My Last Tanker Nickname: Oddball

Donald Sutherland as Oddball, a tank commander in the movie "Kelly's Heroes"

I got my last tanker nickname more than a decade after I earned the nickname Sgt. Bambi Killer.  I got that nickname on a business trip to Sao Paulo, Brazil, in 2000.  The company I worked for just bought a company in Brazil and I was part of a team that went to Brazil to introduce ourselves to the people who ran the business.

Sao Paulo has traffic that makes Los Angeles look like Omaha, so the local managers sent a limo for the four of us. This meant we could be more comfortable on the three-hour 20-mile trip from the airport to downtown. 

At the time I had a beard and still had a lot of brown hair.  Among the local staff people who were waiting to meet us was my now long-time friend Ivan Porccino. Ivan speaks five languages and was assigned as our interpreter.  When we got in the car, Ivan introduced us to the driver and said we would be in Sao Paulo for a few days. The driver said, “I love America. I learn English watching American movies.”

So we talked about movies. The driver mentioned he loved “Kelly’sHeroes.” Bob Lee (Robert E. Lee, no kidding, but he went by Bob) our CEO said, “Neil was a tank commander back the 80s.” The driver turned, looked at me again and said, “Oddball! You are Oddball!” And so I was. For the rest of the trip and the rest of the time I worked for that company, I was Oddball, especially to Bob Lee.

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Cold War Tanker and Star Wars

In May of 1977 the first Star Wars movie was released in America.  Several months later the hit movie came to Armed Forces theaters in West Germany, including the theater on Wiesbaden Air Base.

But many soldiers in 1-70th Armor missed the new film.  We and most other combat arms soldiers were on REFORGER 1977.  When we got back, the next movie was in the theaters.  The only way we could watch it was in dubbed German in town.  We Cold War soldiers missed Star Wars.

I did not leave Germany until November of 1979 and was not on post when the movie came back.  I finally saw Star Wars in the spring of 1980 in an independent theater that was re-running the film just before the June release of the second (and best) of the the first three films, "The Empire Strikes Back."

But I did not see that film until fall in that same theater.  In June of 1980 I had the worst motorcycle accident of my life.  I spent two weeks in the hospital and had surgery on both legs to repair the damage from a 75mph crash.

I saw the third movie when it was released, because I was in the 68th Armor in the Army Reserve in Pennsylvania in 1983.