I promise, your story won't be fed into a data collection AI and used to help Chicoms take over America...

Best story gets you nothing because I ate all the cookies again.

One time at band camp…

No, wait, I mean one time while on alert (SAC nuclear alert) somebody took my pilot’s flight suit out of his room in the middle of the night, soaked it in water, and hung it up outside in below freezing weather.  The frozen flightsuit was returned to his room just before he got out of bed for the morning brief.

Lots of fun was had at the alert facility.  It’s incredible what crazy stuff you could come up with by the 5th or 6th day of your week long alert tour.

Told this before and not too exciting but anyways.

-Over northern Iraq
-Popped a big blue Monster because nothing was happening and I was tired as hell and had another two hours until landing on the boat
-As soon as I did I hear “stand by for 9-line”
Fuck.
-They want a laser guided GBU54
-Double fuck because now I have to self lase so I have to be in a large left angle of bank and can’t use my left hand for anything other than the TDC for the damn laser with my right hand on the stick and nowhere to put the Monster can
-So I put it between my legs. Dropped the bomb. Spent half the time lasing the bomb in on a bunch of ISIS dudes in an open field and the other half trying to keep from spilling Monster all over myself by squeezing the damn can with my legs

Okay, that's something I didn't expect to read. neat.jpg

Spent 9 months in Kuwait driving around an O6.

I just ate something at the DFAC at Afrijan that didn't agree with me.  We just left Afrijan after lunch and headed towards Camp Buehring.  The windows were rolled up because it was over 105 F outside.  Then it hit me.  I let loose a SBD in the vehicle.

It took awhile for the smell to reach the O6.  She said, "SGT, what is that smell?!"

With a straight face and no hesitation, I answered, "It's Kuwait ma'am."

She believed me.

Today actually.

Watched a troop get hemmed up over stealing 9 bucks from the snack bar, while trying to get approved for cross training.

Crazy part is, he's never been in trouble in 4 years in the force. Steals 9 bucks and change from not paying and they group as a repeat offender. Cross training may get denied.

Wasn't overseas but in a helicopter. UH-60 in February, all doors closed. Pilot had some sort of burritos to eat.  He was sitting left seat and farted. Flying the 0-32, E-36's around. 0-6 sitting right behind him was on comms with us no one else was.  He says jesus christ what is that smell. I watched their faces as it moved around the back of the helicopter.  Pilot was doubled over laughing and put us in a dive. Copilot had to take the controls to pull out of the dive. Best way to treat the officers and Sgt Majors.

Not related but reminded me of this.

My first duty station was Fort Gordon (Augusta, Georgia). There was a paper mill over ten miles away but you could smell it often when the weather was right, especially in the mornings it seemed. It smelled terrible. Any time I drove past the actual plant I'd hold my breath as long as I could. Can't imagine how people could work there.

Anyway our unit deployed to Iraq for a year. After the deployment was over we flew back into Augusta airport on a chartered flight. I remember shortly after we landed that paper mill smell started to permeate the plane.

Lot of people were crying out, "Ugh, oh man, what is that horrible smell!".

This one warrant officer answered, "That's Augusta!".

A female E5 responded to that with, "Ugh, that's scary!"

The WO1 responded with, "No, what's really scary is at some point you were used to it."

What were you flying ?

Kool…in Iraq, down near Syria, around al quaim, and doing recon in the area, and woke up to some early morning harassment small arms fire originating from a small heavily reeded island-sandbar on the Euphrates. Thought we were going to get wet, when advised 2 jets were in area and happy to help out… dropped 2 500 pounders. No more mooj, and come daylight, looked like no more sandbar.

