I wasn’t at all excited about the call from Headquarters on New Years Eve, reporting a possible poaching incident. The rain for the past few days had been merciless, and still coming down. Nevertheless, duty calls so we jumped in the vehicle and headed out to investigate. As mentioned in a prior story, my younger brother, John, was visiting with me at Fort Gordon. The steep muddy road was almost impassable, even for the Jeep. The creek that we had to ford was overflowing its banks and running wild, but we made it across.
Further up the trail a tree had fallen, fully blocking our path. A tug with a chain only managed to spin the jeep wheels, threatening to roll the jeep over as it slid sideways into a ditch. My next thought was that we might not be successful in fording that creek while traveling in the opposite direction. That concern turned out to be well founded. As we reentered the stream the front wheel ran up on a boulder necessitating me to push in the clutch pedal. As a result, the clutch got wet, therefore loosing all friction that enabled the vehicle to drive forward.
Water was running in, up over the seats! We were almost swept away before we could exit the Jeep. Downstream, we noticed several beaver dams that we tore apart in an effort to lower the depth of the water. Although we were somewhat successful, that was a waste of time as the clutch still remained under water and the Jeep still refused to move. We found ourselves soaking wet, fifteen miles from nowhere in a rainy thirty degree temperature setting. We were in the first stages of hypothermia, symptomatic with uncontrollable shivering, which had been overlooked because of the adrenaline produced in trying to free the vehicle. we now realized that we had better get moving. There was no chance of road traffic in the rear area of the military post, especially on New Years night.
I grabbed my portable radio that had, so far, been useless for lack of a signal, and we tore out, up the muddy road. The Sticky Georgia clay made going difficult. The longer we walked, the taller we got! Five miles later we intersected the paved, “North Range Road”. I then had enough radio signal to call the motor pool for a wrecker.
Being New Years night, there was a motor pool party going on! The first wrecker driver had been drinking heavily and couldn’t discern his right from his left. I said,” veer left”! but he veered right, right off the road into the quicksand swamp. Once again, we all walked back to the paved road to make a call for another wrecker. This scenario repeated three more times resulting in four wreckers being burred in the quicksand swamp.
John and I, that night, walked the ten miles back to my office, took a shower and collapsed on the bunk beds. The next thing I knew the call was coming in from Headquarters complaining about the wild dog in the family housing area on main post.
The water receded the next evening and I drove the jeep out of the almost dry creek bed, but it took the work of the CH 47 Chinook helicopter to retrieve the wreckers and suck them from the quicksand.
SP-5 James M. Cripps
US Army 1967-1970
Fort Gordon Game Warden
VA THE REDNECK WAY, YOU DON'T HAVE TO GO IT ALONE! 