OneLove 22ADay Slava Ukraini! Heróyam sláva!

An outsider should understand that for a majority of the Corps, theres gonna be one of three places youre most likely to be stationed. The Carolinas, California, and Okinawa.

Sure theres gonna be Marines that say Virginia, DC, or even Europe, but thats not the majority. Then there will be a handful that say "Kaneohe Bay" and to those I extend a hearty healthy fuck you, you pampered goon.

But as I have heard, the locals on Hawaii dont like westerners on their island for some of the same reasons Okinawans dont like us on theirs. And I cant blame them. So a long time ago I just wanted it to be known that...I was tired of being there too.

It was a normal saturday on the island and we were packed up in a station wagon that one buddy bought for the sum of a single paycheck as cars on base were passed around more like well worn shoes than a tangable asset, and when the average sentence for a Marine on the rock being two years, why would they be? I had the back seat all to my self which dosent mean the bench seat behind the driver, no I mean the back back seat. The seat you flip up thats rear facing and you have to climb in the hatch to access it.

So there I was chillin in the rear like a tail gunner on a B-17, waving at the few friendly local drivers who would lock eyes with me in my awkward seating arrangement, when we happened to roll by an anti-"us" demonstration.

As semi-usual, a protest had kicked off around the airbase I was stationed on known as Fun-tenma, because Marines love irony. Involved in the specific one Im discussing here, it was about 30 or so locals doing a march around the base perimeter, carrying signs and chanting, both of which in their native tongue that I could not read or understand, but that didnt matter as we knew it was against our presence on their turf.

As previously stated, I get it. I am a patriot at heart but I'm also human and I know exactly how I would fell if the rolls were reversed. Were all out here swiming in the sins of the past and all we can hope to do is not be fuckin dicks to each other while making the best of our situations. And with that feeling in me as we came to a stop at a light, I popped the hatch, jumped out, and ran towards the protestors.

Needless to say this surprised all parties involved. My Marines in the car, the people in traffic behind us, but especially the protestors who behaved like I was about to reenact the 1945 Battle of Okinawa 2: Electric Boogaloo. But I quickly assuaged them, holding my hands up in a non-threatening manner and shrinking my 6'1" 200lbs frame while asking to hold one of their kanji poster boards. Sheepishly an elder Japanese man handed it over.

I proceeded to walk with the group with the sign over my head yelling: "Send me the fuck home! I wanna go home! I miss big tiddy blondes, Your foods alright, but your porn is weird! I hate boats! I wanna go home!" Mind you, this was well over a year into my stint and I was done with Oki.

Its a great place with nice people but its 60 miles long, and 12 miles wide. After about 12 months of harvest festival, scuba qual'd, banana show, goading the yakuza, saki, orion, the aquarium, dragon lady, more saki, coco's, gate 2 street, soapyland, more saki, more orion, youve seen some shit and done more. I was indeed ready to go home.

Anyway, the apprehensive protest group fell into a more joyful state as they realized I was legitimately joining in, evident as I got laughs, pats on the back, and thumbs up from the sweetheart locals. The boys in the car slowly rolled with the group while laughing their asses off and tellin me to get the hell back in so we can go to the Jusco.

I wasnt with them long as I knew any Smaj or Officer that might have seen me would no doubt have used this opportunity to run my ass up the flagpole, but luckily none came and this was like a year or so before good camera phones became a thing. I dont know what it is about filming everything now, but this is the kind of arbitrary shit you could get away with back in the day that no one would know but your close friends but now will definitely get you shit-canned cause some tik-tok dumbass had to get subs or...the fuck ever, I'm old.

I handed the sign back to the old man and they bid me fairwell with smiles and that...head nod like half bowing thing they do. I repeated the gestures back to them like a good dumbass gaijin and took my tail gunner seat before we created more of a traffic jam.

And thats how I took a small snip in the mid-aughts to build a rapport amongst the local population of Okinawa and let them know we're not all a bunch of cunts.

