With all the military and veterans on here, thought it would be fun to have a thread to share funny stories from your military experiences. I have a couple to start it off: During the latter part of my military career, I was at work one day building a file on enemy troop movements and forecasted future engagements. I had been working a lot of hours straight through and was exhausted. I stood up to get another cup of coffee and passed out. I regained consciousness when I made that abrupt stop on the floor and got back up. One of the butter bars (2nd Lt's) there took it upon himself to call for medical response. They took me to the hospital to check me out and then decided to keep me overnight for some "rest". They had m hooked up to a machine to monitor my heart rate and pulse. It had alarms on it if my heart rate increased over a certain point or dropped under a certain point. All through the evening, every time I went to sleep, a nurse or medic would wake me up and ask me how I was doing even without an alarm going off. It was every 15 minutes like clock work. Finally, about 2:00 AM, I decided if they were going to keep me awake, I was going to play with them. Every time, after they asked me how I was doing, I would wait until they got back to their station and then roll out of bed and start doing pushups until the alarm went off and then hop back into bed. They would run down to check on me and I'd tell them that I was fine and they would start back down to the station. By 4:00 AM, they called the doctor in because of all the alarms. He came in and asked me how I was doing and I told him what I had been doing. I said, "You told me you wanted me to stay for some rest but the nurses and medics were making sure I wasn't getting any. I decided if I wasn't going to get any rest, neither were they." He checked me out and then sent me back to the barracks for 72 hours bed rest there, where I slept almost the whole time. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Years ago (1983), while I was stationed in Germany, someone kept coming into my office while I was not there and stealing my lunch. Since everyone else that worked on that wing and floor of that building was either of equal rank or outranked me, I decided to put a stop to it. I bought a can of Whiskas canned cat food, mixed in some mayo to make it look like tuna salad and put it on bread. I placed this sandwich in a brown paper bag with "Leave this sandwich alone!" and put it in the fridge in my office. Sure enough just before lunch it disappeared. Every day for a week, I replaced the sandwich with another cat food salad sandwich with instructions to not eat it. Every day, the sandwich would disappear. I then left a note on the fridge, "I sure hope you enjoyed my cat's dinner all week." No response, so the next week I made chocolate chip cookies that also had chocolate Exlax in them. Again, I put a sign on the cookies "These are mine, DO NOT EAT THEM!" That afternoon, about half the command staff of the unit was running back and forth between their offices and the latrine. When I approached the first sergeant about it, he said the supply sergeant had shared them. I went to the supply sergeant and told him the cookies he had stolen had enough exlax in them to give a battalion the runs. He in turn went to the unit commander (who also was affected) and tried to get me in trouble for what I had done. I ended up before the battalion commander who laughed about the whole thing and dismissed me with the warning that I might not want to do that again, unless of course someone was stealing my food again. That supply sergeant ended up getting court martialed later for using the unit credit card to buy furniture for his home in Germany AND other items he was shipping back to the states. I guess he didn't learn from his mistakes.
Ha those are good. Many of my stories are going to stay where they are (not on the web) but I do have one that just came to me. So while working in the brig about 5 years ago I was working in the special housing unit (max and suicide guys). We had the fire alarms start going off and we were all back cuffing and getting everyone out of there. The second deck sentry outside of this housing unit is not supposed to leave his cage he is only there to let people in and out of there. He thought he had to go in this housing unit and make sure we cleared out. As bright as he is he came in with the keys and that door can only be opened from the outside. Lets just say when they heard he was stuck in there and he called it over the radio everyone ran back in as if there was an emergency including the brig CO, 1st Sgt along with M Guns and everyone else. Well lets just say he dissapeared for a couple of hrs. -------------------------------- One more.....so we have to do rovers around the brig within every hr throughout the whole night. (walking the perimeter) and this was usually done by a new guy. So we always dressed someone else up in orange and as they got close one night and look as if they just came from under the fence and running to the tree line. One kid starting screaming like hell while chasing this guy down a tank trail at like 0300 trying to catch him. We were all sitting in the tree line watching these unfold and let me say that is something that gets you to laugh like hell.
When I was in the Navy we used to get midshipmen from Annapolis aboard the ship for part of the summer. Every summer we would convince a midshipman that the way we got mail out on the Atlantic was by a helicopter dropping our sack of mail on a "mail buoy". We would then have to steam past and grab the mail with a gaff off of the forecastle. It took a man of great hand/eye coordination to do this as the ship would not slow down, nor turn around and if the mailbag was missed, we lost that mail. We would then convince them that it was Navy tradition that the person on "mail buoy watch" was given a heroes welcome once he had secured the mailbag and received a steak dinner. Every year, a midshipman would beg to be the watch. We would grudgingly give in and tell them to report to the Boatswains Locker in their dress uniform the next morning. When they showed up, we would give them a life jacket to wear, a pair of binoculars, a gaff, a flashlight to direct the helmsman to the buoy, sound powered headphones and a helmet. One person would then tie them off to the anchor winch and let them start their watch. The last year I was on board the USS PAIUTE (ATF 159), a midshipman stood out on the forecastle looking for the mail buoy from sunrise to sunset. He did not want to give up because he wanted to be a hero. Often wondered what happened to that guy.
I had someone somehow put a 5.56 round the wrong way on an m4 and jam it in there. An idiot can only do this but it was hell to take it out.
You'd be amazed at the stupid thing that you can't explain how they happened do happen in the military.
