Did Pvt Hartley eventually shoot his DI?
I got a couple of them . They got eaten last time I hit “post”.
- Regiment decided it’d be good for morale if we got to choose a name for our Firebase. Since we were the 7th Cav (Garry Owen!) we voted for FB Little Big Horn. That lasted for a week before we were told to try again. FB Dien Bien Phu II lasted a week and a half. FB Balaclava lasted a month and a half before wiser (and more senior) Regimental heads declared that we were Firebase Ultimate Victory. I think they could hear us crying “You’ve got to be effing shitting me!” all the way to Saigon.
B. I was in my hooch one morning trying to sleep off the previous night’s perimeter security watch. A trio of clowns with a lot more enthusiasm than skill were playing basketball near the entrance of my hooch. The third time the damned ball came bouncing down the steps to where I was sleeping, I decided merely grumbling at them wasn’t working. So I climbed out of there to address the issue with them. I’m wearing issue army green boxers, my feet are stuffed into jungle boots (untied), there’s a web belt with a holstered .45 around my waist, I’m wearing my helmet, and I’m shooting them the absolute MEANEST pissed off SGT look I can muster up. One of them finally screwed up the courage to try a weak smile and called “Shoot the ball, Sarge!”. Oh, I hated being called that word. So I dropped that damned basketball, let it roll towards them as I pulled my .45, shot the damned thing, turned around, and descended back into the depths of my hooch.
The one where someone tosses a dummy grenade through the window of a mess hall. Is that an urban legend or has it been documented as happening?
I thought about this a lot before posting. Does it count if it was a friend who did it? Because I certainly wasn’t involved.
While I was stationed in Okinawa, USAF btw, the base commander’s wife would put up elaborate holiday decorations. One day, my friend drove by the Thanksgiving display and was in a bad mood. That night, she went to the display, pushed the Native Americans to the ground, used a dry erase marker to make pock marks, tossed empty whiskey bottles and army blankets around and stuffed pillows under the Pilgrims clothes.
For some reason, probably because my friend was a stupid kid, she thought that was so much fun that she spent her time thinking up more pranks for the other holidays. Valentines Day? Lots of ketchup and fake guns. President’s Day? Does anyone have any idea how hard it is to get a dozen 8 balls?
I never destroyed anything. If I had to move things out of my way, I would always put them in her back yard. My friend always waited until dark on the night before the holiday to make her changes. She spent 13 months there, and never got caught.
I think its mostly because my friend didn’t prank the displays before the holiday, and because it was a pretty harmless thing to do that got interest base wide. People would show up to take before and after pics.
She could have been caught if anyone really wanted to stop the 13 month reign of pranks. The day before she left, she put a globe with her next duty stationed marked in red and lots of Good bye banners.
Not a mess hall, but my buddy and I pulled it on another Seabee in Vietnam. The guy was a class A fuck-up and deserved it. The best part was that he was trapped in the front seat of a pickup between the two of us when I dropped it in his lap. I got some bruises out of it from him flailing for the door handle, but it was totally worth it. Fuckin’ asshole.
A buddy of mine was OIC of ‘Mount Muppet’ [Mount Moffat on Adak Island] in the late 80s. He used to joke that they were closer to the Soviet Union than the US, and should do liberty there instead of in Anchorage. The base CO ordered a new Mercedes, and in a rough water crossing to the island it broke it’s tiedowns and ended up going overboard 
And one Chief had a contract that made his hobby take in more money than his official income - he supplied crab and fish to the Officers club and the messing facilities in the islands. One covert weekend, they even had a soviet trawler stop next to them as they were fishing and buy their catch.
mrAru did a Northern Run that stopped over in Bremmerhavn, and one of the guys was out exploring and got lost, so he decided to stop in what looked like a ‘bingo hall’. So in he went, and asked the gent on the front desk if he could call him a cab, as he needed to get back to the piers. The nice gent at the desk called him a cab, and he stepped out into the street to wait. The cabby stopped, and mrAru’s buddy got in, and asked to be taken to the American Dock. The cabby looked at him rather oddly and asked him if he was certain. He said yes, and asked the cabby why - the cabby informed him that he was picked up at the East German Embassy. Much paperwork ensued once he got back to the boat…
I was only a military dependent, but I remember being something like seven years old and having blood drawn at the clinic at Ft. Myer for some reason. The nurse told me, “If you don’t stop shaking, I’m going to have to stick you again.” I wish I’d had the presence of mind at that age to shout “Ma’am, yes, Ma’am!”
Adak was a scammer’s dream. One of my fellow Seabees used to buy and sell junkers on the island. Somebody pointed out that all of his cars had blue rims. Turns out there was a warehouse with a bunch of Air Force trucks stored in it; most of them were minus their tires.
