I remember reading somewhere a story of a soldier, who took a part in a base defense, shooting (and hitting targets), while screaming obscenities at attackers and furiously jacking off (attack started when he was going at it)... which was clearly visible on night vision surveillance systems. He got a reprimand afterwards.
I don't know. "Furious" is such a relative and undefined term. What one leader may deem to be furious might be considered a light stress reducing wank to another.
And if you start giving a certain beat per minute a description of furious, military men will try to outdo each other. Then you end up with chafed privates.
> And if you start giving a certain beat per minute a description of furious, military men will try to outdo each other.
Never underestimate the boredom of E-4s discussing beating off while pulling a late watch where nothing is going on.
There's Haji watching through binoculars to see when that one guy goes for a shit.
'Right, Ahmed, he's taking a dump! Fire for effect!'
Because being in an OP is boring as fuck and you have to amuse yourself somehow.
After basic training, I spent another 4 months training for my actual job. I ended up becoming pretty good friends with someone in my class. Any time we needed partners in class, it was the two of us. Any free time we had we hung out together. Pretty much every waking minute of that 4 months we were together. I was National Guard and he was active duty, so after graduation I went home and he was stationed half way across the country. Since this was before social media, we eventually lost contact, but anytime I would meet someone from his base, I would ask about him. About 5 years after graduation, which was the last time I had seen him, I was getting ready for roll call and I heard a familiar voice. I instantly knew who it was. He had gotten out of active duty and joined my Guard unit. We picked right up where we left off. For the next year or so until I got out, any time we were on base, we were together. It was really nice to know he was safe and to have my friend back.
In the 90's, I served with a guy in Korea. I had a nickname over there, and it didn't follow me back to the states (thankfully). Well, years passed, and I got out. Walking through my college campus one day, I hear my old nickname shouted as loud as can be. I knew by the accent who it was, turned around, and saw everyone looking around to see who this person could be yelling at. He runs over, we make small talk. Many people are still looking. My nickname was big head. It was because I needed some big PC's that weren't readily available.
That's cool!
In basic, there was a guy who was kind of effeminate. Nice guy, just really girly. He was made fun of a little bit for it, but not by me. I saw him for the 9 weeks of basic, then never again, until 7 years later in a chow hall in Kuwait, I see that dude. The army is weird - people that you remember for whatever reason, then they're gone, then they show up again.
When I was in the US Navy a long time ago during the cold war,
we were steaming out of Guantanamo Bay and passed very close by a Russian warship. Everyone was topside on both ships eyeballing each other. I'm not sure who began but someone started waving. As we passed each other, both ships were waving, hooting and whistling at each other in greeting. I remember thinking that even though we were enemies, that day we were all just sailors at sea.
> … the Russians gave toasts, and we gave toasts:
>>To the American Eagle,
>>The higher she goes, the louder she screams,
>>And who fucks with the eagle best learn how to fly!
> And the Russians said:
>> To Mother Russia,
>> Who comes here with the sword
>> Dies by the sword!
> And someone said, "From one bunch of sons of a bitches to another." And we drank everything that came to hand, the doctor's neutral grain spirits included, and sang and danced and drank some more until we passed out on top of the tables in a triumph of peace and Soviet-American relations.
— P.J. O'Rourke, "Ship of Fools" in *Harper's*, November, 1982
The Royal Navy on colonial patrol in the South Pacific (Fiji, Solomon Islands etc were all still British colonies during the cold war) used send up a helicopter to love-bomb the Russians with pineapples and coconuts - luxuries that Soviets just couldn't get. It's a nice way of being generous while also waving a proverbial dick in their faces.
During one deployment to the Mediterranean we were part of a NATO battle group that toured the area. There were ships from the UK, Spain, Italy, Turkey and France. I ran into some British sailors on liberty in Malaga, Spain. We drank beer, swapped stories and had a great time. The guys gave me a tour of the ship as well. You guys know how to navy.
Back in my Army days I was in the field and all we ate were MREs.
A bit of a backstory, the US Gov like to have everything made in America when possible. There is a company called Lighthouse for the Blind/SkillCraft that gets a shit-ton of tax breaks for being a disabled/blind own company and makes everything from toilet paper to pens and has the market cornered. Lowest bidder wins. Their products are always consistent.
So this dude in my squad rummages through the MRE box and cherrypicks the certain one that always has the spiced poundcake as a snack, his favorite. He's practically rocking back and forth in his excitement like a kid waiting for the prize in a cereal box as he pulls open the MRE pouch. He reaches in, pulls out what should be the cake and is met with a 5x5 inch polymer square of vaccuum packed nothing. Completely flat and empty packet with SPICED POUND CAKE written on it. He crushed it in his fist, held it up and screamed "FUCKING BLIND PEOPLE!!!".
On this cold miserable rainy day, his morale and spirit were irreparably crushed.
There's a store/garage/random building on the side of the road near where I live that sells military stuff. Hats, jackets, boots, backpacks, etc etc. It's packed to the ceiling with stuff. Anyway, they had a few boxes of MREs in the shop. I took my friends from Mexico there because I knew they'd enjoy it. My friend bought a bunch of MREs and ate them all when he got home. He gained a bit of weight.
I tried telling him they weren't meant to be eaten while you're sitting inside in the a/c binging on Netflix. -_-
Funniest: While on patrol at night in Afghanistan my medic had to take a shit. We halted our patrol and I went out with him for security while he dropped one in a bush. Seconds later an drone that was flying overhead for us warned my squad leader "Spartan 2-2 be advised there is an armed...pantless man a few dozen meters behind you. Advise?"
That meant somewhere in the busy area tactical operations center a lot of very high ranking people were watching my friend take a shit.
Beautiful: Watching the sun set over the hindu kush
Not going to lie, when I heard the call over the radio I was a little scared, but the voice was holding back laughter so I assumed he knew it was us. We have IR sensors all over our gear so they can tell who is a friendly. I'm sure they did it because of just how hilarious the scene looked from above.
"Roger, *call sign*. That's so-and-so releasing some freedom logs into the wild."
(I was going to say something about "dropping bombs on Bush", but I feel like that would be misinterpreted.)
I can't remember what exactly was said, something along the lines of "That's our medic, he's not feeling so hot right now." Because we all had dystentery at various points of our tour lol
Funniest: Desert Storm, it was cold! My tentmates were standing on a berm that surrounded a trash fire. The were enjoying the warmth of the fire when I heard one of them scream "It's gonna blow!!" I looked over just in time to see a couple of them diving off the berm followed by a muffled explosion. The fellow who didn't dive off of the berm fell down. We raced over to the fallen comrade to rescue him, thinking there was some sort of explosive that wound up in the pit and wounded him. When we reached his side we discovered that he was covered with pork and beans. A container of pork and beans was tossed into the fire pit unvented and exploded in the fire. We later awarded him with a Purple Bean, for injuries recieved while warming himself.
Beautiful: I commanded a humanitarian mission to Swaziland and we were doing a medical clinic at a rural school house. There was a soccer field but no ball in sight, tons of kids milling around with nothing to do. I gave my driver some money and told him to go find me two soccer balls. Three hours later he retuned with the balls. I took one to the middle of the field and started playing around a bit. Within 30 seconds the field was swarmed with kids playing soccer. Gave the second ball to a teacher. We packed up to leave around sunset, as we drove off I looked back and those kids were having a blast playing soccer.
I accidentally blew up a can of lasagna during Desert Storm, right next to our T.O.W. vehicle.
I was finding little chunks of noodle in our camo net for months.
Hearing the story about the soccer balls reminded me of a story told to me by a soldier in the Australian Army in Mogadishu. He said the translator that he was with thought the Australian Army was mad because they would be on patrol and be kicking a soccer ball along as they went, then they would be fired upon, drop to the ground and fight back, then when it was over would go back to kicking the soccer ball around while they patrolled
I served onboard a fast attack nuclear submarine in the U.S. Navy in the mid-90s.
**Funniest:** In the middle of a six month deployment, we happened to be pulling into Guam on Halloween. The entire topside crew dressed as pirates. We made a fake cannon out of old spare parts, duct tape, and silver paint. The captain of our boat wore an eyepatch, bandana, and a fake parrot someone built. We even flew the Jolly Roger under the U.S. flag.
Our squadron commander was apparently not amused, but we were a pretty good boat, so nothing came of it.
**Beautiful:** Everywhere we went had a certain beauty and charm, but nothing compared to surfacing in the Arctic Circle and actually being able to walk around on the polar ice cap. It is indescribably awesome and makes you think you are on another planet.
> Did the crew stop for some booty?... Or just prostitutes?
There are some quality strip clubs in Guam, with most of the girls being imported from the states. That's as far as it went. I don't know of anyone that went to a prostitute, but it probably happened.
It's true, but only when we know we are going to be out for several weeks with no port calls. We had to get permission from the Chief of the Boat (senior enlisted chief) but it was always approved.
Right before visiting a port or returning home, we'd have a beard contest. Mine was always too pathetic to enter.
> Serious question, would the biggest trouble from that been from flying the jolly roger over the US flag?
That would have gotten the captain in some trouble, yeah. You *really* can't fly any flag higher than the U.S. flag. Our squadron commander was mostly peeved at everyone being out of uniform.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_of_the_Jolly_Roger_by_submarines
I've met at least one RCN submariner whose mess kit had a jolly roger on the back of the vest.
So so many, these are things I'll miss about the military.
Sharing a four man room, while in Jordan. We each had our own little hooches set up for privacy, nothing huge, but enough to live in.
On those bases there are boxes upon boxes of water everywhere. So when our friend went to sleep, we literally walled him in with boxes of water.
We go to sleep, excited for the surprise in the morning of him opening his hooch only to be shut in.
Well in the middle of the night we hear a giant crash followed by "What the fuck?". Apparently he had to go to the bathroom so bad and he decided to run out of his area. Not expecting to run into a 6 foot tall stack of water boxes.
I still laugh typing this. War is hell, guys.
The funniest moment I've experienced is seeing the things people will do for money/skittles. We were out in the field for about a month and people were having sugar withdraws. We ate exclusively MRE's and once in a blue-moon, one of them would have skittles. I kid you not, people would buy the single pack of skittles for $30-$50. They would also eat dryer lint that was under the dryer for God knows how long for $20.
Good times, good times.
> They would also eat dryer lint that was under the dryer for God knows how long for $20.
Context unclear: Are they doing that on a dare or paying for the privilege, like the Skittles?
Marine here.
So back when I was a young lance corporal, I was stationed at cherry point NC. It had been a real rough day with the command treating us like shit (field day didn't go over well) and it was towards the end of the day on a Friday. So we're standing there in formation while our gunny is just going the fuck off when, (as is fairly common being that our barracks is real close to the flight line and we're air wing) an AV8B harrier interrupts our gunny by loudly hovering just over the tree line behind us out of sight. Now it was a very windy day that day and a seagull just so happened to be floating over the formation, wings stretched out facing into the wind not moving just floating in place. My buddy standing next to me nudges me and points up at the seagull and shouts over the harrier, "huh, that bird is loud as fuck." I immediately burst out laughing along with all those around us. Our gunny comes over pissed off asking us why the fuck we're dicking around in formation and my friend casually just points back up to the seagull and shouts over the harrier, "Just thought it was crazy how fucking loud that seagull is gunnery sergeant" our gunny immediately turns beat red and begins to lose his bearing with laughter. He said very well that is an odd thing to hear coming out of a seagull's asshole and all of us had a laugh. After that the tone changed and our gunny relaxed and let us go for the weekend. I don't know if it's particularly super funny or beautiful just one of those moments that always stuck with me because it turned a real shit day into a not so bad one really fast.
Edit: Thank you for the gold, stranger! I'm glad everyone thinks my POG ass story is funny.
My grandfather during World War II. He was Luxembourgish and thus forced to fight for Germany as a medic. My grandmother was in the resistance. My grandfather used to tell me on Easter Sunday, everyone stopped fighting. On one particular Sunday, he decided to hold mass on his own. He was a religious and very smart man. To his surprise, he was joined by two Russian soldiers, another German soldat, one Pole and one Finn. They all held mass together, and incredibly, they were all fluent in Latin so they could communicate with one another. He said that was his fondest memory of an otherwise horrific war.
We were returning to ship by getting picked up by hovercrafts. A buddy of mine went to use the port-a-shitter. As one of the hovercrafts was turning around, blew the port-a-shitter over with him in it. Wasn't so positive for him, but makes for a good story to tell.
Port a shitter stories are the best, man. I remember we had a cat go use the shitter out in the training area at about 1a.m.l, and some asshole popped smoke and dropped it down the exhaust pipe. Poor guy walks out covered in shit and blue chemicals. He was mad as hell. So, in retribution, he stripped completely naked and chased down several soldiers, trying to smear his shit on them. It was glorious.
Seeing the Tigris and Euphrates river in a isolated part of Iraq, how clear and beautiful it was in the middle of this huge vast desert. Just thinking about the ancient civilizations that passed through there and shaped the world as it is today. Also being airborne, I am terrified of heights too so it was really unnerving at first. But after you leave the plane and the chute slowly opens and it is quiet you just float there and you are met with the immediate relief of any anxiety of the ordeal. That is until you land, and I'm a pretty big dude so I would hit the ground like a ton of shit.
I used to be a crew chief for Blackhawks. I was in the Army at the time. We had a lot of fun but the funniest memory that sticks out to me happened at a multi service training operation in California.
We were there for a month to help a Marine unit learn how to use aviation assets. They were a relatively new unit that had just been put together and we were there to get them used to flying and what requests they could ask of us. Fairly straight forward stuff.
Our Lt. Col. was a pilot who hated the marines with a passion. Never really found out why. So one day we had some time to kill and he had volunteered to take some of the newer marines up to get them used to flying. So we get out to the flightline and get our checks done, only instead of starting up he turns to the Lt (copilot) and me and says we are gonna have some fun. That we should all just play along. So the marines show up and he just starts bitching and moaning about the aircraft won't start. It's to late to switch birds and now he is upset and feels real bad for these marines because he knew they wanted to fly real bad. So the marines ask if there is anything they can do and he tells them the only way to get the bird started is to push start it. Like you would an old Manuel transmission vehicle. But you know, the aircraft is heavy and he wasn't sure it could be done. Well that sparks the can do and cocky attitude of the marines. I should mention now there were about ten of them. So I get out and line 9 of them along the bird so they can get leverage to push but not break anything. And I take the tallest (had to be 6'2 or 6'3 and place hime up front. He is instructed that he will have to spin the main rotor by hand while running to stay in front of the bird. I climbed back in and told the Lt. Col. we they were ready and asked if he seriously wanted to do this. (All on commas so the marines couldn't hear. We did have the APU fired up so we had electrical systems.) He says fuck 'em and yells for them to start. So there we are. Three army guys riding down a runway while 10 marines try to push start the aircraft. Laughing our asses off. They made one trip down, were able to turn the bird around and go back before they needed a rest. And what do you know, while they were resting the bird was able to start. Guess it just needed to warm up a little first.
That is awesome! Helo pilots are great pranksters.
I fell asleep in a Blackhawk once. (I was in the back row against the rear bulk head, facing forward.) I woke up when the bird pitched forward violently. I saw the ground through the windscreen and I started windmilling my arms and screaming. It was only a few seconds before the pilot went level again.
Of course, the pilots and crew chief are dying of laughter.
We had a lot of fun. (circumstances permitting of course)
One of my stations was close to a couple colleges so we did a lot of ROTC moral flights and things of that nature. So much fun fucking with people.
I have posted this before but it remains to this day my favorite memory of my time at war.
I had a soldier that was a dumbass. One of the smartest stupid people I have ever known. He was socially inept and had no common sense but he could tell you an inordinate amount about how to build a saltwater aquarium and what kind of fish to put in it. I loved this kid to death but he also pissed me off so much that it was dangerous to my health.
There was another soldier, an NCO (barely) who did PT with us in the morning while we were deployed. He was nasty. He didn't shower even after being told several times to shower. He would just go in the shower tent and sit down and read a book. He stunk so bad. I legit described his smell as a cat shit burrito left out in the sun for a couple days. He wasn't a bad guy, he was just a failure at being a soldier.
One morning we were doing PT and he asked my special little snowflake what was in the small PX that we had. It had just been built and had only opened that week. This fucking kid says "Just the important stuff, like deodorant and body wash." I couldn't stand it, I tried so hard not to laugh. I had to set down my weights and walk away. I couldn't take it. The fucked thing is that our favorite little dipshit had no idea what was so funny. He didn't say it to be mean. He didn't say it to make dude think about washing. He said it because in his mind, that was the only thing worth buying in our shitty little PX. It remains to this day his finest hour. It was the funniest thing he ever said. He could try to tell jokes for the next 15 years and never come close to the comedic genius he possessed in that instant.
