Everyone that I know that has served in the military has a story that they like to tell, their “Now this is no shit” story. I never served so I don’t have one but I’d like to hear yours.
One of the more humiliating things I have seen was when I was at Fort Knox in Basic Training at the end of 1988 and into 1989. We had a guy, Pvt Hartley, whom was considered a “fat body” by the DI’s and was mercilessly dogged for his weight. They made him do all kinds of shit, from extra pushups, taking food off his tray in the mess hall (“you don’t need THIS, fatty!” they’d say) and when we went on road marches in our full kit, he was required to run around the formation (we were in 3m spacing) with his weapon held over his head until he essentially collapsed.
But that’s not the funny part. One day we had a foot locker inspection. In Basic you are not allowed any civilian articles other than a picture or two in your foot locker (don’t know if that’s changed). At any rate, you certainly weren’t allowed civilian clothing in there, and everything in there had to be just so. This is explained to you…presumably everyone knows this.
So anyway, this same guy Hartley, for some unknown reason, had a pair of red bikini briefs in his foot locker. And of course the DI finds them and is like “What in the FUCK is THIS SHIT, Private!?!?!!?”
So then the DI proceeds to call him a faggot and whatnot, then he makes Hartley strip down to nothing and tells him to put on the red bikini briefs (and by this time Hartley’s shame was such that every inch of his skin was just as red as that underwear). And after that (we are all still standing at attention in front of our foot lockers) he tells Hartley to crawl, I swear to God, on his hands and knees down the center of the barracks, while the DI is kicking him in his ample rump calling him homosexual slurs. Jesus…it was funny for awhile because this guy brought it upon himself, but man…talk about humiliating.
Looking back I feel bad for laughing but I was only 18.
Not really a "This is no shit!’ story, but it is one of my favorite to tell.
Baghdad, 2008. We just finished a major operation in the Sadr City area of Baghdad. Seems that every General and reporter in country wanted to take a tour of the area. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, was one of them, so we escorted him around. My job was to man the machine gun on the vehicle and provide security on the ground when we stopped. Also, I had to wear a very large and heavy, radio like device while we were ouside of the vehicles. So here we are, walking around and we get the word to pack it up. Since I have to man the gun in the truck, I have to get in the vehicle first (the vehicle has a door on the back to allow entry). Now, try to picture how one would remove a backpack very quickly, ‘‘throwing’’ the shoulder strap off. Thats what I was doing, 'throwing the left strap off when I felt the very large and inflexable antenna on my radio like device hit somehting. I look to my left and I see my Brigade Commander with a mortified look on his face. I look to my right to see Adm. Mullen. I was just thinking to myself "This guy could make all traces of me dissapear, and I just whipped him in the face. Also, he is a kinda small guy, not some big tough burly guy. Well, cant dwell on what I did, we had to get moving, so I continued to get back in the truck. The whole trip back I kept thinking of the shit I am going to get from my command when we get back to base. Well, back at base, he is getting ready to leave, so I shake his hand and say ‘‘Sir, I am sorry for hitting you’’ and he replies with thanking me and he hands me one of his coins. I reply back with ‘‘at least this will make a good story for the rest of my career’’.
In the Navy we call these “sea stories”, and they universally begin with “This one is no shit…”
This one is no shit. I was onboard the USS Enterprise in the early 1990s while it was in the shipyards for a major overhaul/ nuclear refueling. I was in Duty Section One and a hoseman in the in-port fire party. In English, this meant that every 6th day I was on call to fight any fires or participate in any drills that went down that day.
So one day we’re sitting in the fire party berthing, playing spades as usual, when the 1MC (like a PA system for the ship) starts clanging and the announcement comes:“In port fire party section one - report to the flight deck to repel boarders!”
We’re all saying “Repel boarders? Have we got pirates in Newport News? Do we need cutlasses?” but we go to the flight deck and we’re uncoiling the firehoses over to the edge, and that’s where we see a bunch of Greenpeace activists in their Zodiacs being chased by the shipyard security boats. We charged the hoses and all took turns blasting those dirty sea-hippies into the James River.
I guess they were planning on boarding the ship and unfurling some big banner against nuclear power, but we spoiled their day.
No shit, there I was…
Fort Irwin California, National Training Center.
It was a cold and rainy February. Unusually cold and rainy for the middle of the California desert. I was in Army Aviation at the time. Due to the bad weather we were grounded and just hanging out in our GP medium tents. My tent was just for me and my fellow Aeroscout Observers. A unique bunch. We had the stove going on high to take the chill out of the air.
Just some background. At the time there were two kinds of Army stoves theYukon and the potbelly. For this story it is important to understand that the Yukon has a door on the side, the potbelly opens on the top. We fueled the stove by taking a “fuel sample” from the helicopters and using the JP8. The JP8 was in an upside down 5 gallon fuel can outside of the tent with a line running to the stove.
