At Ft Hood, we used to sneak around to other positions, and remove 50s from their mounts & leave them disassembled on top of the turret, tape centerfolds onto the pantels so the gunner'd get a real eye-full (NOT when we were firing live joes, naturally), cut chem-lights open and hose down other howitzers with 'em, etc. We'd also stick a razor blade under the fuze before we fired (makes a godawful shriek when it leaves the tube), punch the tube with cherry juice mixed with grease to counteract the flash reducer in the powder........

So what'd you guys do to break the monotony?

I was known for MRE bombs. I once cleared out an entire Division Main "circus tent"! Sneak up on othere positions and "kill" the occupants. Cut a few feet out of someone's commo wire. nothing too bad.

A couple years ago at Yakima we snuck into the Cal-Guards Main camp and dumped about 10 cans of powder'd gatoraid into their water buffalo's. (my guys wanted to take a bath in it, but I talked them out of it) MRE heater bombs in gatoraid bottles were always fun in the portapotties. My personal claim to fame was when I took a dehydrated cow flob at Camp Robberts and threw it into the drivers compartment of a M577, That was no big deal till they took it to the wash rack!...

I always wanted to put the dehydrated cow crap into the shitters at range control, but never got the chance. If someone wants to give it a shot and let me know about it I would be honored [:D]

Lawn Darts. Don't go to the field without them. Of course, these days they are collectors items.

HEY I resemble that Remark LOL!

Some days I feel like a collector's item.

At Ft. Hood we were known as the "Latrine Bombadiers". You would be amazed at what an arty simulator will do to a latrine...
Use the end connector to pull a .50 bullet from the case, pour a bit of powder around the neck, stick the now loose bullet in, bury the case in the dirt, and light it off so it would hit a M113 or M60s hull.
One crew in my platoon hated the plt. Sgt./TC so bad, they took his outlet valve out of his M24 mask. We had "found" a case of CS and kept nukeing him whenever he went to sleep...
Set a 2d AD Sheridan on fire with a star cluster during a big ftx.

You got to sleep?
Must of been a REMF.[:P]

For fun, I'd stick a grenade sim in one of Ft Lewis' famous pine needle ant hills, & play "Mt. St Helen's".

Paul

edited because I messed up...

REFORGER. We liked to go hunting for reservists/NoGo's. They seemed to think exercises stopped at 17:00. We'd catch them playing cards or grabassing around in the dark.

One time my 1SG and I neutralized an entire artillery battery. It was a fairly dark night and they had 0% security. They were so loud we didn't have to worry about noise discipline. They even had boom boxes!

We snagged a referee and dragged him from one tent to the next leaving simulators at each one. The ref said we couldn't pop the sims so we yelled BOOM!, blew the jeep horn, and flashed the lights. The ref declared them 100% attrit'd.

Not the kind of thing that will be taught at the War College but it was good for a laugh.

Oh yeah, dodged errant 155 arty rounds. The TACFIRE system was being tested at Ft. Hood at the time. 1/77FA used to drop shells on someone on a regular basis. We had on TC lose his arm directly in front of me. They almost shot down a LifeSaver Huey flying across the impact area to pick up a wounded engineer during a cold break. And the one that hit 47.5 meters in front of my tank and sprayed me and the BN CO. with shrapnel. My driver was screaming like he had been killed. I crawled under the gun to check him. A chunk of steel had hit the front shroud, dropped through the drivers hatch and burned through his fatigue pants, right by his Johnson!
Then there was the 8" round at Vielseck during BNCOC that put a fist sized chunk of shrapnel through the controllers M151. And the shelling at Camp Aachen at Graf the day after we cleared out of the barracks that killed 6.
Yep, ain't nothing more dangerous than the field artillary....

LOL, don't feel too bad; 1/21 once dropped an 8-inch joe right on top of gun 3 while we were all lined up for chow. Since we weren't used to being on the wrong end, none of us recognized THAT sound, but luckily Smoke did, and when HE hit the ground (after yelling out "incoming!!!!"), we followed suit. The round detonated in the air (musta been a VT fuze), and the only damage was a fist-sized hole in No 3's turret roof. LOL, you should have seen Smoke haulin' ass to get to his radio.....

1. Take a big dump in an ammo can, then write the words "Joes Playboys do not touch" on the side.  Set the box down next to the area where the "S" guys hang out and stand by and watch the guys who try to make off with the ammo can.

This is a modified version of the civlian game called "purse" which get the same effect.

2. The pilots used to leave stuff on the birds all the time, we found a camera one day and spent the rest of the day taking closeup pics of chow, assholes, and sailors that looked light in the loafers.

This one doesnt work unless the camera isnt returned to the proper owner.

reynold's post reminded me of the cameraa that got away. Woe was the nimrod that lost control of his/her camera. Invariably all remaining exposures would be taken...nut sacks, "group moon", inside the portapoties etc. We did this to someone in A.I.T. and the girl didn't check her pics....mom found them!

