Recanting Holzhof

Born August 16th. 1981 in Richmond, Virginia USA in a hospital on the James River on a full moon Jonathan was to spend most of his youth traveling as a child of nondenominational Christian Missionaries

At one point in his childhood Australian Special Forces told him that he was being set aside from the family as part of Mission Aries

His parents A. Vance Woodyard and Patricia “Patty” tool him in tow to Dallas Theological Seminary before going to Papua New Guinea 🇵🇬

Vance forged through the jungle on foot and canoe until he found an unreached people group called the Konai / K’Nai Tribe in Dahamo Village

After building an helipad and airstrip medical aid post school and house for the family teachers and medical workers Vance established a church and pastor this took up until just before Jonathan’s 13th birthday

The family moved to Union Georgia Stateside near where Vance’s parents raised him and in 1994 the family moved to the mission organization headquarters in Orlando Florida

I wasn’t offended I was fascinated. I had never met racist black people before, they were massive and had obviously been lifting weights for years and they were serious so I backed off real quick to my table of shots and decided to people watch. A minute later three or four rednecks playing dress up in cowboy outfits came in and immediately squared off with the black guys. Someone sat next to me and said “you’re in the army now, the bogged gang in the world” they went on to explain that I was looking at a black gang facing off with a white click and that the Latinos were all watching. The face off happened real quick just like when fighters pose for the UFC and the moment passed and as the waitress delivered the gangsters thier plethora of shots.

Eventually the place got super full and we were out of shots so we decided to pry our squad leader from the strippers but it ended up with someone buying me a lapdance and someone else spending thier whole paycheck on another table of shots and mixed drinks int the stripper room and we left the bar some time way after sunrise.

I had made good acquaintances with a guy in my platoon named Brian so when I got back to the B’s I knocked on his door to ask if he wanted to go to breakfast with me.

I had showered after the club and while I was washing my hair I felt two arms wrap around me. I turned around and a naked German woman was in the shower with me, I must not have pulled my room door all the way shut because they automatically locked and you needed a key to get in.

I considered what she was offering for a second, squeezed a booby before I got my wits about me and kicked her out of my shower, paitently talked her through getting dressed because she was either having a psychotic break and was in a manic state or just really drunk. Either way I wanted her gone, once she was dressed I gently pushed her out the door and threw her stuff in the hall and before making certain she was locked out. She yelled and banged on the door for a while then went quiet.

After about two minutes of silence I checked to see that she was gone and watched her going down the hall asking for sex at each door. I yelled for CQ to do thier job and kick a pest out of the men’s barracks but got no answer.

About an hour later is when I knocked on Brian’s door. I hear a slap and screaming “I am a lady” in a thick German accent. Eventually the door opened and that same woman was shoved out the door and I was pulled in with the door quickly shut behind me.

Brian had not considered her to be a lunatic and had tried to go through with her demand for intimacy only for her to change her mind at the last second. They started yelling at each other through the door before Brian saw her purse and threw that in the hall.

He calmed down and decided breakfast was a good idea.

We got the call for the taxi but as we walked up to it. The pest got in, Brian tried to get her to get back out but her

I decided what I was given to drink tasted like a cross between cotton candy and how iodine must taste, but I was wide awake had no clue what else to do and had people to talk to so I stayed.

I didn’t drink much, didn’t have the taste for it but as it got later more guys came by the room and each one brought their own bottle, eventually after trying a little bit of everything I found something I liked and relaxed into talking about nothing.

The next day I was woken up kindly and was told your not in basic training anymore then sent to a series of offices the one appoint I remember though is the dentist, he replaced all of my fillings in one quick session and gave me two percaset which kicked in during the next meeting which I just sat through numbly trying to pay attention.

Eventually the days of inprocessing drew to an end and I was integrated into my platoon with morning PT and long days working on equipment in the motor pool.

Busy week of exercise, work and casual drinking passed and out Squad Leader announced we we were all meeting up on Friday night to go to his favorite strip club off post.

I said I’m a private and I’m not giving a percentage of my measly income to some women, I was told just bring 15 dollars not German money to get in the door, but to show up or the platoon wouldn’t trust me.

I was cool with that and figured even if I got swindled at a strip club I had consumed enough coffee and alcohol and microwaved dinner and shared takeout food for free that it would have cost about the same any way.