So anyway… we were sitting around bullshitting but there was obviously something wrong with the stove. It was burning weird and there were soot stalactites forming inside. Unknown to us someone hooked up the waste POL can instead of the fuel can. The waste can had the actual fuel samples. As well as engine oil, hydraulic fluid, brake fluid and anything else someone threw in there.
So the senior guy in the tent keeps looking at the sove. He’s worried. So I start to tell him how we did it in Germany. If the stove got a little dirty we would throw some water in it and the steam would clear it out. We used stoves a lot in Germany. This guy was not too familar because they weren’t used much in Fort Hood. Another Germany guy joined in and said the same thing. What we did not mention was that in Germany we used Yukons. This stove was a potbelly. We weren’t lying. You could open the side door, throw in some water and quickly close the door with no problem. Not so with a stove that opened on top.
We watch this guy stand over the stove. He looks at the mug of water in his hand. He looks at the stove. He opens the stove. He looks at the water. I start pulling my sleeping bag up over my nose. He tosses the water in the stove and is imediately engulfed in a fireball a good 15 feet across. I cover my head out of self preservation and I’m laughing hysterically. I peek out from cover and see him knocked on his ass next to my cot. My buddy is up and patting down the guys smouldering eyebrows. Which sends me into laughter again. Then someone runs in from outside after seeing the huge smoke cloud come out of the stovepipe, “What the fuck happened, someone elect a new pope?” More laughter.
OK so you had to be there. But its more than 20 years later and the picture of him in the fireball is clearer in my head than what happened yesterday.
All my other stories involve large amounts of alcohol.
I have a lot of them from a 23 year career. One of my favorites happened when I was on a detachment to St. Thomas, USVI. We were working up on top of Crown Mountain, and spent our off-time in the town and on the beaches.
So we’re walking down the beach one day carrying a couple of coolers and a hibachi for some relaxing time, when a guy on a blanket spots our short hair and yells “Hey, you guys in the military?” I responded “Yeah, Navy Seabees!” He says “I thought they disbanded you guys after World War II!” Ever quick on my feet, I stopped dead and let the cooler fall to the sand. I stared at him for a few seconds and then whispered “You mean it’s finally over?” Then fell to my knees and began fake sobbing.
I was on a job in an embassy in eastern Europe and had a healthy disrespect for diplomats at that time. The elevators there were Russian built and very rickety. There were signs everywhere that said NO MORE THAN THREE PERSONS AT A TIME IN ELEVATOR.
So I’m going up with two other people and it stops at an interim floor. A couple of FS dweebs are standing there and proceeded to get on. I said “You know this thing is only rated for three people.” One guy gives me and my dirty clothing a withering look and says with a smirk “We’ll take our chances.”
Sure as shit, the elevator lurches a few feet upward and stops dead, with a sickening half-lurch downward. “Motherfuckers,” I’m thinking. One of them says, “well, I guess we’ll be in here for a while.”
So I’m inwardly fuming and I give it about 30 seconds and then start with some heavy breathing, then start in with the darting eyes, and I grab at my shirt collar and say “Man, you know I was in Vietnam and I’ve got a REAL FUCKING PROBLEM WITH SMALL SPACES!!” Everybody is backed up against the wall at this point, and I start laughing. “Nah, just fucking with you.”
No shit, there I was - still the Cold War [about 1986] and I am in line waiting to go in through the main gates of NOB Norfolk. There was one protester yelling at the guards, and he decides to make a run in through the gates. No idea why he would want to break into NOB at 9 in the morning, but as he bolts in, there is a squad of marines doing their morning run just getting to the gate area. They see him and dogpile onto him and hold him until a car from base security shows up and hauls him away in cuffs. Thing of beauty, still brings a tear to my eye 
And no shit, there mrAru was, on the Spadefish coming back from a cruise with an admiral riding along, up from Charleston. A Soviet ‘trawler’ shadowing them back just outside the 3 mile point. As the Ches Bay Bridge-Tunnel comes into view, the admiral gets a wild idea for a prank. Onto the mount goes the barbeque, and up comes a little trickle of burn bags. Oops…one accidently goes into the water, and before the boat could turn to go back and get it, the AGI swoops in to pull it out of the water. Seems the admiral filled that particular burn bag with contents of the porn locker, and some carefully translated pages cranked out on the printer with various obscene and scurrilous wishes towards the soviet crews paternity and offspring … shortly after they have wound down from the little jaunt, word comes down from above they need to stop teasing Ivan … 
What is the AGI?
Capt
Please and Thank you
It stands for Auxiliary, General Intelligence - otherwise known as a spy ship.