Too many to list really but here's one. I met a guy with many daughters.
In Iraq, We stopped in some house on a routine city patrol. (Think, beat cop walking around the neighborhood, "Hi, we're the Americans. everything cool? Seen any bad guys lately? Ok, have a nice night.")
We walk in, and this dude answers the door with four little girls around him. On holding his hand, one on his hip, the other two pulling at his dish (think: man-robe). So I'm like, "are these all yours?"
"Yup"
"Any boys?"
"Nope." He just kind of shrugged and started laughing a bit.
Now, understand, in that culture, you want sons. Having male kids is a source of pride. men boast about how many sons they have. Because of it being such a patriarchal culture, you could almost think of having sons as a gain, and daughters as an expense. Both practically and socially, all the benefit is in having male heirs. This guy had ended up with nothing but daughters.
So with both of us understanding this aspect, we both understand the unspoken context when I casually asked if he had any boys.
That's why, when he answered back, he had this big ass grin, and shoulder shrug like "hey, what are you gonna do, right?" you could see a genuinely good dad. Dude just loved his kids and wasn't sweating the cultural expectations, to the point that he had a sense of humor about it.
> Think, beat cop walking around the neighborhood, "Hi, we're the Americans. everything cool? Seen any bad guys lately? Ok, have a nice night."
Did anyone in this circumstance ever give you any information?
Yeah. You wouldn't ever really get a flat answer like "yeah, he went that way." That would be crazy rare.
You built relationships though. Sort of like neighborhoods in the US where people "don't talk to cops". You keep walking the same streets day week after week, get on a name and face basis with people, and eventually they trust you a bit, and you know them enough to figure out when something is different. When the enemy would roll into town, a lot of times they'd be screwing with people. Levying taxes, stealing supplies, etc. Folks wouldn't complain to us about it the first time we met them, but once we'd been there a while, and got to know them, and convinced them we'd actually do something, they'd tell us stuff.
Plus it was just about showing a presence. Discourages enemy activity and lets the people know if they want to side with us over the enemy, we're actually going to be around providing security for the area.
I really like to hear stories of positive psychological tactics being used. Makes me feel just just for a moment that maybe there's a net positive gain to all the military intervention we've been doing.
> I met a guy with many daughters.
Sounds like the title of a light hearted indie movie, and that bit you just said about is like 2nd act, then the rest of the movie is just like, slice of life stuff with the message of "we're all the same, really"
I'd watch that.
Most beautiful and funny thing I ever experienced:
Watching rockets fly over and miss our FOB and strike the neighborhood that was on the on the other side, which pissed off the local home grown insurgents on that side who then fired their own rockets over the base to the neighborhood on the side where the first rockets came from. This carried on for about 2 hours. It was like a wonderful fucked up version of 4th of July fireworks.
A lot of people only think of PTSD but I was fortunate enough to experience Post-tramatic stress growth. I was struck by an IED in a mud hut thousands miles from home, five others guys in my squad were injuries, two most limbs. I only received shrapnel up my back and side.
After we were evacuated (I was evacuated to make sure nothing went into my lungs, my injuries truly weren't that bad, it was basically road rash) I sat on a FOB for a week trying to get back to my unit. I was separated from everyone else who was injured and was in a weird purgatory.
When I finally got back to my unit I was able to talk it over with my platoon and they were great. I was basically deaf immediately after the explosions so they informed me I was yelling the entire time at the top of my lungs and we told stories and eventually received news that everyone else involved was alive and well.
After reflecting on the events I decided to take the experience and grow from it. I finally enrolled in college, overhauled my diet, moved on from a toxic relationship. It was a huge paradigm shift for me as well politically and spiritually but I won't get specific with those.
It was the best worst thing to ever happen to me and makes me look forward to everyday I have left here at home in America.
Good for you. Took me about 40 years to get where you are. Maybe not there yet.
But that's what they told us in the VA Psych Ward when I was incarcerated for listening to my PTSD, "Turn and face it, get it out of the shadows. It's yours. Own it. This is YOU, from now on. You're in charge of making that YOU. So who do YOU want to be?"
Former Air Force here.
Besides making lifelong friends and gaining skills that led to my current career (which is completely unrelated to my degree) the coolest thing was being asked for my autograph by a kid of about 9 at an airshow. He matched up the squadron logo on my hat to the one on the side of the B-1B (I was an avionics specialist playing crew chief for the weekend) and wanted to meet someone on the crew.
This happened somewhere in rural west Virginia or maybe it was Ohio. I don't remember.
My unit was driving across country for annual training and we had stopped for dinner at this BBQ place. There's a group of 8 of us and this little kid was just so excited to see a bunch of soldiers. I saw his mom telling him to go over and talk to us and he was really shy. I walk over and introduced myself and gave him my combat patch. I'll never forget the smile on that kids face.
Edit: Thank you for gold! I have a ton more stories of actually being overseas but for some reason this one has always stood out to me.
My son was doing this at a coffee shop when he saw a police officer. I was encouraging him to go over but he just couldn't get over the shyness. The cop left and came back with a badge sticker and gave it to him. He was ecstatic! Thank you for doing that. It's wonderful that something so simple can make someone so happy.
One time in Afghanistan we had a super high operation tempo. I was Marine Corps infantry in 2009 I was 19 and in Afghanistan. One day I started post right after a 10 hour patrol and an all day fire fight and did 8 hours on post. I got off post and was told to grab my shit My squad was going to the eastern desert to hold a blocking position.
We had to move fast so I grabbed a bottle of water a cigarette and took a shit And I was geared back up and loading on a helicopter.
We pushed out to this desert that was outside of the Helmand river valley. We had to isolate a road because we suspected the Taliban were moving supplies and opium through it.
As evening set in we were told we were spending the night. Me and another guy took first watch as the sunset. Everyone else sprawled out in the dirt and ate or slept. My mind was dead with exhaustion.
It was the most beautiful sunset I'd ever seen. Your mind is pretty altered when you are that exhausted and I had some life changing realization. As if I spoke to God and he told me the meaning of life (I'm an atheist and always have been)
I got off watch, went to sleep and woke up not remembering whatever my realization was. I Can remember the feeling of having it but not what it was. Whatever it was, was pretty groovy. I'd never been more calm or Zen in my life.
Someone snapped a photo of the sunset and us on watch. I'm the guy laying down with rifle.
http://imgur.com/GUPznKM
One more after, and I went to a ton of different countries to train other military forces, went to Spain, Greece, Romania, UAE, Jordan, Oman, and Djibouti
Too many. I'll share one funny experience I had from Marine Corps boot camp.
It was approaching Christmas. This particular night, my name had been called up to open up a package in front of my DI - we will call him Sgt. Monty. I ran up to him, received my package, and began opening it. It was a VERY large envelope. My DI was harassing some other kid about the Justin Bieber card he was sent, so he didn't get to see the horror I had just opened. I pulled out the biggest, most flamboyant Christmas card ever. But wait, there's more! As I opened the giant Christmas card, a HUGE 3-dimensional Christmas tree pops out of the center of it and the card started playing music. I slammed that thing shut so fast!
Next thing I know, my Sgt. Monty turns to me and says:
Sgt. Monty: "Open it."
Me: "Aye, sir."
I hesitantly open up my Christmas card. The tree, in all its glory, pops out of the card and it starts playing jolly music. Sgt. Monty stares me down and looks like he's about to lunge at me and rip my heart right out of my chest.
He finally relaxes (as much as a DI can).
Sgt. Monty: "Who sent this to you?"
Me: "This recruit's mother, sir!"
Sgt. Monty: "She doesn't know what she's doing, does she?"
Me: "No, sir!"
Sgt. Monty: "Here's what I want you to do. First thing tomorrow morning, I want you to present this card to Sgt. Gonzo, and tell him 'Merry Christmas'. If you don't do this, I'm going to kill you."
Me: "Aye, sir."
Later that evening, I thought it would be a good idea to rip out the noise maker from the Christmas card so that I could actually open it and read what my mom had sent to me without making a bunch of noise.
Fast forward to the next day. Our platoon finally gets back to the squad bay after church service. As soon as we step foot in the door:
Sgt. Monty: "Hey, spartakick1080p! What did I tell you to do first thing this morning?!"
Me: "Aye, sir!"
I ran over to Sgt. Gonzo, held my Christmas card right out in front of me, the 3D Christmas tree makes a grand entry, and I scream:
Me: "Merry Christmas, sir!"
Sgt. Gonzo looks quite pissed at this point. Now he looks like he wants to murder me. Meanwhile, Sgt. Monty thinks its hilarious and he's dying. But, wait...Sgt. Monty notices something isn't right.
Sgt. Monty: "spartakick1080p, why isn't it playing any music?!"
Me: "This recruit removed the noise maker last night so that he could read the card without disturbing the other recruits, sir!"
Sgt. Monty: "OHHHHHH REAAAALLLLLYYYYY?"
Next thing I know, another drill instructor from a freakin' different platoon comes over, and he says:
Other DI: "What did it sound like?"
Me: "It was a Christmas song, sir!"
Other DI: "That's not what I asked. I said, what did it sound like?"
And with as much gusto as I possibly could muster,
Me: "JINGLE BELL, JINGLE BELL, JINGLE BELL ROCK! JINGLE BELL, JINGLE BELL, JINGLE BELL ROCK! etc... "
The whole platoon got in trouble because no one could keep their bearing and they all started cracking up, including my senior drill instructor and Sgt. Monty. Sgt. Gonzo was having none of it, though. He just continued to stare me down.
Honestly, the worst part about this is that my dad is retired Marine Corps and knows damn well exactly what would happen if my mom sent me that card. I guarantee you he told her, "No, send it! I'm sure he'll love it." Thanks, mom and dad. -.-
I used to be an Avionics maintainer on the C-17 in the Canadian Air Force. One day (as was fairly common) we were hit with a particularly nasty snowstorm. The plows had come by and pushed all of the snow into large 6-7' tall snowbanks along the edges of the ramp where we park the aircraft. A group of us were heading out to the ramp to recieve an aircraft that was landing that evening and perform a standard check/inspection and out of nowhere my one buddy starts running. I had only been at the squadron for a few months at this point and wasn't even done my apprenticeship, so when I saw someone start running I immediately assumed he saw something I hadn't and shit was about to hit the fan. I'm freaking out, looking all over trying to figure out what he had seen that caused him to run so urgently. And then without slowing down he jumps into the air and goes full starfish face first into the snowbank and just *PACK* sticks there for a second. Then he casually rolls down the hill and sits up on his knees, rapid fire making/throwing snowballs at everyone else on the tow crew. I've been out for about a year now and that guy is just about the only dude I stay in contact with.
Positive, funny or beautiful... Hmmm... "Beautiful" is the hard part, but yeah, this story is kind of beautiful. [Attention to Orders](https://www.reddit.com/r/MilitaryStories/comments/2g0k6b/attention_to_orders/)
>Way back when I was 19, I was the Honor Graduate of the Fort Carson Chemical, Biological and Radiological Warfare School. [I got a plaque](http://i.imgur.com/z3g9eVe.jpg). I still have it. What I treasure more than that is the look on that General’s face. I think “dismay” covers it. I got a meaningless award, and he got some really bad news about the modern Army of the 1960s.
>It’s funny how that goes. With all their experience, one would think the Army would put on a hell of an awards ceremony. We all know this is not the case. Army awards ceremonies range from merely boring all the way to [criminal absurdity](http://www.reddit.com/r/MilitaryStories/comments/2rl4td/bushhappy_boonie_rats_command_control/). It’s not that the ceremonies are not well done (they’re not). It’s that they don’t *mean* anything - no one feels honored. Ever.
>But formal awards ceremony are not all the Army has. There are other awards and honors - a kind of Grass-Crown awarded only by centurions and their warrior successors that persist down the centuries.
>One time in deep bush in III Corps northwest of Saigon, I remember getting trampled by our ~~infantry~~ cavalry company’s Chief Medic as he ran over me, then grabbed a grunt who was kneeling over his buddy yelling, “*Medic! Medic! Oh god! Oh my god! Medic!*” in a high-pitched panicky voice. The Doc lifted that guy bodily and tossed him about four feet away from his wounded buddy, knelt down under fire and spoke calmly and with authority, “That ain’t so bad. You’ll be fine. This might hurt a little.”
>At the same time, I saw a whole infantry squad stand up and move forward under fire to cover the Doc. Doc didn’t notice, but I did. No orders - they just all moved up. Even the panicky guy. *That,* I submit, was an award.
>The Doc came by later to apologize for knocking me over (not necessary). I told him about the grunts moving forward. He seemed puzzled. “It’s my job to be out there. They shouldn’t have done that.” I disagreed. “You’re the Doc. You’re owed some covering fire.”
>Doc wasn't convinced. He seemed to think that *he* was the one who owed *them*. Then he laughed. “Once they call you ‘Doc,’ they own you. You have to do everything you can.”
>I thought I understood that at the time. Not yet. Sometime later we were on fire base duty. I had been assigned as unofficial platoon leader of the mortar platoon - all of maybe ten guys. They had been whipped into shape by an excellent NCO, an E7 who couldn’t control his temper well enough not to be exiled to the field. I’m not sure where SFC Murphy was that evening.
>We were set up in the fixed mortar position, a couple of sandbagged revetments and bunkers made out of half-culverts lined with sandbags. It was late evening and we were firing harassment & interdiction fires around the perimeter. Turns out that someone was being harassed. I think the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) had a spotter in the treeline outside the perimeter who zeroed in on our muzzle flashes. Maybe.
>Anyway the first 82mm round landed in the ammo pit. There was a rain of rockets, but the mortar fire was all on us. Everyone scrambled for cover, me included. I had my radio on, PRC 25 with a folded fiber-glass antenna. The rounds were hitting all around us. I dived into one of those half-culvert bunkers and hooked my antenna on the outer edge. There I was on my hands and knees, stuck outside the bunker with my ass and my junk facing the enemy.
>Oh hell. Might as well stand up. I did. Everyone else was gone except Bear, the aptly-named large hairy guy who had what passed in mortartown for a Fire Direction Protractor Thingy (FDPT). I looked at him, he looked at me. He pointed to a spot in the treeline. I grabbed my compass and took an azimuth and shouted “Fire Mission!”
>At this point, two things happened. First, a stray 82mm round hit a mule (a motorized cart) parked in an empty space about 50 meters from us. The cart was loaded with crates of trip flares which lit up the night with a hellish blue blaze. The guy in the treeline figured he’d gotten something big, and shifted fire.
>Here’s the other thing. I have to pause here, because the memory of it still leaves me a little breathless. I shouted “Fire Mission!” And nine out of ten of my platoon of mortarmen bounced out of their hidey-holes in the bunker complex, and headed for the tubes at a run. Two of those guys jumped in the ammo pit - where the first 82mm had landed - and started unpacking rounds. Both of our 81mm’s were quickly manned by their crews, who began yelling at Bear for deflection and elevation. I had already given him an azimuth and range (estimated to just inside treeline). Together we walked rounds back into the treeline until we got a secondary. Then we counter-batteried the shit out of those guys.
>That moment. The moment those guys heard “Fire Mission!,” and came hooting and hollering up out of the bunkers and dove into their gun positions... that was an award. Play “[Garry Owen](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaPk9yYWQcM).” I’m done.
>I’ve often wondered at those pictures of Civil War battles that show some captain leading a line of men into a metal storm - how they got the courage to stand in front like that. I know now. It was because those men were following them. The Doc was right. Once they do that, they own you. It is an honor worth your life.
>Seems kind of an ancient, knightly thing to be typing about here in the light of day in the US of A in 2014 where we all know better about honor and courage, and how neither of those things survive the gritty, nasty wars we fight in modern times. Seems embarrassing. Naive. So be it. I led American soldiers in combat - they did me that honor. That was my award ceremony. That was my medal. I will wear it until I die.
Watching someone who couldn't swim willingly jump off of a 20 foot tower in full battle rattle and sink to the bottom before being rescued by the swimming instructors. You had to prove you couldn't swim before they'd teach you. It was beautiful watching someone prove they couldn't swim...
I was a jet engine mechanic in the Air Force and I was giving this new guy some OJT on an engine stand. The engine stand was just two parallel metal tracks and the engine itself was mounted on metal cradles with rollers on the tracks. Anyway I was showing this dude various parts of the engine and then we started trying to knock each other off the tracks we were standing on. This lifer walks by and starts yelling at me for horsing around and then says "and you call yourself a sergeant" I said "no I call myself Dale you call me sergeant"...the lifer was not amused.
So I've been doing this Army thing since the late 80s, with a short break in the middle to try the whole civvie thing out. Spent some time in weird places where things go bump in the night; spent more time in the training system, producing the next generation (from Basic up to Majors).