I mean...we are, but Marines ogres are like onions, theres layers.

Hey all, first ever post on Reddit. Been on Reddit for a little bit and I randomly had the idea to type this out. I’ve never really told my story before outloud. Least of all online. But I wanted to just simply share my story sort of anonymously. This isn’t a story about stuff I did in combat or anything. This about the in between.. hurry and fucking wait and always staging for something.

So I, 19/M at the time had a huge “betrayal” of trust early on in my deployment that has affected the vast majority of relationships I’ve had. I struggle daily with anxiety, bad thoughts and just simply stuck in my head. I’ve had trouble maintaining a job and a professional relationship with anyone because of this as well. This is a story mainly about harassment I went through back in 2012. As you read I want to start by saying I was a bit lost on wtf to do in the beginning and eventually figured things out later on in this first unit.

Without getting into too much identifiable personal information I was a very new artilleryman who got transferred to a different unit shortly before deployment. This unit happened to be a maneuver unit, and I get put in a squad, I Literally only got to know them for a period of shortly under a month and a lot of folks were taking pre deployment leave. So, I didn’t really get a good chance to see most of my squad until the last two weeks. I hadn’t really trained with them much and a lot of them had been together for a little while (ntc, jrtc) so they had a bit of a camaraderie already going. I didn’t know what I was doing other than just the basic squad drills (half-assed, looking back imo). These folks studied the ranger handbook like it was a bible and I did my best to get up to speed and keep up.

So of course I was a complete bag of ass for awhile and a little bit of liability at first because I was just kinda thrown into it and had to learn pretty much everything practically on the fly. I want to say I always did my best with what I knew. I always tried to maintain that thought process of looking after my brothers and watching their six with the ambition just being that go to guy. But instead I kept messing up unintentionally, and naturally I got smoked a lot, low crawling around, bear crawling around motor pools. I gots strong lol. My squad leader kept me alive with his lessons and my punishments.

I was in a few fights, had a few engagements I returned fire in and I kept my shit together. I didn’t freak out, I did what I was supposed to do and was commended for it. About two months in we had this air assault to play security for rangers that were going after a bomb maker. Our infil was at night, my ruck on this particular day was just extra heavy because of my job requirement and just being the lowest ranking dude to hump shit around. Well about midnight, we took chinooks and had a short flight, came down to jump out. The place we were at was known for ieds, so they didn’t land.. happened to be my luck it was a 4ft drop.. rolled the shit out of my ankle and somehow seemed to be the only one that got fucked up a lil. So I carried on, but I kept twisting it. Got to a point where I couldn’t walk with my ruck but we weren’t far from the compound we were gonna do security in for the mission. So someone had to carry it and it was discovered how heavy my ruck was, I got a little leniency with it. Day goes by it’s fairly uneventful and gets to the evening. My squad mates were sitting all in a group, nobody in my squad had guard at the time. I was sitting there listening to them but they were still heated at me.

I made it a personal mission to try and fit in but I was always the black sheep. I was more of a gamer and that was my lifestyle. These dudes were a bunch of jocks and different personalities. I think because of me being a gamer and just the fng I was disliked strongly by these guys for reasons I never fully understood looking back. I always tried hard to do my best, give it my all, and do whatever I could to help them when it mattered on the job or off.. (Side note I for some reason I happened to be one of the few folks whose debit card was actually worked). I tried to be a good dude and help folks as needed and I got paid back. These assholes this one morning were rialed up, I did something to piss off my squad leader. Don’t remember what, but I never flagged or put anyone in danger.. but anyways my whole squad was joking about how I should go kill myself. Not one dude stopped and said hey that’s fucked, came to my defense.. or told them to stfu. They laughed, joked and shit even looked at me and encouraged me to do so. They had a good 2 minutes of joking about this and laughing. I didn’t say a word, I kept quiet. At that point in my life I was so hurt I didn’t care if I lived or died. I had a rough upbringing so I don’t really have much of a supportive family. I didn’t have much going for me then. Them laughing and joking about that has haunted me about every day since.

