My dad joined the Army in 1971. After AIT, he was sent to the 7th Cav (2nd of the 7th, Gary Owen), at Ft. Hood. He was designated the company/battalion radioman.

One night during an exercise, my dad was bored and decided to do a turkey call on the radio. Then someone pipped up with a rabbit call, then someone did a tiger growl, this continued for a few minutes until an angry Captain got on the radio and silenced everyone. The next hour, the exercise was canceled and all CO's and radiomen were called to battalion headquarters. They were met by a General who was red faced, spitting pissed.

He had them lined up and said he was gonna bust them down to privates, all of them, unless the turkey man came forward. No one said a word during the hour long ass chewing. They got smoked the next day by their CO's, and the event was never spoken of again. My dad said he learned a lot that day......... Sounds like it was a long day for him.



Happy Veterans day everyone. Share some stories if you got'em.

haha that's great.

I farted loudly at work yesterday and unknown to me the VP of my division was on the other side of a short wall with another senior manager, it echoed loudly  and luckily for me it sounded like a duck quacking so I just made a few duck calls and then he asked if I had any luck duck hunting this year .

My dad was a young ensign on the USS New Jersey and put in charge of a quad mount 40mm AA gun tub. Inspections were frequent and if everything was perfect he was made to take the guns apart, oil and reassemble them to keep the men busy. So an old timer took him aside and showed him the trick. Intentionally leave something slightly out of order - a rag, a small tool wedged on the mount - it'll give them something to notice and check off a box for. Just be sure to have it gone (and replaced by some other minor do-dad) for next inspection.

He also learned that a steel ship in the summer in the calm sea gets hot.... once on an errand he want to the ship's laundry and turned on a light that was unaccountably off. He saw a huge steel vat (for washing clothes) filled to the brim and a seaman's head just above the water. He looked at my dad and said "shhhhhhh". It was 120 degrees below decks and he was cooling off....

After being a small fish in a big pound he transferred to a Mine Sweeper to be a big fish in a small pond.

Atlantic Ocean. Small wooden hulled ship. Said he lost 30 lbs. due to sea sickness.

To this day water and boats are therapeutic for him....

Dad was on an attack transport. Between Iwo Jima an Okinawa they went to refit and pick up more Marines. As a Chief he went out with the 30 flag division chiefs and 3 Sailors on an LCVP. One Chief procured 30# of steaks, another 30 cases of beer. They sailed up river on the island and found a beach/sandbar in the jungle, lit a fire and proceeded to grill the steaks and start pounding the beer. Didn't finish the steaks but they consumed all of the beer, started to motor the LCVP back to the ship, problem being they were so drunk they ran aground often, had to pile out of the boat and push it back into the channel. They finally arrived back at the ship, hours late, still so drunk that they couldn't parallel park against the hull of the APA, they kept ramming the side. Ship had to lower a Sailor to pull alongside so they could pick it up into the davits. They got back on board, zero punishments as itheir party was all of the Chiefs.

lol

Friend of mine was in basic at Fort Benning, and he had a Mexican who was helping him and a few others put up the large tents. The mexican guy was assigned to the mallet to beat the stakes into the ground. As they were doing so, they stopped to eat then returned to the tent, where the Mexican guy left the mallet. They chewed him out and told him from now on he was to hold the mallet until they go to sleep. The next day they went to chow and the guy was holding the mallet whilet standing in line. A DS walked in and saw him. The DS walked up to him and began screaming "Why are you holding that big fucking hammer, private"

This is a clipped version of some of my shenanigans during OIF 2 in Samarra.

During one long area clearance mission, our Brads set up in a square a few hundred meters apart. My BC (Bradley Commander) knew that I always kept porn with me so we started broadcasting porn over the battalion and brigade net. Of course, we kept hearing the BC and CSM bitch in about it but nobody could figure out where it was coming from. After doing this off and on for a few hours, we called it quits. We did hear about for quite a while though in every mission brief from that day forward.

Been a while since I heard some of these so I may get some details wrong. Dad was active as a combat engineer then went in to the reserves as a mike boat mechanic
They were doing a field exercise with west point cadets assaulting a beach. The first couple times they just stopped the boat like 25 yards out from the beach dropped the ramp and let them slog it through the surf. On the last day they actually ran the boats all the way up on to the beach much to the chagrin of all the cadets who had no idea they could do that.
In a dense fog they ran over and sank a coast guard buoy...almost sinking the boat as well IIRC.
When in the engineers he got to go over to England and unpack Big Red. They ended up driving a forklift off the dock into the harbor.





