Military lunacy! Crazy tales from service life

[airhead]

One of my favorites:

We had a 2 week wonder (reservist on summer) assigned to us that could not stay out of the way. One of the sgts. managed to send him off in a jeep for a 55 gallon barrel of prop wash.

I think each supply bounced him to a different place on the base. We didn\'t see him for 2 days.

 

[No Such Agency]

Myself and some other low-ranking reservists were setting up the mess for a mess dinner. This is a VERY formal and ritualized dinner and presentations ceremony for a military unit. Pvt. White (a 19-year-old, dumb, mean, misogynist sack of crap if ever I knew one) was placing wine glasses... and an NCO caught him SPITTING in the Sgt.-Major\'s glass

The amazing thing is... was he court-martialed? Told to turn in his Jimmy badge and leave the unit? Sent to clean the washrooms with a toothbrush? NO. He got clean away with it. There was no time. Harsh words were spoken, a new glass was placed and we finished up. That dumb waste of air had horsehoes nailed to his ass, I saw him get away with so much crap it isn\'t funny.

... what, you all were expecting Sgt. Rock\'s Tales of Two-Fisted Combat?

 

[Wolf Fang]

hahah... thats great... so far the onlything i gots is the memories of \"skittles parade\" every saturday morning i belive it was.

the companies would march to the square all in their desiginated T-shirts wich were all different colours according to the Coy.

juliette was purple (me!), kilo was a barfy brownish tan colour, alpha white, golf green, and so on.. was rather amusing seeing a battalion with 11 different shirts all standing in ranks.. not THAT amusing but so far the best i got... well other then the maw-tent hopping :innocent:

there was also the time of the black out (same year) and also that year final parade was cancelled

 

[philologus]

One of our Foward Observers locked himself out of his room when he went to the shower. He came to my room, clad in only a towel, to borrow a 120\' rappelling rope. Since this was the Infantry I didn\'t find the request odd at all. His room was on the 3rd floor. In the meantime I went to the volleyball court out front (it was a Saturday in the rear) to play V-ball with our medics. This FO was on the roof in a good L-shaped position preparing to rappel into his room through the window. He was still clad only in a towel so all of his equipment was on display. Again; none of us at the time thought this was odd behavior. About the time he prepared to make his descent the 1st SGT came strolling up the sidewalk. He looked up at the semi-nude joe on the roof and said \"what the Hell are you doing?\" The reply was \"I locked myself outta my room. \" To which the 1st SGT responded \"Carry On!\" and kept walking. No one thought it was odd at all. I miss the Infantry.

 

[Trevor]

I was in cadets, so not exactly military, but one time we were at an army base on camp and we got to shoot all the different guns (thats great fun, especially in UK where you have to have a liscence to own an airgun! My favourite was the little smg).

Anyway, we got to have a go at the bipod mounted heavy machine gun, this gun is belt fed from a bloody great box of ammo. We were supposed to do a small 1 sec burst and move on. So there\'s a line of us waiting to shoot and a couple of army NCOs overseeing things. My friend who was on the small side (even for a 13 yr old) goes to shoot, trouble is he\'s so small and the kick is so big he gets bodily lifted off the ground as he fires... now the only thing he has to hold onto is the trigger... so he\'s clinging onto the gun, finger tight on the trigger, being bodily bounced around as the gun shoots, the whole thing is rapidly jumping round to face the rest of us in the queue.

I have never seen anyone move so fast as those NCOs did, one landed bodily on him to stop him moving, whilst the other prised his finger off the trigger. It was over before I had even registered we were in danger. I was seriously impressed to say the least.

 

[Sand Rat]

When I was in basic (Navy) we were doing the float portion of the swim test when one of the guys freaked out and grabbed the guy in front of him, sinking them both to the bottom of the pool. The grabbee did everything to remove the grabber, but had no success until the Seal (Military type, not the sea mammal) that was monitoring the swim test came over and punched the grabber - hard enough to be heard through the water.