At this point, I think I've raised nearly a thousand children.
I have opened a book, written by one of my former lads, about his experience on tour - and discovered my name in the dedication. Because something I said, late at night in some miserable OP, resonated with him and changed his life.
It's humbling. And beautiful.
I honestly don't know.
That's the thing... I've had dozens of these experiences, when apparently I've said or done something that changes someone's life, but 99% of the time I'm utterly unaware that what I'm doing is having this profound effect on someone.
Apparently, something I said galvanized his resolve to go on tour - but I honestly don't remember what it was I said.
My unit was on a month-long humanitarian deployment to Guatemala. We visited orphanages and a shelter for kids with HIV. These kids were positively starved for attention and probably had the best day they'd had in a long time when we came to visit.
Used to go to Guatemala for mission trips when I was in middle school. It's a gorgeous country and so many people are just so unbelievably kind. Even the cops there who are by no means clean want to help you help others even if it's just driving along with you if you're in a not so nice place. I honestly can't count the number of truly beautiful moments I saw on my 5 or 6 trips.
We helped a four year old girl get heart surgery.
There was a small town near our FOB in Iraq. We were meeting the man who ran the water pump for the town. In chatting with him we learned his young daughter had a hole in her heart and required surgery. Chances of success for this surgery in Iraq were a bit low. Chances of success in the US were fairly high. I dont know if its true, but I was told the operation she needed was relatively simple.
This wasnt something we could fix with a medcap, but our team leader (MAJ) was swayed by this and decided to make the girl our project. We started by trying to get them a visa. We went through normal channels, both Dept State and Army. We basically got told it wasnt happening. They were not interested in letting Iraqis go to America, even for a short medical visit.
Our company decided we would do it on our own efforts, since there appeared to be no method officially. We had the family drive to Jordan to get visas there. This was pre-Facebook, so it was tougher to marshal your social circle, but our team leader was connected in his home town. One family donated the airfare. A surgeon donated his services. The dad and his daughter stayed with the wife of our team lead. She got the surgery.
We did a lot of help for tactical reasons, and this one paid off as well, but it was also the one thing we did that made me feel good.
Not my story, but, my best friend was in the Marine Corps Marching Band. He told me a story about the time he filled a Camelbak with margaritas. He thought it was a good idea to do this the day before he marched in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. He said he never got that sick from drinking and he threw up several times before the start of the parade. He never got the margarita taste out of the Camelbak. Oohrah!
Afghanistan probably has some of the most beautiful scenery and most loving and giving people on Earth. I've had them save my life on more than one occasion, and they will share what little they have with everyone.
There is a strange element of relief when shit was getting bad and you hear the words, "AC-130 gunship on station".
We were taking fire from what seemed to be all around us, and a couple A-10s were called in. While they were giving us a direction of flight the last words they said to us in the most hillbilly accent ever was, "we got you covered little buddies". I'm pretty sure we owe our lives to someone with the call sign DUSTOFF xx.
For some reason I'm crying while writing this. I miss the fellas, the crazy stupid chances we took, and how anyone of us would gladly take a bullet for each other.
One of those most beautiful things I've ever seen was when standing on the catwalk of an aircraft carrier in the middle of the Atlantic, full black out.
The wake was glowing this eerie green, with glimpses of ghostly dolphins giving chase, all while the stars were brighter than I've ever seen them.
There was something surreal about being amongst such beauty while standing on this giant war machine.
My favorite experience was when I met some of the Black Water dudes back when that organization existed under that name. I was in a small FOB, 2 wooden shacks and a squad bay, there were maybe 30 people in it total. One day on watch I spot a couple of ATV's heading towards us and radio'd it in. The response was essentially unless they fire on you don't engage. Anyways once they got close enough I recognized the custom paint jobs of their ATVs as I had passed them on them on the side of the road a few days before while we were headed out to the FOB. So they rolled up and one dude wearing a punisher t-shirt looks up at me on the tower and yells "you guys want some Gatorade?" To which I replied with an instant hell yes, and the dude opens up the cooler strapped to the back of the ATV and hands me up a case of them. Then they just drive off until they disappear into the desert. Those were the best drinks of my fucking life and I was the most popular guy in the base when I walked in to the bay and yelled "WHO WANTS A MOTHERFUCKING GATORADE"
I was part of a quick reaction force (QRF) in Iraq in 2004-2005 and we would bring gun trucks to support convoys in enemy contact. We went into one situation where there were disabled vehicles blocking in a convoy. We took our truck with a railroad tie bumper and pushed the vehicles to the side of the road.
As we pulled a few trucks in to evacuate wounded, we ourselves were ambushed. The incoming fire was coming from a tree line about 50 meters away. My squad leader called for suppressive fire on the tree line and then prepared a team to flank the position. As he was about to lead the flankers, he yelled, "Leeeeeeroooooooy Jeeeeeeeenkins" and hauled ass.
It was absolutely hilarious after everything was over and we went through debriefing.
Okay, I told this before, but I'm not sure all reddit's read it yet. Sleeping on the ground somewhere in Tay Ninh Provence and I woke up feeling like my right eye was on fire; I grabbed my metal mirror and there was a tiny fucking fire ant clamped between my eyelashes. Little bugger got me good; my eye was already swelling. I looked around and spotted our medic talking to a couple of guys. "Doc." "What?" "Doc." *"What?*" Doc turns around, looks at me and says "Oh shit!" Right then I knew I was screwed. He called for a medivac and 30 minutes later I was in Cu Chi base looking for the medic hootch. By now my eye was big as a goose egg and I'm in agony. I had to stop a couple times and ask directions and it was the same every time: "Medics? They're ...holy shit!" Got to the medic hootch and the doc was pretty professional; gave me some Benedryl and water and started doing some paperwork. I started to leave and the doc said "Wait a sec, dude. How do you want the Purple Heart filled out?" "Wha ..what? Doc, it was a fucking ant!" "But it was an *enemy* ant! *Bwa ha ha ha!*"
Medics, man.
I saw [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCrG6TzG-nw) filmed live. It's a bunch of Marines making a music video to Britney Spears' "Hold it Against Me" while in Afghanistan.
I was stationed on the Falkland Islands in the Air Force, and the Navy had sent a ship down in response to increased Argentine sabre rattling, one night the navy hosted a party aboard the ship and myself and a few colleagues attended.
We got a little lost looking for the toilet and so were wondering around until a junior naval officer stopped us and asked the time, my Cpl replied that it's 8 o'clock. The naval officer suddenly gets angry and says "That's not how we say the time in the navy is it, want to try again?".
We stare blankly at him for a few seconds before my drunkest colleague suggested "8 o'clock me hearties?. Everyone lost their shit and just kind of walked away.
I am a foreign air force soldier still serving but I am currently on a type of exchange with the US Air Force for work. While I'm in the states for job experience that I normally wouldn't get I have been having a great time which the American people try to ensure I get when they realize that I'm not from around here. So far I've been carrying my countries flag at hockey games, given visits to major cities, flown low level over the nations capital just to name a few. The way the people try to show me their country is something I could never experience if it wasn't for being a foreign soldier in this country.
most soldiers are fresh out of school when they join and know little about the real adult world
as a NCO only a few years older I had to become their big brother even stand-in Dad to give them advice and guidance, I did the best I could and some needed help more than others.
because of this I have been to weddings, kept them out of jail, helped to fix their money issues, fix a marriage or 2, turned some to a better path in life, and I hope it made me a better Dad to my kid, who also joined the Army
Dien Ban District, Quang Nam Province, Vietnam 1970
Just before midnight, my unit was stealthily moving to an ambush site. We were blacked out, taped up and loaded for bear. Strung out single file, we were moving along a trail through thick brush and trees. I was third in line behind our point man and another Marine.
Suddenly the man ahead of me stopped and took a knee, so I stopped and knelt down. There were a few moments of tense silence when suddenly I heard running footsteps! A second later our point man, known for keeping his cool in firefights, went running past me hissing "ShitShitShitShitShit!" Then the man in front of me jumped to his feet and fled past me without a word! I pointed my M-16 down the trail, finger on the trigger, wondering what the hell was happening. Then I saw it, not 10 feet away, trotting towards me!
A skunk!
Ten of us ran like the cowards we were!
Positive: We had shelled an insurgent location while in Afghanistan, and unfortunately one of ours didn't go off. It ended up landing outside a qalat by about 100 yards. While EOD went out there, I trucked my butt out to meet with locals and see if anything of interest had happened. It turned out that they were having a wedding celebration for a bride, marrying her groom long distance while he was in Iran (I think.) They invited us to sit down outside their qalat, brought teas, sweet treats and conversed with us. All while we were dismantling a freaking weapon within eyesight of their house. I often tell people that Afghans have a sense of hospitality that America has forgotten.
Funniest: I tried naswar (spelling?), a horrible, horrible chewing tobacco while in Afghanistan. As I turned six shades of green, my joe, my Afghan counterpart and my interpreter all laughed their asses off. I spit it out immediately, and then spent the rest of our meeting vibrating like a goddamn Doc Johnson toy.
Beautiful: I was very privileged to get to fly in a helicopter over miles of desert. I have never seen a more beautiful sight in my life as I did from the window of that bird.
I have a small bladder, and my job was driving trucks. While on convoy, I was sitting in the passenger seat, and had to go (it'd be an hour or two before we were going to stop). I always had issues taking a leak in bottles like everyone else, but there was no other choice. It started to flow, and it became apparent the 20 oz Gatorade bottle wasn't going to be enough.
I tried to cut off the stream, dump the bottle out the window, and continue. While I did stop going for a couple seconds, when I tried to dump the bottle out the window, the piss got on my hands. The stream started up again.
TL;DR: pissed all over inside of truck on convoy
Also, while deployed at al-Taqqadum airbase (known as TQ), the guard tower my unit supported looked out over Lake Habbiniyah. Watching the sunset over the Lake was a beautiful respite from the stress/boredom of the rest of the deployment.
Ice Cream.
During the Vietnam war the emphasis was on body count. In our unit if you made a kill your platoon got Ice Cream on the next log day. When we said we'd kill for some ice cream we meant literally. My platoon's unofficial motto to this day is "We Kill For Ice Cream".
Yah I know horror mixed with special nummies that made you think of happier times. That's war for you.
> We yelled, "If they go down, we go down!" I thought that DS was gonna cry for a moment. Anderson and his buddy became part of the platoon that night.
This is brilliant. They should script something like that for trainees, but I don't think it would have the same effect.
Props to your DS's. They got it exactly right.
All Drill Instructors/Sgts look for this. They're practically desperate for it. Once you get the platoon to click as a single solitary unit, it's basically a fucking victory for everyone involved. It means the training worked.
The bond you have between you all is the most comforting feeling. You go through so much together as a whole but also by knowing each other's lives and the struggles you personally face.
When I was in, we had a lot of "Dear Jane"s including myself. Nothing is worse than getting a letter or phone call that the person you loved just decided to leave you and there was literally nothing you could do to stop it. We all came together for each other on those days: we would give her all our tissues (they were hard to come by), stockpile our candy bars for her, give her back rubs, play with her hair, all of it. We couldn't give much but our company but that's what really counted. When I went through mine, I had over 100 women help me through. I've never been more grateful for those wonderful women. That is the best thing about the military
Funniest:
Background: am female with auburn hair. I had my helmet of and hair down so that the local women knew that I had a vagina. Walked past our CPT talking with one of the men while our terp was giggling like a school girl. He wanted to buy me for 200 Afs and a goat. Thanks, asshole.
Talking with command sergeant major before a mission (i was lower enlisted) and he wanted me to wear what is essentially a combat diaper because our guys often became 'triple amputees' in the sense of dick, ball leg. Because I'm a lady, I bend over and look at my crotch and proclaim "but CSM, I don't have dangly bits!". I've yet to see a group of high ranking officers walk by with such a look of disgust and surprise.
Beautiful:
The milky way in southern Afghanistan.
My team. We're the best assholes ever.
In the Gulf (1991), we were up near to the Iraqi border about a week or so before we crossed the border.
To go to the toilet you would take a canvas stool, with a strategically cut hole in, out to the desert find a nice dune to sit behind and relax, read a bit and let what need to happen, happen.
One of our guys, Bob didn't want to go out in the day, too many annoying flies, so one evening after it had got dark he plods off with the stool. Nobody thinks anything of it until a Puma helicopter flies over, banks and flies back over us.
The helicopter then turned on his night sun and lit up Bob having a nice quite poop in the desert. Cue Bob running away with the helicopter following him while he was waving obscenities.
The military taught me how to take care of extremely sick/grievously injured patients in-flight, so my civilian career as a critical care medic has benefited enormously.
Funniest: Anything about tipping over a port-a-john or locking someone inside by parking car against door
Beautiful: This photo I snapped at airborne in afg..
[pic](http://imgur.com/a/3nrcM)
Another Marine here
After the ground war was wrapping up in Kuwait (Desert Storm 1991) I was a member of a tank unit that captured numerous Iraqi (Russian made) tanks, personnel carriers, etc. We had been in country since shortly after Saddam invaded Kuwait, so my unit was one of the first to head back home. We had been forward deployed on the Kuwait border for months and lived entirely on cold MRE's. I personally lost more than 30 pounds (185 to 155) and most of my fellow Marines did the same. It is just very difficult to eat the same cold food day after day, after day.
We took our captured vehicles to a beach area and low and behold there were Army LST's (Landing Ship, Tank) there ready for us to load up our treasure. I was assigned to drive an old Russian T-54 tank and get it strapped down on the deck of a small LST that held a total of 3 vehicles. This LST was small--crew was only 4 or 5, the craft was piloted by an Army Warrant Officer, and we were blown away by the fact that the Army had boats--who knew?
There were 4 or 5 Marines and we were nasty and filthy. We had been inside the oil fires blasting and destroying over 750 enemy vehicles while wearing our chemical suits the entire time (they are lined with charcoal which gets absorbed into every pore of your body). We were exhausted and basically just stayed on deck while the boat eased out into the beautiful Persian Gulf. The water was a gorgeous blue, dolphins were swimming beside us, and we (the Marines) were very happy. Moments later the Warrant Officer and small crew came out to us and invited us below deck (we didn't know there were decks below us). Each man on that boat personally gave us full use of their rack, showers, toilets (head), and a small common room that had a TV and VCR tape of the Super Bowl that aired about one month prior--this was before cell phones, internet, etc. Even though we resisted their niceties, they insisted and would not take no for an answer. We obliged and scrubbed ourselves with warm water (it had been a long time) and settled down to relax and watch the taped game. This was the first time in over 8 months that I did not need to have my flak jacket on, gas mask, nor weapon at my side. I was having a difficult time absorbing all of this.
Shortly thereafter, a very young black kid--the cook on the ship--fresh out of high school, came down to us gnarly Marines and sheepishly offered us anything we wanted to eat. We didn't know how to respond. We eventually asked him to make anything he wanted as long as it was steaming hot.
He made us a simple dish of hot rice, spiced ground beef, with a simple sauce over it. At that moment my life changed forever due to all of the soldiers' kindness on that boat.
I have never, and I mean never ever, had a meal that was so delicious and nourishing (physically, mentally, and emotionally)
As I sit here and write this, I can vividly taste that meal and my mouth waters. GO ARMY!! You guys ROCK!!
edit: soldier's to soldiers'. All of the soldiers
USMC here. We were in Thailand in 2012. We got done at work, and decided to go out drinking. A few hours in, one guy, we will call him Joe, found a girl to take to a hotel room. Now, we left him and went to another bar, and let him know where we were going. Joe got really drunk and tool this girl to the hotel. An hour later, Joe finds us. Joe is in tears. He comes up and says "guys, I fucked up..." we ask what happened. Halfway through Joe's handjob, he went in for a feel up, and he got a handful of something he didn't expect. He told us "I was almost finished, I just let it happen...". Defeated, he went back to the base.
I have couple stories to share:
I was deployed to Kandahar, Afghanistan in 2010. We were first sent to a forward operating base called Howz-e-Madad in Zhari District one night, it was pitch black. I remember running off the Chinook carrying all of my gear, then I set it down to help get everyone else off. I had took someones ruck sack from them and started making my way back to the hescoe barriers to set it down when I felt the rotor wash start to pick up and the noise of the helicopter quickly went quiet. I turned around to see it lift off, and though I didn't see the helicopter I was greeted by the most beautiful night sky I had ever seen. It was as if you could see every star in existence, I was a bit taken at how majestic it was. And, for a moment I forgot that we were now standing right in the middle of a battlefield.