The night arrived and we all piled into a taxi and went for a short ride off post. The security at the door took my 15 bucks and handed me 15 raffle tickets. I was explained to that that’s how most places in Germany does it.

When we got inside I was told to give the bartender 14 tickets for 14 shots and let her have the last ticket as a tip or for a free shot. We all ordered the same way with different flavored shots and had an a whole table completely covered with full shot glasses and was told “this is the mortar’s table, don’t let any non mortar at this table. Now, drink up!” Our sergeant who had demand-invited us had a bunch of shots then announced he was going to the stripper room and for someone to order more shots and as he pulled out a wad of cash and handed someone 15 bucks before walking off and disappearing with a swagger and bounce in his step.

Up until this point I had only been around men for about three months and was getting hit on by women. I was quickly warned not to flirt with English speakers they could be other soldiers that might cause unnecessary drama for my career or someone’s wife or girlfriend and that we would go out farther from post to talk to German women at another time. I decided that was good advice and said I was gay or married, they didn’t care they were on a mission so I ended up literally giving a cold shoulder several times to which someone said “I love a challenge” which made me laugh, but walk off right into a group of six foot six black guys who spewed a bunch of racist threats at me.

Side Note • The Holzhof Enchantment – The Genesis Of Enchantment

The first time I witnessed imputation of a spyrite was at the Grog Ceremony Bonfire after the final march in infantry school. I was held aside as The Queen Of Battle Ishtar posessed my fellow soldiers moments before they all drank the Grog just proior to dawn’s early illumination.

Ishtar was a mixture of smoke and fog that entered the encampment as I stood next to the drill in•St.•Ruck•Tor/Door once he was certain the spirit had passed and normalcy was resumed he pushed me to the cauldron of Grog smiling that i should enjoy myself.

That was May 2002 now it is May 2024 and the VA (Veterans Affairs) hospital in Orlando prescribes me medication for ExtraPyraMidal Symptoms or in the colloquial possession.

Initially they were able to impute an angel into me via exposure to prolonged meditation and color sounds on specific herz frequencies

I was given three options for my first duty station while I was in basic training I put Germany down as my first choice because my drill sergeant said everyone enjoys going to Germany.. My second choice was Italy and my third was some place in America that my drill grunted would be an ok place to stay for a few years

I don’t remember much about my graduation ceremony other than doing push-ups as my family looked on, my dad putting the blue infantry cord on my shoulder for the Turning Blue ceremony and seeing both of my. Grandmothers at the same place and same time. We did something as a family after graduation but I was too tired to remember what we did

B) The Big Red One, First Infantry Division Rose Barracks, Vilseck Germany

I don’t remember the flight to Germany either, I do however recall the long bus ride from the train station to my duty station the Rose Barracks in Vilseck.

The sergeant that met me was short and his uniform was too large and especially his hat that made me think of Elmer Fudd I got in his little red car and said nothing about his wierd European porn magazine collection that covered every bit of the car that had a flat surface.

He was friendly and easy going and talked about drinks after I settled in and before we could say anymore the car was parked and I was pointed to a door with a desk and a uniformed soldier sitting at it, behind the desk two guys were shooting each other with air soft bbs they had bought on the German economy. Not long after seeing those two idiots and hoping I never had to play that game one of them got kicked out of the army for Destruction Of Government Property. … One of the two had been permanently injured by a bb and German airsoft guns got banned from base. Before I could go up the stairs a very drunk guy in civilian shirt and uniform pants fell down the stairs and said “welcome to the platoon”

Eventually I made it to my room and was given a bunch of information that I immediately forgot then I was left alone.

That was my introduction to the Big Red One

After a few hours of doing nothing in my room because it was unclear if I was supposed to go somewhere or someone would one and get me I memorized my room number and left the barracks to explore I got as far as the middle of the parking lot when someone yelled for me to come up to their room and party.

I found the room and looked at the “party” it was a bunch of Coca-Cola bottles and a half empty bottle of Southern Comfort. I was given a full cup, motioned to sit down and told “welcome to Germany”

Some fortunate souls got the occasional reward of getting to yell the Infantryman’s Creed

The Infantryman’s Creed

I am the Infantry.

I am my country’s strength in war, her deterrent in peace.

I am the heart of the fight… wherever, whenever.

I carry America’s faith and honor against her enemies.

I am the Queen of Battle.

I am what my country expects me to be, the best trained Soldier

in the world.