This one goes a back a ways. February, 1984 in Taegu South Korea. I was in the USMC stationed in Japan. My squadron deployed to the ROK for an annual joint exercise called Team Spirit.
Since we were aviation maintenance types, we got liberty in town nearly every night. My group of friends had a routine of hitting the same bars every night and hooking up with a Yobo (steady girl) for the duration of the deployment. It was technically a prostitution type situation, but not really that lurid. The girls had a choice of who they went with. You paid the "bar fine" and what happened the rest of the evening was between two consenting adults.
Now for the meat of the story; One evening, we all arrived at our spot a bit later than usual. We took a table with our girls and settled in for drinking and socializing. After a while, my best friend's girl said that she had to go. Apparently, another Marine had paid her bar fine already. No big deal, except that as they were leaving, this Marine made a threatening gesture towards my friend.
We laughed it off and moved on with our evening, or so I thought. About a half hour passed and my buddy told me that he had something to do and would I go with him. Not caring what it was he needed to do, I said sure, let's go.
We left the bar and walked down a side street, then snaking through some alleys. We came to a walled in compound. A typical enclosure with several one room "apartments" within.
We stood there in the dark at the gate. My friend said this is what I need you to do; Go through the gate and turn right along the wall. Three doors down, you will find a pair of combat boots. Get them and come on back. By now I had figured out what was going on. This was his Yobo's place and the boots would belong to the Marine that threatened him.
I did as he said, and as he described, I got to the third door. It was a typical Asian style sliding door. wood frame with a grid of opaque panes of glass. I could hear the Johnny Carson on the television from inside the room. The boots were sitting there as he described. A bonus was a USMC Woodland Camo utility cover (hat) sitting on top of the boots. I scooped them up and headed for the gate.
We both headed through the alleys. A few blocks away, we came upon a bicycle parked along a building on a side street. I put the boots and cover in the basket and we made our way back to the bar where we started. I got back to my Yobo, and he picked out another girl.
When we separated for the night, we agreed on a time to meet at the main gate to catch the bus to the flightline for work in the morning. Morning came, and I left my Yobo, and walked to the gate through about 4 inches of freshly fallen snow.
I met my buddy on the bus, and as other Marines arrived from town, we saw a Marine walking through the snow in his cammies, no cover and just socks on his feet. The ball busting he took from every Marine who saw this was glorious. We laughed along with everyone else, but a more satisfying laughter than anyone else. He never suspected that it was us who did it to him. Neither of us knew the guy, or as far as I remember, ever saw him again.

NTC, I'm playing insurgent for some unit doing training. Me and a buddy get tasked with the forward OP/fighting position, they give us a dismounted tow missile to attack the armor. This was the early days of drones so someone thought overhead concealment was wise. Unfortunately being a dismounted tank company we didn't have many camo nets, we did have a lot of tank tarps. So we set it up and cut a hole in the back for the ATWESS simulators.

Blue force starts the attack the next morning. They get in range and we start lighting them up. Buddy is doing fantastic work with the tow and I'm spotting/reloading for him. We just finish off vehicle #12 and he has to traverse wide for #13. ATWESS goes off and our fighting position fills up with smoke. Buddy starts screaming "We're on fire! We're on fire!" so I check myself. I'm not on fire my trusty M65 field jacket seems to be reasonably flame resistant. I respond "I'm not on fire" so he starts screaming "I'm on fire!" He flops down and sure enough his waffle top is hanging out below his jacket burning away. So I start smacking him on his ass to put the fire out. Once I get it put out he asks me "How bad is it?"

I promptly pull the waffle top off his skin to see the damage. Dude has burns all across the tramp stamp area. I let him know he'll be fine but that's going to leave a scar. OC decided we were hit by a 500lb bomb and we're out of the fight. No real first aid kit with us so we just sit on the rocks and watch the rest of the fight unfold.

The fight wraps up and Sergent Major decides to do the medivac. I watch my buddy waddle down the hill get to SGMs humvee turn around and drop his drawers. SGM starts laughing, I'm laughing at the top of the hill. He gets in the humvee and we don't see him again until the rotation is over.

Buddy is fine, we lost nothing but a tank tarp, blue force got wreaked and we all got a good laugh out of the day.