Over here I\'ve gone to the bunker a couple of times and spent the alert sitting on the bunker, not in it, so I could smoke while waiting for the all clear.

 

[Dedwrekka]

Again, not exactly a fullblooded military experience, but after four years in the JROTC I\'ve been fully convinced that I\'m not interested in going through anything like that again.

Our SAI leaves us just before the beginning of the third year, and we get stuck with a real winner. Colonel who spent his time in inteligence, and we have it from several good sources that he\'s not directly commanded any unit in his time in the military.
So, when time comes around for promotions and selection of the new company commanders we get the real suckups in positions. Spine-less wonders who can\'t stand up to a rabbit, much less a colonel who places blame for his bad decisions on the NCOs, officers, and cadets. Of course, the boys have some fun with the new magaement. Everything from defiling their desks to doing some really nasty things to the drinks that they left out. Of course the best part of it all is, they still havn\'t figured out a single bit of it.

 

[Evil Dave]

Oh, so many tales to tell...

We were once doing war games with a sub out in the Atlantic.
The sub sent pictures they had taken through the periscope the next day and you could plainly see the guy on aft watch taking a piss into the sea.

We had a torpedoman who could never remember to take off the torpedo tube covers, so that when we fired test shots they would go flying hundreds of yards into the sea. Imagine a metal frisbee about two and a half feet wide and you get the picture.

When out at sea and very bored we would fire objects out of the torpedo tubes to see how far they\'d go. Basketballs work great.

Our fleet went right through the America\'s cup race one year.

 

[vincenti]

MY TURN /THE ROYAL ,PRINCE CHARLES.

I see the crazy tales didnt need a seperate post, they came on their own ! My only personal war story /tale of individual courage is bound up with Prince CHARLES.(yes the ROYAL one ) .I was his bodyguard !.......well not really his personal bodyguard .......more something that was his ,type of bodyguard.....Well it was exactly His, it was actually ours & he was kinda borrowing it ........Not that he actually ended up using it ..OH alright , it was Airborne forces day ,Charlie boy is part of our regiment & me & another guy had to guard his toilet !.......But I did risk using it !!! (the Royals use Imperial Leather soap !) lol Strange but True ,. GOD bless ......VINCENTI

 

[airhead]

@dave, did you get to see what the super secret keel wings looked like on those yachts?

@vincenti, stole the idea blatently.
:innocent:

 

[wiccanpony]

I kept my horses on a military base and we had miles and miles of open county to ride on. It was shared with the Marines doing all kinds of training from tanks to search and destroy.

Lots of times my horse and I would come upon guys in camouflage in the gullies and bushes, doing “hide and seek”. What is funny, is the horses knew they were there long before we could see them, the head would come up, ears perked .

Some smart guys in the “seek” group noticed this and would sit up on the high ground and watch us riders and when our mounts became super alert, they would radio their buddies as to where the “hiders” were. They finial but a stop to that, we had to ride on another part of trails.

Oh, try riding by a group of tanks grinding their way down the road or cross-country. It’s heart stopping as you horse decides he wishes to be somewhere else.

 

[Wolf Fang]

Originally posted by wiccanpony
I kept my horses on a military base and we had miles and miles of open county to ride on. It was shared with the Marines doing all kinds of training from tanks to search and destroy.

Lots of times my horse and I would come upon guys in camouflage in the gullies and bushes, doing “hide and seek”. What is funny, is the horses knew they were there long before we could see them, the head would come up, ears perked .

Some smart guys in the “seek” group noticed this and would sit up on the high ground and watch us riders and when our mounts became super alert, they would radio their buddies as to where the “hiders” were. They finial but a stop to that, we had to ride on another part of trails.