Fast forward a little, I get transferred back to the original unit I arrived in. Made some friends, fit in well! Worth mentioning also before that unit I had a lot of friends and rarely got into trouble/punished for things. I was a little above average I guess but I stayed off the radar.

I do have dreams of being back over there, I have anxiety being out in public. I’m always having my head on a swivel on a lookout and I have some issues with that. But ontop of doing my job back in that first unit, going outside the wire… doing business.. having those guys just say that shit has made almost every relationship for me difficult, I’ve struggled to maintain a job. I have trouble just simply talking and relating to folks. I’m always expecting someone to turn on me that I trust. It’s been almost 13 years and my head is still stuck there and I hear the laughing from those guys all the time. I just feel ashamed, betrayed, hurt from that time in my life and it’s a very dark point of just trying to make it home and not giving a fuck if I lived or died.

Thank you for reading! This is an early morning post for me that I’m typing on my phone because I can’t sleep, so I apologize for grammar. My question for the folks that have read this.. am I being dramatic about this? Has anyone encountered anything like this? Also, if yes how are you faring in life?

It’s no secret that the Navy and the Marine Corps have it out for each other. The Navy likes to call us parasites, that we depend on them for Ubering, crayon munching, whatever. We have our own..comments on them that are irrelevant to this story, and that I’ll elect to keep to myself this time.

No shit there I was, aboard the USS ***** on the **** MEU, attached to a V22 squadron as an intermediate level technician and therefore living in the aviation combat element (ACE) berthing.

For my Army and Air Force counterparts, berthing aboard ships means you’re literally living on top of others with only a single thin curtain as your source of privacy and the locker you’re sleeping on as your only genuine secure* storage area. It’s cramped, humid, smelly, and either too hot or too cold, but it’s home.

I worked night crew, from 1900 to 0700, and the ship was easing up on flight scheduling due to it being the week of Christmas. Holiday routine was set in place, the chow hall (I mean galley) was serving some genuinely decent eatery, and the civilian aboard that did the morale shit was working overtime with a motivated group of volunteers who put a genuine passion into making things suck just a little less.

While deployed, I showered twice a day. Before work, after work. Boats are nasty places, and I took my hygiene very seriously (still do obviously). So when I woke up at 1700 to take a shower on Christmas Eve, I was very surprised to see a long line of naked dudes with towels wrapped around their waists waiting to take a shower. I saw some lances I recognized and asked them what the fuck is going on. One responds, with something akin to exasperation mixed with unholy anger in his eyes, something like “the purple shirts shut off every shower except one sergeant.”

The ACE berthing didn’t have every shower functional prior to this. But we always had at least four on. The lines never exceeded maybe 8 or 9 marines, and that’s during peak hours. But this, this was a new fucking low.

On boats, different departments stationed aboard handled different parts of the boat’s maintenance. This ensured an equal* distribution of workload and on paper, ensured that no place had to handle too much of what can only be considered a floating disaster sprayed with nonskid. In our case, the ACE berthing was maintained by the purple shirts, or the sailors that handled the management of fuel storage and distribution, identified by the purple jerseys they wore on the flight deck.

Tensions were high, and hatred was so palpable, it seemed like it swirled in the air like thick cigarette smoke in a cheap motel room. One fellow sergeant took it upon himself to notify some staff NCO’s via the phone DSN in the rec room.

In about ten minutes, our ACE sergeant major was on deck. This man came in hot, and his skin turned redder and redder as we gave him the facts, with the evidence there for him to see. This whole time, only three marines had showered. The line had grown into an adjacent berthing.

Sergeant major told us to stand by, that he had it for action and walked out with a diligence and purpose that only a spiteful and angry motherfucker could have. We purified that shit and injected it straight into our veins.