After I got promoted and moved to a new duty station my life got a lot safer and things didn't catch fire as often. If I got to pick who to go to war beside, he would still be my first pick.

Picture of tow for reference.  

I learned how to hitch a ride with the Colombian Navy.

I worked with an Australian colonel in Iraq who literally hitched from Mosul to Baghdad.

The other Australian soldiers I worked with always talked about how lucky that guy always was. Said they were waiting for him to one day wander into a building, find Zarqawi dead and get credit for it.

A buddy of mine was a helo pilot - and told me a story about one of the pilots in his unit.

Pilots have to do a medical check-up every year. This pilot goes in to see the doc and it gets to the prostate exam. They - the pilot and the doc - go into a small room where the pilot drops trou and bends over while the doc puts on the rubber gloves. With the pilot bent over the doc puts his left hand on the pilot's left shoulder while inserting his finger you-know-where. Unknown to the pilot, the doc has one of his orderlies standing behind a curtain - the orderly quietly reaches out with a gloved right hand and puts that hand on the pilot's right shoulder.

Ever see The Last Detail, with Jack Nicholson and Randy Quaid? Nicholson and Otis Young are Brig chasers taking Quaid to Portsmouth Naval Prison to start an 8 year sentence for stealing $40.00 from a charity fund. Great movie. Pretty accurate depiction of military life.

NBC…..NoBody Cares

AT at Ft Brag, mid 1990’s.
The BC’s focus is on NBC training this year.
Rumors floating around of actual CS being used during training.
Our section is in the middle of an AAR.
Lt. is scared to death of CS.
First Sgt strolls by, pops smoke, chucks it in the middle of our group and yells Gas, Gas, Gas.
Lt freaks out.
We all dawn and clear our M17 masks…..well almost.
Through the blue smoke I can see Lt, struggling with his mask.
My eyes began to tear up……from CS?
Nope, these are tears from laughing so fuckin hard.

An M17 gas mask has six elastic straps that meet in the back, creating a large “patch”, that when properly adjusted rests on the upper part of your head. The space between the top two straps, the mask and the patch is roughly the size of a tennis ball.

Lt., in his panic, has attempted to dawn his mask upside down. He’s somehow managed to squeeze his head through the tennis ball sized gap on the top of the mask and it is now stuck.

Top is not impressed…
“WHAT THE FUCK…..”
“Someone HELP him!…..”
”On second thought……”
“ALL CLEAR…..”
“I’ll get it”

Top grabs the mask by the hood and rips it off
Lt. stood there in all his glory, ears bright red, face all scratched up, mask on the ground…
That’s the guy who would lead us into battle…lol

Deer strikes on a C-130 can be a wee bit messy.

2012 or so, I keep breaking cameras (dust keeps jamming the motor to open the lens, cracked one screen) out on mission and have to write reports that need a lot of pictures.  So I request another camera from my task force after breaking my issued camera and two of my personally bought ones.  They are complaining about it and tell me I need to just buy one.  Fuck that.  I tell them no camera, no pics.  They thought I was bluffing.  My next two mission reports had "no pictures due to no camera" where the main pics were supposed to be.  The battle captain calls me furious so I tell him to get me a camera or I was going to start sketching shit like in a courtroom.  Next clip that comes out has a package for me....it's no shit a giant Sony digital camera from like 1998 that took 3.5" floppy disks.  It came with two floppy disks and took a whopping 8 pics between them and this thing was huge, and heavy.  I was primarily dismounted on missions and was not happy.  So I took it out, and when I did my reports, I put in 8 low res pics from the floppy disks and for the rest wrote "No pictures due to absolutely shitty camera".

Again I get a call. I stand my ground and tell them i'm not taking that thing out again.  My commander says he'll figure something out.  Next clip comes in, I have another package.  Its a sweet new smartphone, apparently they were made to give to Afghan troops and had some sort of picture based reporting system on it.  My commander tells me he grabbed one and I can just use it to take pictures.  Neat.