EDIT: Damn it now I cant find anything on it.....but for those that don't know, Big Red was a big ass cargo ship full of tanks and supplies and shit that we just kept packed up and ready to go during the cold war.





EDIT 2: Looks like they still have it....or at least did as of 1999.  http://fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ship/docs/000100-MS490.htm





 

My grandfather was a Marine officer from the late 40s to the 70s.

During TBS they were doing an exercise where they had to move through a field at night without being spotted by a spotlight. The spotlight starts coming his way so he buries his face in the deck, and one of his hands laid on a stick. The light moved away from him, so he got up to move and for some reason he decided to take the stick with him. So he stands up to start moving and this stick starts to slither and wiggle out of his hand. It was a snake. He screamed like a little girl and gave away their position.

In Korea he was a forward observer for his artillery battery. They had just taken a hill and he was callin in rounds on the next position they were going to take. As he's calling in rounds with his binoculars he feels a tap on the shoulder, but he waves the person away and keeps adjusting his fire. The person keeps tapping and tells them to go away, he's busy. The tapping wouldn't stop so he turned around and saw an armed nork trying to surrender to him.

I don't remember if this was in Korea or Vietnam but he got in country and was assigned to some laundry detail. He talked to his ranking officer who he knew and got his orders changed to get to an artillery unit. So he reports to first battalion first Marines and starts working there. About two weeks later someone shows up and asks  "are you 2Lt. Mindfreak?" and he replied in the affirmative. Turns out he was supposed to be in 11th Marines and they had been looking for him for two weeks.

He recently passed away.

My dad was in France and then Germany during WWII. He went a shore 3 days after the Normandy invasion.

He was part of a mobile AAA battery. As they followed the front they moved into Germany. Late in the war, probably

March there was some slack time. At one point some said "let's go boar hunting" no boars were found but they stumbled across

some anti tank guns that had been mostly disabled. Live ammo was scattered everywhere. Someone found a bore and barrel still intact

and inserted a round.

However, the breach would not close. No problem, he said we stood back about 50 yards and shot at the primer....

The casing came flying back almost hitting the guy next to my Dad. The round launched out across the valley...he was 20 years old at the time..

Dad passed in 2004....miss you Dad

My dad enlisted as a pilot trainee, went to Grand Forks, ND. Flew "Fighter Cubs" (Piper Cub training aircraft) for a short time until he was grounded by migraines. He was then sent to radio school, to become a radioman/gunner. Got some kind of infection on his thumb* so he was on hospital orders... watched his squadron march to the base HQ, came out looking like hell. Turns out they'd been washed out of pilot school and put into the Infantry, and shipped to Germany as replacements. He never saw any of them again. Being on medical orders, he didn't ship out with them.

He eventually became an MP and was on a troop train to embark to go to the Pacific when they got word of the A Bomb.

Got to Guam and had a few misadventures. One funny one: He had to "guard" a shack full of parachutes that had been ordered destroyed. So, knowing that they were prized by the Guamian women (who were excellent seamstresses), he stole one. And lost control of it. According to him, the parachutes were spring-loaded; when he pulled the rip cord, he suddenly found himself with a large double-armful of silk. Inside the warehouse. Facing an Army court-martial if caught. He managed to get away undiscovered, and sent home a nice dress to Mom and some silk shirts for himself.

He f*cked up one day. Escorting an Army prisoner back to the stockade, he told the prisoner to go up the long hill and turn himself in while he went to his barracks and got a shower. This made his sergeant very, very unhappy, and learned that if the prisoner had escaped, he'd have served the prisoner's sentence and lost all rank. (He was a corporal at this time.) He got off with a sergeant-issued gluteal mastication.

One night he was sent out to relieve an MP guarding some fuel trailers. Each trailer had a spigot which was "locked" with a wooden peg through a metal loop. On his first patrol, all pegs were in place; on the 2nd patrol, a peg had fallen loose and was hanging by its string; he replaced it. On his 3rd patrol, FIVE pegs were hanging loose! He never figured out if it was his sergeant messing with him or some Japanese hold-out stealing gas. He did remember that the guy he'd relieved gave him a strange look.

One unhappy incident: He was watching an Army transport taking off with a load of soldiers who'd amassed enough points to go home. The transport lost power on all 4 engines, and crashed in the jungle, killing all onboard. He had the guard detail, to keep looters from stealing the soldier's personal effects. That story haunted him till the end of his life. Here were all these guys who'd been through hell, and they got killed as they were leaving for home.


*Given the attrition of bomber crews, his thumb infection may be the reason I was born... he might not have survived, either as a bomber crewman or as an infantryman in Germany.

