Military Stories

[Nyoibo]

One story my dad told me was when he was up in Townsville getting drunk and hanging a bra from the flag pole on something like the town hall, damn thing was up there for weeks, when I was up there with him he showed me the flag pole, I have no fucking clue how they got it up there.

[Caveat Emptor]

I was in ROTC for a couple of years in college, and we went on an exercise to Fort Indiantown Gap, PA one weekend. I was part of the friendly team. We were supposed to observe the opfor ("enemy") position for "intel." The opfor was at one end of a bowl-shaped clearing about 1/2 mile in length and 1/4 mile in width; it looked like some huge creature had used a giant ice cream scoop in the middle of the woods. Half the group headed off to observe, and I was part of the group that was secured the egress. I expected the obs team to head down the path in to the right of us and intel from a covered vantage point some 100 meters away to our right. Noooo. I watched in horror as the obs team, led by our cadet platoon leader for that day, marched STRAIGHT down into the near half of the bowl. The opfor team was at the other end of the clearing and could see our intel team clear as day. We had no radio, otherwise I would have grabbed it and shouted something to the effect of "Lima one-one, ARE YOU REALLY THAT STUPID!?!??" All I could do was do a facepalm and watch as they started to "gather" intel, and then, from the OPFOR team, came...

"CLAYMORE!!! CLAYMORE!! CLAYMORE!!

"The DOD regrets to inform you that your children are dead 'cause they were stupid."

[Salted Grump]

My little brother is in Basic at the moment, and related a story that caused me to facepalm;

He's in decent physical condition, but was stuck in 'Fat camp' because of a lung infection that prevented him from passing the Running endurance test. The Day after he got out of 'Fat camp' And back into Platoon (with about 15 other 'Donuts'), he was ordered to take the Physical test again that he had to do in order to get out of Fat camp.

Right about then is when he opened his mouth and said (practically verbatim) 'Sir, if you make us go through that test again, and we fail, I think I speak for half of the platoon with I state that we would quit.'

He was brought up on a charge of Insubordination, and nearly charged with Mutiny. When he came back home for a 3-day leave, I just looked at him for a long time and finally said 'So, Going to Alberta?' (Alberta's Main Military base is also the Military prison for the reprobates in each of the branches)

[dalesys]

A coworker was in Navy Basic, visited the head, came back to the front area and was washing his hands at the large circular basin when a new squad came in.
"Here."
So they circled the wagons and got down to business. Everyone of them is letting it all hang out when their D.I. comes in...
He was not amused.

[protege]

My great uncle was one of the ones who liberated concentration camps.

My grandfather fought in the Battle of the Bulge during WWII. All I know is that he was in an Army infantry division, and occasionally got to "blow shit up." I'm sure he saw some horrible things, but he never talked about them. From what I understand (and according to my grandmother) "the things he saw and did would have made your hair stand on end!" Even she wouldn't talk about them. What sucks, is now I can understand the sacrifice he made...yet nobody can tell me. Grandma won't, and Grandpa died in 2001

[PCGameGuy]

Well, one I recall is from Navy training, C-School for data systems. We were training on old equipment, big iron and ancient mono CRTs. As always, we were being shown the parts of one of the terminals in the lab, and so the instructor is pointing out the various parts like the CRT, the horizontal board, the vertical board, and he gets to the power section for the CRT and doesn't point just tells us where it is. The class 'genius' goes up and says, 'Which part? This here?' and points at it. Whereupon he decides to take a seat and relax. Five feet back from the monitor and twitching, as the high capacity section discharged through his arm! The instructor? 'That's why I didn't point at it.'

Bummer was having to take the next day going over safety, but at least we got to use the monster discharge tool.

[Nurian]

At my company, we had this one guy who had a tongue bar and was constantly getting written up. So he developed a talent: With his mouth closed, the unscrewed the top and place both bar and top under his tongue. Suddenly, no more writes-ups and he gets to keep his bar in! Joy!