I go out on a mission, and of course its a super shitty one.  I end up working a half dozen IEDs while dismounted. Every time I crawl up, before I do anything I pop out my sweet new camera and take a few pics.  When i get back to camp I jump on the VSAT and have an angry email from some random navy dude asking why I sent him like 40 selfies of myself.  Turns out the camera defaulted to selfie mode and I never even noticed as the camera had no live video feedback,  also another awesome feature is it automatically sends everything on it when it gets signal, and it all goes to some Navy email.  So I spent the day crawling up to IEDs and taking pictures only to end up with a shitload of selfies populating the spank bank of some Navy program office.

My most "interesting", was at Balad.
Sitting at a smoke shack, in acus, security badge, with my holstered M9.

Another Soldier comes in, starts smoking, we minor chit chat.  
At a point he says "you ain't american",  "how did you get those clothes?"

"What are talking about?

"you ain't no american, I think you stole that uniform" and proceeds to slowly fumble to find a mag for his rifle.

At this point, I'm talking to him about what the hell he's thinking, while loading my pistol in the holster.  (mags on the holster, safariland).

Then he says "ima let you go, this one time" (or something like that), and walks off.

After I unload my sidearm, I was like WTF?  And hence my disdain for the D.C. NG.

The problem with a lot of funny military stories is they are inside jokes.  You have to understand the culture of the specific community you're talking about and the personalities involved.
When telling the story to an unitnitiated person, you end up telling 20 minutes of background info for a 5 minute story and it doesn't end up funny.

Or, the un-initiated can only react by looking at you like you are some kind of fucking lunatic.  At that point you KNOW it's a good story.

Getting woken up at 4:00 AM by banging on my apartment door (Off base housing) only to find three very drunk Marines at my doorstep, one of which had his entire forehead duct taped (multiple layers, no less). Come to find out he walked into the side of a street sign, slicing his forehead wide open. Marines being Marines they duct taped it and beat feet to their Doc's apartment.

Getting the duct tape off without making the already impressive laceration worse was quite the adventure... Concocting a plausible story that won't get any of us jammed for what happened and missing formation was an even bigger adventure....

A Corpsman of Marines job was an adventure each and every day. Just when you thought you've seen it all, some Marine will undoubtedly prove you wrong, over and over again...

1992 or 93.  I was stationed at Misawa AB in northern Japan.  A couple friend of mine had gotten into rock climbing and such.  We had found a couple placed to rappel on rocks and stuff but after many drinks we decided that we needed to kick it up a notch.  Then next day we drove around looking for a spot to do it and figured that the Aomori City bay bridge was just the spot.  At about 2300, we drove up the bridge and climbed out onto the bridge like ninjas and set up the ropes and anchor.  Got rigged up and went over the side in about 3 minutes. It was only about a 100 feet or so. There was still a bit in my rope bag.  So we got down, pulled the rope and drove off without being seen.  Made a couple laps around the block to make sure it was quiet, recovered the anchor hardware and went back to base feeling like we got away with something.

True.  A lot of ‘you had to have been there’ and ‘There I was…’.  And they often have a darkness to them that is hard to understand by those who were never mil.

There I was…

Flying B-52’s out of Diego Garcia during the first Gulf War.  DG is British Territory and is full of the ‘Queen’s Animals’.  Chickens running everywhere and wild donkeys from the long abandoned copra plantation.  These chickens always bothered one of our young navigators and he constantly complained about them.  His biggest gripe was they were all red or white and, since Americans were on the island, there needed to be some blue ones too.  The young LT was killed in a crash coming back from a mission.  The next week, there were suddenly dozens of blue chickens running around.  The Brits were all in a tizzy about somebody harming the Queen’s chickens, but soon realized blue food coloring wears off fairly quickly.  