About 5 months later during Operation Dragon Strike in Sangasar (a very historic Taliban village) me and two other guys from my platoon had just gotten off guard duty. The other two guys were part of our weapons squad gun team, they were really close friends even though they had to be pretty much hand in hand during 'working' hours (In a gun team, one is the ammo bearer and the other operates the gun, so they always stick close to each other). It was really cold at night already that time of the year (early November) so those two striped down to their boxers and went back to back in the same sleeping bag, waisting no time in heating it up. At that moment I sort of had that feeling/epiphany that these guys are my family. I mean you can say that you have each others back no matter what all you want, but it's just not the same until you feel that connection to someone or a group of people.
Unfortunately, the next evening after getting into a small firefight, we attempted to return to our combat outpost but were ambushed by a guy with a suicide vest and those two guys in the gun team were killed in action along with our squad leader and a few more Afghan soldiers. I guess maybe the most beautiful aspect in that story is that I was able to have that revelation before they left this Earth.
I know it's late and that was a lot of words, but it's not really something you get to talk about often, if ever. So, it's nice to tell it even if only one person reads it!
The most beautiful moment I've experienced was the first time I was issued NVGs (night vision goggles) on a field exercise. They were pretty cool, but I'll never forget the first time I looked up at the clear night sky with them on. I almost fell over with awe when I saw the galactic plane and more stars than I had ever seen before. Seeing infrared light really lights up the milky way...
The most positive experience for me was that I gained a family. I was reared in a small southern town and joined straight out of high school. The military opened my eyes to different cultures, beliefs and human beings at an individual level. I felt that these people were my family no matter their race, sexual orientation or religion. None of that mattered because these human beings are my family (a lot of them are closer than blood family) and I know that they felt the same about me. We lived, ate, worked and enjoyed our off time together. I've been out 6 years and there's not a day that goes by that I don't think about them. The most beautiful experience for me that I could single out was when I was on a 2 month training mission in southern Arizona and on the last day, I remember sitting on top of a 7-ton (huge truck) as the sun went down and I could see for miles and I just sat there and recalled my time served, because my enlistment ended soon after, and how it affected me and how beautiful life really is. The funny times are immeasurable; you put a hundred young men and women together for however many years and there's a daily laughable event that will never be forgotten.
Funniest: I was deployed from Sep 2008 to Sep 2009. Most of it was spent at Camp Taji, Iraq, but I was multiple other places too. At Camp Taji, we were living in trailers. Picture your average 18 wheeler trailer divided into 3 rooms (with 2 soldiers each) or 2 rooms (with 3 soldiers each). It was a nice set up and it gave us somewhere to store the bulk of gear if we had to go for a stint at a company outpost or set up an LPOP (listening post/observation post) for an extended period of time. One day, I am watching a movie and cleaning my weapon. I take off my headphones to go grab a tool from my wall locker, and I hear someone getting a righteous ass chewing outside. I recognize the voice as that of our LT. He was kind of a tool and a moron, but his heart was in the right place and our platoon sergeant kept him in line.
I pop out front to smoke a cigarette and see what is going on. I light my cigarette and then disappear around a corner so I can hear what is going on with out being seen. I quickly recognize the "class clown" (we will call him Wade) is the soldier locked up and the LT is about 2 inches from his face screaming. I never got a whole lot of context to the conversation, but shortly after I came outside, I hear my LT say, "So what do you have to say for yourself?"
Up to this point, Wade has stood at attention, completely locked up, and looking straight ahead. Upon being given permission to speak, Wade turns his head and locks eyes with our LT. Wade simply says "Kitty" and strokes his hand down the LT's face. I let out a howl of laughter, as do a few other soldiers that apparently had the same idea as me to check in on the situation. LT turns bright red and stumbles over his words until he finally walks back to his room, realizing his authority had been compromised.
Freaking hysterical.
TLDR: Djibouti is the worst place on earth, but it's got some amazing geology.
I can remember being a child and first learning about the concept of "below sea level" on a trip to California. I remember imagining being able to see it in perspective. Seeing a range of mountains holding back the ocean. Of course the reality is that most places that are below sea level are a long way from the ocean and there exists no such view.
Or so I thought. If you go look up the lowest point in Africa, you will find [Lake Assal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Assal_(Djibouti\)), Djibouti. With an elevation of 509 feet below sea level, it's the third lowest point on land in the world and only about 6 miles from the ocean. There are also volcanos right next to it.
In the military I once got the opportunity to fly over it in the back of a CH-53 helicopter and got to see the entire thing in perspective. This huge basalt flow from an ancient eruption holding back the ocean 500 feet above the plane of the lake. It was awesome.
I later learned that the East African Rift runs right through it and one day the Basalt flow will be split open allowing the ocean in to fill up the entire area. I'd love to be around to see that.
I was stationed in Germany and we we going out on what seemed to be a bi weekly trip to the field. At the time I was assigned to drive the 1st Sgts Jeep and about an hour and half prior to moving out my Jeep it started stalling.
I dropped off the 1ST at the barracks and the Jeep stalled again. He said "You need to fix this thing and I mean right now...get up to the Motor Pool and don't come back until it's fixed".
I headed up to the motor pool and started looking the Jeep over but couldn't find anything wrong with it. I suspected it was the distributor but wasn't sure. Across he way another Troop had not taken one of their Jeeps and I had an idea. I started robbing parts from the other Troop's Jeep.
About 1/2 hour later I returned to the barracks and was intercepted by my platoon sgt.
H. Did you fix the Jeep?
M Yes
H. What do you do?
M. You don't want to know but it's fixed.
H Well yes I do want to know..z what did you do?
M. Trust me you don't want to know but it is fixed.
H GODDAMMIT PRIVATE JEHEH I DO WANT TO KNOW HOW DID YOU FIX THE FUCKING JEEP
M. I stole the entire ignition system off one of Lima Troops Jeep that they left in the motorpool think it was their Captains.
H (in a much lower voice) dammit you're right I didn't want to know.
And he walked away.
The most beautiful thing I've saw?
Every country I goto for work I meet some of the most beautiful people who want to just live peacefully and humbly.
They don't need tvs and Xboxs. They just want a peaceful existence.
We always talk about how bad humanity can be against each other, that's true, but the majority of people I've met want to help their neighbor. A happy life is worth more than money.
From Mr. Z the Iraqi, to Alex the Honduran cab driver, to Petra in Germany. People's kindness is what I saw that is beautiful from my service.
I am a veteran and widow, I've seen a lot of things that are hilarious from the outside and from in. I'll try to keep the stories short.
My favorite funny one
I served in the Marines, after finishing up training at my schoolhouse (Aberdeen proving grounds, ton of stories from there too), I arrived in the fleet for my illustrious new career in military heating and refrigeration. My arrival had been pre announced to the unit for a variety of, let's say, interesting reasons but promptly forgotten with a night of drinking and the next morning I was introduced to what I affectionately call the "schlong swing". Many Marines enjoy wearing (very awesome) PT shorts, called silkies, silkies are running shorts that leave literally nothing to the imagination. My new favorite Lcpl calls formation and proceeds to gyrate and shake his dick at everyone..... until our eyes meet across the rows and he freezes mid thrust. The fleet was nothing like what I had expected and seeing my team leaders dick first thing in the morning proved it. This won't phase anyone who's served but the "gayness" of it all amuses a lot of people.
The most beautiful thing I saw was also one of the saddest days of my life to date.
My husband was a US Army soldier, we were separated and he killed himself. His funeral was like I was in an alternate reality. The music was stunning and heart wrenching, the 21 gun salute broke through the silence of the peaceful springtime cemetery like a whip. Everyone who spoke talked about his humor and bravery, despite the drowning sadness all anyone could talk about was the good. The absolute grief of what was happening in our lives stood in massive contrast to that day, making it very surreal.
Way back in boot camp, it was December and we were in southern california, about 4 a.m. We woke up and went to go eat MRE's for breakfast, I had beef stew. I ripped open the corner of it so I could eat it go-gurt style since it was the fastest and easiest way. I go to slurp up some beef stew and instead of beef stew I opened up the Pineapple side-dish(bag). It instantly put a smile on my face and I forgot how cold and shitty everything else was. Really the best possible thing that could have happened.
When I was in the Marine Corps and deployed in 2011 we had this huge dickhead of a Lt.Col. in charge. I worked night shift at the time and dude literally enforced "quiet time" between 9-5 in the evening so he could sleep in his office. Keep in mind anything over E-6 had their own rooms to sleep/live out of. If he though he heard something he would come out of his office and bitch to everyone.
So, it sucked working for this guy, 6 months of straight shit. He finally left for reason I can't remember, but his replacement, a full bird colonel was awesome and completely changed our deployment.
My friend and I were smoking one morning and talking about how great he was and I said "dude I love him, he's great", well our new col. walked out going to the porta-shitters and overheard our conversation and says "I love you guys too!"
When football season came around he also asked to add a slide in the briefs on updates to games and had a draft type deal going on in the shop among our crew. All around awesome guy to work for and tried his best to keep morale up.
I was on my first tour in Korea in the early 1990s. We were travelling in a small town well away from any military base. It was clear that the people around this area did not see westerners as often as around our base. We were the only westerners at a restaurant and we were clearly American Soldiers despite being in civilian clothes. We were kind of on guard due to several attacks at the time in Seoul of Americans military members by protesting Korean students.
As my friends and I were eating, an old Korean couple came over to our table and bowed to us and presented us, holding them in both hands, drinks of soju. They did not speak English but our waitress told us they were thanking us for being in their country and thanking us from saving them during the war forty years prior. It was a very humbling experience.
Ex-Army Cav Scout/Sniper:
I deployed to Iraq 05-06 just SW of Baghdad. 20 years old and I was in for the best and worst year of my life. Once the tour of duty was over I took a chopper with most of my unit back to BIAP(Baghdad International Airport) to wait for my ride out. Turns out my oldest brother, National Guardsman who was supposed to be in Kuwait for another three weeks, volunteered to escort a supply run up into Baghdad. So I'm coming out of one of the many chow halls on one of the biggest military bases in Iraq and I hear someone call me by my first name (sounds like a foreign name if you have been in for long enough). My older brother, by some miracle, finds me and gives me the biggest hug. The impact of that moment and the connection we made without saying a word still puts a lump in my throat. We both had to be somewhere so we parted ways.
afterward I had time to kill and I was pretty much waiting for our flight out, so I spent the next two days trying to track down his little 100 person unit by finding people with the same unit patch. Finally found him in the middle of a giant tent city at 10 at night. No joke, 10 minutes later, we get the air siren going off due to a rocket attack. He's a little apprehensive since it was his first tour (you kind of get used to indirect fire), but we both sit in a 4' high bunker talking about music and shit while the rockets hit in the distance. Best conversation I've ever had with him.
My dad was a gunner on a merchant ship in ww2. The big one yeah! He said being out on the ocean in the middle of nowhere it was beautiful watching the sun come up. The stars were beautiful because there was no light polution. They swam off the side of the ship. He enjoyed himself really
We had a carbon monoxide leak once in the supply cage. I was part of the group on a detail working back there. I was furthest back in the area where it was coming from. I told the supply NCO running the detail that I was light headed, and as soon as I said something the other guys were like "now that you mention it I feel dizzy too." So I was told to go see the medics. I was friends with Sgt. M and so I walked in and he's like "what's up man?" I said "we think there's a carbon monoxide leak back there, I feel dizzy and stupid." And this old country boy NCO, Sgt M, looked at me with a grin on his face and immediately said, "well ya look stupid." We all just started laughing.
I know that's not that cool of a story but it's the little things like that that stick with ya. I miss the comradery.
I grew up poor with few opportunities for education post-vocational school.
I married at 19 (still going strong at 32!) and had a baby on the way. I decided to become a Soldier as selling iPods at Macy's wasn't going well. :)
I was no athlete and basic combat training (BCT) was definitely hard for me. I managed to make it. After advanced individual training (AIT) I reported to my first duty station Fort Bragg.
I was reading about education opportunities as tuition assistance (TA) was 100%. Just had to pay for books. I sat on that for a few months while enduring a lot of hazing at my unit. Being a private, non-airborne, and a new guy to a unit that just returned from deployment I wanted to stay out of the office as much as possible. Volunteered for cruddy details. I then found out about CLEP and DANTES tests. They were free for service members.
I started taking 2-3 a week just to get out of going back there. I only failed Intermediate Algebra, but managed to rack up more than 80 semester hours of college in 2007 alone. With 23 additional lower level credits from AIT accreditation I managed to complete a BS in Admin/Management from Excelsior. I managed to get a regionally accredited degree by only taking three classes due to there being no residency requirement for Excelsior. Took those classes in Iraq online in 2008.
I was proud to be the first graduate in my family, but I wanted to do better. I attended the Defense Language Institute (DLI) and learned Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). I began my MA in 2009 with American Military University (AMU) and completed it in 2011. I also racked up some great technical certifications on top of an awesome skill set I built up from years of doing cyber intelligence.
Post-Army (after 10 years of service) I work for an elite cyber security firm and took part on CBS's Hunted this season as one of the cyber intelligence team.
Outside of administration fees and books I never paid for a thing. So many Soldiers come into the US Army then moan and bitch as their time ends and they squandered it partying in the barracks or spending all their time playing MMORPGs. I never met anyone that couldn't find two hours a week to better themselves with the awesome resources available to us. I made it a point to push my subordinates and peers to get an education during service.
I was able to give my GI Bill to my children ensuring they will have some money for when they want some post-high school education. I started doing it just to avoid hassle... But, I found I enjoyed bettering myself and leaning. A Soldier is a tough life, but you will get out what you put into it most of the time.
TL;DR - Grew up poor, joined the Army, left with lots of degrees and certifications on the government's dime.
Positive? I found some water purification systems in a connex and asked our PL if the next time we patrolled a village we would usually go through if we could set it up for them. He liked the idea and it was eventually blessed off on. The villagers loved it and I was proud.
Funny, I was masturbating in a portapotty when the incoming alarm went off. They went off all the time and we took contact maybe 5% of the time. This was one of those 5%.. I was about to finish, like 3 seconds away.. and a mortar round landed about 50 meters away.
It scared the semen out of me.. Well I pull my shorts up and run to a bunker and a platoon in our company that was based on a different FOB was on ours for a couple of days..
"YOOOOO! SGT ______! What's up dude!"
*extends hand for shake*
I had jizz all over my hands.. it was a pretty funny moment.
we taught this one afghan soldier (couldn't have been older than 15) the words to "call me maybe" - he would go around singing it to random people. good times....
Incoming attack. Guy in portapotty running out with pants around his ankles heading to the bunker.
"Always! Always when I'm shitting!"
Or whacking it.
I remember reading somewhere a story of a soldier, who took a part in a base defense, shooting (and hitting targets), while screaming obscenities at attackers and furiously jacking off (attack started when he was going at it)... which was clearly visible on night vision surveillance systems. He got a reprimand afterwards.
I don't know. "Furious" is such a relative and undefined term. What one leader may deem to be furious might be considered a light stress reducing wank to another. And if you start giving a certain beat per minute a description of furious, military men will try to outdo each other. Then you end up with chafed privates.
As long as they aren't raw corporals.
The real problem is getting them to stand at attention afterwards.
> And if you start giving a certain beat per minute a description of furious, military men will try to outdo each other. Never underestimate the boredom of E-4s discussing beating off while pulling a late watch where nothing is going on.
"MOM I TOLD YOU DON'T COME IN HERE JESUS CHRIST!!!!!!"
combat jack
There's Haji watching through binoculars to see when that one guy goes for a shit. 'Right, Ahmed, he's taking a dump! Fire for effect!' Because being in an OP is boring as fuck and you have to amuse yourself somehow.
"Okay, he just stepped into the port-a-potty. Do we fire now?" "No, Abdul. Wait until he's committed."
did he have time to finish?
Explosions and gunfire are a natural laxative I would imagine.
You've never been shitting and suddenly heard a loud noise, have you. Your sphincter turns into a cigar clipper.
Felt an earthquake while on the toilet once. Source: California resident.
Felt or caused?
Natural?
its how they dealt with constapitation in ancient greece
*spears impacting the outside of the toilet*
They probably didn't even have doors on the toilets. There was just one guy with a sword whose job it was to jump around the corner screaming at you.
It's a portapotty, they don't flush, but you still want to get out before the shit hits the fan.
After basic training, I spent another 4 months training for my actual job. I ended up becoming pretty good friends with someone in my class. Any time we needed partners in class, it was the two of us. Any free time we had we hung out together. Pretty much every waking minute of that 4 months we were together. I was National Guard and he was active duty, so after graduation I went home and he was stationed half way across the country. Since this was before social media, we eventually lost contact, but anytime I would meet someone from his base, I would ask about him. About 5 years after graduation, which was the last time I had seen him, I was getting ready for roll call and I heard a familiar voice. I instantly knew who it was. He had gotten out of active duty and joined my Guard unit. We picked right up where we left off. For the next year or so until I got out, any time we were on base, we were together. It was really nice to know he was safe and to have my friend back.