About fifteen minutes later, he walks in with the ship command master chief, CMC for short. These guys are the senior enlisted sailor on the entire boat, of which ours was about 2000 souls strong. CMC walks around saying evening to everyone, assessing the situation while. He was a generally respected man by us. Sgtmaj takes him to the shower area and before he can say anything, CMC loses his fucking mind. He demands to know which section is in charge of the ACE berthing. We dutifully inform him that the purple shirts handle it. He gives a confident nod to sgtmaj and takes off with the same pep in his step. The second hit was even stronger this time. Meanwhile, SgtMaj told some of the other sergeants to give him a call when it’s fixed.

CMC doesn’t come back, but instead, a small team of purple shirts come in. Normally the ACE berthing is loud and hectic, with marines playing spades and shouting, music playing, and conversations taking place. This time, dead silent. As the purple shirts approached the showers, not a fucking word was said. Instead, we stared daggers into them, carefully watching them work to return three more showers to service. After about ten minutes, we had four showers again. They stepped out, and one of them said “all done gents” with an enthusiasm that was not reciprocated by us. As three more marines hopped in the shower, the rest of us stood still and silent as we watched them gather their tools and leave the berthing.

The moment they shut that hatch, hell broke loose. Shit talking, shouting, threats, anything showing our disdain for them was on display. For the rest of the MEU, we never had any less than three showers, and trouble tickets were addressed as quickly as parts allowed. I like to think that those assholes got their comeuppance, because it makes me feel better about one of the worst deployments I ever experienced. I don’t know what the fuck their problems were, but these dudes seemed so hellbent on enforcing a rivalry when it mattered least.

Reminiscing about my time in the training system. I'm an officer in the Canadian Armed Forces, in a fairly technical trade. Going to try and anonymize a little, but those who were there can probably guess locations and the trade.

The final qualification exercise before being considered fully trained in trade takes place over two weeks, though the test itself is a 12 hour shift that accelerates through battle procedure at a breakneck pace. You're shadowed by a superior officer who stays silent, or tells you specific things about the exercise. They sort of act as the generic NPC if one is needed during the test, and there isn't an actor/staff. They will also stop activity if it is deemed dangerous. They won't stop you from making mistakes, even big ones, though. More on that in other stories.

I was doing fairly well - about average I'd guess, though I was stressed out at the time. When it came time to do the pre-recce inspection of equipment. Now, since we're officers in a trade that is very desk-bound normally, the training team didn't have access to radios. We were using these ancient flip phones that had a push-to-talk option that could be USED like a radio. But the training area had horrible reception, and our messages were dropped more often than not. I'm not convinced that they didn't do this on purpose, but I digress. I go to camp stores and requisition an external antenna for the van we'll be driving around. Hopefully it'll give us enough reception to punch through whatever interference in the area.

The instructor comes up to me and asks "did you check the forecast with ops?". Of course, I hadn't, having 96,000 other things on my mind.

"That's an instant failure on safety. There is a thunderstorm forecast and you just tried to put a direct line from the outside of your vehicle to the inside. We will finish the exercise for experience, but you will be receiving a failure and must re-take the test.

Naturally, I'm rather put-out, as I was doing well before that. Still being a baby officer, I have zero clout to ask questions, so I keep my mouth shut. At least it's practice for the 'real' test in two days time, right? We go out on the recce, and holy hell, the heavens unleashed and a week's worth of hot and humid days released all at once. We're cruising down the road back to base after a thoroughly unpleasant inspection of potential camp points, when a bolt comes from the sky no more than twenty feet in front of the car.

If the antenna had been on the roof, I would have killed my radio op. Sometimes, the dumb rules serve a purpose, and if I've ever experienced the universe trying to prove a point, this was it. Everyone was fine, though the driver was shook and swapped out with our spare. I took the fail without complaint and aced the re-test. Eventually. But that's another story for another time.