In the race for victory, I am swift, determined, and courageous,

armed with a fierce will to win.

Never will I fail my country’s trust.

Always I fight on…through the foe, to the objective, to triumph overall.

If necessary, I will fight to my death.

By my steadfast courage, I have won more than 200 years of

freedom.

I yield not to weakness, to hunger, to cowardice, to fatigue, to superior odds,

For I am mentally tough, physically strong, and morally straight.

I forsake not, my country, my mission, my comrades, my sacred

duty.

I am relentless.

I am always there, now and forever.

I AM THE INFANTRY!

FOLLOW ME

Learning the basics of being a Mortarman was a lot of fun, very physical, and essential to my job. From the end of mortar school to graduation flew by and before I knew it, it was graduation day.

The time between Mortar School and graduation from basic training escapes my memory, I believe that is because the mantra of the day became “Repetition Is Key” and we simply repeated everything we had already been taught until it became muscle memory and second nature.

It was bored into my brain that Repetion is key to any decent talent and in mortar training our talent turned out to be the skill of doing innumerable sit ups and running the span of an open field for every mistake made.

Our mortar instructor decided to treat us to music, which he played on full blast, and everyone liked. At first.

He played Welcome To The Jungle and only Welcome To The Jungle and each time he played the song half of us had to run shuttle sprints while the other half did sit-ups and in between songs his one tracked playlist he would ask random questions about the mortar firing system, which of course, no one could answer so it turned out to be a marathon of shuttle sprints and a lifetime’s worth of sit

I did get punished once, though not by my peers. I was walking past someone who said they were going to end their life and threw himself out the window, it was only one floor so he sort of bounced and was ok. I had to peel potatoes with him for a day for letting him jeopardize government property, aka his body.

The brown government issued underwear was scratchy, rode up into every crevasse and made life a swampy, bunched up mess down there, well one sweltering day that was particularly hot for that part of Georgia we went on a march. Dave decided to use the OD Green tape between what he was born with and the underwear on that march.

When we stopped for water and a rest, he went off to the bushes to adjust things and started telling people to call for the medic, this immediately got the attention of an instructor who had to see. He went silent holding in laughter, then explained to all of us that the tape Dave used is called 500 mile per hour tape because it can withstand winds up to 500 miles per hour on aircraft. The glue had melted from the gauze and plastic and fused into Daves sweaty skin, when we had stopped in the shade, his skin and the glue dried into a type of horrifying plaster.

I don’t know how Dave resolved that issue, we had to keep marching, I was just glad I didn’t decided to become a medic.

I made friends with a guy who joined us halfway through our Basic Training because he was prior service and didn’t have to go through all of the training. We were marching a long time and slept on the ground. Like Dave something happened to what God gave him. He had set up his mat and Woobie a poncho liner used as a blanket on a nest of Bull Ants and one bit him on the tip of where he conducts business down there.

There was a lot of routine, a lot of waking up earlier than I had ever woken up in my life, a lot of yelling and even more pushups than all of that put together, we drank water like the world would run out if completely the next day and took classes on disassembling and reassembling our weapons in the coldest air conditioned room on earth which made everyone shiver and have to pee while performing unfamiliar, complicated tasks to the point of muscle memory.

We marched everywhere and went on marches to nowhere in infantry school. We did all of this in unison as a unit while being encouraged to be advanced individuals in case the day ever came that the roll of leadership fell upon us in combat.

If confidence wasn’t instilled in each recruit, the ability to perform the task while sleep deprived while resisting the urge to relieve themselves under intense vocal and social pressure was.

I was several weeks into basic training, and we had by no means mastered marching, polishing boots or the capacity to move fast enough to not annoy our instructors but as ill prepared as we were it was time to commit a new skill to memory, the non-perishable skill of firing mortars via repetitious movement.

n September 19-20, 1863, Braxton Bragg’s Army of Tennessee defeated a Union force commanded by General William Rosecrans in the Battle of Chickamauga. …Bragg refused Longstreet’s call for reinforcements, Thomas organized the remaining Federals in a desperate Union stand, earning a lasting reputation as the “Rock of Chickamauga” for his efforts.”

The unit has a long American history, and I am glad to have taken part of it learning to become an infantry soldier and mortarman.

Initially when we arrived at our training unit, I was disappointed that I was designated to be an Infantry Mortarman, but I changed my mind the first time I fired a mortar round and all of the dirt within a certain radius jumped in response to the mortar leaving the tube. I had fun.