We where living in a shelled out hospital where I met a hardcore dog that not only survived indirect and direct fires but managed to have a litter of pups, she became known as tits.

Tits the dog did a wonderful job keeping the other feral dogs away from us on our foot patrol so I rewarded her a giant summer sausage.

Later that night she ran into the building the Iraqi Army guys where racked out in and shit diarrhea everywhere.

- Fin

I once brought a DOA 10K HF transmitter comm van back online by Fonzi-fisting the main cover panel, just as a visiting one-star was stepping in the door to chew us out for being down during the exercise (Reforger).  Platoon sergeant was a happy boy.

I knew where the dodgy interlock was.  

Back in the late sixties, the Korean DMZ was like a wild life sanctuary. Deep track in the snow everywhere. We actually had  a regular army buck sgt. who said it was N. Koreans on stilts with deer hooves tracking us. He's probably a four star now.

When I was in AIT we had a soldier named Dick.

He was a troublemaker

Our drill/platoon sergeant came running up to the 3rd floor screaming "I WANT DIIIIICK, I WANT DICK RIGHT NOW!"

He was dead ass serious which made it even funnier.

I had an EWO who’s last name was Holder.  His first name was Richard.  Imagine the looks he got when people read his flight suit name tag… Major Dick Holder.

USAF Basic training, around Sep 1988.

We've been there about 3 days, and we've been getting smoked for anything and everything.  Nobody has had a chance to get to know anyone and we had an ice breaker in the day room.  We're all sitting on the floor and our TI is sitting in a chair.

TI is SSgt Candelario--a little bantam rooster hispanic guy who sounded like he left the barrio for the USAF.  He takes off his hat and says 'We gonna have a conversation.  I wanna know who you fucks are, why you joined, and where you from.  This will be the only time I don't want to hear any reporting statements cuz this is just guys talking'


We go around the room and everybody is introducing themselves and giving out little bits of information.  Everyone seems to be relaxing a bit.....until we got to Airman W***. Airman W*** had a huge head, and our fresh haircuts made it seem even bigger.  He looked like a real-life Elmer Fudd.  Wade jumps up to attention and gives his reporting statement.  "SIR, AIRMAN W*** REPORTS AS ORDERED. SIR, I'M AIRMAN W*** AND I COME FROM MISSOURI, SIR"

SSgt Candelario kind of chuckles and gently explains to Airman W*** that he specifically told him 'no reporting statements and he'd better start paying attention to instructions or he was going to have a really hard time in the military.

Candelario started asking questions (in his latino accent)  "So, AIRMAN W*** FROM MISSOURI WHO CAN'T FOLLOW INSTRUCTIONS, why did you join my Air Force?"  

SIR, I WANTED A BETTER JOB, SIR!  

Oh yeah?  What job you have before? (Candelario must have known the answer because he was having a hard time keeping a straight face)

SIR, I WAS A MORTICIAN SIR!

--everyone sitting close to W*** scootches away a bit--

Candelario just looks at him for a minute.....and finally says 'Hey W***, when you was alone with those dead bodies.....did you fuck 'em?"

SIR, NO SIR!!!!!  BUT MY UNCLE DID!



Airman W*** only lasted about 2 weeks before he washed out.  That was 34 years ago and I remember it like it was yesterday.






I spent better than half of my career overseas and I met some unbelievably funny people during those 20 years--I think it's a coping mechanism that some people have for dealing with shitty situations/conditions.  There was always something to laugh about if you think about it.

In basic I missed the dummy in bayonet training and just grazed it

My DS came up to me yelling about how much I love that dummy to spare his life and I should fuck that dummy.

After a minute of being confused he told me to start fucking that dummy.

I dry humped it and was told to show that dummy some respect and pull my pants down to properly fuck that dummy.

I pulled my pants down and dry humped the dummy for a minute and he had me redo the drill.

I stabbed that fucking thing so much that it fell apart

SGT looked at me and said "I guess the fucking honeymoon is over isn't it?"