I have never been in the military, but these are two stories I enjoyed:
The SO was a Black Hawk pilot in the Gulf War. Naturally, being a bunch of horny kids, the other aircrews assumed that the other pilot on her helicopter had seen her naked. Someone asked the other pilot, ‘Have you seen her tits?’ The other pilot told her what he’d been asked. She said, ‘Well have you? Because I want them back!’ (She was rather petite, and lost a lot of weight during her deployment.)
In the 1960s, USS Oklahoma City was the flagship (along with Providence; they alternated) for the 7th Fleet, and my dad was a Communications officer on her. The Admiral’s daughter came for a visit (I don’t remember what port), and my dad was assigned to show her a good time by the ‘by the book’ Captain. He took her water skiing. She had such a good time that the Admiral sent a note to the Captain, thanking him for his hospitality, and asking to pass his thanks along to my dad for taking his daughter water skiing. 'Lieutenant [Johnny L.A.‘s Dad], report to the bridge!’ The Captain was appalled that my dad would take the Admiral’s daughter water skiing, saying ‘There are sharks out there!’ (But he couldn’t really do anything, since the Admiral was pleased.)
This may be a case of “you had to be there” but I still think it was a hoot. My first duty station after a year of training was VS-41 at NAS North Island - we were the training squadron for the then-brand-new S-3A Viking. And several of us were among the first women out of avionics training assigned to squadrons - it was an interesting time, the summer of '74…
My friend Valerie and I worked Mids - it was a great shift because you almost never saw an officer and our job was to preflight the aircraft that would be used for the next day’s flight training, repair as required, and train the guys from the fleet squadrons how to preflight, troubleshoot, and repair the planes. I really enjoyed my time there.
One of the team chiefs, Pete, was a second class petty officer who was known for giving folks nicknames. He called me Fred because he forgot my first name and couldn’t pronounce my last name (it was Polish and it took some getting used to.) He called one of the guys Stoney because “He looks like a Stoney.” But this is the story of how Valerie got her nickname.
Part of the preflight required that we vacuum the internal avionics bay. The deck in that area was maybe 18" by 8’ or so, and there were two narrow shelves that were about 6" by 8’ just in front of the equipment racks. In the normal course of operations and maintenance, it could get pretty dirty in there, so after we’d complete our testing and we knew the plane was ready to fly in the morning, we’d haul the vacuum cleaner out to the flight line.
Pause here to mention that in order to run preflight tests on the plane, you’d have to hook it up the a power unit - essentially a drivable portable generator that was very loud, so sound suppressing earmuffs were required. So you’ve got the generator noise, plus the sounds of the aircraft itself - cooling fans and such, plus the shop vac that sat between the operator seats with the hose led aft to vacuum out the bay.
This particular evening, Valerie was going to vacuum while Ray was doing something in the cockpit. She was in the back of the plane with the brush attachment on the vacuum hose, merrily moving it over the shelves, floor, and assorted electronics boxes. As she finished and turned to leave, Ray was there with a big grin on his face, reaching over to turn the vacuum on. He had turned it off just as she was starting, and he enjoyed the spectacle of her “cleaning” the airplane.
As soon as they returned to the shop, Ray had to tell everyone the story. Pete immediately renamed Val as Suzy Homemaker, and she kept that name for the 3 years she was in the squadron. She thought it was a cute nick. I was so happy to be Fred…
Oh, and Val and I are still friends. In fact, we’re way overdue for a lunch date.
I wouldn’t doubt it at all 
There was a problem in barracks, the guys were reading what could be considered light porn - stuff like the Victorias Secret and other revealing lingerie catalogs, playboy and such and not being particularly covert about it and a couple of the females objected but the guys ignored them until the ladies started bringing in female porn like Playgirl and fetish catalogs. The guys complained and were told if they could read their porn, the ladies could read theirs in the commons just the same. The light porn stayed in the private rooms after that.
One of the guys on the Spadefish was seriously delinquent on qualifying on a Med run, so they duct taped him to a chair in the mess decks and put the Blue Sominex on the table in front of him and every time someone went past they would turn the page.
I have a few.
I went to Basic at Ft. Jackson and one of my Drills was a real character named Drill Sergeant Gallimore. He’d call everyone yardbirds, yell “No, stupid!” back at someone who asked a dumb question, take a private’s hat and make funny faces at the other DI during instruction, and tell people “You can’t have it your way – this ain’t Arbys!” Near the end of Basic, we were preparing for the “Super Bowl” - the final test of common tasks and Drill Sergeant Hall was putting masking tape with numbers on our helmets for identification during the tests. One private asked a dumb question and I replied “No stupid!” a little too loud and in a perfect Drill Sergeant Gallimore voice. DS Hall stopped what he was doing, looked around with a wicked look and asked “Who did that?”