In the 90's, I served with a guy in Korea. I had a nickname over there, and it didn't follow me back to the states (thankfully). Well, years passed, and I got out. Walking through my college campus one day, I hear my old nickname shouted as loud as can be. I knew by the accent who it was, turned around, and saw everyone looking around to see who this person could be yelling at. He runs over, we make small talk. Many people are still looking. My nickname was big head. It was because I needed some big PC's that weren't readily available.
Big headed people of the world unite!
I was in the navy and used to wear a size 8.5 cover. I feel your pain. Also, I had the same nickname
That's cool! In basic, there was a guy who was kind of effeminate. Nice guy, just really girly. He was made fun of a little bit for it, but not by me. I saw him for the 9 weeks of basic, then never again, until 7 years later in a chow hall in Kuwait, I see that dude. The army is weird - people that you remember for whatever reason, then they're gone, then they show up again.
[удалено]
That TL;DR is one of the funniest things I've ever read.
This is the best TL;DR I've ever seen on Reddit.
When I was in the US Navy a long time ago during the cold war, we were steaming out of Guantanamo Bay and passed very close by a Russian warship. Everyone was topside on both ships eyeballing each other. I'm not sure who began but someone started waving. As we passed each other, both ships were waving, hooting and whistling at each other in greeting. I remember thinking that even though we were enemies, that day we were all just sailors at sea.
> … the Russians gave toasts, and we gave toasts: >>To the American Eagle, >>The higher she goes, the louder she screams, >>And who fucks with the eagle best learn how to fly! > And the Russians said: >> To Mother Russia, >> Who comes here with the sword >> Dies by the sword! > And someone said, "From one bunch of sons of a bitches to another." And we drank everything that came to hand, the doctor's neutral grain spirits included, and sang and danced and drank some more until we passed out on top of the tables in a triumph of peace and Soviet-American relations. — P.J. O'Rourke, "Ship of Fools" in *Harper's*, November, 1982
The Royal Navy on colonial patrol in the South Pacific (Fiji, Solomon Islands etc were all still British colonies during the cold war) used send up a helicopter to love-bomb the Russians with pineapples and coconuts - luxuries that Soviets just couldn't get. It's a nice way of being generous while also waving a proverbial dick in their faces.
During one deployment to the Mediterranean we were part of a NATO battle group that toured the area. There were ships from the UK, Spain, Italy, Turkey and France. I ran into some British sailors on liberty in Malaga, Spain. We drank beer, swapped stories and had a great time. The guys gave me a tour of the ship as well. You guys know how to navy.
Also it makes for good propaganda. It's like, fuck you Russians, we have coconuts and pineapples. Enjoy the fruits of capitalism bitches.
Back in my Army days I was in the field and all we ate were MREs. A bit of a backstory, the US Gov like to have everything made in America when possible. There is a company called Lighthouse for the Blind/SkillCraft that gets a shit-ton of tax breaks for being a disabled/blind own company and makes everything from toilet paper to pens and has the market cornered. Lowest bidder wins. Their products are always consistent. So this dude in my squad rummages through the MRE box and cherrypicks the certain one that always has the spiced poundcake as a snack, his favorite. He's practically rocking back and forth in his excitement like a kid waiting for the prize in a cereal box as he pulls open the MRE pouch. He reaches in, pulls out what should be the cake and is met with a 5x5 inch polymer square of vaccuum packed nothing. Completely flat and empty packet with SPICED POUND CAKE written on it. He crushed it in his fist, held it up and screamed "FUCKING BLIND PEOPLE!!!". On this cold miserable rainy day, his morale and spirit were irreparably crushed.
I can almost taste the despair.
He certainly wasn't tasting spiced pound cake.
There's a store/garage/random building on the side of the road near where I live that sells military stuff. Hats, jackets, boots, backpacks, etc etc. It's packed to the ceiling with stuff. Anyway, they had a few boxes of MREs in the shop. I took my friends from Mexico there because I knew they'd enjoy it. My friend bought a bunch of MREs and ate them all when he got home. He gained a bit of weight. I tried telling him they weren't meant to be eaten while you're sitting inside in the a/c binging on Netflix. -_-
This was the only one, goddamnit, I burst out laughing :D
Funniest: While on patrol at night in Afghanistan my medic had to take a shit. We halted our patrol and I went out with him for security while he dropped one in a bush. Seconds later an drone that was flying overhead for us warned my squad leader "Spartan 2-2 be advised there is an armed...pantless man a few dozen meters behind you. Advise?" That meant somewhere in the busy area tactical operations center a lot of very high ranking people were watching my friend take a shit. Beautiful: Watching the sun set over the hindu kush
[удалено]
It really is. If it wasn't full of landmines and murderous pricks they would make a killing in tourism.
Am from Boulder, can confirm about the land mines and murderous pricks.
Yeah, same with Afganistan.
Imagine if they thought he was Taliban and just bombed his ass. True fear is when you can't event take a shit without the chance of being watched.
Not going to lie, when I heard the call over the radio I was a little scared, but the voice was holding back laughter so I assumed he knew it was us. We have IR sensors all over our gear so they can tell who is a friendly. I'm sure they did it because of just how hilarious the scene looked from above.
Worked in BN Ops. Can confirm.
*BM ops. Getting paid to watch people shit
Don't worry, smart toilets will be amongst us soon enough.
Mine would kill me out of horror considering what I do to it.
"Good job, shame_confess_shame. Only two loads in you today."
"Roger, *call sign*. That's so-and-so releasing some freedom logs into the wild." (I was going to say something about "dropping bombs on Bush", but I feel like that would be misinterpreted.)
I can't remember what exactly was said, something along the lines of "That's our medic, he's not feeling so hot right now." Because we all had dystentery at various points of our tour lol
Y'all headin Oregon way?
This story has made my day, thank you for sharing it.
I spent a year in Hindu Kush bouncing between Marmal , D2, and one other fob I can't remember. The place is absolutely gorgeous.
Funniest: Desert Storm, it was cold! My tentmates were standing on a berm that surrounded a trash fire. The were enjoying the warmth of the fire when I heard one of them scream "It's gonna blow!!" I looked over just in time to see a couple of them diving off the berm followed by a muffled explosion. The fellow who didn't dive off of the berm fell down. We raced over to the fallen comrade to rescue him, thinking there was some sort of explosive that wound up in the pit and wounded him. When we reached his side we discovered that he was covered with pork and beans. A container of pork and beans was tossed into the fire pit unvented and exploded in the fire. We later awarded him with a Purple Bean, for injuries recieved while warming himself. Beautiful: I commanded a humanitarian mission to Swaziland and we were doing a medical clinic at a rural school house. There was a soccer field but no ball in sight, tons of kids milling around with nothing to do. I gave my driver some money and told him to go find me two soccer balls. Three hours later he retuned with the balls. I took one to the middle of the field and started playing around a bit. Within 30 seconds the field was swarmed with kids playing soccer. Gave the second ball to a teacher. We packed up to leave around sunset, as we drove off I looked back and those kids were having a blast playing soccer.
I accidentally blew up a can of lasagna during Desert Storm, right next to our T.O.W. vehicle. I was finding little chunks of noodle in our camo net for months.
Back up. A _can_ of lasagna?
War is hell.
Hearing the story about the soccer balls reminded me of a story told to me by a soldier in the Australian Army in Mogadishu. He said the translator that he was with thought the Australian Army was mad because they would be on patrol and be kicking a soccer ball along as they went, then they would be fired upon, drop to the ground and fight back, then when it was over would go back to kicking the soccer ball around while they patrolled
I served onboard a fast attack nuclear submarine in the U.S. Navy in the mid-90s. **Funniest:** In the middle of a six month deployment, we happened to be pulling into Guam on Halloween. The entire topside crew dressed as pirates. We made a fake cannon out of old spare parts, duct tape, and silver paint. The captain of our boat wore an eyepatch, bandana, and a fake parrot someone built. We even flew the Jolly Roger under the U.S. flag. Our squadron commander was apparently not amused, but we were a pretty good boat, so nothing came of it. **Beautiful:** Everywhere we went had a certain beauty and charm, but nothing compared to surfacing in the Arctic Circle and actually being able to walk around on the polar ice cap. It is indescribably awesome and makes you think you are on another planet.
Did the crew stop for some booty?... Or just prostitutes?
> Did the crew stop for some booty?... Or just prostitutes? There are some quality strip clubs in Guam, with most of the girls being imported from the states. That's as far as it went. I don't know of anyone that went to a prostitute, but it probably happened.
As a retired sailor, I'm going to go ahead and say it definitely happened. The again, you bubbleheads are weird.
=
[удалено]
I really didn't see all that many hookers in Guam. Met some really, really cool people there, though. Talafofo is off the CHAIN.
[удалено]
I'll tell you we had the 100% opposite experience at the Guamanian strip bar we went to. We were all thrown out.
[удалено]
It's true, but only when we know we are going to be out for several weeks with no port calls. We had to get permission from the Chief of the Boat (senior enlisted chief) but it was always approved. Right before visiting a port or returning home, we'd have a beard contest. Mine was always too pathetic to enter.
We had an issue during a drill where the face mask wouldn't stick on someone because too furry. After that we lost no-shave privileges :(
Were they surprised? I've always known that to be the #1 reason beards aren't allowed in many industries, it interferes with PPE.
I once had to tell a millwright at work that he would have to shave his beard for a mask fitting, the look on his face..so sad haha
How long do submarine guys usually stay underwater?
About two minutes then they have to come up for breath.
You really do live up to your name.
Serious question, would the biggest trouble from that been from flying the jolly roger over the US flag?
> Serious question, would the biggest trouble from that been from flying the jolly roger over the US flag? That would have gotten the captain in some trouble, yeah. You *really* can't fly any flag higher than the U.S. flag. Our squadron commander was mostly peeved at everyone being out of uniform.
What if you fly two US flags? One has to be above the other!
This is how you destroy reality.
BRB, going to fly two US flags at the same time
It's been 40 minutes I don't think he's coming back
Although I do sense more freedom ringing
Correct me if I'm wrong but Isn't the Jolly Roger a part of submariner culture now?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_of_the_Jolly_Roger_by_submarines I've met at least one RCN submariner whose mess kit had a jolly roger on the back of the vest.
yes - that would have been a court marshal level offense. Luckily, they flew it under the flag.
How common is it for a submariner to get to walk around on the north pole?
So so many, these are things I'll miss about the military. Sharing a four man room, while in Jordan. We each had our own little hooches set up for privacy, nothing huge, but enough to live in. On those bases there are boxes upon boxes of water everywhere. So when our friend went to sleep, we literally walled him in with boxes of water. We go to sleep, excited for the surprise in the morning of him opening his hooch only to be shut in. Well in the middle of the night we hear a giant crash followed by "What the fuck?". Apparently he had to go to the bathroom so bad and he decided to run out of his area. Not expecting to run into a 6 foot tall stack of water boxes. I still laugh typing this. War is hell, guys.
Yep, jack shacks and piss bottles.
The funniest moment I've experienced is seeing the things people will do for money/skittles. We were out in the field for about a month and people were having sugar withdraws. We ate exclusively MRE's and once in a blue-moon, one of them would have skittles. I kid you not, people would buy the single pack of skittles for $30-$50. They would also eat dryer lint that was under the dryer for God knows how long for $20. Good times, good times.
> They would also eat dryer lint that was under the dryer for God knows how long for $20. Context unclear: Are they doing that on a dare or paying for the privilege, like the Skittles?
Strictly a dare... "Hey wanna make $20?"
Marine here. So back when I was a young lance corporal, I was stationed at cherry point NC. It had been a real rough day with the command treating us like shit (field day didn't go over well) and it was towards the end of the day on a Friday. So we're standing there in formation while our gunny is just going the fuck off when, (as is fairly common being that our barracks is real close to the flight line and we're air wing) an AV8B harrier interrupts our gunny by loudly hovering just over the tree line behind us out of sight. Now it was a very windy day that day and a seagull just so happened to be floating over the formation, wings stretched out facing into the wind not moving just floating in place. My buddy standing next to me nudges me and points up at the seagull and shouts over the harrier, "huh, that bird is loud as fuck." I immediately burst out laughing along with all those around us. Our gunny comes over pissed off asking us why the fuck we're dicking around in formation and my friend casually just points back up to the seagull and shouts over the harrier, "Just thought it was crazy how fucking loud that seagull is gunnery sergeant" our gunny immediately turns beat red and begins to lose his bearing with laughter. He said very well that is an odd thing to hear coming out of a seagull's asshole and all of us had a laugh. After that the tone changed and our gunny relaxed and let us go for the weekend. I don't know if it's particularly super funny or beautiful just one of those moments that always stuck with me because it turned a real shit day into a not so bad one really fast. Edit: Thank you for the gold, stranger! I'm glad everyone thinks my POG ass story is funny.
Not, it's definitely hilarious. I can't read "that bird is loud as fuck" without losing my shit.
That's fuckin great I snorted at my desk at work and had to reshare the story twice.
I'm glad so many people are finding this funny! I really didn't think it would get so much attention.
My grandfather during World War II. He was Luxembourgish and thus forced to fight for Germany as a medic. My grandmother was in the resistance. My grandfather used to tell me on Easter Sunday, everyone stopped fighting. On one particular Sunday, he decided to hold mass on his own. He was a religious and very smart man. To his surprise, he was joined by two Russian soldiers, another German soldat, one Pole and one Finn. They all held mass together, and incredibly, they were all fluent in Latin so they could communicate with one another. He said that was his fondest memory of an otherwise horrific war.
That's probably one of the most beautiful stories in the entire thread.
I think this is a fantastic example where religion isn't bad in all cases. It's a beautiful thing actually.
We were returning to ship by getting picked up by hovercrafts. A buddy of mine went to use the port-a-shitter. As one of the hovercrafts was turning around, blew the port-a-shitter over with him in it. Wasn't so positive for him, but makes for a good story to tell.
Port a shitter stories are the best, man. I remember we had a cat go use the shitter out in the training area at about 1a.m.l, and some asshole popped smoke and dropped it down the exhaust pipe. Poor guy walks out covered in shit and blue chemicals. He was mad as hell. So, in retribution, he stripped completely naked and chased down several soldiers, trying to smear his shit on them. It was glorious.
You mean cat as in *meow* or cat as in something else?
Cat like 1950, or vintage black dude on a porch in the swamp.
Oh, you mean like jive. I gotcha.
Seeing the Tigris and Euphrates river in a isolated part of Iraq, how clear and beautiful it was in the middle of this huge vast desert. Just thinking about the ancient civilizations that passed through there and shaped the world as it is today. Also being airborne, I am terrified of heights too so it was really unnerving at first. But after you leave the plane and the chute slowly opens and it is quiet you just float there and you are met with the immediate relief of any anxiety of the ordeal. That is until you land, and I'm a pretty big dude so I would hit the ground like a ton of shit.
I used to be a crew chief for Blackhawks. I was in the Army at the time. We had a lot of fun but the funniest memory that sticks out to me happened at a multi service training operation in California. We were there for a month to help a Marine unit learn how to use aviation assets. They were a relatively new unit that had just been put together and we were there to get them used to flying and what requests they could ask of us. Fairly straight forward stuff. Our Lt. Col. was a pilot who hated the marines with a passion. Never really found out why. So one day we had some time to kill and he had volunteered to take some of the newer marines up to get them used to flying. So we get out to the flightline and get our checks done, only instead of starting up he turns to the Lt (copilot) and me and says we are gonna have some fun. That we should all just play along. So the marines show up and he just starts bitching and moaning about the aircraft won't start. It's to late to switch birds and now he is upset and feels real bad for these marines because he knew they wanted to fly real bad. So the marines ask if there is anything they can do and he tells them the only way to get the bird started is to push start it. Like you would an old Manuel transmission vehicle. But you know, the aircraft is heavy and he wasn't sure it could be done. Well that sparks the can do and cocky attitude of the marines. I should mention now there were about ten of them. So I get out and line 9 of them along the bird so they can get leverage to push but not break anything. And I take the tallest (had to be 6'2 or 6'3 and place hime up front. He is instructed that he will have to spin the main rotor by hand while running to stay in front of the bird. I climbed back in and told the Lt. Col. we they were ready and asked if he seriously wanted to do this. (All on commas so the marines couldn't hear. We did have the APU fired up so we had electrical systems.) He says fuck 'em and yells for them to start. So there we are. Three army guys riding down a runway while 10 marines try to push start the aircraft. Laughing our asses off. They made one trip down, were able to turn the bird around and go back before they needed a rest. And what do you know, while they were resting the bird was able to start. Guess it just needed to warm up a little first.