We were doing our annual training at Ft. Carson with the Nebraska National Guard. The Oklahoma National Guard had arrived the day before in Tent City. As you know, there’s a bit of a rivalry between Nebraska and Oklahoma.They claimed two out of three shower points. Thus, we had to wait twice as long in line to shower. Some of our guys tried to sneak in to the other showers. The Oklahomans responded by posting guards. We bitched to command, who sent it higher; it turns out that the base commander would have to get involved so, the matter died there.
We were pissed. The shower points were fed by an external tank that was refilled by water trucks. Someone noticed that the guards left when the tanks went dry, leaving the showers unguarded at night. So, we hatched a plan. We got some empty barrels of weapons solvent and some funnels and created makeshift urinals. About forty of us pitched in for several days.
Then towards the end, we got the squad radios and all the Night Vision devices we could lay our hands on. Being Infantry, it was pathetically easy to stage a raid and empty about 60 gallons of urine into the tanks that fed the showers. The real reward was the smug satisfaction as they smirked past our line to our own shower in the morning.
We never got caught, Good Times.
We went on deployment one year with an extra sonar tech on board - his boat was spending a month or two in dry dock, and they sent him along with us so he could get some experience. Don’t remember if it was his idea to volunteer for the deployment, or his boat’s, but he didn’t like us one bit – he was constantly going on about how much better his boat was, his crew, &c. Our sonar girls got fed up with this nonsense, of course, and turned to Radio for help.
And so one day, when I went up to Radio to relieve the watch, Robby met me at the door with a smile on his face and a piece of paper in his hand. The sonar girls had suggested that a message saying this kid was being permanently transferred to us would be a good joke, and Robby had done a bang-up job of it. The message purported to be from Naval Personnel, to us, the kid’s boat, Squadron and other appropriate addressees, and said that the kid’s transfer had been approved, that another ST (fake name and SSN included) was being sent to his boat to replace him, that said ST would be arriving in Honolulu on such-and-such day (fake travel control number provided), and that actual transfer orders for the kid would be forthcoming.
As expected, we went to periscope depth to copy the broadcast during my watch. After we went deep, I routed the boards with the real traffic on them, then went back and got the phony message, stamped it for routing, forged the CO’s, XO’s and others’ initials on it, added it to the board, and went looking for the kid. I found him in the crew’s mess, plopped down across the table from him, handed him the board – open to The Message – and told him to read and initial, and to add a ‘C’ after his initials if he wanted a copy of it for his own records. He asked what it was, and I told him it was approval for his transfer to us. He looked absolutely horrified.
By chance, he had been sitting at the table next to the chiefs’ table when I found him, and both Doc and the chief yeoman (who was really a PN, not a YN, but that’s irrelevant) were sitting there, enjoying their coffee. PNCS pricked up his ears when he heard the word transfer, and said he’d need to see the message. I let the kid finish reading it, made him initial it, ensured he’d marked it for a copy, and then handed the board to PNCS. Then I went around the table, scooted in next to Doc, and whispered to them that it was a fake. PNCS chopped it, marked it for a copy, and handed the board to Doc, who did the same. Both of them cheerfully congratulated the kid on his new status, while I left as quickly as I could.
I somehow managed to get all the way up to Control, well out of the kid’s earshot, before I broke out laughing. The COB was in Control, sitting on the edge of the conn shooting the breeze, and of course wanted to know what was so funny. So I told him the story, and handed him the board to read. He was just finishing when the forward door to Control opened and the kid walked in. The COB didn’t miss a beat; he chopped the message, told me to just throw his copy on his rack, then looked up at the kid and said, “Congratulations – welcome aboard!”
Unfortunately, it was only an hour or so before the sonar chief took pity on the kid and told him the truth…
I’ve got one or two, but:
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My wife reads these boards. So I can continue my current line of work, I have to hold back for the time being, and. . .
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The thread title says ‘were.’ I should probably work on the book deal now so I can get to publishing later.
Tripler
Mmmmm hmmm, good stories.
When I was stationed at Camp Humphries, in South Korea, my unit supervisor asked me if I’d be willing to compete for the “Soldier of the Month” contest. He wasn’t concerned with how well I did but simply wanted our unit to be represented. I agreed, as it was an easy deal. One simply went before a board and answered military type questions. There was a study list, and I figured I’d look it over, memorize what I could, and wing it.
Then a jerk from another unit, a misogynist asshole it there ever was one, asked me “Who put you up for this?” Maybe he was trying to psych me out, as he was his unit’s rep that month.
After that I studied hard. I talked to two other gals in my barracks who’d done it. They helped me study, by pretending to be the board. I’d walk in, salute, sit, and they’d fire away. I really, really worked at it.
Comes the day, and the board interviews. I was the last of seventeen to interview and the only woman. I answered every single thing right, and apparently my military demeanor was up to snuff, because I was told right away I had won. Before I’d come in, the board said, they’d been about to call back two others who were tied, with one error apiece.