Back in 05-06 I was working midshift flight line, had some X's to take care of on a phase jet. Pulled up to 3 Bay ran to the jet, surprise surprise no forms on the stairs. Climbed the ladder voila forms are there, open them up and start looking through pages and I heard like a mud suction noise behind me. Turned my head and much to my dismay I get an eyeful of black balls and white pussy just slapping around in the avionics closet. I quietly gathered my forms and descended the ladder, grabbed the radio and called all spec trucks to 3-bay asap. I have never seen a black dude blush but that married E-7 and that single E-3 turned a new color of pink after the standing ovation they got when they were done. Some rat fuck snitched on them and he was demoted, she was just fine. Bagged a new nickname (3-bay) and another married E-8 not too long after.

What NV mount is that?

Another Lackland Basic Training story:

March 1986, we form up in the morning for our first PT formation on the PT field.  There are probably around 10 flights (about 45 to 50 people in a flight) positioned on the field around an elevated platform where the instructor who will be leading PT and calling the exercises is standing.  It's dark and there is some ball field lighting on.  

A little information:  When you in process you cannot have any jewelry in basic training except a wedding ring or medic alert tag or bracelet.  I had a medic alert bracelet for an allergy to penicillin.

Anyway we are formed up around the stand and the first exercise was one of the stretch/warm up exercises something along the stand and reach, where you began with your hands in the air and your feet shoulder width apart.  On the command begin you, bend at the waist keeping your legs straight and touch your fingers to the ground in front of you and count 1,2,3 as you raise your fingers off the ground and move them back between your legs and then raise your torso up and count 1 and repeat until you reach the designated reps.

So there we were with our hands in the air waiting to be given the begin command.  All of a sudden the lead instructor is yelling "What are you wearing!".  Everybody is like oh shit, who is it.  Then we hear "what is that you have on!" and he is looking in our general direction and some of the TI's are starting to move our way like sharks closing in on their prey.   "What the fuck is that on your wrist!" and I notice that a TI is coming straight at me.  Oh shit.  

Me:  (yelling) "Sir Airman Basic Floridacop reports, it's a medic alert bracelet sir!".
Instructor:  "What is your medical condition?"
Me:  (yelling) "Sir Airman Basic Floridacop reports, I'm allergic to penicillin sir!".
Instructor:  "There is no penicillin on the PT Field, take that shit off!".  
Me:  (yelling) "Sir Airman Basic Floridacop reports, Yes Sir!".

I immediately took it off and put it in the pocket of my OD green pants (we were still issued the OD green utilities in basic) and you ran PT in a t-shirt, pants and tennis shoes.  Once we finished and went back up to the dorm I ditched it into my privacy drawer and learned my lesson that you wanted to do nothing to attract attention to yourself in basic and the TI's noticed everything, even in crowds of hundreds of people.

During my time in the Navy, while repairing a very highly technical transmitter (at the time -- an ANFRT-24A) that was frequency synthesized, I had what was known as a small pea-nut vacuum tube in one hand and a handful of actual peanuts in the other.

I replaced a faulty component that took hours of troubleshooting to find and waited for the transmitter to warm up to see if the tough assed repair took hold.

Wham, it came up right on frequency and in the excitement, I popped a peanut into my pie hole.  Except it was the wrong peanut as in the tube and I bit down on it.  Pow and now I had a mouthful of glass and other toxic metals.

The saving grace was that it all was mixed in with real peanuts and I spit out the majority of it.  Careful pick ins for the next half hours got the rest.

Tubes don't taste all that good.

operation united shield off the coast of somalia.
After my 2nd-3rd flight into the airport we were told we couldn't load ammo into our crew served weapons unless we were fired at first.  This was about 1 year after the blackhawk down deal.

State department could ruin a rock fight.

A really shitty proprietary one that used to come with the PVS-15's before we got the G24's.

