Date:  Tue, 20 Jan 1998 22:15:46 -0500
From:  Steve Harper <sharper[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]FOTO.INFI.NET>
Subject: Re: "shake and bake" (=explosives)

At 14:13 1/18/98 -0500, Gerald Cohen said:
>   Paul Dickson's _War Slang_ presents "shake and bake" as a verb: "to
>employ a mixture of weapons in an attack." The expression arose during the
>Gulf War.
>

I first heard the term in the Viet Nam era. The Army was very short on noncommissioned officers
and developed a program to take promising enlisted candidates directly from basic or advanced
individual training, send them to school for a relatively short period of time (four weeks? six
weeks? I'm not sure.), and make them sergeants. They were always referred to as "shake and
bake" NCOs.

In twenty years in the Army I never heard the term used as Dickson mentions, but I retired in '86,
well before the Gulf War.

Steve Harper
Fayettevlle, NC