My Dad likes to say that while in Army basic training in 1943, he only cleaned his rifle 3 times. Once after Breakfast, once before Lunch and once before Dinner!

He likes to tell me that story everytime he sees me NOT clean a firearm immediately after I am done shooting for the day.

My dad got busted down a rank when he was doing KP for making a life sized naked lady out of mashed potatoes. This was back in the 60's.

After Normandy there was such a shortage of infantrymen that they culled flight programs Armywide for Soldiers to serve in line units. His classmates my have just been unlucky.....

Bored GIs gonna GI.  Thanks.

Friend of mine did a tour in Iraq. He said they had been deployed for some time when they finally got a chance to go to a base camp, take a real shower, and eat at a real chow hall. Him and his men are going thru the line and he gets his tray full, goes over to a table, pulls out a chair. He then proceeds to sit on the generals top cover that the general had left on the chair. As he is sitting there realizing just how much his life is going to suck, up walks the general. General apologizes and says it was his (general's) fault as he should have left the chair pulled out.



My friend apologized and started to leave for another table, when the general told him, "No stay here and eat with me...". So my friend said he ate chow with the general while his men went to a table as far away from the general as possible.

My Grandfather was a unit armorer in the Seabees during WWII and served in the pacific.

One island they were on had been cleared of the Japanese. They had a movie theater set up in a clearing and some other nice amenities. Movies were played ant night and gave the guys a chance to take a break and unwind. The only shenanigans was that someone was stealing rations. Finally one night a well fed Japanese soldier made the mistake of running into an Officer in the dark. Turns out the guy dodged the Marines when the island was being cleared. He survived off of stealing food from the mess tent and rations from supply. Spent most of the day sleeping and stayed up at night watching the movies from the tree line. He meant no harm and was  enjoying the American occupation of the island.

A Marine Infantry Officer from California had quite an affinity for weapons of all shapes and sizes. He regularly brought captured weapons back to my Grandfather in the "arms room" tent to inspect, disassemble and crate up to ship back to his home in California. Type 92's, 96's, "knee mortars", you name it. He even came across a box of new consecutive numbered unfired Nambus. There was a reason....none would fire. I don't remember the issue....but Grandpa fixed them. And the Marine happily got them home. One day the Officer showed up frantic. He had a 37mm gun that had been removed from a Japanese light tank his unit had taken out. He needed it cleaned up and crated because time was of the essence. He greased it up and crated it within the deadline....suddenly the Officer shows up with some Marine privates in tow. They grab the crate load it up on a truck and speed down to the dock. From the horizon a large ship/carrier comes along...a smaller boat casts off while the big ship is moving along and comes up to the dock. The crate is loaded and it speeds off back to the ship that is still moving without missing a beat. My Grandfather was shocked at how this Marine Infantry Officer could have coordinated his 37mm gun being picked up in the middle of a war by the passing ship. Turns out the Officer was the son of a well connected Congressman. Before my Grandfather passed....we joked about the type of weapons...and artillery that Officer sent back to the State of California. His collection wouldn't be very welcome anymore.

His favorite story was the "Lucky .45". A Marine Sargent removed a pistol from a dead Japanese soldier as a souvenir on one of the islands. It was a well used 1911 and had very likely been removed from a dead US serviceman as the same...a souvenir. The Grip had some Japanese characters carved into it. On another island the Sargent had the pistol placed in the small of his back tucked in his pants while he and others were clearing some caves. A well hidden Japanese soldier was able to shoot the Sargent from behind...hitting his "Lucky .45"....making it even more lucky.... Aside from a bruised sore lower back the Marine was unharmed. Unfortunately a portion of the frame and slide were badly deformed and the pistol was unusable. The Sargent brought it to my Grandfather hoping it could be made serviceable again. Wasn't anything he could do from the limited tools he had in the tent. Quite a few guys wanted the pistol just from its mysterious history of passing back and forth from friend to foe and saving the Marines life. The Sargent got quite a few tempting offers in trades but he turned them all down. He swore he would be buried with the pistol. Grandpa said from what he knew the guy did survive the war and most likely is buried with his lucky .45.

RIP Curtis Worth Hulit. My Hero.

those are great stories!  Your grandfather sounds like he was an excellent human being.  Thanks for sharing.

My great uncle was with the USAF as a Security Police senior NCO at Da Nang during the Tet Offensive. He did a great job, and was rewarded with a nice position at Minot, ND. He lasted a couple months in winter and asked to go back to Vietnam.