Fuck. I was busted. We had some good laughs when I did the impression before, but I wasn’t dumb enough to do it in front of a Drill. He heard me this time though and I knew I was going to have to drop and do pushups for that one, but I wasn’t going to try to hide and make the whole platoon suffer so I raised my hand and said “I did, Drill Sergeant.”
“Damn, you sound just like Gallimore,” he replied and then went back to what he was doing.
I had been in the Army for almost 2 years when I received orders to go to Ft Bragg. I was assigned to a Special Operations communications battalion that supported Special Forces and the unit had the SF patch and wore green berets (this changed shortly thereafter. They made it so the non-tabbed soldiers could not wear the Green Berets and the unit patch went to the SOCOM patch instead of the SF one, but I degrees). Being in an Airborne unit, I was soon sent to Airborne school at Ft. Benning. Just about all of the instructors there are Rangers and there is a bit of a rivalry between Rangers and SF, so the Sergeant Airborne used to give me a lot of grief for having the SF patch but not being an SF soldier. At one point in the training, I performed a perfect Parachute Landing Fall off the Swing Landing Trainer and the SA yelled “You’re a go, Special Forces!” So I pumped my arm and yelled “Special Forces!” and then ran back to the line. He stopped me right there and told me to drop and give him pushups. I dropped and started pumping them out and when I got to 8 he yelled at me to stop doing pushups in his drop zone and to go do them on the PT track, so I hopped up, yelled “Yes Sergeant Airborne!” and double timed it out to the PT track and started pumping out push ups. When I got to 8 he again yelled for me to move, so I jumped up and yelled “Yes Sergeant Airborne!” again and ran over to where he wanted me to go. I did this 3 or 4 more times until he had me run back into line and by this time everybody there had been laughing their butts off.
After Ft. Bragg, I got out of the Army and went into the Reserves. I got into a Special Forces unit there as well and there were quite a few characters and typically on Saturday night right after final formation, you’d hear a collective “Psht” as dozens of beer cans were popped open. There were a couple radio repairmen who were pretty determined to blow up a suburb and would always bring in homemade fireworks. One Saturday night, we were all hanging out in front of the commo building blowing stuff up when the motor pool guys came over with balloons full of acetylene. There was a golf course there and many of the golfers elected to stop playing to watch the drunk soldiers blow shit up.
I survived.
I was stationed there in 1969-70, before females were allowed to serve there (at least on the Naval Station). The place was a hotbed of sexual adventure with bored housewives, dependent daughters and horny Navy guys. Married guys’ wives were always being sent off the island for conduct prejudicial to good behavior. One guy emptied a 45 auto at someone who he thought was shagging his wife (turns out he was wrong). Luckily, he was a poor shot. The biggest scandal was when the ComSta commander’s wife found out his regular jaunts out to Moffett Field were for booty calls. The woman called the guy’s wife and ratted him out. She was last seen at the air terminal with 20+ pieces of luggage. Good times.
No shit, there I was…
If all you have are Basic Training stories then you haven’t done shit in the Army. However, I met the guy with the biggest set of metaphorical balls in the world in Basic. We were on the parade field at Fort Knox rehearsing for graduation. We had just run through the ceremony a couple of times and the whole company was standing at parade rest while all the Drill Sergeants were up front discussing whatever they discuss, probably how to properly eat a baby. As I’m standing there I hear what my mind assumes is someone pouring water out of a canteen onto the ground. I look over to the next platoon and I see one of the guys, dick in hand, pissing on the ground and grinning. The Drills were less than 50 feet away. They never heard, no one ever said anything and he got away with it.
If the Navy had wanted me to have a favorite story, they’d have issued me one.
The Navy needs to figure out how to get those exploding dye packs the banks use if they’re going to do this again. 
I don’t know, but when I was at the camp where armoured training was carried out ( I wasn’t in the US Army, but that of a much smaller allied country ), there was a story of an armoured officer that drove a tank up to the officer’s mess, and fired a blank round through the window. I don’t know if that was true, either, but I’d like it to be so.
My own satisfying moment was when I had to drive a car full of officers back to their barracks, and the battery was flat, so I had all of them pushing the car to jump start it, LOL.
As for the rest of my career in the military, I have many stories, but none that I can write about here.
I was a Navy junior officer on a submarine for five years. I posted this story to a Navy blog a few years ago, so I’ll do my best to translate the acronyms and terminology [asides will be in square brackets like this]:
Anyone remember the 05’ collision of the Philly [my boat, the USS Philadelphia, SSN 690] in the Persian Gulf? I was a JO [Junior Officer] onboard at the time.