Fun fact: I work in the Raytheon factory that builds the TOW ITAS.  That unit is one of the ones that came off our assembly line.

1985. Airport, Colombia, MO.
Finished our meal in the snack-bar, and were heading towards the lobby exit and to where Christine (C-130H, 74-2063) was parked on the ramp.

There are about a hundred passengers waiting in the lobby, ready to go to a waiting B727. The six of us were about 15 seconds from the exit, the AC (A goofy, fun Major) Slapped his leg and let-out a huge, drunken-like laugh. The two on either side quickly grabbed his elbows to assist this clearly inebriated lost soul.

He then has the full attention of all within view.
Then He proclaims loudly:
"Ooooh, Mac-lin! Great party, but the whiskey's aaaall gone, so We go fly now!". And the door closed behind us.
He quickly recovered and as I looked back, all I saw were about 100 sets of eyes the size of dinner plates! The look on their faces was: "That's America's Best?!?!?!"

So many stories.

Rose was our platoon fuck up in OSUT.

On the grenade range Rose was to my right during practice, using the grenades with detonators inside.

Like always Rose fucked up.

He wasn't holding the spoon tight enough and just as he got to "Prepare to throw".  There was a BANG right behind his head.

That grenade was about 5 feet away from MY head.

Had it been real...

But the funny part was all the shit he took from the Drill Sadists for being so stupid.

Well worth the high pucker factor of realizing that if the isiot Rose would have had a real grenade I most likely would have died.

Love that movie...

Baghdad, just outside of Sadr City, 2006.

After an exhausting night of hitting houses looking for HVTs, we ended up stopping at an IP station to eat. They had a pretty good little shop in there and the IP cook made some amazing fried egg sandwiches with some kind of purple sauce. I have no clue what the sauce was made from but it was great. Anyways, on our way back to the FOB, we get hit with a good sized IED that disabled one of our trucks. While trying to recover the truck, we ended up getting into a pretty good firefight. We finally made it back to the FOB after 8 or 9 more hours thanks to the AWTs that we had on station.

As we're cleaning out the trucks, I get the urge to fart and let out a little squeaker. Not bad but it smelled horrible. My gunner was 5'2" and 130lbs. He couldn't carry the 50 he manned and normally had my driver do it. This day, I decided to carry it up the 3 flights of stairs to the floor where my platoon lived. I get to the top of the stairs and needed to fart again so I let it rip. As I'm doing so, I realize that what I thought was sweat running down my legs was liquid shit. And it wasn't a little. I dropped the 50, grabbed a change of clothes,  baby wipes, my shower shit and went down to the shower trailer to wash up. I ended up pissing out of my ass a few more times in the shower and puked from the smell. After washing it all down the drain and washing myself up, I went to see my platoon's medic. He gave me a couple of 1,000ml bags and some anti diarrhea pills. 20 minutes later, I have to run down to the port-o-shitters and spent the next couple of hours in there. This happened several times that night.

In the morning, I was severely dehydrated and our medic walked me over to our aid station. I was diagnosed with dysentery and given more IVs and more pills. The PA wanted me to check in with him in a few hours so I wasn't supposed to go out that day. Turns out, the CO wanted to out with our platoon that morning and his RTO was also sick. I felt lucky because he was letting shit fly from both ends. The CO needed an RTO so as an NCO, I said fuck it. I'll be his RTO for the morning. We had to stop a few times so I could let the shit fly but it wasn't a bad morning. We had just loaded up to RTB and moved maybe 100m when we had an IED go off on our truck. As we just had our bells rung, we didn't notice the smell for a minute or so. The CO and driver started gagging and couldn't get out of the truck fast enough. Turns out, if you have dysentery and get hit by an IED, you just might shit.

I didn't go out for a week after that. I had a nice little mini vacation doing nothing but taking IVs, watching movies and running to the port-o-shitters.

Not active but a contractor.