The USMC once lost my grandfather in Philadelphia. From my vague memory of the story:
My grandfather was an ANGLICO in Korea at the start of the war. After he was rotated home in '51 he and some other guys ended up at the Philadelphia Navy Yard. They reported in and were shown where they were staying, and then ignored. After a couple days they got bored. So, in the abscence of direction, they went out on the town. The next day nobody came for them or told them to do anything, so they went out again. Because nobody told them not to. This went on for two weeks and they started to get nervous so the guys sent my grandfather (senior enlistedman there as like a Cpl or Sgt) to go talk to the Gunny (IIRC) in charge of the barracks.

So my grandfather walks into his office and introduces himself. The Gunny says, "Who the fuck are you?" My grandfather introduces himself again. The Gunny shuffles through papers. My grandfather says, "Gunnery Sgt, me and a bunch of other Marines have been up on the 3rd deck for two weeks. Nobody's come for us or told us anything" The Gunny stares at him. My grandfather said, "Should I go and talk to the Captain about this?" The Gunny looked flustered and said, "Uh, no. I'll take care of this." They got another week or so of no duty and spending all day (and evening) in Philly while the Gunny sorted it out.

RTO huh.... yeah, iv got a rto story.

heres me... brand new private from basic. in the 101st airborne division. 2/502.

we do a artep... my first one..... we do a assault on objective..... im running around with my m16, popping of shots at the opfor.... WOOOOOO this is awesome !     i encounter.. the LT, the platoon sergeant,  the RTO, and the evaluator.

evaluator...... BOOM.. radioman just got killed ! ! !  WHAT DO?!?!

patoon sergeant......PRIVATE  BUCK19DELTA  ! ! !   GRAB THAT RADIO !

buck19delta......... HOOYAH ! !   ( grabs up radio, throws it on his back, puts the mike on his chinstrap...... then  a few min later... gets distracted and starts running and gunning again..  sniping, dodging machine gun fire, trying to sneak up on enemy machine gun alone.. etc..

over the next 30 min..... he hears this in his ear.... over and over..... approx every 15 seconds...

Delta 2 delta 2, this is delta 5 over......

Delta 2 delta 2, this is delta 5 over......

Delta 2 delta 2, this is delta 5 over......

Delta 2 delta 2, this is delta 5 over.......

Delta 2 delta 2, this is delta 5 do you read ???  

( damn... i wonder who the hell that delta 2 guy is???  they sound mad at him... dumb fucker.. )

Delta 2 delta 2, this is delta 5 over......

Delta 2 delta 2, this is delta 5 over......


FINALLY.... i hear this...

PRIVATE BUCK19DELTA ! ! ANSWER THE FUCKING RADIO ! ! ! ! ! ! !

me.................... um..... " HELLO" ???

radio...... GO FIND THE lt RIGHT FUCKING NOW ! ! ! ! AND STAY WITH HIM ! ! ! !




EVALUATION TIME..

EVALUATOR....  

PLUSES.... you did good on the assault...   you did good on motivation... your use of cover was great... aid and little went great.... good use of smoke for cover and conceilment....   you found your objective and seized it..

now....  needs improvement...

wheres my radio operator at ?!?!?!  

me.....

the entire platoon.....


i got a lot of rto classes after that... a lot... of fucking radio classes.

i arrived in germany.... from the 101st..

11 bravo, assigned to a 4/7 patriot missile battery, stationed in dexheim.... i basically end up on this little missile base in the middle of nowhere...... the unit had been there for a while, couple weeks or so.. so, the company commander decided they needed a break..

he gets everyone together,tells us to get civilian clothes out.... to go to the local airbase.... bus and all... we cram the bus full.... and end up in some club, on a military base... everyone starts drinking.... another group of soldiers shows up... someone starts hitting on our females, which causes a fight...

next thing you know.... theres 60 something soldiers having a bar fight... unit vs unit....

someone screams.. " call the mp's"  

someone answers.... " we are the fucking mp's !!!"

company commander..... holy shit ! !     fall back ! !  

the entire group, approx 30 -50 of us,  stumbles back to the bus, where the bus driver was asleep.... we tore ass off the base.  way back up the mountain to our missile base... we hide the bus, tell the gate guards, that if anyone asks, noone has left he base in days, and we dont even have a bus, etc.... everyones like " oh shit ! "... everyone changes clothes, and everyone pretends to no nothing. people with black eyes and bruises are told to stay out of sight etc..  

we even get a call at the cq desk.... which the platoon sergeant has taken over, 5 minutes after us returning..

phone rings.