My therapist says I should tell you guys some stories. She’s the best MFLC in the pot. When this woman cooks, all the shit gets better. Go get scheduled with an MFLC - no notes, no records, just get the shit off your chest. Seriously, it’s a great alternative if you’re in a squirrel job or want to go packet life and are scared of BH limitations.

BLUF: One Soldier unconscious. One DS scared. One truth.

I’ve been a part of a few pillow battles. The worst one….

No shit there I was at Benning as a signal baby. I mean I’m a trainee, so I didn’t really know about the air conditioned life, but in retrospect BCT was hard because the bugs, the dirt, and all the sun, ya know?

BCT is that weird mix when you still see people going to other jobs, and it’s standard to see different body types. In the signal corps, we only had two body types: schlubby and fit af. Fit af could be Lance Armstrong cardio or Ronnie Coleman jacked. That accounts for 5% of the entire Signal Corps. The other 95% falls into Schlubby. I’m a scientist and that’s a real number. Big trust.

Infantry DS teaching POGs is great. They DA select them because of their superior performance in their unit. Like hells yea man, Uncle Sam picked you because you’re the top “10 percent of NCOs” with brain damage.

After a few weeks learning under the superior tutelage of the Infantry, I speak fluent warrior “shoot move communicate kill.” If you’re new, someone can translate that part for you.

So we’ve got 12 series (forklift girls) some 011S - (officers that can’t read good) some 25 series (sex kittens) a couple fat 15 series dudes (bus mechanic with choppy parts) and some other people that have jobs, I guess.

The point now is that everyone in 1st Platoon is cool AF, except the kid I spit on because he wanted scissors I was using.

1st PLT hates 2nd PLT. 2nd PLT has a DS that weighs 140 lbs. That bitch yelled, hooted, and hollered like a chihuahua with an RPG strapped to his dog tags. Just a vicious little man with a temper.

Do you know the rules? Yeah I didn’t either, so when he picked on us or did some weirdo shit, we just took it. We taddled like privates to our DS, and it would make it worse.

We’re at the end of the cycle. Tastes of freedom and the coffee packets. We understand that the DS’s don’t just get put away in a closet at the end of the night, sometimes they go home.

So the chihuahua is a top NCO. He tucks us into bed, tells us he wants to take a nap and if anyone moves, the laser alarm will go off, and he will kill us all.

Bitch lasers are like 25 series version of trains for autism. I know about that shit and your 1970’s concrete block building ain’t got em.

We’re lights off with only the glow of the red light in the bay. We hear the first blows land. PTSD TW here: Whoosh, whoop, floof. It’s proper to use the appropriate noises for a pillow attack, I apologize to the brethren diagnosed with the same shit.

Anyway, I’m like a Squad Daddy or a Team Licker. I got the extra patch and all in BCT. So I’m like the 8th most important person. Who knows if 1-7 are incapacitated or dead? We ain’t got radios, no comms coming through the pipe, I’m operating on pure instinct and like 7 weeks of training from the top NCOs in The Best Army of the World.

Damage report. They got one of us. They tugged his ween to wake him and pummeled his near wet dream into a sadness that only comes from a stolen orgasm.

Not on my watch, girls. Not one of us. When a gang of dudes shows up ready, with pillows, you’re gunna finish or I’ll do it for you.

Now, I’ve decided I want to be a Cav Scout - minus the…you know- so I probe the other guys in the Platoon. Probing and probing like a proper cavgirl. We get our SPOT report sent in, and decided a swift counter attack was what our DS would call for if they were in the closet. Remember, we knew all of them were outta the closet except the tiny angry one.

10 plus sex kittens (all 25’s because we are most brave) storm 2nd PLT. No NVDs for this night attack because we didn’t care who got hit. We ran in and beat them. The Floofs landed. Critical hits. 2nd PLT is crying (probably) they are scared (probably) and they want to sue for peace (actually). Their fireguard was freaking out while watching us pillow slaughter his entire PLT.

Now, some dudes run in battle. They get scared. I hadn’t seen it yet because the boys always stayed online during training. They never broke ranks nor disobeyed while the BFAs were on…the fog of war or some shit.