One day he's walking with me when we meet his sargeant unexpectedly. He tries to remove the top, succeeds...

and swallows them both.

He was uncomfortable for a few days. I asked if he retrieved the bar. He grimaced and said, "It's in a better place now." I never did see him with one after that....

[Diablo]

Ha, ha PCGuy....
We had this nuke electrician in my department on my boat we used to call "The Human Fluke". I had personally seen him survive 4160V shock and this was the third time he had done it. Nice guy but dangerously dumb. Yet he used to make fun of this other electrician. Seems the other dude was an enthusiast of piercings below the belt. At the time he had a four way Prince Albert, Jacob's Ladder, and a French Tickler. No big deal I guess except he was working on 450V stuff and what do you know...he gets shocked...and it all gets discharged out of his...metal thingies. Medical actually had to cut his penis free from his leg afterward and then the boat sent him to Mast for the piercings...as if he hadn't suffered enough. I always thought "Wirebiters" were a tad screwy...

[Dave1982]

My uncle told me this one the other day.

He's at some sort of training exercise and for some reason, he and a bunch of other personnel have to stay at an off-base motel.

One young guy - who as my uncle put it "still felt the need to demonstrate his manliness and how big his stuff was" - proceeded to get so stinking drunk (on an off day) that the next morning, he was still roaring drunk.

This genius decides to sober up at the swimming pool, and attempts to sit down on one of those pool-side lounge chairs, and somehow rolls the chair and plunges it and himself into the pool.

Of course, being drunk, tangled up in a pool chair, AND being in the water is a bad combination: he's going to drown. So my uncle and a couple of guys hauled him out of the pool and dumped his ass into the chair, whereupon he passed out. They decided to leave him there to sleep it off.

Now, it seems that the night before - while even more drunk - he'd pissed off a couple female service members who happened to witness his little accident at the pool. So they decided to give him a little makeover. Nail polish for his finger AND toenails, lipstick, eyeshadow, the works.

Then they decided to draw and write various obscenities in lipstick and marker all over his abdomen and thighs.

Lastly, one of them found a piece of heavy paper, cut it into the shape of a face, and put it on the guy's thigh in an obscene position, then they left him to bake in the sun.

Several hours later, he woke up with second-degree sunburns and quickly discovers the makeover he'd received. A painful shower removed most of it - except for the "face" of unburned skin.

Yes, there was hell to pay for all of this. When asked why he didn't put a stop to it (he was a senior officer) he said "hey, he wasn't going to die, and he wasn't one of my guys, so I didn't give shit."

[Reyneth]

My grandpa was in the army in WWII. He was something of a mechanic so he would end up driving the most beat-up tanks or trucks in his group because he could deal with the minor issues that may come up.

One time he fell behind due to the age/disrepair of his vehicle. So he had to cut through a field to get away from the enemy that was near to surrounding them. Ripped through that bumpy, uneven field like a bat out of hell.

When they get in sight of camp and the rest of the guys, he holds up a roll of toilet paper for anyone else in the truck that might need a little cleaning up before they report back.

[AccountingDrone]

My great uncle was one of the ones who liberated concentration camps.

We weren't ever allowed to mention it, or even hint about it.

Many years later, he STILL had nightmares.

My dad got a silver and 2 bronzes in Germany. The silver was for *some* bridge that had to be kept open to cross the Rhine ... seems they made a movie about it

[AccountingDrone]

SWe literally had no freaking clue how much exposure any of their people had. We conduct an investigation and found out their their entire immediate command was in on this and that their Chiefs and Officers would use the same TLD to go down in the space rather than do what we spent literally hours teaching them on a regular basis. They informed us that the TLD is used to block radiation as long as they had one...?!?!? Think about that... So what does the command do? Send a bunch of our ELTs (Our guys that handle radiation controls) to mast and blame the entire thing on us for not preventing them from being so damn stupid.