4/7 ada  staff sergeant xxxxx here, how can i help you ma'am or sir??

some officer..or something...  this is  xxx at base xxx... we had a incident here a few hours ago.. a huge fight, and the offenders left base... we are trying to find them, we had people assaulted.. etc.   have you had anyone leave your base in the last few hours??

sergeant...... no sir.... we are on lock down... noone has left this base in days.

some officer..... thank you sergeant.... we will keep looking..

good luck sir.... 4/7 ada out..

While in comm school we were practicing erecting antennas. We were spaced about 75-100 yards apart in groups of two. We were to erect the antenna, hook up the radio and do an op check.
After getting ours up and running I got bored and during a moment of silence I got the bright idea to recite the part of that old 70s song convoy where they guy say breaker 19 you got a copy on me pigpen.  The Sgt training us heard it then came on the net and said who ever pigpen was needed to start pushing.

The name stuck.

I have one from my Dad and one from my father-in-law.

My Dad was in the air force during vietnam. He said at boot camp (I think it was boot camp) they were all lined up and given a cup of flouride to use as mouthwash. The sergeant turned his head mid-sentence while saying "Do NOT swallow." Half of the guys there only heard "swallow" so they swallowed the flouride. All of them that swallowed were sick for about the next 12-15 hours.



My Father-in-law was a Marine during the earlier stages of Vietnam when they were still using M14s. There were restrictions on the number of M14s that each squad could have with the full-auto selector switch. The rest were all semi-auto. His unit had been pretty deep in the shit so they didn't pay too close attention to the limitations. As my father-in-law put it "you don't want semi-auto when the VC are coming across your line."

He had an officer come in to inspect his unit and upon leaving the officer pointed out that all but 3 of the M14s issued to his squad (maybe unit idk all the .mil terminology) had the full auto selectors. This was a certain figure above the limit on full-autos that one squad could have to which my FIL replied "Thanks for bringing that to my attention."

The first thing he did when the officer left was put in a requisition for 3 more M14s with the full-auto selector.

My Dad has piles of them. My personal favorites are the one about the soldier who tried to experiment with the "push back on the slide of a 1911 and it won't fire" theory and put a round through his hand in the process, and the one about an MLRS unit at Sill accidentally FASCAMing a section of public roadway during a demonstration.

A fellow LT I was stationed with in both Germany and Ft Benning told me of his dads WWII experience.  His dad was named LR Hewitt and he was from Florida.  His first name was LR.  LR did not stand for anything, his first name was the letters LR.  Well, that was fine for Florida but didn't work with the Army system and his dad's forms kept getting sent back for the correct name.  Finally, LR filled out the forms with FIRST NAME:  L (Only) R (Only).  Yep, in all of his service documents he was listed as Lonly Ronly Hewitt.

The most amazing thing was that years later when he married and settled down, he named his first kid RL.  

MOAR!!!

iv seen a hemmitt not quite make a turn, and rip the brick / stone side off a germans house, exposing their living room...

iv heard of a german tailgating a m1 abrams tank... and the tank exhaust blistering the paint on their car hood.

iv been in the field before, and the local germans didnt want us there.... they came and told us they didnt want us there.... and hours later we were beset by hundreds of bees..... supposedly they had all their bee keepers get their swarms stirred up, to help make us leave....we were dodging bees everywhere, it was almost impossible to serve meals, especially the drinks, which typically was huge jugs of cool aid made with real sugar...they were swarming with bees.  i took great care and managed to not get stung....

the bee assault  worked though......we moved 20 miles away to another site...  then  the next day, after the move, , i take out my canteen, take a drink, and sit it on my leg.... and get stung by a fucking bee, on my thigh. the bee  was under my canteen, in the pouch for 24 fucking hours, and 20 miles. .and nailed me the next day.. WTF?!?

One of my favorites from my Dad (68-69)

He was a Sgt in armored cav.  Dad is in command of the Scout track.  So they are motoring somewhere, and they come to a river they have to cross.  The fairly new LT looks at the map and at the river and declares that this is the where they will fjord said river.

SGT:  LT, we should pick a different crossing, we have used this one too many times.

LT:  No, we will cross here.

SGT:  LT this is a bad idea.  We have crossed here too many times, it's going to get mined.  

LT:  THIS is were we are crossing, SGT.  So cross it.

SGT:  If you want to go across here that is fine, but I am not going first.  You go first.

LT proceeds to mount up on his 113 and orders the driver to cross the river.  Down one bank, across the river and half way up the other before it happens.

Just like my dad predicted, it was mined.

The mine threw the 113 over 20 feet in the air and it came down on the opposite bank.

On its roof.

On top of the aforementioned LT.