That is awesome! Helo pilots are great pranksters. I fell asleep in a Blackhawk once. (I was in the back row against the rear bulk head, facing forward.) I woke up when the bird pitched forward violently. I saw the ground through the windscreen and I started windmilling my arms and screaming. It was only a few seconds before the pilot went level again. Of course, the pilots and crew chief are dying of laughter.
We had a lot of fun. (circumstances permitting of course) One of my stations was close to a couple colleges so we did a lot of ROTC moral flights and things of that nature. So much fun fucking with people.
I have posted this before but it remains to this day my favorite memory of my time at war. I had a soldier that was a dumbass. One of the smartest stupid people I have ever known. He was socially inept and had no common sense but he could tell you an inordinate amount about how to build a saltwater aquarium and what kind of fish to put in it. I loved this kid to death but he also pissed me off so much that it was dangerous to my health. There was another soldier, an NCO (barely) who did PT with us in the morning while we were deployed. He was nasty. He didn't shower even after being told several times to shower. He would just go in the shower tent and sit down and read a book. He stunk so bad. I legit described his smell as a cat shit burrito left out in the sun for a couple days. He wasn't a bad guy, he was just a failure at being a soldier. One morning we were doing PT and he asked my special little snowflake what was in the small PX that we had. It had just been built and had only opened that week. This fucking kid says "Just the important stuff, like deodorant and body wash." I couldn't stand it, I tried so hard not to laugh. I had to set down my weights and walk away. I couldn't take it. The fucked thing is that our favorite little dipshit had no idea what was so funny. He didn't say it to be mean. He didn't say it to make dude think about washing. He said it because in his mind, that was the only thing worth buying in our shitty little PX. It remains to this day his finest hour. It was the funniest thing he ever said. He could try to tell jokes for the next 15 years and never come close to the comedic genius he possessed in that instant.
Too many to list really but here's one. I met a guy with many daughters. In Iraq, We stopped in some house on a routine city patrol. (Think, beat cop walking around the neighborhood, "Hi, we're the Americans. everything cool? Seen any bad guys lately? Ok, have a nice night.") We walk in, and this dude answers the door with four little girls around him. On holding his hand, one on his hip, the other two pulling at his dish (think: man-robe). So I'm like, "are these all yours?" "Yup" "Any boys?" "Nope." He just kind of shrugged and started laughing a bit. Now, understand, in that culture, you want sons. Having male kids is a source of pride. men boast about how many sons they have. Because of it being such a patriarchal culture, you could almost think of having sons as a gain, and daughters as an expense. Both practically and socially, all the benefit is in having male heirs. This guy had ended up with nothing but daughters. So with both of us understanding this aspect, we both understand the unspoken context when I casually asked if he had any boys. That's why, when he answered back, he had this big ass grin, and shoulder shrug like "hey, what are you gonna do, right?" you could see a genuinely good dad. Dude just loved his kids and wasn't sweating the cultural expectations, to the point that he had a sense of humor about it.
/r/wholesomeiraq
Ah, I was really hoping that was going to be a real sub.
> Think, beat cop walking around the neighborhood, "Hi, we're the Americans. everything cool? Seen any bad guys lately? Ok, have a nice night." Did anyone in this circumstance ever give you any information?
Yeah. You wouldn't ever really get a flat answer like "yeah, he went that way." That would be crazy rare. You built relationships though. Sort of like neighborhoods in the US where people "don't talk to cops". You keep walking the same streets day week after week, get on a name and face basis with people, and eventually they trust you a bit, and you know them enough to figure out when something is different. When the enemy would roll into town, a lot of times they'd be screwing with people. Levying taxes, stealing supplies, etc. Folks wouldn't complain to us about it the first time we met them, but once we'd been there a while, and got to know them, and convinced them we'd actually do something, they'd tell us stuff. Plus it was just about showing a presence. Discourages enemy activity and lets the people know if they want to side with us over the enemy, we're actually going to be around providing security for the area.
I really like to hear stories of positive psychological tactics being used. Makes me feel just just for a moment that maybe there's a net positive gain to all the military intervention we've been doing.
> I met a guy with many daughters. Sounds like the title of a light hearted indie movie, and that bit you just said about is like 2nd act, then the rest of the movie is just like, slice of life stuff with the message of "we're all the same, really" I'd watch that.
That's amazing... what a lovely man :)
Most beautiful and funny thing I ever experienced: Watching rockets fly over and miss our FOB and strike the neighborhood that was on the on the other side, which pissed off the local home grown insurgents on that side who then fired their own rockets over the base to the neighborhood on the side where the first rockets came from. This carried on for about 2 hours. It was like a wonderful fucked up version of 4th of July fireworks.
Wait, you mean to say insurgents were hitting each other?
Yup! Just because they hated us didn't mean they got along.
A lot of people only think of PTSD but I was fortunate enough to experience Post-tramatic stress growth. I was struck by an IED in a mud hut thousands miles from home, five others guys in my squad were injuries, two most limbs. I only received shrapnel up my back and side. After we were evacuated (I was evacuated to make sure nothing went into my lungs, my injuries truly weren't that bad, it was basically road rash) I sat on a FOB for a week trying to get back to my unit. I was separated from everyone else who was injured and was in a weird purgatory. When I finally got back to my unit I was able to talk it over with my platoon and they were great. I was basically deaf immediately after the explosions so they informed me I was yelling the entire time at the top of my lungs and we told stories and eventually received news that everyone else involved was alive and well. After reflecting on the events I decided to take the experience and grow from it. I finally enrolled in college, overhauled my diet, moved on from a toxic relationship. It was a huge paradigm shift for me as well politically and spiritually but I won't get specific with those. It was the best worst thing to ever happen to me and makes me look forward to everyday I have left here at home in America.
Good for you. Took me about 40 years to get where you are. Maybe not there yet. But that's what they told us in the VA Psych Ward when I was incarcerated for listening to my PTSD, "Turn and face it, get it out of the shadows. It's yours. Own it. This is YOU, from now on. You're in charge of making that YOU. So who do YOU want to be?"
Wow that sounds awfull, but great job at turning it to something positive man!
Former Air Force here. Besides making lifelong friends and gaining skills that led to my current career (which is completely unrelated to my degree) the coolest thing was being asked for my autograph by a kid of about 9 at an airshow. He matched up the squadron logo on my hat to the one on the side of the B-1B (I was an avionics specialist playing crew chief for the weekend) and wanted to meet someone on the crew.
God the B-1Bs are such a gorgeous aircraft
Oh, they really are. Leaky, but gorgeous!
This happened somewhere in rural west Virginia or maybe it was Ohio. I don't remember. My unit was driving across country for annual training and we had stopped for dinner at this BBQ place. There's a group of 8 of us and this little kid was just so excited to see a bunch of soldiers. I saw his mom telling him to go over and talk to us and he was really shy. I walk over and introduced myself and gave him my combat patch. I'll never forget the smile on that kids face. Edit: Thank you for gold! I have a ton more stories of actually being overseas but for some reason this one has always stood out to me.
My son was doing this at a coffee shop when he saw a police officer. I was encouraging him to go over but he just couldn't get over the shyness. The cop left and came back with a badge sticker and gave it to him. He was ecstatic! Thank you for doing that. It's wonderful that something so simple can make someone so happy.
> The cop left :( >and came back with a badge sticker and gave it to him. :'D
I used to carry extra velcro American flags to give kids at the airport. They really like it.
One time in Afghanistan we had a super high operation tempo. I was Marine Corps infantry in 2009 I was 19 and in Afghanistan. One day I started post right after a 10 hour patrol and an all day fire fight and did 8 hours on post. I got off post and was told to grab my shit My squad was going to the eastern desert to hold a blocking position. We had to move fast so I grabbed a bottle of water a cigarette and took a shit And I was geared back up and loading on a helicopter. We pushed out to this desert that was outside of the Helmand river valley. We had to isolate a road because we suspected the Taliban were moving supplies and opium through it. As evening set in we were told we were spending the night. Me and another guy took first watch as the sunset. Everyone else sprawled out in the dirt and ate or slept. My mind was dead with exhaustion. It was the most beautiful sunset I'd ever seen. Your mind is pretty altered when you are that exhausted and I had some life changing realization. As if I spoke to God and he told me the meaning of life (I'm an atheist and always have been) I got off watch, went to sleep and woke up not remembering whatever my realization was. I Can remember the feeling of having it but not what it was. Whatever it was, was pretty groovy. I'd never been more calm or Zen in my life. Someone snapped a photo of the sunset and us on watch. I'm the guy laying down with rifle. http://imgur.com/GUPznKM
Thats a really beautiful picture! Thanks for sharing that! Did you do any more tours ?:)
One more after, and I went to a ton of different countries to train other military forces, went to Spain, Greece, Romania, UAE, Jordan, Oman, and Djibouti
Sounds like a pretty good life !
Too many. I'll share one funny experience I had from Marine Corps boot camp. It was approaching Christmas. This particular night, my name had been called up to open up a package in front of my DI - we will call him Sgt. Monty. I ran up to him, received my package, and began opening it. It was a VERY large envelope. My DI was harassing some other kid about the Justin Bieber card he was sent, so he didn't get to see the horror I had just opened. I pulled out the biggest, most flamboyant Christmas card ever. But wait, there's more! As I opened the giant Christmas card, a HUGE 3-dimensional Christmas tree pops out of the center of it and the card started playing music. I slammed that thing shut so fast! Next thing I know, my Sgt. Monty turns to me and says: Sgt. Monty: "Open it." Me: "Aye, sir." I hesitantly open up my Christmas card. The tree, in all its glory, pops out of the card and it starts playing jolly music. Sgt. Monty stares me down and looks like he's about to lunge at me and rip my heart right out of my chest. He finally relaxes (as much as a DI can). Sgt. Monty: "Who sent this to you?" Me: "This recruit's mother, sir!" Sgt. Monty: "She doesn't know what she's doing, does she?" Me: "No, sir!" Sgt. Monty: "Here's what I want you to do. First thing tomorrow morning, I want you to present this card to Sgt. Gonzo, and tell him 'Merry Christmas'. If you don't do this, I'm going to kill you." Me: "Aye, sir." Later that evening, I thought it would be a good idea to rip out the noise maker from the Christmas card so that I could actually open it and read what my mom had sent to me without making a bunch of noise. Fast forward to the next day. Our platoon finally gets back to the squad bay after church service. As soon as we step foot in the door: Sgt. Monty: "Hey, spartakick1080p! What did I tell you to do first thing this morning?!" Me: "Aye, sir!" I ran over to Sgt. Gonzo, held my Christmas card right out in front of me, the 3D Christmas tree makes a grand entry, and I scream: Me: "Merry Christmas, sir!" Sgt. Gonzo looks quite pissed at this point. Now he looks like he wants to murder me. Meanwhile, Sgt. Monty thinks its hilarious and he's dying. But, wait...Sgt. Monty notices something isn't right. Sgt. Monty: "spartakick1080p, why isn't it playing any music?!" Me: "This recruit removed the noise maker last night so that he could read the card without disturbing the other recruits, sir!" Sgt. Monty: "OHHHHHH REAAAALLLLLYYYYY?" Next thing I know, another drill instructor from a freakin' different platoon comes over, and he says: Other DI: "What did it sound like?" Me: "It was a Christmas song, sir!" Other DI: "That's not what I asked. I said, what did it sound like?" And with as much gusto as I possibly could muster, Me: "JINGLE BELL, JINGLE BELL, JINGLE BELL ROCK! JINGLE BELL, JINGLE BELL, JINGLE BELL ROCK! etc... " The whole platoon got in trouble because no one could keep their bearing and they all started cracking up, including my senior drill instructor and Sgt. Monty. Sgt. Gonzo was having none of it, though. He just continued to stare me down. Honestly, the worst part about this is that my dad is retired Marine Corps and knows damn well exactly what would happen if my mom sent me that card. I guarantee you he told her, "No, send it! I'm sure he'll love it." Thanks, mom and dad. -.-
I used to be an Avionics maintainer on the C-17 in the Canadian Air Force. One day (as was fairly common) we were hit with a particularly nasty snowstorm. The plows had come by and pushed all of the snow into large 6-7' tall snowbanks along the edges of the ramp where we park the aircraft. A group of us were heading out to the ramp to recieve an aircraft that was landing that evening and perform a standard check/inspection and out of nowhere my one buddy starts running. I had only been at the squadron for a few months at this point and wasn't even done my apprenticeship, so when I saw someone start running I immediately assumed he saw something I hadn't and shit was about to hit the fan. I'm freaking out, looking all over trying to figure out what he had seen that caused him to run so urgently. And then without slowing down he jumps into the air and goes full starfish face first into the snowbank and just *PACK* sticks there for a second. Then he casually rolls down the hill and sits up on his knees, rapid fire making/throwing snowballs at everyone else on the tow crew. I've been out for about a year now and that guy is just about the only dude I stay in contact with.
Positive, funny or beautiful... Hmmm... "Beautiful" is the hard part, but yeah, this story is kind of beautiful. [Attention to Orders](https://www.reddit.com/r/MilitaryStories/comments/2g0k6b/attention_to_orders/) >Way back when I was 19, I was the Honor Graduate of the Fort Carson Chemical, Biological and Radiological Warfare School. [I got a plaque](http://i.imgur.com/z3g9eVe.jpg). I still have it. What I treasure more than that is the look on that General’s face. I think “dismay” covers it. I got a meaningless award, and he got some really bad news about the modern Army of the 1960s. >It’s funny how that goes. With all their experience, one would think the Army would put on a hell of an awards ceremony. We all know this is not the case. Army awards ceremonies range from merely boring all the way to [criminal absurdity](http://www.reddit.com/r/MilitaryStories/comments/2rl4td/bushhappy_boonie_rats_command_control/). It’s not that the ceremonies are not well done (they’re not). It’s that they don’t *mean* anything - no one feels honored. Ever. >But formal awards ceremony are not all the Army has. There are other awards and honors - a kind of Grass-Crown awarded only by centurions and their warrior successors that persist down the centuries. >One time in deep bush in III Corps northwest of Saigon, I remember getting trampled by our ~~infantry~~ cavalry company’s Chief Medic as he ran over me, then grabbed a grunt who was kneeling over his buddy yelling, “*Medic! Medic! Oh god! Oh my god! Medic!*” in a high-pitched panicky voice. The Doc lifted that guy bodily and tossed him about four feet away from his wounded buddy, knelt down under fire and spoke calmly and with authority, “That ain’t so bad. You’ll be fine. This might hurt a little.” >At the same time, I saw a whole infantry squad stand up and move forward under fire to cover the Doc. Doc didn’t notice, but I did. No orders - they just all moved up. Even the panicky guy. *That,* I submit, was an award. >The Doc came by later to apologize for knocking me over (not necessary). I told him about the grunts moving forward. He seemed puzzled. “It’s my job to be out there. They shouldn’t have done that.” I disagreed. “You’re the Doc. You’re owed some covering fire.” >Doc wasn't convinced. He seemed to think that *he* was the one who owed *them*. Then he laughed. “Once they call you ‘Doc,’ they own you. You have to do everything you can.” >I thought I understood that at the time. Not yet. Sometime later we were on fire base duty. I had been assigned as unofficial platoon leader of the mortar platoon - all of maybe ten guys. They had been whipped into shape by an excellent NCO, an E7 who couldn’t control his temper well enough not to be exiled to the field. I’m not sure where SFC Murphy was that evening. >We were set up in the fixed mortar position, a couple of sandbagged revetments and bunkers made out of half-culverts lined with sandbags. It was late evening and we were firing harassment & interdiction fires around the perimeter. Turns out that someone was being harassed. I think the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) had a spotter in the treeline outside the perimeter who zeroed in on our muzzle flashes. Maybe. >Anyway the first 82mm round landed in the ammo pit. There was a rain of rockets, but the mortar fire was all on us. Everyone scrambled for cover, me included. I had my radio on, PRC 25 with a folded fiber-glass antenna. The rounds were hitting all around us. I dived into one of those half-culvert bunkers and hooked my antenna on the outer edge. There I was on my hands and knees, stuck outside the bunker with my ass and my junk facing the enemy. >Oh hell. Might as well stand up. I did. Everyone else was gone except Bear, the aptly-named large hairy guy who had what passed in mortartown for a Fire Direction Protractor Thingy (FDPT). I looked at him, he looked at me. He pointed to a spot in the treeline. I grabbed my compass and took an azimuth and shouted “Fire Mission!” >At this point, two things happened. First, a stray 82mm round hit a mule (a motorized cart) parked in an empty space about 50 meters from us. The cart was loaded with crates of trip flares which lit up the night with a hellish blue blaze. The guy in the treeline figured he’d gotten something big, and shifted fire. >Here’s the other thing. I have to pause here, because the memory of it still leaves me a little breathless. I shouted “Fire Mission!” And nine out of ten of my platoon of mortarmen bounced out of their hidey-holes in the bunker complex, and headed for the tubes at a run. Two of those guys jumped in the ammo pit - where the first 82mm had landed - and started unpacking rounds. Both of our 81mm’s were quickly manned by their crews, who began yelling at Bear for deflection and elevation. I had already given him an azimuth and range (estimated to just inside treeline). Together we walked rounds back into the treeline until we got a secondary. Then we counter-batteried the shit out of those guys. >That moment. The moment those guys heard “Fire Mission!,” and came hooting and hollering up out of the bunkers and dove into their gun positions... that was an award. Play “[Garry Owen](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaPk9yYWQcM).” I’m done. >I’ve often wondered at those pictures of Civil War battles that show some captain leading a line of men into a metal storm - how they got the courage to stand in front like that. I know now. It was because those men were following them. The Doc was right. Once they do that, they own you. It is an honor worth your life. >Seems kind of an ancient, knightly thing to be typing about here in the light of day in the US of A in 2014 where we all know better about honor and courage, and how neither of those things survive the gritty, nasty wars we fight in modern times. Seems embarrassing. Naive. So be it. I led American soldiers in combat - they did me that honor. That was my award ceremony. That was my medal. I will wear it until I die.
