To start off.... I am not a veteran. I am a military brat.
My dad was in the Air Force for 24 years and the majority of it spent in the command post. Now that I'm older and can understand a lot of more of what he's talking about he's shared quite a few of his stories while in the Air Force. I find them interesting and some of them are pretty funny.
Lets hear yours!

One time I had a fellow troop use my water I was warming to clean out my canteen cup after i shaved, for his hot cocoa. He asked after the fact, if it was ok he used my water for his cocoa? I said , "sure."

Deployed to Kuwait, Operation Desert Fox, Dec 1998. We were bombing Iraqi units, and every once in a while Saddam's troops would manage to get a SCUD in the air. One such time I was getting up after just a couple hours sleep (20 hour workdays were not uncommon) and had made my way to the latrine. Just about halfway through launching my own SCUD the damned sirens start blaring and all I can hear is the shriek of that and the shuffle of boots as the latrine empties with everyone seeking shelters. A few second after I thought everyone else was gone, I hear a whimpering voice from a stall at the other end: "Hello... is anyone else in here?"  

"Yep"

Still whimpering "What do we do?"

"I don't know about you but I'm not going anyplace anytime soon!"

I watched my driver poop in a Gatorade bottle...while he was driving. Kept his 5pt seatbelt on, never varied the speed, and didn't spill a drop. It was the most dexterous example of anal gymnastics I ever saw.

I was active duty Air Force Security Forces from 00 to 08.  Shortly after 9/11 they had us patrolling the base in uparmored humvees with enclosed EOD turrets.  Remember the EOD turrets, thats an important part of the story later.

We had a black guy we'll call Dante.  Dante was deathly affraid of spiders.  His biggest mistake was to tell us after we found a Tarantula walking on the flightline one day.  One day Dante and I were on the same crew.  Dante had the M-60 and I was his A-gunner.  After hours of driving out on the desert along the base perimeter, our team leader wanted to go the shopette for a snack.  Dante decided he wanted to get a snack too.  While he was shoppng and I was minding the teams guns, my buddy Mike showed up with a different patrol and shows me this very life like toy spider.  He said, "Hey I'm gonna slap this on Dante's 60 and see what he does."  Being the good friend to Dante I didn't stop him.

About 20 minutes later we saddle up and our team leader tells Dante to get in the turret as we drove away.  Right as Dante contorted his body to get from the seat to the turret, he comes face to face with the "spider".  All we hear is a blood currling scream and pounding up in the turret and then Dante is gone.  We stopped the humvee and see Dante taking off across the parking lot.  Then the team leader yells for Dante to come back.  Once we got Dante calmed down the team leader says, "What, you're afraid of this?" and throws the spider at him.  The shit your pants routine started all over again.  By this time a crowd had formed and one guy said he saw our humvee driving along and then all of a sudden he sees the back hatch fly open with a guy screaming and rolling off the humvee, landing on his feet and taking off like a streak of shit screaming all the way.

It took Dante a little while to calm down and he caught shit for that story for years.  He blamed me for the spider for 15 years until Mike finally came clean about it.

When I was a Flight Commander in a Minuteman ICBM squadron, I arrived at my launch complex one day to pull an alert tour.  During the changeover routine, the departing Deputy walked up to me holding a napkin with something in it.  “Check this out”, he said.  He was holding a mostly-smoked joint.  “I found this next to the Commander’s chair this morning.”
Now remember, this was in a freaking Minuteman Launch Control Center, buried 50 feet underground and capable of launching a minimum of 10 nukes.  
I couldn’t believe this moron was dumb enough to save the thing and show it to his commanding officer instead of flushing it.
I picked up the phone and called the command post, reported a Two-Man Policy violation and relieved the crew.  
Well, pretty soon we had plenty of company; everything from Colonels to drug dogs.  Choppers and flashing lights everywhere.  A new crew was flown out and relieved us, all our stuff was searched and sniffed, everyone who had pulled an alert there during the previous 10 days was subjected to lie detector and drug tests (even my Deputy and me!) and there was much flapping of arms and running in circles.
They never figured out who had been smoking weed, but they narrowed it down to two guys.  Both were well known screw-ups and both were transferred to non-critical jobs.