Ft Irwin, gaurd unit is in for rotation, unit somehow expected us to have water buffalos for them to take out to field.

Nope, now it's summer 110 heat and they have 0 water. Solution was to send 2 pfcs to the commissary to buy drinks. They didn't say go buy water and Gatorades so the pfcs took it upon themselves to select the beverages. They came back with tons of monters, red bulls, mtn dews etc...

Never heard so many medevac calls during a rotation all for severe dehydration.

29 Palms June 1986. I was active duty with a reserve air group. We deployed with our reservists from the east coast for their annual training.
Being air wingers, we were billeted near the airfield in corrugated steel A frames. We had a mess hall, heads with showers and a gedunk. After work, we sat around the hooches sunning and drinking cold beers.
One early evening, a convoy of grunts coming in from the OP's. for showers and hot chow started rolling through camp.
I am sitting there in a lawn chair, drinking cold beers and soaking my feet in a plastic kiddie pool, I shit you not.
I saw the condition of these dirty, exhausted grunts and started chucking cans of ice cold Bud's onto the trucks.
The whole convoy erupted in loud cheering.
well about 8 beers in, a Sgt Major came running out of a hootch to see what all of the commotion was. He about lost his mind when he saw me throwing beers to these guys.
He was cussing me and threatening me with Office Hours while the grunts in the trucks were cussing him.
it was a few moments of pandemonium in the camp. Nothing ever came of it but a some grunts had a moment of happiness in an otherwise shitty place.

Driving a humvee through the desert (NTC) in a convoy for hours at night. Lost as fuck.

Wearing a PVS5 and Kpot plus MILES hear. The most awkward and uncomfortable apparatus you can imagine.

I've got a big ass dip in, mixed with coffee powder. I can't bring a spit bottle to my mouth, so I have to just swallow or spit down my chest. I'm in a constant state of ready to puke.

I've  had the NODs on so long and/or I'm so tired I'm starting to hallucinate. There is a box humvee in front on me and it has a cameo net covering the box. The net hanging off the side is bouncing around with it. Suddenly I realize there is a dude hanging off the side! Not really, but it took me some time to figure out it was just the net.

The tumbleweeds start looking like little gnomes crossing the track. Once I realized what the were I made a game of running them over. That's how I made it through the night.

I had two encounters in the desert with Army GOs that could have gone really badly, but didn't...

One of the units I had some responsibility for at the Deid had it's own tool crib right off the ramp, and put in a snack bar to earn a little morale money. Everything was behind the counter, and they had to put up a big sign to stop people from coming around and helping themselves...since many tended to "forget" to pay.

I was doing a spot inspection, turned and saw yet another Army uniform digging in the fridge, and kind of half shouted, "HEY, you BETTER fucking pay for that!" Guy stands up...Army two star. He actually smiled and said, "I'm good for it" and dropped a bill in the box for a fifty cent drink. My guys busted up laughing, probably from the look on my face, but the Army traveling with him honestly looked like they were going to piss their pants.

Second time, we'd been running a three day rolling generation to keep gunships overhead of some tiny positions in northern Afghanistan that were way the hell out in indian country. It was Jan, and I walked out of Ops after giving the mission commander his mx brief into the sunlight at about 8 am and flopped down on a bench out front and closed my eyes. Somebody sat down next to me and said, "you doing okay?" I never lifted my head or opened my eyes...and had about a ten minute conversation with the guy. He was very relaxed and we had a good chat about what we were doing, how it was going, and home.

Somebody walked by, and the way they addressed him sort of tripped my tiny radar. Opened my eyes and looked over...two star Army Chief of Chaplains. I apologized profusely, but he wasn't fazed. He clapped me on the shoulder, wished me well and gave me his coin. It's sitting on top of my safe. An Army major came out looking for me on the flightline about two weeks later and gave me a Ranger challenge coin for that same generation. It's on my safe as well. I have a tub full of coins, but to this day I value that one more than all my deployment decorations put together.