The driver broke his jaw (I think) and after some digging and pulling They pulled the LT out from under the track.  He was a little bruised and he needed a bath, but otherwise he was fine.  

He never questioned my dad about crossings ever again.

When my dad would talk about it,  he had some great stories. .. he was an incredible story teller and could make almost any thing hysterical. ...

1 story in particular was great because he had photographic evidence. ..

He was on point,  just inside the brush by a huge clear area in the jungle.  He said he thought to himself it was a perfect place for a sniper,  and as soon as he thought that, he got shot.  As he went down,  he saw the sniper in a, tree.

He fired his M79 at the tree, expecting to hear a boom... instead he heard a scream and a thud... when his team found the sniper,  he was dead, lying on his back... the 40mm grenade  had hit the sniper but never detonated.    Someone took a picture looking straight down  into his chest and gave it to him when he got back... you can kind of see the round inside the guy...

Somewhere in my house I still have that picture. ..

My dad was in the army from 49-72.  He didn't tell many stories but the ones I remember are:

-He was stationed on Kodak island at some point.  A guy in his company wanted to go hunting and checked out a rifle.  After a while the guy comes back to the base minus the rifle.  When he was asked what happened he said that he was walking down a road and it was foggy enough that he could barely see.  When the fog cleared a Kodak grizzly bear was standing right in front of him.  The guy tossed the rifle at the bear and turned around and ran back to the base.

-While stationed at fort Knox he and some buddies got drunk at a bar and ended up driving to Nashville ,TN.  None of the knew how they got there.

-When he was in ,Germany they had an encounter with autobahn annie.  She asked everyone if they wanted to sample her goods. No one took her up on herr offer but someone asked what about the german shepperd that was their patrol dog.  She said 5 marks and they her.  He said the dog laid around the next several days licking himself and crying.  Seems he caught a case of the clap from annie.

I just read the passage in Citizen Soldier about the Bulge, and what you say is true. Additionally, they thought that they'd need fewer bomber crews because they were becoming more successful in their raids and tactics. In addition to the bomber crews they also broke up a bunch of Army scholastic units. I forget what they were called but they were helping kids get their college diploma to make officers of them; instead, they ended up as Infantry replacements.

Now, THAT is a man I wouldn't be bothered to call "Sir."

I wonder how many RL's there are. I know of one in Ft.Worth.

That's a great story OP.  I was 1st of the 7th 10yrs later ("FIRST TEAM!").





One of My favorite memories is of cold Tankers and Scouts huddling around the ass end of tanks on winter mornings (Some


still wrapped in fart sacks) while we cranked 'em over for the first time.





Favorite FUNNY memory was the day I was laying out BII (Basic Issue Items [The crap that comes with a piece of equipment])


for My M60A1 in front of a BII inspection.  My TC was a former ROK Marine from Korea named SSG HA.  He had the WORST


accent on FT Hood BAR NONE! He was very hard to understand sometimes.





Anyway, I've got everything laid out and he comes to inspect it.  He looks around for a few minutes and then asks me "Where


WENGES?" (?)  I asked "WENGES SSG?"  He says "Yeah...WENGES" (I have NO idea what a "wenge" is).





"Do you mean WRENCHES?" I suggested.  "NO NO NO NO WENGES! WENGES!" he says (He's getting exasperated).  I'm just


standing there looking stupid and he says "You know, WENGES, REH, GREE, BREW....WENGES!"  FINALLY it clicks.  We had


colored lenses that snapped over the sights for the main gun (Different colors for different light conditions).  I said "Oh!....


You mean LENSES!"





SSG HA looks at me like I'm a moron and says "Thas whah I said, WENGES!".


 

When I got off the bus at boot camp in San Diego, we were met by a bunch of little men wearing tan uniforms and speaking something that sounded vaguely like English. There were ~10-12 of us from Georgia. We looked at them, and looked at each other. None of us had a clue what they were saying. They got madder and madder the longer we stood there scratching our heads. Finally one of the angry little men pointed at a line on the concrete and pointed along it. We got the hint and followed the line. I was seriously wondering if I'd somehow joined the Japanese Navy. I'd never seen a Filipino or the khaki chief's uniform. Both of my CCs were Filipinos, so I became more proficient with the accent.  After 31 years, I still am not certain what PO Isyasa meant when he told us "cats edds up" when we were making our bunks. Catch edge up? No idea.