I was unit NBC NCO so became immune to CS from spending so much time in the chamber.  I would take micro-pulverized and dust my uniform and just walk around.  Arty simulators in the tents were always fun.  Locking the doors on a duece. (can only be done from the inside, loosen canvas, lock door and re tie canvas).  Finding vehicles un secured on post and driving them off.  After active, joined a guard mash unit during college and would just do the nurses [devil].  I would also run sniper checks on the doctors.  Freak out lt's by sitting on top of fuel truck with hatch open smoking a cigarette.  Transferred to Armor to get to go to the gulf (still didn't deploy)  [frown]  and that opened up a whole nuther can of worms...

That brings back some memories!

One night at EFMB, I was trying to bring up the spirits of some of my buddies who had boloed night land nav the night before.

I took a 1 litre Pepsi bottle I had found, but also added 3-4 of those baby chemlights to it.
[}:D]

Snuck off with the crew and set it off.

Scared everyone shitless!

The OIC was some Full-Bird Dentac pogue.

Me and my crew were kicked off the site for a "safety violation".

He tried to push for a court-martial for me.

Said I had constructed an improvised explosive device and tried to blow up the TOC and the mess tent. They said there were green flames everywhere! [>Q]

In my defense I said I was making a, um, er,  handwarmer. Yeah, thats the ticket, a handwarmer.

I figured if we could harness the thermodynamic energy of the hydrogen gas into a cylindrical transfer container and combine it with the endothermic properties of the chemlights, we could induce a synergistic reaction which would improve soldiers morale. Right.

It went to my JAG and they said he was full of it. Confined to quarters, 2 weeks extra duty, letter of reprimand.

My NCOIC wasn't too pleased when I framed the letter and put it up next to a pic of me shaking the hand of the post two-star for representing my unit as soldier of the milenium. [:D]

Funny how that happens. I remember one guy getting an article 15. As he left the CO's office the first shirt handed him his SOQ certificate.

we played spades, sneak around in squad sized elements and see how many of the tents we could knock out w/ MRE bombs and MRE gas bombs....splice into field phone lines and dial up the guard posts (prank calls)...talk our buddies in the comm vans into letting us call home, and let us patch in signal generators and send a ring tones to the distant end (his ringer would go off until we turned off the generator) silly shit like that...i loved the field.

Armorer....Illegal and pretty damned stupid.  First of all you didn't know where the turtle would be when you set the charge off (not to mention that it is just out and out cruel to the tutle)  What if it ended up under an ammo supply vehicle or tanker?  How many people would you have killed before you realized how stupid that is.  Maybe you were lucky in no-one getting hurt, but the potential is so high that anyone even considering doing that should get smacked upside the head.

Down time .... what the hell was that, seems like we were always on the move in the field. And the time we did have was to sleep. eat recamo your face, weapons maintance, personnel Hyg. And not in that order because sleep came last. Sometimes tell jokes, stories, guy used to carry there g/f panties in there helmets. We called them drive-on panties.

Being in a light Infantry unit did not allow a lot of fun and games. We were either humpin, flying in choppers, diging fighting positions,or weapons cleaning. Sleep was usually two to six hours a night depending how watch was set up. For kicks I used to file some of my M60 rounds down and get some acorns and make some acorn rounds they would cycle somewhat if get length of casing just right with the right size acorn. The acorns will fly out at a not so straight somewhat accelerated speed so watch your lane. I actually got two kills like that against the 82nd when my 60 jammend and I was being over run.

Hey R-32 don't mean to rag on you, but 11BC2 is not a mortar unit but Infantry. The C2 designation is for the Dragon Missle Anti Tank Weapon. I'm also a 11BC2.

I was a bradley gunner when I was in and I used to take tins kippered herrings to snack on in the field, after finishing a can I would sneak into another one of the tracks and pour the leftover oil into the heater vent (only works during cold weather), when they crank the heater up the smell of that burning oil was god-awful and lingers for weeks.
As for inflicting pain on your buddies, stick a spent blank casing in the muzzle then fire another blank, hurts like a mother.  Works with cleaning rods too, but that could be deadly.

(Ft. Polk circa 1985)
Sneak into the middle of a bivouac and set off a fist full of bottle rockets. [}:D]

In the field, not too many were immune from my BB pistol. [}:D][}:D]

Had an OPS SGT that would putt along in his rented party boat while we were stroking in our 15-man assault rafts screaming like a drill. (Toledo Bend Reservoir) [:p]

We were in the field in Wildflicken in Germany and was in the motor pool when we went about five tracks down from us and dug a hole about 2'x2' and 3 foot deep. wrap a arty sim in a poncho and put it in the hole then pull the snow and slush back in on top. ran the com wire to my track and waited for a bunch of guy's to come in to the motor pool and set it off with the jump start plug in the drivers hatch. Then we pulled the wire back to us and combat locked it up and watch them go nuts !

I remember another one.

We were in Hohenfels in the summer and an A-10 pilot thought it was funny to buzz the CO's tank (really mine, he just rode along for the fun). He made several passes at about 200 feet.

