>>>
>>>I think that 'Catch-22' was more from the Korean conflict era.
>>>
>>
>>FWIW Catch 22 took place in WWII (Italy)
>>
>>MASH was set in Korea
>
>I don't remember the movie but I remember the scene where a couple of guys (GI's) are sitting on the floor of a C-47, and one of then says, "I'm not doing anything. I'm FIGMO." Those were his only lines.
>
>When I was in the service (USAF) we had guys that would actually put nametags on their unifors that read "SHORT" and "FIGMO" and my favorite, "OMGIF". That FIGMO backwards indicating that you got a worse assignment than the current one, as in "Oh My God, I'm F***ed!"

Pete;

You made me remember the term "Short Timer". Guys would take their ID (dog tags) chain and as they approached the magic date of discharge, remove one link at a time each link representing one day. Normally guys would start doing this with about 30 days to go. I remember a guy named Tom Shine, who had a really BAD attitude. When he reported in to our duty section he said he had a short timers chain. He took it out and it was several chains linked together. It had over 900 links left – almost three years!

The line I recall whenever someone got orders for a “less than desirable spot” was “I got orders for bum F*** Egypt”!

C-47’s (military DC-3’s) have the best safety record of any flying aircraft. However, the C-47 did not have seats for passengers (at least not for us!). They had wooden troughs that allowed you to sit facing the person on the other side – just a long row on each side of the plane. We also had stretchers hung above to allow wounded to lie. We would sit there with our parachutes on ready for action. I got on one C-47 and the officers were clowns (I thought). An officer stood on either side of the door and as I approached the opening one officer hit me in the gut with a parachute as the other handed me a paper bag. Then one of them said “We expect you to use both before you hit the ground”! This turned out to not be a joke.

We had a real neat job in the Air Force, that the Army also had. The Army called it “Path Finder”, we called it “Forward Observer”. Let me tell you what fun that could be. You jump out of a plane a C-47, L-19 or God knows what, and you jump behind your target. With your radio you “talk in” a F-101 or what ever flavor happens to have been in the air, and he fires his weapons systems. Now, he is firing towards you and the guys he is shooting at are running towards you. That can be a lot of fun and reason to re enlist – if you are crazy. Dropping napalm would really motivate everyone involved and would give you a good sense of direction – what direction to not go! We called anyone covered with napalm a “chrispy chritter”. That helped to make us feel better as we could joke about it after all was said and done.

Now why did I not re enlist?

Tom