I had heard a similar story to this many times and thought that it was bs but I knew both people involved in this incident and I know it to be true.
Two friends were OP4 at camp Merrill. Both were drinking in the barracks, one has a ruger p85 and tells the other that if the slide is pushed back it will not fire.
Argument ensues. Dummy number one takes loaded p85 and pushes back slide, but not far enough and pulls trigger. Bullet miraculously passes through hand without tearing out large amount of bone or ligament but dummy number two is not so lucky. Bullet lodges in pelvis and does some sort of damage that left him in a wheelchair up to the last time that I saw him. I saw dummy number one a few times with the healing hole in his hand but he disappeared  and no one ever heard from him again.  Pretty sure he went back to his hometown after serving some time somewhere.
The funny thing was that he was not confined immediately afterward not even to base, I saw him several times off base.
I guess he could have lied and just said it went off accidentally, which sounds stupid but a little better than I pointed it at him and intentionally pulled the trigger
Does CMJ usually provide for people to walk around freely after doing something so dumb and obvious that cost the govt hundreds of thousands of dollars?

My wife's grandfather was a Nuremburg guard.  Once while he was escorting Rudolf Hess down a catwalk their strides fell in step for a ways and some other guards started humming "here comes the bride".

MOAR!

Great stories guys. Thank you for sharing.

I love hearing stories from vets, nothing on Earth is as interesting as the stories they tell.

I'll share some more when I have time.

One of my favorite non-deployment stories was the very first night I was in Germany several several years ago. Brand new PV2 Steensen, straight from 31B (MP) OSUT. Completely lost and overwhelmed. (When I was a private...I was pretty much a chihuahua that had been left in 40 degree weather overnight.)



My new Platoon mates invite me out to go to the wine fest in Kitzingen, where we were stationed.



We all carpool out there, and are having a good time. Everyone else is hammered, but I'm dead sober, as I hadn't much developed a taste for drinking yet, when my new squad leader, SSG ******, spots his wife sitting in the lap of a local German man whom she had been having an affair with. He walks over, a couple of the soldier's telling him it's a bad idea. He gets into a verbal altercation, quickly followed by a shoving match, when several more local nationals get involved physically against him.
We don't play that game, and somehow (the next few minutes were kinda a blur) we are in a knock down drag out fight. Pretty much the 20 of us that came out vs about twice that number of angry Germans. One thing I remember very keenly is the SSG standing over SSG-wife-fucker, large german beer stein held over his head, about to be brought down into the other individuals head. I remember thinking that I didn't want this to turn into a murder, so I slipped up behind him, and slipped the beer stein out of his hand and tossed it away. He was very very confused, looking around for who borrowed his beer stein.



Hear sirens in the distance. Oh fuck. Two MP patrol cars come squealing up. Thank god, it's guys from our PLT on duty. I go running up to one of the vehicles in the chaos, grab the car handle, and am about to yank it open when he locks the doors and zooms a hundred yards up the road as the crowd was surrounding his vehicle. I was too new. He didn't recognize me. (RIP SGT Michael Peek. You're missed.)



We all decided it was time to go before the Polezi showed up, and broke off into groups of three and four and quietly slipped away. It was only a 7 mile walk back to the barracks on a cold snowy German night. I was ready for bed when I got home. Had PT the next morning. Not another word of it was spoken by anyone.

This is kind of lame compared to some of the stories that have already been posted, but I'll try one.



I was stationed at a Ground Launched Cruise missile (nuke) base in Europe in the late '80s.  The Russians had a habit of flying their satellites over the base at regular intervals to take pictures.  Of course we were told when the overflights were going to be so we could cover up the stuff we didn't want them to have pictures of.



The funny side effect was that at the specified overflight times, it was common to see people stop what they were doing, and look up to the sky and give a middle finger salute to the Russians.  It wasn't much, but it sure was fun.  I'm sure they got a few photos of me to laugh at.  

porta shitters are comedy gold on deployments, there's all sorts of interesting things to read while you're dropping a deuce.
When I went to Iraq with 1/17 cav, 82 cab, we had a whopping 2 or 3 females in our unit (which was a good thing) but because girls were so rare in division at the time, even the ugly ones were constantly hit on, hence the term deployment queens
because everyone treated them like royalty while deployed in the hopes they would get laid (which was a big no-no, but guys are gonna be guys)

anyway I'm taking a dump in one one day and read a saying that has stuck with me to this day,
someone wrote:
What are all the hot girls out here gonna do when they get back home and they're ugly again?
below that someone else wrote
Re-enlist..