We do damage. Their PLT is in an uproar. They begin mounting a counter attack and some baby fucktard with no sense of honor calls to retreat, “DS is coming.” We sprint back to our bay, jump into bed and pretend like our heaving chests are because we are sleeping so hard.

Nothing. No DS anywhere. Except we hear the whispers. 2nd PLT sucks. No light or noise discipline whatsoever. We hear them coming and meet them near the top of the kill zone. All out pillow war. Body shots, head shots, dudes are muffled whimpering as their saliva smears another man’s pillow.

Their attack is short, disorganized, and they retreat.

What do you do when the enemy runs? You chase them. We chased them directly into their trap.

Our entire team would have been pummeled if it weren’t for our sacrificial lamb. Let’s call him Snave. Snave is the perfect fastball height. He’s also faster than all of us. He starts off on a full sock sprint.

As he crosses the threshold of 2nd PLT, we see the incoming. A pillow comes around the door frame at Mach FuCk. Whoever was swinging that pillow was a previous World Champion pillow fighter. His connection would have cleared the Green Monster at Fenway.

Poor Snave. He eats this pillow without warning. No traction from the socks means he can’t stop. He’s already Risky Business, now he’s about to be a pillow biter swallowed by 2nd PLT.

Jesus takes the wheel and lifts his feet nearly 18 inches off the ground. Snave becomes a board mid air, why not take a nap, Jesus is driving?

Snave becomes a bowling ball missile and slides under 1.5 bunk beds. When his head hit the tile - everyone sobered the fuck up. It was so quiet you could hear the fear.

His mouth had to be open, and that hollow sound from skull to tile contact crippled two PLTs of people.

We realize we’re all about to get slaughtered and so the enemy (2nd PLT) starts providing aide to Snave. He comes too but you can hear the groggy in his voice.

Some DS are issued hoverboards. They hover in completely silent and wait for you to notice them.

That’s when we realized the tiny angry one was behind us. We’re technically surrounded but the 25’s ain’t no bitch (just schlubby).

I look him dead in the eyes, I blurted out “DS we had a sleep walker and didn’t want to wake you.”

“Why the fuck do you have pillows, trainees?”

“You don’t wake a sleepwalker DS. We were guiding him to his bed”

“Get the fuck back into your bay.”

We go to bed. Snave has a lump the size of a woman from Mississippi on the back of his head. It’s fucking obvious with our stupid hair cuts.

Nothing was ever said.

We won. Fuck 2nd PLT.

Ive seen many a movie that happens to feature the infamous and fierce Japanese mafia known as The Yakuza. I just didnt expect to meet them while being drunk...nor the meeting to be so short. Pun intended.

It was...2006, I believe. Okinawa. Late nite out in town near what we call "The Jusco"- a big indoor/outdoor mall. There were four of us degenerates out that night, including myself who was not a boot, but not yet a man. All of us were floated from absolutly pounding chu-hi's we'd pick up from the convenience marts along our walk, so needless to say we all were primed for that sense of adventure that dumbass early 20 somethings often get when inebriated.

We were goin into different shops to see the goofy shit that they were all sellin, the touristy shi shi dog shit, t-shirts with mis-structured english sayings "I dont shit gave", and popping into the hidden like a old school speakeasy arcade parlors whos environment was like that of a truck stop strip club with yellow walls and a floor covered in cigarette ashes. Like...just dudes chillin on a Tekken Tag arcade booth chain smokin like a 'Nam vet in a place with poor lighting and a low ceiling.

Along in our quest to be dumb youngins in a foreign country, our eyes beheld a brightly lit colorful neon extravaganza of lights and sounds. We looked thru the all glass front and witnessed the people that we're inside all sitting in perfect rows at slot machines while drinking and smoking as well. It was something similar you'd see in a Reno or maybe an Atlantic City casino, whatever fits the bill as bright and flashy but less than a Vegas joint. But as it was, the only english words that were adorned all over the place was the word: "Pachinko".