Oh, try riding by a group of tanks grinding their way down the road or cross-country. It’s heart stopping as you horse decides he wishes to be somewhere else.

heheh... ive had a slightly similar experiance with our re enacting group... we do our battle tacticles on a training area for the regular forces and well... during a night exercize our platoon came across a platoon of reg force.. thinking they were the germans we open fire. soon the reservists thinking we are the enemy platoon began firing.. then sudden we relize... why does every german have a MP40 with such small rounds? then the reservists begin thinking... why are we being attacked by artillery? (the C-7 blank is rather quiet compaired to the round of a 303. Lee-Enfield round) then both get up and walk over to each other and just kinna chatted and laughed lol

 

[minimaker]

One thing about a conscript army is that the army gets more well educated people than it needs. Most of them get placed in unrelated functions and I was one of them. I had just graduated as a mechanical engineer en in the army I was made a telex operator. Why? Well, I happened to have a typing certificate.
Telex operator? Yup. Old technology? Yup. So I got trained on those things for three months and then went to active service only to discover that telexes had been declared obsolete a few months before! lol Anyway, got retrained as a radio operator training in one week (normally takes 4 months) and did that for the rest of my time there.

 

[No Such Agency]

Originally posted by minimaker
Telex operator? Yup. Old technology? Yup.

Hey, my dad was a telex operator or supervisor for ages. Yeah it\'s considered obsolete in North America, but interestingly, he had absolutely zero difficulty learning how email works. Because email is basically just telex without the printer.

 

[vincenti]

Another Tale !

A very good friend & I were teamed up on an exersize were our task was to terrorize the guys from a regular infantry unit.We had infiltrated into our hide and watched them deploy over the day.Night time then became our play time !Their C.O. said we could do whatever we wanted as long as we didnt kill anyone , which we thought was only fair.We watched them send out patrols & selected an ambush site.Surprisingly enough my mate & I had not been in position long when 4 Grunts came wandering into the killing zone.I wont bore you with all the details , but we basically wanted to snatch one of them.It worked perfectly .I dragged the patrol leader away ,his comrades headed for the hills.His struggling ceased once I shoved a 9mm browning up his nose.My buddy joined me and we both got a little concerned when his state of aggitation heightened.After some minor interorgation the poor Sergeant explained the worst.He was from some other random infantry mob , he thought it might nice if he took his guys out for a night navex exersize.He did not realize the training area was being used by anyone else!lol::.My mate & I tryed desperately not to laugh,though once we sent him on his merry way we nearly wet ourselves.lol .Moral of this story never wander onto military training areas, even if YOU are military!lol........... GOD bless ...........VINCENTI

 

[Infidel Castro]

My Grandfather (the venerable one) witnessed a great freak incident in a parade where folk were presenting arms. He was over in Burma or just leaving on a boat and the parade did the old affair of shouldering the guns and all that jazz, when one of the other squadies (who hadn\'t put on his safety catch) accidentally triggered the gun and sent the bullet right across the face of the fella next to him, managing to just nick (only ever-so-slightly) the poor bugger\'s lips. They swelled instantly to a massive size and the fella (poor siwine) was traumatised for weeks. How they all laughed!

Same venerable old fella was in the jungle in Burma on a gunning post (artillery-type sergeant he was) during a raid/bombing run by the Zeros. He literally saw a bomb launch directly at him and drop down and down and down ans he shit himself and thought I\'m dead and stood there still, cacking his pants when suddenly, as if by a guiding hand, the bomb lifted over and above him on the thermals. It blew to the side and rear of him and sent his helmet off over his head (the other way and the strap would have taken his (now bald) little pate clean off. His ear gave him merry hell for a while after the blast, and he got some shrapnel in his foot, just about making it through the leather of his footwear and the laces. Remarkable.

 

[vincenti]

Holy Moly . if there is a prize for the best story I think REV s grand dad must be odds on favourite ! lol GOD bless .............VINCENTI

 

[Infidel Castro]

Poor bugger must have had to kill who knows how many people though. He never mentions that. Can\'t blame him!

 

[McKenna35]

The skippy list...

I found this a while back and since it relates to the topic I\'ll post the link for y\'alls amusement and edification:

http://www.skippyslist.com/skippylist.html

No I didn\'t write these but I found them hysterical!

 

[airhead]

that guy must have been drafted.