I dont think I have ever seen a thread like this one so I would like to start one. Post any story you have from the service, funny, sad, drunk, sober, stateside, deployed, whatever. Just any story you would like to share.

This one is about an Iraqi named Crispy. I was in Iraq before Bush declared an end to all major ground combat, yet too late to see an Iraqi even wearing a uniform (4ID). Saw lots of uniforms on the street as we went through Baghdad though  We were running a vehicle checkpoint outside of Tikrit when a gasoline tanker that was being looted blew up. We saw the smoke but didnt know what it was at the time, just assumed it was the engineers blowing stuff up. Mabey 5-10 minutes later a truck attempts to run our checkpoint. Before we shoot the shit out of him the truck stalls out. The driver gets out and pops the hood. I hear my PSG yell "Holy shit, get that guy out of here, he has 3rd degree burns all over his body!!" I look at him and think what are you, crazy, its a black guy. Then I see this big patch of pink on his neck an realize that is where his chared skin has fallen off. He restarts the truck and drives off as if nothing is out of the ordinary while everyone just stared at him in disbeleif. The funny part (if you can say that) is his passanger appeared to be in great physical shape, but is so out of his mind at the moment he is even worse off than the driver, screaming at everyone for what I assume was help. We nicknamed him Crispy and joked about it for a few weeks. I always thought, that is so sick, so how come I find it so amusing. Just one of my stories. Have a few more, hope you share yours too.

Our shop got a strongly worded directive- "unauthorized bombing of South Vietnamese villages will stop immediately. "We kind of looked at each other- "what the hell are we getting this for, we're all about C130s?" It turned out that our 130s would land on the little strips, dump the trash out the back, and do a pretty aggressive climb out. All those little strips had hooches/villes at each end, and on the climb out they were being bombed with tools, toolbags, lunchboxes, tiedowns and whatever else wasn't secured. A toolbag can put a serious hurt on you, I guess....

There I was, Kandahar, Afghanistan, late February, 2002.

I worked the night shift at the 3rd BDE, 101st ABN DIV TOC, in the BDE Fire Support Element during Operation Anaconda.  So, I wake up and throw on my full battle-rattle and start heading towards the terminal for another exciting night of 'net surfing.  As I'm leaving my tent, a platoon from D/2-187 Inf. goes screaming past, loaded for bear in their uparmored Hum-vees; TOW launchers, M-2's, Mk-19's and SAW's pointing in every direction.  They're heading towards the opposite end of the airfield and I'm left wondering what's happening.  Well, once I got to the TOC, it didn't take long for me to get filled in on the situation.

Due to the hieghtened risk of rocket attacks, we had an AC-130 overhead almost constantly during the night.  Well, the Spectre guys had called the TOC and reported some "suspicious" activity at a grid coordinate, which just so happened to be right next to the ammo dump.  So, the Delta platoon was sent to investigate.  The Spectre guys apparently knew exactly what the "suspicious" activity was all along and informed the RTO what they could see.

The "suspicious activity" turned out to be two soldiers, one male, the other, female, who thought the ammo dump was a perfectly discrete location for a midnight rendezvous.  I guess they weren't aware of the AC-130 or its' capabilities.  Afterwards, the BDE CDR, COL Wiercinczki gave an order, making KAF a no-sex post.

From what I heard, the AC-130 guys made copies of the tape and distributed amongst the folks back in Qatar.

Heres another one, possibly the funniest one off of the top of my head from the sandbox. We were living in Saddam's birthday palace in Tikrit. It was three large buildings, each one being like a large banquet hall. The line plattoons were living all in one of these buildings. Anyways, when they built this palace they installed an elevator shaft for future instalation of an elevator, at least thats what it appeared to be. Whoever occupied this palace before us had knocked about a 2 foot wide hole in the wall to expose this shaft, which was a 20 to 30 foot drop to the bottom. It didnt take long for this to become a garbage disposal hole for us. Months and months go by as the trash builds and builds when one PFC stubs out a ciggarrete and throws it in the hole. A little later smoke is coming out and the hole platoon is running water upstairs throw down the hole for 2 hours until we realize it aint going to work and it is decided to let the fire burn itself out. Thats about when we realize the elevator shaft is somehow conected to the ventalation system cause smoke is pouring out of vents down stairs, where probably 70-90 people were staying. We were constantly blowing black snot out of our noses. And the oxegen supply was kind of cut off to the fire, so it smoldered for 3 days. All the while the constant haze was throught the building. They had built a little room on the roof directly above the shaft which a a few holes in it. About 7 of us went up there with our pro masks, pick axes and sledge hammers and made this small hole into a pretty damn big hole. Finally the smoke was able to escape easier, which sucked in more oxegen to get it burning real good and it was out  the next morning. And for some reason the next day of all the people our division CSM stops by. While our PSG is running around like a chicken with his head cut off telling people, clean this, straighten this out I stopped him and told him "Hey sargeant, just be glad he didnt come by yesterday!" One of the many things I will never forget.

Feb. 27th 1991....

Watched the Bradley in front of me and the one in back of me get hit....still have nightmares to this day.  

This story makes me laugh.

Back at OSUT, we were in AIT and it was a weekend, we decided to have some fun in the barracks.  Only one DS was on CQ, and we were going to have some fun.  Some individuals were stuck in the barracks for multiple reasons.  I didn't get pass because I got a NO-GO on my demo knot (damn crossover slipped, I never had that prob before), others were held for similar offenses.

We got done waxing and buffing the hall, and we pulled out the mop buckets.  We put an individual in each mop bucket and placed them at either end of the hall.  They donned the kevlar, and were equipped with a rolled up sleeping mat.  Some privates would push the jousters at each other, in hopes of knocking the opposite team's jouster out of his bucket.  

We did this a few times, and apparently were making too much noise.  The DS heard something and came up:

"What the hell is goin...I gotta see this!"

The DS just watched and laughed as the jousting continued.  He let us do this until pass was over.  It was pretty awesome.