While stationed in Germany, we had an E5 that made the mistake of telling us how scared he was of the wild boar hogs. We were in Hohenfels for training and the 1st Sgt decided to have some fun with the E5. We had set up the M60 on the perimeter about 100 meters from the tent in a heavily wooded area. It was about midnight when the !st Sgt had his fun,  he snuck down to the 60 and started snorting like a hog. The E5 picked up the 60, tripod and all and did the 100 meter dash through the woods at night  without dropping the 60 or knocking himself out on a tree. The E5 was white as a ghost when he ran inside the tent (he was very dark complected). The rest of us were rolling out of our cots laughing.

I get to say I was a Spoilsport.

Back in my First Company at Fort Hood when I was a PFC.  I had acquired the habit of War Gaming on the weekend.  I believe it was a Friday afternoon and we were done for the week.  I was in my room painting a couple of the models you might find on that Link.  Now I was concentrating carefully on painting some tank or Other armored vehicle at the time.  I really didn't notice the commotion in the barracks behind me.

And somebody put a live tarantula on the desk in front of me.  No warning, just a sudden unannounced visitor to keep me company whilst I painted a model.

Hey! I said, A Tarantula!   I put the paintbrush down and watched it with interest.

Think about it: Before I joined up I lived just a few miles from the border with NYC and often went to Manhattan on the weekends.  They thought I could be considered a City Boy who never experienced wildlife outside of TV or the movies.  In reality I was born the the region of PA that The Molly Maguires made famous in book and film.  Before I joined I had purchased a Case of 10,000 rounds of .22 Rimfire ammo.  I had already used up more than a Brick or two by the time I joined the Army.  I had probably fired off more ammunition than nearly any other Trooper in the company save any M60 gunners.

And here comes a arachnid that I knew to be relatively harmless. Don't bother me and I won't bite you.  No Problem Bro!  I've seen your cousins in pet stores and in all sorts of pictures as pets.  I know better than to bother you.  I was seriously fascinated by Terry! (really)

I can only guess what was happening in the Barracks.  Everybody else got surprised by Terry's handlers and freaked out to various degrees.  Here was a City boy and he was going Kewl!

After a while its handlers put Terry in a drinking glass.  There were fragments from a couple of insects in he had given Terry earlier.  Eventually the Company Commander showed up.  Get rid of Terry he was told.  Terry was drowned in the glass with some clear alcohol or some such nature.  Pity, I was hoping Terry would be let free.

Epilogue: A few weeks later we were in the Field doing Army Stuff & Training.  Somebody caught and killed a copper colored snake.  They said it was a Copperhead snake.  Why did you kill the snake, I asked, snakes eat mice.  Mice are a bigger nuisance than snakes around here.

My father joined the NG in Oklahoma when he was 16, lied about his age,  fought in Korea and retired a Colonel. His last assignment was as a liaison officer for West Point..
I'm about 5 at the time. One night he gets home and is still in military mode, starts barking orders. Mom looks at him and says, "Your not a Colonel in this house".
He takes off his cover, grins and its over.. That's when I realized who really ran things...

Had a troop find out a guy from his Tech school knocked up his Battle Buddy's mom while on Recruiters Assistance.  thats a good story right there.

The mascot for the helo det attached to our ship was Marvin the Martian. During dinner one evening, a ransom demand was made over CCTV after he was kidnapped by ship's company. Poor Marvin had been tied to one of the prop shafts and was spinning around as we churned through the ocean.

The det was not amused. 

Early in my AF career, in the ealy 70s, my flying unit was about the only group that didn't have any patches on our flight suits. Nametags, that was all we wore.
On time we traveling on a tanker and made a stop at one of the east coast tanker bases (probably Pease) on our way over to England. As the bunch of us were having a drink in the NCO club in our nondescript flight suits, someone asked us who we were. "Presidential SWAT Team" one our guys replied. The questioner slowly backed away and was later seen pointing us out to his drinking buddies.

We got on our tanker and flew away.

Funny thing, next day the President made an unexpected landing at that base.

What story do you want?

No Balls Skittle in diesel and shit.