Best story that I have was stealing the Gator in Kandahar. I was going through some tough times (lonely, depressed, feeling isolated, etc.) so my buddies "acquired" a Gator master key and decided that I needed to get out. We spent 45 minutes driving around the base searching. Once we found one that was out of the way, we went to work. The gator had a hard time starting so we were messing around with it. We had a group of Air Force guys come up and ask what we were doing. One of my buddies explained that we were the night shift maintenance group coming to pick it up and service it. They seemed like they bought it. When we got it started and headed down the road, the AF guys followed us in their bus. The gator died in the middle of the road, so we pushed it out of the way and took of, because the AF bus had sped up, like " we caught them stealing stuff, let's get 'em". I was driving the 4-runner and kinda knew where I was going so I quickly lost them. It was a good night and I needed the camaraderie.
While I was a drill sergeant we had one private that stands out to me as the dumbest of the dumb. He was from the same area as me and he had obviously fried his brain with drugs years ago. During random rants that drill sergeants are known for I would call him out for being a failure at life and accuse him of smoking meth in specific locations in north Louisiana. I never told privates much about where I'm from and he never figured it out. He just would look shocked and amazed that I must know every road and dope smoking location in the US. This kid was special, he didn't make it anywhere near graduating.
In the 70's and 80's in Korea, there was a curfew from midnight to 4:00 AM. Often soldiers who lived in the barracks would stay at one of the bars until 11:55 or 11:56 and then try and sprint back to the base avoiding the Korean police who often liked to start arresting GI's a little early. I lived on the economy with my bride and one night about 1:00 AM I awoke to someone pounding on our outer gate. There at the gate was a friend we called Mongo. He was either loudly whispering or quietly yelling (Mongo and I have debated this point for 30+ years), for me to let him in. About half way to the gate, the smell of septic gasses about knocked me off my feet. Before opening the gate, I asked him why the smell of fecal matter was like a tidal wave coming from his direction. He told me that he overstayed a bit too long at one of the clubs and while trying to sneak back to base, he had been detected by the Korean police. While running along the levee of a benjo ditch (open sewer system), he slipped and fell in. He admitted that even though it was most unfortunate to fall in, he was able to keep his drunken head above the "water". The other fortunate part of this was the Korean police no longer wanted anything to do with him. He could not go on to base as it was too late, so he wandered around the village until he was sure that the cops weren't following him and then, in his stupor, decided that I would help him. I opened the gate and told him to stand there inside the gate and not move. I went into the house and got a new box of laundry detergent, kerosene, and a scrub brush. Once back outside, I told him to save his ID card, but to put everything else he had into our bun barrel. Even though it was 40 degrees outside, I then hosed him down and then threw him the scrub brush and laundry detergent. While he attempted to become fecal free, I poured kerosene on the clothes and burned them. The only thing that smells worse than a benjo baby (someone who fell into a benjo ditch) is burning a benjo baby's clothes! After he had gone through several wash and rinse cycles, I gave him a pair of bib overalls to wear and kept the burn barrel going until 4:00 AM. At 4:00 AM, he walked back to base barefooted and with no clothes on other than the bibs. The MP's at the gate knew what happened, but since he was clothed, had his ID card and no longer reeked of feces, let him pass. Mongo, who was quite a bit bigger than me swore if I told anyone he would tie me in knots and throw me in. Needless to say, the next day at work, it was a topic that everyone but Mongo enjoyed. He offered to give me the bibs back, but I decided to be generous and let him keep them. Every once in a while I call Mongo back in Indiana to catch up. Every time we talk he say he still has the bibs and they are now framed hanging on his living room wall as a reminder to never get that drunk again.
I was working the outter most gate house at the US embassy in Paris, about 20 yards from that gate house there was a check point ran by the French military. Theyd stop people and check them before sending them our way and it go from there. There were some other gate house besides myself one being a French guy that was the "greeter" for the embassy. He was pretty cool and we'd let him come on post and mess around with cameras, usually looking at girls walking by. He came over this particular day and said they had a guy out front wanting to come in with info about attacks on the US. 9 out of 10 times this was bs but we always had to take them as being serious. I switched to the camera out front and paned over just in time to see the guy get body slammed down to the pavement and about 20 of the French military guys come running out to drag him across the road to one of the several buses they had parked along the street. Come to find out after rewinding the camera the guy had a toy gun in his waistband and was goin to prove how bad American security was and try to gain access to the Embassy with it. Needless to say we never saw him and he had no idea he wouldn't of made it far. Another time while in Paris we were having a party at the Embassy, we did this to raise money for different things, and after it shut down and a few of us decided we'd go out one of the Ambassadors personnel security decided he'd tag along. This guy hung out with us a lot and was actually pretty cool. So we were decidkng how to get where we were gojn and he offered to drive us in his car. His job outside of security was a police officer so we figured wth. As we're speeding around town headed to the bar he decides we're not getting through traffic fast enough so he decides to take a short cut. Ends up he's gojn down a one way street, streets are basically one lane over there if its oneway, we meet a car. Both vehicles slam on the brakes and we barely miss hitting them, so now we're all like now what to do. So he flips on his lights and makes this car back probably two block back down the street and we go along like nothing happened. We finally made it to the bar and continued to have a good time. One of the guys ended up almost getting into a fight but it got broken up and then we don't see the guy that wasn't with us for awhile afterwards. Come to find out after asking our buddy, the cop, he followed the dude into the bathroom and ended up flashing his badge and sidearm at the guy telling him not to mess with us and got scared and left. Needless to say we never brought that entire night up to anyone because we would of been long gone. I'm really not sure how the guy that was the AMBO's security never got in trouble but he never did.