A buddy of mine has a bunch of stories and I, and other, have been prompting him to write a book for years. His dad and brothers were also Army and between them didn't have the accumulation of stories he had. Here's a sampling of chapter titles:

My Command Track Ran Over Me and I Lived
The Guy who Punched the Guy with the Bird on his Hat
Bridge Defense vs the ROK Rangers
AWOL and the Egyptian Pyramids
I Was Chased up a Tree by a Rhino
The Trials and Further Trials of LT Fuckup

My Dad served from the early 50's through 69 and had some good stories.
When he enlisted he was only 16, he went with his two friends and they were 17 with parental signatures so Dad forged Grandma's.
They rejected his buds and took him.
He was in armor and really loved his time in before retiring as a Sgt. Major while we were in Bamberg Germany in 69.
Just a quick version of a few:
He still talked about the time accidently sat down on top of the exhaust on one of his tracks and burned his ass, made the medic swear to silence.
In Japan another guy getting blown half out of the tank when the paddy walls collapsed on each side of the tracks and the bottom of it pancaked onto a muddy spot with the escape hatch not latched.
Having his teeth worked on in the field in Korea by a dentist with one of those foot pump drills, hated going to the dentist the rest of his life.
Trying to teach Iranian military how to operate American armor in the 50's, said they were basically un-trainably stupid, he always felt like we would roll over them in the first gulf war.
While stationed at Fort Irwin in the mid 60's my mom used to give him a hard time about how easy he had it riding around in a tank, until one field day he took her for a trip around the desert.
She never said a word about it after that. LOL
One of my favorite memories was when I was only 6 or 7 and he was involved with closing a reserve base around Monrovia California.
He got me and my older brother up early in the morning, still dark and we got to ride in the tanks through town as they roaded them to the rail yard, sitting up looking out the turret driving down the street as a kid was really neat.
Lots more stories, lost him about a year ago and still miss him.

"The flack was so thick it looked like you could walk on it"  From my Dad in 1944.

I was in the 101st and had orders to pcs to Germany in 81 . A few others in my unit did as well.  1 guy wanted to be an mp . He changed his orders and his MOS in his file and sent himself to an mp unit . He was court martialed and did time before getting thrown out.

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The SAMSO (Space and Missle Systems Organization) in California used to put signs out with "Yebat' Tvoyu Mat" (Fuck Your Mother) on the roof.

this was well after my mil days, but this is the story of me bringing updog to the JNCC at Camp Victory in Iraq.  I was passing one of my night crew engineers in the chow hall just before his shift, and got him with the updog. You should seen his eyes when he realized its potential.

Anyhow it spread like wildfire, climaxing during shift change in the JNCC.  We had a STM-1 fiber circuit coming it, delays, delays etc etc, it had finally been completed but still some problems on the DISA side.  Of course, military shiftchange is all powerpoint, and the line item for this entry read "blah blah STM-1 circuit blah, we believe the problem to be due to updog".  This is what the handoff tech read off the slide during StratWAN's presentation to the Major during shift change.  Major looks puzzled and says "whats updog?"  The ENTIRE JNCC answered him back, freaking hilarious.

My Wife's grandfather "Gramps" was a LT in WWII (He's a spry 94 year old).  I take him dinner every Thursday and he tells me old war stories.  The best meal of my week.  He graduated from Texas A&M (Whoop) in 1943. Went to artillery trailing in Ft Sill, OK.  The stories are great and I admire the greatest generation more and more.

1.)  On of his Texas A&M classmates was from So Cal and told friends he could introduce them to movie stars.  After graduation from their training several classmates went to So Cal to meet movie stars.  Gramps opted not to go, the 3 classmates that went got picked up and shipped out to Pacific theater and were gone a year and half long than the officers that went to Europe.  Wrong place wrong time.

2.) Gramps got lost in heavy fog and finally found a wall (be feel) and stopped to try to get his bearings.  Could hear German be spoken on other side of the wall (turns out it was a barn 100 yards away from US lines.  He said he turned around and felt his way back to the US line.  He said that was very scary for him.

3.) During battle of the Bulge, the artillery battalion was being moved from Sabret to another location.  He went to communicate that orders to fall back had been given to the Captain of the 101st Airborne.  Gramps said the Captain told him "You fellows can go were ever you want, the 101st is staying here to fight these bastards".  Gramps said that he has always wondered what happened to that Captain and that he was a brave SOB.

I need to write all of his stories down.  His son, my FIL, told me that he won't talk about the war with him.  I don't know why he shares so freely with me, but I love to hear the stories and look at his after action reports.

I will neither confirm nor deny that during a particular deployment, in a very hot and humid location, we may have acquired grape juice, yeast, sugar and pantyhose to concoct a drink that smelled and tasted like kerosene.  The upside was after the first good drink, you couldn't taste anything anyway, so I guess it evened out.

Supposedly somebody asked an officer why men were receiving panty hose in care packages.