We were in the Gulf on the surface, ahead of schedule (IIRC) and transiting into Bahrain at about 5 kts. The ENG [ship’s engineer officer] was OOD [Officer of the Deck], an unqual [unqualified- not yet fully qualified in submarines] JO was CC [Contact Coordinator, the watch designated to track ships on the surface to help the OOD drive the ship], and it was the midwatch. CO was asleep, XO was CDO [Command Duty Officer, essentially acting CO while the CO sleeps]. I was asleep. It was cloudy or foggy and very dark. At some point prior to 0300, the FTOW [Fire Control Technician of the Watch, an enlisted man assisting the CC] on the scope saw a shape behind us and reported it to the CC- the FTOW (a pretty junior FT3) thought the object had a 0 angle on the bow [meaning it’s headed right for us]. The CC (or possibly the FTOW himself) reported it to the XO, in control. The XO gets on the scope and says “no, it’s 30 degrees on the right drawing right”, or something to that effect. Minutes pass. The shape gets bigger, and the FTOW makes the same report. The CDO disagrees again. Finally someone (I don’t know exactly who) realizes it is heading right for us. The OOD requests a recommended course of action from the CC and the CDO. The CC says he’s working on it, and the CDO does nothing (or at least nothing productive). We’re still going about 5 kts, and being overtaken by a fat Turkish freighter about to run us over diagonally. The events of the next several moments are unclear, but involve the ENG (a little man with an abnormally high pitched voice) yelling “Get away from me!” and a somewhat heroic non-qualified and non-native-English speaking Lookout Under Instruction [Lookout is a self-explanatory watch station- Under Instruction means someone learning the watch] grabbing the Lookout AND OOD and pulling them to the deck of the bridge. Immediately before impact the COW [Chief of the Watch, another important watch station] furiously screams into the 1MC [the main ship’s announcing circuit] “Rig ship for collision” (which is when I wake up) and sounds the collision alarm, than seconds later a huge impact that almost hurls me out of my top bunk.
We were wedged underneath the forward part of the 50K ton Turkish freighter’s hull for over an hour, with the blade of one fairwater plane and the rudder wedged inside the freighter’s hull, and our screw banging against their hull with every turn. We couldn’t drive our way out. WEPS [Weapons Officer] was on the iridium phone [fancy satellite phone] the entire time. Finally the EDMC [Engineering Department Master Chief] suggested we lower the ass end of the ship out from under the freighter. So, all off watch personnel go to Shaft Alley [farthest portion aft in the submarine]. This lowers us a bit, but not enough. So next we manually open the aft MBT [main ballast tank] vent valves and flood the tanks (BTW- if you’re a submariner, you can recognize what an ENORMOUSLY risky act this is for a surfaced submarine). This works, and with terrible screeching sounds of metal tearing, we get free and limp into Bahrain.
The aftermath- we’re in Bahrain for a month. We actually got to like the place. The Squadron deputy and his assistant, an O-4, the SQENG [Squadron Engineer], and a mysterious O-3 arrive to “assess” the situation. Just a few days after we arrive, the CO, XO, and ENG are GONE.
There is much rejoicing. The ENG was incompetent in all things and hated. The XO, while not totally incompetent in all things, was hated as well. The CO was almost hated, but I still felt bad for him. The mistake he made was signing that watchbill- the WEPS had recommended himself (a superior OOD and DH) as the OOD for the midwatch, or a more senior CC, but the CO overrode him. And he was not incompetent- he was just kind of less-than-stellar leader, and had no empathy for the crew. I think he was afraid of the crew, and the crew sensed it.
So we got to know Bahrain. And the temporary CO was an awesome dude, a real gung-ho, cowboy type, who made it fun to be onboard. And the permanent replacement CO, while very low key, was a great guy as well, and very satisfying to work for. The SQENG was cool as temporary ENG.
The long term replacement ENG had a breakdown and quit after a few months, but that’s another story.
I deployed to Guam with a Seabee battalion in about 1978. Our CO and XO were universally hated and despised as petty tyrants who were out of touch with their men. Additionally, the OPS officer (S-3) was an incompetent wide-body. Mixing these people into deployment to a shithole like Guam was a bad scenario. Tensions began running high very quickly and discipline was becoming an issue.
Full battalion quarters (where everybody in the battalion musters en masse) was held on Saturday mornings only. During the week, everybody mustered at their company building. So one Saturday morning, we all go straggling out for battalion muster, and there, parked in the middle of the administration building, is a D-6 bulldozer. A lot of buzz commenced, of course, but also laughter. The battalion was called to attention, and the Plan of the Week was read, as though nothing untoward had happened. After dismissal, one of my guys walked past the XO and asked: “So what do you think of the bulldozer in the building, sir?” His answer (no shit): “What bulldozer?”
A major NIS investigation ensued, with no guilty party found. The scapegoat was designated (the S-3 officer), and while nobody was sorry to see him go, everyone wished it was the CO.
A week after NIS departed for the US, somebody ran a D-8 into one of the company buildings. Fun times.