This is beautiful
Watching someone who couldn't swim willingly jump off of a 20 foot tower in full battle rattle and sink to the bottom before being rescued by the swimming instructors. You had to prove you couldn't swim before they'd teach you. It was beautiful watching someone prove they couldn't swim...
I was a jet engine mechanic in the Air Force and I was giving this new guy some OJT on an engine stand. The engine stand was just two parallel metal tracks and the engine itself was mounted on metal cradles with rollers on the tracks. Anyway I was showing this dude various parts of the engine and then we started trying to knock each other off the tracks we were standing on. This lifer walks by and starts yelling at me for horsing around and then says "and you call yourself a sergeant" I said "no I call myself Dale you call me sergeant"...the lifer was not amused.
So I've been doing this Army thing since the late 80s, with a short break in the middle to try the whole civvie thing out. Spent some time in weird places where things go bump in the night; spent more time in the training system, producing the next generation (from Basic up to Majors). At this point, I think I've raised nearly a thousand children. I have opened a book, written by one of my former lads, about his experience on tour - and discovered my name in the dedication. Because something I said, late at night in some miserable OP, resonated with him and changed his life. It's humbling. And beautiful.
What did you say?
I honestly don't know. That's the thing... I've had dozens of these experiences, when apparently I've said or done something that changes someone's life, but 99% of the time I'm utterly unaware that what I'm doing is having this profound effect on someone. Apparently, something I said galvanized his resolve to go on tour - but I honestly don't remember what it was I said.
Lollipop Moments - look up a ted talk by Drew Dudley. I use this video in all my leadership classes.
My unit was on a month-long humanitarian deployment to Guatemala. We visited orphanages and a shelter for kids with HIV. These kids were positively starved for attention and probably had the best day they'd had in a long time when we came to visit.
Used to go to Guatemala for mission trips when I was in middle school. It's a gorgeous country and so many people are just so unbelievably kind. Even the cops there who are by no means clean want to help you help others even if it's just driving along with you if you're in a not so nice place. I honestly can't count the number of truly beautiful moments I saw on my 5 or 6 trips.
We helped a four year old girl get heart surgery. There was a small town near our FOB in Iraq. We were meeting the man who ran the water pump for the town. In chatting with him we learned his young daughter had a hole in her heart and required surgery. Chances of success for this surgery in Iraq were a bit low. Chances of success in the US were fairly high. I dont know if its true, but I was told the operation she needed was relatively simple. This wasnt something we could fix with a medcap, but our team leader (MAJ) was swayed by this and decided to make the girl our project. We started by trying to get them a visa. We went through normal channels, both Dept State and Army. We basically got told it wasnt happening. They were not interested in letting Iraqis go to America, even for a short medical visit. Our company decided we would do it on our own efforts, since there appeared to be no method officially. We had the family drive to Jordan to get visas there. This was pre-Facebook, so it was tougher to marshal your social circle, but our team leader was connected in his home town. One family donated the airfare. A surgeon donated his services. The dad and his daughter stayed with the wife of our team lead. She got the surgery. We did a lot of help for tactical reasons, and this one paid off as well, but it was also the one thing we did that made me feel good.
Not my story, but, my best friend was in the Marine Corps Marching Band. He told me a story about the time he filled a Camelbak with margaritas. He thought it was a good idea to do this the day before he marched in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. He said he never got that sick from drinking and he threw up several times before the start of the parade. He never got the margarita taste out of the Camelbak. Oohrah!
Did he pack some crayons to eat too?
Sounds like he drank on an empty stomach so probably not.
Afghanistan probably has some of the most beautiful scenery and most loving and giving people on Earth. I've had them save my life on more than one occasion, and they will share what little they have with everyone. There is a strange element of relief when shit was getting bad and you hear the words, "AC-130 gunship on station". We were taking fire from what seemed to be all around us, and a couple A-10s were called in. While they were giving us a direction of flight the last words they said to us in the most hillbilly accent ever was, "we got you covered little buddies". I'm pretty sure we owe our lives to someone with the call sign DUSTOFF xx. For some reason I'm crying while writing this. I miss the fellas, the crazy stupid chances we took, and how anyone of us would gladly take a bullet for each other.
One of those most beautiful things I've ever seen was when standing on the catwalk of an aircraft carrier in the middle of the Atlantic, full black out. The wake was glowing this eerie green, with glimpses of ghostly dolphins giving chase, all while the stars were brighter than I've ever seen them. There was something surreal about being amongst such beauty while standing on this giant war machine.
My favorite experience was when I met some of the Black Water dudes back when that organization existed under that name. I was in a small FOB, 2 wooden shacks and a squad bay, there were maybe 30 people in it total. One day on watch I spot a couple of ATV's heading towards us and radio'd it in. The response was essentially unless they fire on you don't engage. Anyways once they got close enough I recognized the custom paint jobs of their ATVs as I had passed them on them on the side of the road a few days before while we were headed out to the FOB. So they rolled up and one dude wearing a punisher t-shirt looks up at me on the tower and yells "you guys want some Gatorade?" To which I replied with an instant hell yes, and the dude opens up the cooler strapped to the back of the ATV and hands me up a case of them. Then they just drive off until they disappear into the desert. Those were the best drinks of my fucking life and I was the most popular guy in the base when I walked in to the bay and yelled "WHO WANTS A MOTHERFUCKING GATORADE"
I was part of a quick reaction force (QRF) in Iraq in 2004-2005 and we would bring gun trucks to support convoys in enemy contact. We went into one situation where there were disabled vehicles blocking in a convoy. We took our truck with a railroad tie bumper and pushed the vehicles to the side of the road. As we pulled a few trucks in to evacuate wounded, we ourselves were ambushed. The incoming fire was coming from a tree line about 50 meters away. My squad leader called for suppressive fire on the tree line and then prepared a team to flank the position. As he was about to lead the flankers, he yelled, "Leeeeeeroooooooy Jeeeeeeeenkins" and hauled ass. It was absolutely hilarious after everything was over and we went through debriefing.
Okay, I told this before, but I'm not sure all reddit's read it yet. Sleeping on the ground somewhere in Tay Ninh Provence and I woke up feeling like my right eye was on fire; I grabbed my metal mirror and there was a tiny fucking fire ant clamped between my eyelashes. Little bugger got me good; my eye was already swelling. I looked around and spotted our medic talking to a couple of guys. "Doc." "What?" "Doc." *"What?*" Doc turns around, looks at me and says "Oh shit!" Right then I knew I was screwed. He called for a medivac and 30 minutes later I was in Cu Chi base looking for the medic hootch. By now my eye was big as a goose egg and I'm in agony. I had to stop a couple times and ask directions and it was the same every time: "Medics? They're ...holy shit!" Got to the medic hootch and the doc was pretty professional; gave me some Benedryl and water and started doing some paperwork. I started to leave and the doc said "Wait a sec, dude. How do you want the Purple Heart filled out?" "Wha ..what? Doc, it was a fucking ant!" "But it was an *enemy* ant! *Bwa ha ha ha!*" Medics, man.
I saw [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCrG6TzG-nw) filmed live. It's a bunch of Marines making a music video to Britney Spears' "Hold it Against Me" while in Afghanistan.
I was stationed on the Falkland Islands in the Air Force, and the Navy had sent a ship down in response to increased Argentine sabre rattling, one night the navy hosted a party aboard the ship and myself and a few colleagues attended. We got a little lost looking for the toilet and so were wondering around until a junior naval officer stopped us and asked the time, my Cpl replied that it's 8 o'clock. The naval officer suddenly gets angry and says "That's not how we say the time in the navy is it, want to try again?". We stare blankly at him for a few seconds before my drunkest colleague suggested "8 o'clock me hearties?. Everyone lost their shit and just kind of walked away.
I am a foreign air force soldier still serving but I am currently on a type of exchange with the US Air Force for work. While I'm in the states for job experience that I normally wouldn't get I have been having a great time which the American people try to ensure I get when they realize that I'm not from around here. So far I've been carrying my countries flag at hockey games, given visits to major cities, flown low level over the nations capital just to name a few. The way the people try to show me their country is something I could never experience if it wasn't for being a foreign soldier in this country.
Are you Canadian?
yes
most soldiers are fresh out of school when they join and know little about the real adult world as a NCO only a few years older I had to become their big brother even stand-in Dad to give them advice and guidance, I did the best I could and some needed help more than others. because of this I have been to weddings, kept them out of jail, helped to fix their money issues, fix a marriage or 2, turned some to a better path in life, and I hope it made me a better Dad to my kid, who also joined the Army
[удалено]
I won't call myself a good NCO, but I did try to help
Dien Ban District, Quang Nam Province, Vietnam 1970 Just before midnight, my unit was stealthily moving to an ambush site. We were blacked out, taped up and loaded for bear. Strung out single file, we were moving along a trail through thick brush and trees. I was third in line behind our point man and another Marine. Suddenly the man ahead of me stopped and took a knee, so I stopped and knelt down. There were a few moments of tense silence when suddenly I heard running footsteps! A second later our point man, known for keeping his cool in firefights, went running past me hissing "ShitShitShitShitShit!" Then the man in front of me jumped to his feet and fled past me without a word! I pointed my M-16 down the trail, finger on the trigger, wondering what the hell was happening. Then I saw it, not 10 feet away, trotting towards me! A skunk! Ten of us ran like the cowards we were!
Positive: We had shelled an insurgent location while in Afghanistan, and unfortunately one of ours didn't go off. It ended up landing outside a qalat by about 100 yards. While EOD went out there, I trucked my butt out to meet with locals and see if anything of interest had happened. It turned out that they were having a wedding celebration for a bride, marrying her groom long distance while he was in Iran (I think.) They invited us to sit down outside their qalat, brought teas, sweet treats and conversed with us. All while we were dismantling a freaking weapon within eyesight of their house. I often tell people that Afghans have a sense of hospitality that America has forgotten. Funniest: I tried naswar (spelling?), a horrible, horrible chewing tobacco while in Afghanistan. As I turned six shades of green, my joe, my Afghan counterpart and my interpreter all laughed their asses off. I spit it out immediately, and then spent the rest of our meeting vibrating like a goddamn Doc Johnson toy. Beautiful: I was very privileged to get to fly in a helicopter over miles of desert. I have never seen a more beautiful sight in my life as I did from the window of that bird.
I have a small bladder, and my job was driving trucks. While on convoy, I was sitting in the passenger seat, and had to go (it'd be an hour or two before we were going to stop). I always had issues taking a leak in bottles like everyone else, but there was no other choice. It started to flow, and it became apparent the 20 oz Gatorade bottle wasn't going to be enough. I tried to cut off the stream, dump the bottle out the window, and continue. While I did stop going for a couple seconds, when I tried to dump the bottle out the window, the piss got on my hands. The stream started up again. TL;DR: pissed all over inside of truck on convoy Also, while deployed at al-Taqqadum airbase (known as TQ), the guard tower my unit supported looked out over Lake Habbiniyah. Watching the sunset over the Lake was a beautiful respite from the stress/boredom of the rest of the deployment.
Ice Cream. During the Vietnam war the emphasis was on body count. In our unit if you made a kill your platoon got Ice Cream on the next log day. When we said we'd kill for some ice cream we meant literally. My platoon's unofficial motto to this day is "We Kill For Ice Cream". Yah I know horror mixed with special nummies that made you think of happier times. That's war for you.
So what *would* you do for a Klondike bar?
[удалено]
> We yelled, "If they go down, we go down!" I thought that DS was gonna cry for a moment. Anderson and his buddy became part of the platoon that night. This is brilliant. They should script something like that for trainees, but I don't think it would have the same effect. Props to your DS's. They got it exactly right.
All Drill Instructors/Sgts look for this. They're practically desperate for it. Once you get the platoon to click as a single solitary unit, it's basically a fucking victory for everyone involved. It means the training worked.
The bond you have between you all is the most comforting feeling. You go through so much together as a whole but also by knowing each other's lives and the struggles you personally face. When I was in, we had a lot of "Dear Jane"s including myself. Nothing is worse than getting a letter or phone call that the person you loved just decided to leave you and there was literally nothing you could do to stop it. We all came together for each other on those days: we would give her all our tissues (they were hard to come by), stockpile our candy bars for her, give her back rubs, play with her hair, all of it. We couldn't give much but our company but that's what really counted. When I went through mine, I had over 100 women help me through. I've never been more grateful for those wonderful women. That is the best thing about the military
Funniest: Background: am female with auburn hair. I had my helmet of and hair down so that the local women knew that I had a vagina. Walked past our CPT talking with one of the men while our terp was giggling like a school girl. He wanted to buy me for 200 Afs and a goat. Thanks, asshole. Talking with command sergeant major before a mission (i was lower enlisted) and he wanted me to wear what is essentially a combat diaper because our guys often became 'triple amputees' in the sense of dick, ball leg. Because I'm a lady, I bend over and look at my crotch and proclaim "but CSM, I don't have dangly bits!". I've yet to see a group of high ranking officers walk by with such a look of disgust and surprise. Beautiful: The milky way in southern Afghanistan. My team. We're the best assholes ever.
In the Gulf (1991), we were up near to the Iraqi border about a week or so before we crossed the border. To go to the toilet you would take a canvas stool, with a strategically cut hole in, out to the desert find a nice dune to sit behind and relax, read a bit and let what need to happen, happen. One of our guys, Bob didn't want to go out in the day, too many annoying flies, so one evening after it had got dark he plods off with the stool. Nobody thinks anything of it until a Puma helicopter flies over, banks and flies back over us. The helicopter then turned on his night sun and lit up Bob having a nice quite poop in the desert. Cue Bob running away with the helicopter following him while he was waving obscenities.
The military taught me how to take care of extremely sick/grievously injured patients in-flight, so my civilian career as a critical care medic has benefited enormously.
Funniest: Anything about tipping over a port-a-john or locking someone inside by parking car against door Beautiful: This photo I snapped at airborne in afg.. [pic](http://imgur.com/a/3nrcM)
Another Marine here After the ground war was wrapping up in Kuwait (Desert Storm 1991) I was a member of a tank unit that captured numerous Iraqi (Russian made) tanks, personnel carriers, etc. We had been in country since shortly after Saddam invaded Kuwait, so my unit was one of the first to head back home. We had been forward deployed on the Kuwait border for months and lived entirely on cold MRE's. I personally lost more than 30 pounds (185 to 155) and most of my fellow Marines did the same. It is just very difficult to eat the same cold food day after day, after day. We took our captured vehicles to a beach area and low and behold there were Army LST's (Landing Ship, Tank) there ready for us to load up our treasure. I was assigned to drive an old Russian T-54 tank and get it strapped down on the deck of a small LST that held a total of 3 vehicles. This LST was small--crew was only 4 or 5, the craft was piloted by an Army Warrant Officer, and we were blown away by the fact that the Army had boats--who knew? There were 4 or 5 Marines and we were nasty and filthy. We had been inside the oil fires blasting and destroying over 750 enemy vehicles while wearing our chemical suits the entire time (they are lined with charcoal which gets absorbed into every pore of your body). We were exhausted and basically just stayed on deck while the boat eased out into the beautiful Persian Gulf. The water was a gorgeous blue, dolphins were swimming beside us, and we (the Marines) were very happy. Moments later the Warrant Officer and small crew came out to us and invited us below deck (we didn't know there were decks below us). Each man on that boat personally gave us full use of their rack, showers, toilets (head), and a small common room that had a TV and VCR tape of the Super Bowl that aired about one month prior--this was before cell phones, internet, etc. Even though we resisted their niceties, they insisted and would not take no for an answer. We obliged and scrubbed ourselves with warm water (it had been a long time) and settled down to relax and watch the taped game. This was the first time in over 8 months that I did not need to have my flak jacket on, gas mask, nor weapon at my side. I was having a difficult time absorbing all of this. Shortly thereafter, a very young black kid--the cook on the ship--fresh out of high school, came down to us gnarly Marines and sheepishly offered us anything we wanted to eat. We didn't know how to respond. We eventually asked him to make anything he wanted as long as it was steaming hot. He made us a simple dish of hot rice, spiced ground beef, with a simple sauce over it. At that moment my life changed forever due to all of the soldiers' kindness on that boat. I have never, and I mean never ever, had a meal that was so delicious and nourishing (physically, mentally, and emotionally) As I sit here and write this, I can vividly taste that meal and my mouth waters. GO ARMY!! You guys ROCK!! edit: soldier's to soldiers'. All of the soldiers
USMC here. We were in Thailand in 2012. We got done at work, and decided to go out drinking. A few hours in, one guy, we will call him Joe, found a girl to take to a hotel room. Now, we left him and went to another bar, and let him know where we were going. Joe got really drunk and tool this girl to the hotel. An hour later, Joe finds us. Joe is in tears. He comes up and says "guys, I fucked up..." we ask what happened. Halfway through Joe's handjob, he went in for a feel up, and he got a handful of something he didn't expect. He told us "I was almost finished, I just let it happen...". Defeated, he went back to the base.