The CO was holding a breifing with the platoon leaders and they had to scream above the racket. Their maps were laid out on the front slope and, on one pass, Wrongway Feldman managed to scatter them.

It was entertaining at first. I got his tail number, snapped a few pix for the scrap book, and enjoyed the show.

After the fourth pass I got tired of the noise and climbed into the turret. On his next pass I shot one of those aluminum tube launched red star flares right in front of him.

He saw the smoke trail and sheared off. That was the last we saw of Wrongway Feldman.

The CO yelled something at me about pissing off the Air Force and went back to his briefing.

I probably could have landed in the hurt locker but it seemed like the thing to do at the time.

More appropriate words for most incidents listed here have not been spoken.

God that is funny!

Gee, us AF guys were lost if we're TDY without cable TV and internet access!

This was at home station, not in the field.  There are few things as unpredictable as a bored Crew Chief.  During Desert Shield (at Charleston AFB) a couple of my guys had a C-141 ready to go, just waiting on the aircrew.  It was a warm day and one of the guys had a chocolate bar that had gone soft in the heat.  He ripped the end off the wrapper and started squeezing it out into a neat little "pile" on the ground next to the entry steps.

This cute little (female!) maintenance officer walks up with her clipboard in hand and asks how things are going.

The Crew Chief replies, "We're ready, just waiting on the crew.  But the wierdest thing just happened- a fox ran out of the field, took a dump here by the stairs, and then ran off."

The Lt. says, "Well, we need to get it cleaned up before the crew gets out here!"

Then the guy reaches down and scoops it up in his hand, squeezes so it's coming out from between his fingers, and starts licking it!  Needless to say, the Lt got out of there in a hurry!

Went TDY to Alaska with my guys and a bunch of SEALs.  We were going to train the SEALs on how to control CAS, and they were going to teach us some of their stuff.  We brought along THOUSANDS of rounds of ammo for the GAU5 and M9 because they said we'd be shooting a lot.
Well, the SEALs had to leave early, and we were left with all this ammo.  Sigh, what are a bunch of REMFy Air Force pogues to do?  The ammo boxes were heavy, and we didn't have any civilians around to carry them for us.  Heheh.
So five of us went to the range at Eielson and blew all this ammo away in one afternoon.  Full auto, emptying entire clips with one trigger pull--- blazing away with one M9 in each hand.  My GAU got so hot that the barrel coating turned light gray and stayed that way.  ANother guy set his rifle on a sandbag and the hot barrel melted the sandbag, encasing the barrel and bayonet lug in plastic and sand.    
ANother time we were in Thailand for Cobra Gold.  We had this fat ALO captain who made it quite clear that not only were the enlisted one of the lowest forms of life, but we were also there for his convenience (carry his luggage, put up his cot, peel grapes for him.)  Well, we got to our biv site and he immediately split, heading for the Army officers' hangout, with the parting words "put my cot up there, Airman."  I put his cot right where he wanted it, noticing that it was right next to a small ant hill.  Well, putting this guy's cot somewhere else would have been disobeying the capt's order.  And being clumsy as I am, I inadvertantly spilled some of my syrupy Gatoraid on the ground and on his cot.  He came back later, after it had dried into a sugary film.  Well, he didn't sleep too well that night, and neither did we because of all of his swearing and thrashing around.  Poor guy.  
         

Fun? Tried to stay warm moving my fingers and toes alot.  Moving when I could.  Kept crat candy in my inner pockets so I had something warm to eat. Was thankful if I got an hour of sleep in 48 hours.

In '67, in the Nam, brought back a bb gun on my second tour. The vietnamese had never seen one. Being young dumb and full of cum, I stalked some of the hooch maids and shot them in the ass from a hide. We would then convulse with laughter until time to do it again. the hooch maids got together and did a search and found the bb gun in my gear when we was gone on a convoy. I pled nolo contendre and was confined to the company area for a month plus had to do my own laundry till I left for another unit:>(

bar

The 5 years I was in Germany, I was the Armorer and all I did was sit with the weapons and screw with people.We had armsrooms in the field and was stuck there most of the time. I did order about every part I could for the weapons to keep me busy and to have for trading material. I wish I had some of that stuff now.

When I was last in the field (2 years ago)I got my fiarwell smiting. I was woken up hearing somebody calling my name loudly. Opened my eyes to see my squad leader staning inches from my head yelling all kinds of crap totally naked. Night mares for years to come. It was pretty damn funny, but a bit scarry too.

Anybody hear any "reliable" scuttlebutt about what happened on the Saipan that injured all them Jarheads?  You don't think somebody was dicking with a simulator and put it in the shitcan to have fun do you???


(Sorry for bein a little morose, it's within a few days of being 25 years since one of the sailors on my ship was killed in an accident caused by some of his buddies goofing off at work.  One of the direct participants had worked for me in the preceding year and I still wonder if I screwed up in his training somewhere.  I took the accident photos for the investigation starting while the medics were still working on him at the scene.  The answer is "No", and the E-5, E-6 and O-2 that weren't paying attention to what was happening right in front of them  were, but it still hurts.)