My training cycle was one of the first that profanity was forbidden when instructors were motivating and incentivizing, the drill sergeants reminisced the days people with their job were allowed to lay hands on the recruits, they did however find a way around profanity by way of putting recruits into specific positions with repetitive movement that if not executed correctly could result in injury.

Not too much out of the ordinary happened during Basic, to my right was a guy named Andy who quoted my favorite movie the entire time. We both know The Princess Bride applicable to all situations in life and quoted it a lot, especially when the Drill Sergeant was yelling at the other end of the bay, I’d hear and say “Anybody want a peanut?” Or while somebody didn’t get down fast enough to do pushups i would say “He didn’t fall?! Inconceivable!”

To my right was Don Striblioni the Stribblenator Extraordinaire, The Great Stribbles Himself. Stribbles had a struggle settling into military life at first, but he was a quick learner and didn’t call much attention to our area in the bunk room. The guys on the other side of the bay, facing us had some advanced individuals not accustomed to adhering to rules and guidelines decreed by people their own age or younger, they took to issuing Blanket Parties to motivate one another to become Squared Away.

I would roll over in the middle of the night to muffled cries as the individual with a failure to adapt at a pace fast enough not to draw attention to his peers took a beating from bars of soap in socks while held in place by his own blanket, that side of the room was different from my side of the room. One poor guy had met Recycle and started running an underground store from the ceiling tile of his top bunk and was everybody’s best friend on that side until one day the instructors did a ceiling tile check for contraband and he went from hero to just another guy that got a Blanket Party on that side of the bay.

I did get punished once, though not by my peers. I was walking past someone who said they were going to end their life and threw himself out the window, it was only one floor so he sort of bounced and was ok. I had to peel potatoes with him for a day for letting him jeopardize government property, aka his body.

The surfer and Tank were taking turns slapping each other on the shoulder as hard as they could, this had been going on for about twenty minutes and their shoulders were crimson and purple with a ring of yellow, but there was no sign of either of them letting up.

Moments before Church and I left our bunks to get a better look at the slapping competition a trash can with flames coming out of it flew in through the bay doors and enemas as if it were planned, Tank, the surfer and just about every onlooker charged the doors and the flaming can of trash went flying back out of the bay.

There were all sorts of yelling, smoke and the sounds of people getting hurt. Before Church or I could ask each other if we wanted to go watch that a guy who I later learned you simply call a Recycle because he had been injured in Basic Training and was sent to reception until he healed and could be recycled into another class stood up with the missing trash bag and climbed onto a bunk bed, then proceeded to pour pornographic magazines and candy into the bag.

It had been a distraction. The Recycle had gotten new recruits to distract the drill instructors long enough to get to a contraband stash unnoticed and would return to the rebellious bay a hero and leave there much wealthier as he charged cash for access to contraband.

Halfway through my basic training course Recycle was paired off with me for a day, he said he had been in the holding bay for six months with microfractures in his legs and had done nothing but eat, sleep and sell contraband while he healed.

Personally, I would have done like Edward Snowden and gotten out of the service, but most infantry are bound and determined to do things that others don’t.

I’m convinced that the infantry is the group in the army which gives more and gets less than anybody else.

Bill Mauldin

When the crowd had been dispersed and subdued by very loud active-duty military personnel just outside of our bay I heard a few guys laughing about how they had ripped the enemy bay’s door off its hinges and pinned unsuspecting people down with it. Those were huge, solid oak doors with steel hinges, the crowd and mayhem must’ve been insane.

It wasn’t more than a day that I was in the holding bay, got my feet sized for boots, briefed on everything and had all of my hair shaved off and was marching to someone else’s rhythm and beat headed to basic training unit 2/19 on Sand Hill.

The 2nd Battalion, 19th Infantry Regiment known as the “Rock of Chickamauga” was Constituted 1861-05-03.

wikipediahttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/19th_Infantry_Regiment_(United_States)

says the unit was desginated to Garrison Duty and “withdrawn 1989-06-16 from the Combat Arms Regimental System, reorganized under the United States Army Regimental System, transferred to the United States Army Training and Doctrine Command, and assigned to Basic and Advanced Infantry Training duty at Fort Benning, Georgia.”

History.comhttps://www.history.com/topics/american-civil-war/battle-of-chickamauga

explains that “o