One of those two was the mysogynist asshole.
We worked six days on, three days off, and that day was our sixth day. That night a crowd from my unit was at a club, and everyone was buying me drinks, especially my supervisor, The jerk was just a couple tables over, and they wanted to rub in my win. Nobody liked him. Plus my friends thought it was funny, I got quite merry, as I was not much of a drinker. But hey, when it’s on someone else’s tab, why not? I do remember asking folks for the cherries in their drinks!:smack:
And they were giving them to me!
My favorite memory was a trip to a Korean orphanage. The chaplain organized it, and we were told that ordinarily Koreans killed mixed race bastards, but sometimes they were rescued and hopefully adopted out to the US. Of course, the tour was organized to make us horny sailors realize the consequences of our actions, but those guys didnt waste their scarce whoring time on orphanage tours. I went because I hadn’t seen any children in months, and it cheered me up. The only photo I kept from my time in the navy is of me with a bunch of Korean kids playing dogpile on the grownup.
Another story was when we were in the Phillipines at the same time the US had sold Corizon Aquino several armored personnel carriers, so the Communist guerrillas vowed to kill one of us for each apc.
At this time, still finding alternatives to the whole heap of whoring to be had, I was big on renting horses at the Subic Bay Naval Station stables (kept in business for r&r after the horse Marines switched to jeeps). For $5 I could ride up into the jungle all day, stop and swim under waterfalls, etc.
Soon this was stopped due to the death threats, and I was stuck inside the fence. But, if the guerrillas had gotten me, I at least would have had the distinction of being the last US serviceman killed on horseback.
C’mon Tripler. To paraphrase Mitch Hedberg, “I used to be in the military. I still am but I used to be too.”
Nope. I need some plausible deniability so I can deploy again. 
Tripler
Yeah, I have a couple of good ones.
Then there was the time our mechanics were working on the mobile welder on a job site, and the lieutenant happened to drive up in his Jeep and see them. Trying to be one of the boys, he asked them what they were doing, and they told him the engine wouldn’t start. “Sir, do you think you could pull it around the parking lot until it kicks over?” “Sure,” says the LT. We watched him drive in circles for the next five or ten minutes before it dawned on him that a welder doesn’t have a transmission.
In trying to think of my favorite story I realized that in most of them I’m being a jackass. I was described as being “so smart you’re dumb.” I could tell you every piece of a .50 cal from memory, but I lacked common sense.
My unit had to do some dog and pony show for a bunch of bigwigs. My job was to stand by my helicopter, look pretty, and answer any questions.
One Army colonel made it obvious he didn’t think too much about us and he asked my flight engineer why he was a flight engineer and not a pj.
“Well, sir,” said the FE, “I thought about all my strengths and decided that I could do the most good doing this.” A good answer.
He asked me the same thing. “Well sir, I really like to sleep and their job looks really hard.”
Apparently despite being truthful, that wasn’t a good answer.
Oh, a quick one.
My instructor: GODDAMNIT GUNNER! You load ammo like old people fuck!
Me: You mean very sexily?
Instructor:…the hell man?
In March of 1965 I was in medic school at Gunter AFB in Montgomery AL. I had the afternoon off, which was rare during the week.
I was on my way to the BX to get laundry detergent, so I could get a head start on my laundry for the weekend.
A pickup with a bunch of my friends in the back pulled up and asked if I wanted to go with them to a little town about 50 miles away. They said they’d heard that something big was going to happen there. I asked what. No one knew exactly, except it was ending in a march to Montgomery.
I said no. I had laundry to do.
We weren’t supposed to leave the base out of uniform, but everyone did because the locals hated us, especially the women. I’d been into town once and been asked to leave a couple stores. In one, the store owner said, “We don’t care for your kind in here.” You could actually hear the italics.
So, back to the friends with the pickup. They ended up going to Selma and everyone but the driver walked the 50 something miles back to Montgomery.
We were never allowed to be part of any kind of political action, but none of them got caught.
I could have been part of history, but I had to do laundry.
I was with a guy in OSUT with the name Upson Downes. Yes the Drill Sergeants had a lot of fun with that one. My story is after I was done active duty I signed up for the National Guard, I was stunned at the weight of some of my fellow tankers and knew it was above the limits but didn’t really care until a real hot summer training…
100 degree days, gunnery time our company commander insisted all would be well as we sat on the range within a few hours troops were running around the tanks carrying jugs of water. We lost over 50% of our company to heat exhaustion most of us were fine until we exerted ourselves 3-5 soldiers at a time trying to haul out the overweight soldiers who went down inside the tanks. I will always recall fondly the scene when I drove a humvee to the medic camp, troops laying in their underwear with IVs pinned to trees all over the woods.
The aftermath was nasty though as I liked the CO.