But that is what hugging the lead pig is for, full body reading.
The TLD and other forms of dosimetry are just for fast instant reading. TLD/OSL are reasonably accurate but can have issues depending on the type of exposure [word of advice, dont get primary coolant dumped on you ]

Just start from the average of 3.5 mSv/year ambient, and work from there. You have her log sheets so you can get a rough calculation of the time inside ...

And it could be worse ... Chronicle of Severe Days

ed to add: english version http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbCcu...eature=related

[PepperElf]

He grabbed the kid, threw him out of the position. He then picked up the live grenade and threw it, then jumped on the kid to shield him from the shrapnel.

holy crap. that's a sergeant with some pretty freakin big balls.

and in comparison my military stories are a bit tamer.

tho dad did tell me how when he was in ww2 ... everyone on the ship was tired of working so they all decided to hold their own swim-call, and started jumping off from various parts of the ship.

one of the officers sees a body fly past his port-hole window and is like "wtf?"... they run out and start yelling at everyone in the water. the guys got in trouble but I don't remember what the punishment was, jsut that ... by the time they got caught Dad was done swimming and was back at work so he never got caught

[Dave1982]

This one is from the same uncle who told me about the Sunburned Drunk, though it's less funny and more "that's interesting."

Around the time of the Blackhawk Down incident (as in, the events that inspired the movie), my uncle's tank unit (of which he was the commanding officer) was completing their last field training exercise in the M60A3 tank before transitioning to M1 Abrams tanks. Prior to going out on the exercise, they were told that when it was complete, they were not to perform any of the usual post-exercise maintenance on their vehicles. After all, they're being turned in for newer tanks. Why bother?

Well, my uncle, his XO, and senior noncoms got together and decided that no, they were going to turn in their vehicles in as good - or better - condition than when they were first issued them. They felt that unit pride demanded it. So after the exercise they stayed up for the better part of the night bringing the vehicles to tip-top shape. A couple days later they were loaded up on trucks and shipped off.

Later, they learned that the reason they'd been told not to bother doing any maintenance was because those particular tanks had already been slated to be stripped of any useful parts, then dumped into the ocean to form an artificial reef.

Needless to say, they weren't to happy about that, considering all the extra effort they put in to make sure they were in good shape.

However, once the vehicles arrived at the central depot and were inspected, they were surprised by their excellent condition. So excellent that they couldn't just be thrown away. So instead, those vehicles were given to the UN motor pool. Remember that this was just after the Blackhawk Down incident, when the UN was looking for a way to strengthen their presence in Mogadishu, so a number of those tanks ended up being sent there.

Not long afterwards, a photo made its way back to my uncle's unit. It was of HIS personal tank driving around Mogadishu. He knew it was his tank because they hadn't even painted out the serial number. In fact, they hadn't repainted ANYTHING, save for the addition of the large "UN" stencil marking to the side of the hull.

It made him happy.

[Lady Legira]

My dad got a silver and 2 bronzes in Germany. The silver was for *some* bridge that had to be kept open to cross the Rhine ... seems they made a movie about it

My Grandad had some nice medals, nothing special really just a few marking the fact he had been places. I really wish he could have told us more about what he did but most of it was probably still covered by the Official Secrets Act. He was a member of the SOE. He gained his worst injury behind the German lines in France at the gypsy camp which was blown up, both of his legs were shattered and it took some time before he recovered though he still had some of the shrapnel in his legs when he died aged 75.

He mentioned several places he had been though never said why he had been there of course, Italy, Canada, Egypt and some others. He could speak several languages including Romany, some Arabic, Italian etc.

I wish I could tell you a funny story about his time in the army but he never spoke enough of the time he was there though mentioned people and places when he spoke about it.

The fun thing is that most girls learn things from their grandparents but not all learn how to slit a throat properly, how to throw a knife, how to throw a man and how to play cards (poker, 7 card twist)