi Gold.

Operation Blue Falcon always, by some higher power always was a success by the next morning, that is until we decided we knew how to work on airplanes piss drunk when the Old Bird left for an outing of "Military Intelligence", which usually meant he went on a 30,000 dollar golfing trip.

We decided to work on an airplane, a carcass of a C-130, after we had been drinking heavily for roughly 17 + Hours. One of our grizzly warriors some how learned turbine mechanics the night before and climbed into the wing of this airplane with a box of tools. The rest of us just stood around watching the sun come up or doing push ups out of sheer bordem. This continued for roughly 40 minutes before two USAF officers stumbled upon our....gathering of...higher drinking.

One of the brass shouted "Troops!"

*Our glossy eyes veered over to the noise of the officer*

Just as we established eye contact, a tool box fell from inside the wing.

Followed by a wrench

Followed by a blivit

And then fell a body.

This poor bastard misplaced his foot and fell 28 feet to the pavement below.All of us, including the officers watched in silence and counted the times his rubbery body hit the tarmac.

1.

2.

3.

Thud....We all stared in awe.

"Hey, aren't you boys gonna help him!?" Shouted one of the officers.

".....aanahh...he.......he will be good...he will...be..fine.." Says a coherent member of The order of the Blue Falcon.

*The Officers then turn to each other, in confusion*....."Are those boys American.....?"

*Scratches Head*....

"Hell If I know sir, but they sure as hell love doing push ups."

That was the last morning of Operation Blue Falcon, some weeks later we were all shipped off (he was okay) to our respective units, beards intact (which took awhile to wash out the smell of German beer, and vomit).