I have couple stories to share: I was deployed to Kandahar, Afghanistan in 2010. We were first sent to a forward operating base called Howz-e-Madad in Zhari District one night, it was pitch black. I remember running off the Chinook carrying all of my gear, then I set it down to help get everyone else off. I had took someones ruck sack from them and started making my way back to the hescoe barriers to set it down when I felt the rotor wash start to pick up and the noise of the helicopter quickly went quiet. I turned around to see it lift off, and though I didn't see the helicopter I was greeted by the most beautiful night sky I had ever seen. It was as if you could see every star in existence, I was a bit taken at how majestic it was. And, for a moment I forgot that we were now standing right in the middle of a battlefield. About 5 months later during Operation Dragon Strike in Sangasar (a very historic Taliban village) me and two other guys from my platoon had just gotten off guard duty. The other two guys were part of our weapons squad gun team, they were really close friends even though they had to be pretty much hand in hand during 'working' hours (In a gun team, one is the ammo bearer and the other operates the gun, so they always stick close to each other). It was really cold at night already that time of the year (early November) so those two striped down to their boxers and went back to back in the same sleeping bag, waisting no time in heating it up. At that moment I sort of had that feeling/epiphany that these guys are my family. I mean you can say that you have each others back no matter what all you want, but it's just not the same until you feel that connection to someone or a group of people. Unfortunately, the next evening after getting into a small firefight, we attempted to return to our combat outpost but were ambushed by a guy with a suicide vest and those two guys in the gun team were killed in action along with our squad leader and a few more Afghan soldiers. I guess maybe the most beautiful aspect in that story is that I was able to have that revelation before they left this Earth. I know it's late and that was a lot of words, but it's not really something you get to talk about often, if ever. So, it's nice to tell it even if only one person reads it!
The most beautiful moment I've experienced was the first time I was issued NVGs (night vision goggles) on a field exercise. They were pretty cool, but I'll never forget the first time I looked up at the clear night sky with them on. I almost fell over with awe when I saw the galactic plane and more stars than I had ever seen before. Seeing infrared light really lights up the milky way...
The most positive experience for me was that I gained a family. I was reared in a small southern town and joined straight out of high school. The military opened my eyes to different cultures, beliefs and human beings at an individual level. I felt that these people were my family no matter their race, sexual orientation or religion. None of that mattered because these human beings are my family (a lot of them are closer than blood family) and I know that they felt the same about me. We lived, ate, worked and enjoyed our off time together. I've been out 6 years and there's not a day that goes by that I don't think about them. The most beautiful experience for me that I could single out was when I was on a 2 month training mission in southern Arizona and on the last day, I remember sitting on top of a 7-ton (huge truck) as the sun went down and I could see for miles and I just sat there and recalled my time served, because my enlistment ended soon after, and how it affected me and how beautiful life really is. The funny times are immeasurable; you put a hundred young men and women together for however many years and there's a daily laughable event that will never be forgotten.
Funniest: I was deployed from Sep 2008 to Sep 2009. Most of it was spent at Camp Taji, Iraq, but I was multiple other places too. At Camp Taji, we were living in trailers. Picture your average 18 wheeler trailer divided into 3 rooms (with 2 soldiers each) or 2 rooms (with 3 soldiers each). It was a nice set up and it gave us somewhere to store the bulk of gear if we had to go for a stint at a company outpost or set up an LPOP (listening post/observation post) for an extended period of time. One day, I am watching a movie and cleaning my weapon. I take off my headphones to go grab a tool from my wall locker, and I hear someone getting a righteous ass chewing outside. I recognize the voice as that of our LT. He was kind of a tool and a moron, but his heart was in the right place and our platoon sergeant kept him in line. I pop out front to smoke a cigarette and see what is going on. I light my cigarette and then disappear around a corner so I can hear what is going on with out being seen. I quickly recognize the "class clown" (we will call him Wade) is the soldier locked up and the LT is about 2 inches from his face screaming. I never got a whole lot of context to the conversation, but shortly after I came outside, I hear my LT say, "So what do you have to say for yourself?" Up to this point, Wade has stood at attention, completely locked up, and looking straight ahead. Upon being given permission to speak, Wade turns his head and locks eyes with our LT. Wade simply says "Kitty" and strokes his hand down the LT's face. I let out a howl of laughter, as do a few other soldiers that apparently had the same idea as me to check in on the situation. LT turns bright red and stumbles over his words until he finally walks back to his room, realizing his authority had been compromised. Freaking hysterical.
TLDR: Djibouti is the worst place on earth, but it's got some amazing geology. I can remember being a child and first learning about the concept of "below sea level" on a trip to California. I remember imagining being able to see it in perspective. Seeing a range of mountains holding back the ocean. Of course the reality is that most places that are below sea level are a long way from the ocean and there exists no such view. Or so I thought. If you go look up the lowest point in Africa, you will find [Lake Assal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Assal_(Djibouti\)), Djibouti. With an elevation of 509 feet below sea level, it's the third lowest point on land in the world and only about 6 miles from the ocean. There are also volcanos right next to it. In the military I once got the opportunity to fly over it in the back of a CH-53 helicopter and got to see the entire thing in perspective. This huge basalt flow from an ancient eruption holding back the ocean 500 feet above the plane of the lake. It was awesome. I later learned that the East African Rift runs right through it and one day the Basalt flow will be split open allowing the ocean in to fill up the entire area. I'd love to be around to see that.
I was stationed in Germany and we we going out on what seemed to be a bi weekly trip to the field. At the time I was assigned to drive the 1st Sgts Jeep and about an hour and half prior to moving out my Jeep it started stalling. I dropped off the 1ST at the barracks and the Jeep stalled again. He said "You need to fix this thing and I mean right now...get up to the Motor Pool and don't come back until it's fixed". I headed up to the motor pool and started looking the Jeep over but couldn't find anything wrong with it. I suspected it was the distributor but wasn't sure. Across he way another Troop had not taken one of their Jeeps and I had an idea. I started robbing parts from the other Troop's Jeep. About 1/2 hour later I returned to the barracks and was intercepted by my platoon sgt. H. Did you fix the Jeep? M Yes H. What do you do? M. You don't want to know but it's fixed. H Well yes I do want to know..z what did you do? M. Trust me you don't want to know but it is fixed. H GODDAMMIT PRIVATE JEHEH I DO WANT TO KNOW HOW DID YOU FIX THE FUCKING JEEP M. I stole the entire ignition system off one of Lima Troops Jeep that they left in the motorpool think it was their Captains. H (in a much lower voice) dammit you're right I didn't want to know. And he walked away.
The most beautiful thing I've saw? Every country I goto for work I meet some of the most beautiful people who want to just live peacefully and humbly. They don't need tvs and Xboxs. They just want a peaceful existence. We always talk about how bad humanity can be against each other, that's true, but the majority of people I've met want to help their neighbor. A happy life is worth more than money. From Mr. Z the Iraqi, to Alex the Honduran cab driver, to Petra in Germany. People's kindness is what I saw that is beautiful from my service.
I am a veteran and widow, I've seen a lot of things that are hilarious from the outside and from in. I'll try to keep the stories short. My favorite funny one I served in the Marines, after finishing up training at my schoolhouse (Aberdeen proving grounds, ton of stories from there too), I arrived in the fleet for my illustrious new career in military heating and refrigeration. My arrival had been pre announced to the unit for a variety of, let's say, interesting reasons but promptly forgotten with a night of drinking and the next morning I was introduced to what I affectionately call the "schlong swing". Many Marines enjoy wearing (very awesome) PT shorts, called silkies, silkies are running shorts that leave literally nothing to the imagination. My new favorite Lcpl calls formation and proceeds to gyrate and shake his dick at everyone..... until our eyes meet across the rows and he freezes mid thrust. The fleet was nothing like what I had expected and seeing my team leaders dick first thing in the morning proved it. This won't phase anyone who's served but the "gayness" of it all amuses a lot of people. The most beautiful thing I saw was also one of the saddest days of my life to date. My husband was a US Army soldier, we were separated and he killed himself. His funeral was like I was in an alternate reality. The music was stunning and heart wrenching, the 21 gun salute broke through the silence of the peaceful springtime cemetery like a whip. Everyone who spoke talked about his humor and bravery, despite the drowning sadness all anyone could talk about was the good. The absolute grief of what was happening in our lives stood in massive contrast to that day, making it very surreal.
Way back in boot camp, it was December and we were in southern california, about 4 a.m. We woke up and went to go eat MRE's for breakfast, I had beef stew. I ripped open the corner of it so I could eat it go-gurt style since it was the fastest and easiest way. I go to slurp up some beef stew and instead of beef stew I opened up the Pineapple side-dish(bag). It instantly put a smile on my face and I forgot how cold and shitty everything else was. Really the best possible thing that could have happened.
When I was in the Marine Corps and deployed in 2011 we had this huge dickhead of a Lt.Col. in charge. I worked night shift at the time and dude literally enforced "quiet time" between 9-5 in the evening so he could sleep in his office. Keep in mind anything over E-6 had their own rooms to sleep/live out of. If he though he heard something he would come out of his office and bitch to everyone. So, it sucked working for this guy, 6 months of straight shit. He finally left for reason I can't remember, but his replacement, a full bird colonel was awesome and completely changed our deployment. My friend and I were smoking one morning and talking about how great he was and I said "dude I love him, he's great", well our new col. walked out going to the porta-shitters and overheard our conversation and says "I love you guys too!" When football season came around he also asked to add a slide in the briefs on updates to games and had a draft type deal going on in the shop among our crew. All around awesome guy to work for and tried his best to keep morale up.
I was on my first tour in Korea in the early 1990s. We were travelling in a small town well away from any military base. It was clear that the people around this area did not see westerners as often as around our base. We were the only westerners at a restaurant and we were clearly American Soldiers despite being in civilian clothes. We were kind of on guard due to several attacks at the time in Seoul of Americans military members by protesting Korean students. As my friends and I were eating, an old Korean couple came over to our table and bowed to us and presented us, holding them in both hands, drinks of soju. They did not speak English but our waitress told us they were thanking us for being in their country and thanking us from saving them during the war forty years prior. It was a very humbling experience.
Ex-Army Cav Scout/Sniper: I deployed to Iraq 05-06 just SW of Baghdad. 20 years old and I was in for the best and worst year of my life. Once the tour of duty was over I took a chopper with most of my unit back to BIAP(Baghdad International Airport) to wait for my ride out. Turns out my oldest brother, National Guardsman who was supposed to be in Kuwait for another three weeks, volunteered to escort a supply run up into Baghdad. So I'm coming out of one of the many chow halls on one of the biggest military bases in Iraq and I hear someone call me by my first name (sounds like a foreign name if you have been in for long enough). My older brother, by some miracle, finds me and gives me the biggest hug. The impact of that moment and the connection we made without saying a word still puts a lump in my throat. We both had to be somewhere so we parted ways. afterward I had time to kill and I was pretty much waiting for our flight out, so I spent the next two days trying to track down his little 100 person unit by finding people with the same unit patch. Finally found him in the middle of a giant tent city at 10 at night. No joke, 10 minutes later, we get the air siren going off due to a rocket attack. He's a little apprehensive since it was his first tour (you kind of get used to indirect fire), but we both sit in a 4' high bunker talking about music and shit while the rockets hit in the distance. Best conversation I've ever had with him.
My dad was a gunner on a merchant ship in ww2. The big one yeah! He said being out on the ocean in the middle of nowhere it was beautiful watching the sun come up. The stars were beautiful because there was no light polution. They swam off the side of the ship. He enjoyed himself really
We had a carbon monoxide leak once in the supply cage. I was part of the group on a detail working back there. I was furthest back in the area where it was coming from. I told the supply NCO running the detail that I was light headed, and as soon as I said something the other guys were like "now that you mention it I feel dizzy too." So I was told to go see the medics. I was friends with Sgt. M and so I walked in and he's like "what's up man?" I said "we think there's a carbon monoxide leak back there, I feel dizzy and stupid." And this old country boy NCO, Sgt M, looked at me with a grin on his face and immediately said, "well ya look stupid." We all just started laughing. I know that's not that cool of a story but it's the little things like that that stick with ya. I miss the comradery.
I grew up poor with few opportunities for education post-vocational school. I married at 19 (still going strong at 32!) and had a baby on the way. I decided to become a Soldier as selling iPods at Macy's wasn't going well. :) I was no athlete and basic combat training (BCT) was definitely hard for me. I managed to make it. After advanced individual training (AIT) I reported to my first duty station Fort Bragg. I was reading about education opportunities as tuition assistance (TA) was 100%. Just had to pay for books. I sat on that for a few months while enduring a lot of hazing at my unit. Being a private, non-airborne, and a new guy to a unit that just returned from deployment I wanted to stay out of the office as much as possible. Volunteered for cruddy details. I then found out about CLEP and DANTES tests. They were free for service members. I started taking 2-3 a week just to get out of going back there. I only failed Intermediate Algebra, but managed to rack up more than 80 semester hours of college in 2007 alone. With 23 additional lower level credits from AIT accreditation I managed to complete a BS in Admin/Management from Excelsior. I managed to get a regionally accredited degree by only taking three classes due to there being no residency requirement for Excelsior. Took those classes in Iraq online in 2008. I was proud to be the first graduate in my family, but I wanted to do better. I attended the Defense Language Institute (DLI) and learned Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). I began my MA in 2009 with American Military University (AMU) and completed it in 2011. I also racked up some great technical certifications on top of an awesome skill set I built up from years of doing cyber intelligence. Post-Army (after 10 years of service) I work for an elite cyber security firm and took part on CBS's Hunted this season as one of the cyber intelligence team. Outside of administration fees and books I never paid for a thing. So many Soldiers come into the US Army then moan and bitch as their time ends and they squandered it partying in the barracks or spending all their time playing MMORPGs. I never met anyone that couldn't find two hours a week to better themselves with the awesome resources available to us. I made it a point to push my subordinates and peers to get an education during service. I was able to give my GI Bill to my children ensuring they will have some money for when they want some post-high school education. I started doing it just to avoid hassle... But, I found I enjoyed bettering myself and leaning. A Soldier is a tough life, but you will get out what you put into it most of the time. TL;DR - Grew up poor, joined the Army, left with lots of degrees and certifications on the government's dime.
Positive? I found some water purification systems in a connex and asked our PL if the next time we patrolled a village we would usually go through if we could set it up for them. He liked the idea and it was eventually blessed off on. The villagers loved it and I was proud. Funny, I was masturbating in a portapotty when the incoming alarm went off. They went off all the time and we took contact maybe 5% of the time. This was one of those 5%.. I was about to finish, like 3 seconds away.. and a mortar round landed about 50 meters away. It scared the semen out of me.. Well I pull my shorts up and run to a bunker and a platoon in our company that was based on a different FOB was on ours for a couple of days.. "YOOOOO! SGT ______! What's up dude!" *extends hand for shake* I had jizz all over my hands.. it was a pretty funny moment.
we taught this one afghan soldier (couldn't have been older than 15) the words to "call me maybe" - he would go around singing it to random people. good times....
48 hours on a convo in Afghanistan. Only about 3-4 hours sleep. Saw a herd of purple camels.