Why not to bring two canteens of whiskey on a land Nav course

No Balls two Go suck a lizard

I'm a MF Sgt

I can swing like Spiderman with 550 cord

The Colonel first day in the fleet

The Colonel does not go out to the field

The Colonel how he got the name

10# tin of Butterscotch pudding left out in the Iraq desert eat it in 10 mins or less.

Fallujah hand to hand combat.

WOW way to many that I remember makes me think how many I forgot!

Out in the missile field in Montana, there was once an airman who didn't like to shower while he was at the Missile Alert Facility (his team would be out there for 5 days at a time). Naturally, he would smell like shit all day and no one would want to be around him. I *heard* that he was given a "GI shower," as in they dragged him outside in the middle of the night (in the summer, don't worry), handcuffed him to the flagpole, and hosed him down with a fire hose.

Gimme your two favorite. Some of those look to have great promise!

After being on active duty, I was IRR and got activated/attached to a reserve unit and sent to Germany right at the kick-off of Desert Shield.  We were on a train-up cycle but since the Iraqis packed it in early, our unit was tasked with pulling guard duty around Frankfurt.

As boredom took over, a few of us started to make up this elaborate conspiracy theory driven story about how the whole Gulf War was a cover to fight an invasion of alien pod people.

Those odd shaped water towers by the housing areas in Frankfurt?
Docking stations for alien ships bringing more pods.

The First Sgt. got sick,hospitalized and returned to CONUS.
It's because he was exposed to one of the pods and was about to "turn."

Why were a bunch of Infantry guys attached to an MP brigade and sent to Germany?
The pod people were using the activities in Iraq and Kuwait as a diversion and were about to strike Europe.  

The oil well fires?
A result of the death rays used by the pod people.

It went on and on.

I knew things had gotten out of hand when one night on CQ , I overheard a couple of Captains from battalion S2 taking to each other about hearing rumors of troops talking about pod people.

I made some kind of wise-ass comment like "I thought that all information regarding the pod people was classified." or something like that.  The two Captains thought that was funny, laughed and left the CP.

About a week later, no one was laughing (at least out loud) when the battalion SGM held a formation and unequivocally informed us that there were not, never had been, nor would there ever be any pod people.  
And that any further mention of the pod people would result in some loving attention personally administered by the SGM.

During our pre-mob, we went to NTC for a month.  One of the guys in my unit wrote that our CO was a fat, unsexy, douche in one of the porta-potties.  Well, CO sees it, brings everyone to formation and proceeds to go into a spiel about how he can handle being called fat but unsexy is just a goddamned lie.  Says whomever did it needs to admit to it, be some small punishment, and then it'll be done and over.....if no one confesses, the entire unit gets fukt hardcore.  So guy admits to it...1SG walks up to him with an unopened box of actual douche from teh store.  Tells him he has 30 mins to prepare for a class on how to properly use said douche device to entire unit.
Guy reads instructions and proceeds to introduce himself, gives the objectives for the lesson, and starts.  He gets to the part where it says "squirt douche" or whatever so he simulates it.  CO stops him and says, "no, you need to physically demonstrate for everyone."  Guy starts to blush and get embarrassed....takes his trousers down halfway to his knees and squirts said douche product onto himself as he explains how to use it.

Shit was fuckin hilarious.

Also posted this one in the creepy military/deployment thread:


A Stormtrooper manning the MG on a Toyota technical vehicle waving like Miss America on the Special Forces base at the southern edge of BIAP.

W had only one passenger on our C-141 on a flight to Kadena AB, Okinawa...a middle-aged lady.  Figuring she'd be more comfortable sitting on the flight deck, we invited her to join us and she gladly accepted.

Enroute, we were telling each other dirty stories.  Now and then, I look over and see the lady smirking and trying not to smile.

"Uh, oh", I thought, "she can hear us."  Since we were wearing our headsets and had been talking to each other over interphone, I immediately suspected that the overhead speaker was on. I checked and found that it was indeed off.

I leaned over to her and said, "I see you grinning now and then. Are you alright?" She said, "Your stories are amusing!" "Wait a second...you can hear us?"  "No...I teach lip reading to the deaf. That's why I'm going to Kadena."

Oh,shit....