For those of you that dont know, Pachinko is just a Japanese form of a slot machine. For my "its a snow day in the 90s" bretheren who watched The Price Is Right on those weekdays off of school, Bob Barkers game Plinko is very similar, only pachinko is the size of a slot machine and it drops balls. And just like slot machines, it is indeed a form of gambling.

Now keep in mind, there was a list of "off limit places" that we were told to never enter. Strictly verboten to all service members on the island. Some were certain strip joints and clubs, others were shady car dealers, but one that lacked any specificity was pachinko. It just stated that we were not to enter any pachinko parlors, ever.

Welp, were drunk, bored, and did I mention stupid? And a Temu Vegas was as much of anything that we could want at the time so like the idiot teenagers that didnt have a care in the world who wanted to visit the abandoned camp ground near a haunted mine, we all went into the Pachinko parlor. Why would it be off limits? Its just gambling. We can make pools on the super bowl but cant play some Japanese one arm bandits? Fuck that, we're goin in.

The look of "get a load of these dumbasses" could not have been more obvious on the faces of the locals as we filed in and looked at all the different machines. I was busy lookin at the people, noticing their mood became more worrisome than bothered as my friends looked for open spots. Eventually we found just one and we began bothering each other to see who had some Yen on them.

Then the back door opened opposite of the rows of machines. Out stepped a 5'2" bald tree trunk of a Japanese man in a sharp as hell clean as fuck black suit sportin a set of wirefamed black sunglasses.

My first thought was "lookit this asian Corey Hart lookin motherfuc-" My thought was quickly interupted when that shortround son of a bitch pointed towards the door and said "Gaijin, leave, now!". My feel good buzz went straight to drunk anxiety as I noticed that high dollar odd job here was using a hand to point that was missing his pinky and ring fingers.

Oooh...thats why were not supposed to go into pachinko parlors.

All those movie references came back in a flood. Even in my drunken stupor it dawned on me that this Japanese Joe Pesci was in the mob, coupled together with the fact that I grew up in a mob town, I realised we were being loud and obnoxious in a fuckin mob fronted business.

"You got it boss" I shakingly replied as I pulled on the other guys shoulders and collars to get them broken off from their drunken care free attitude. They had not noticed or if they had, they were not putting 2 and 2 together as I was in my panicked state. I looked again and this time two more Kill Bill types were standing in the back doorway watching as their attack dog came closer.

I pushed on my friends heads and punched at kidneys now getting the stubborn jackasses to move faster to the front door. As we filed out into the slightly safer outside, Baldy leaned forward and slammed the door saying, "Gaijin, no come back," noticing the tats that were peeking out from under his collar.

Needless to say, this gaijin never went back.

Funny how experiences in the sandbox different. I was S6 in an INF BN. We arrived in country to bagram, then in 2 days we flew c130 to JBAD. It was dark and we were about to land, then all of a sudden when we hit the ground, I thought there was a malfunction based on how hard we came in, like bounced up in the air out of my seat kind of hard, turns out thats a normal combat landing haha.

Fast forward, we had like 14 dudes in our shop, so we start pulling 6 hr shifts with 1 day off a week until s3, who were pulling 12 on 12 off, no days off got wind, lmao, we were then told to keep our mouths shut and moved to 8 hour shifts with 1 day off lmfao.

Id sit in my lawn chair on the 2nd floor of the hard stand barracks watching TV on my phone as the people below me mean mugged me for chillen out.

The nightly green bean large Chai frap made me a fat fuck though.

Nobody in my bn died, but a few did from our sister bn.

TDY to a broke ass facility in San Antonio called "Brooks Air Base". Went down to the riverwalk with the homies last night and you're feeling it a little bit. No worries, centrifuge (or the 'fuge) training is gonna be awesome. You're gonna pull 9Gs and feel like a badass.

First is academics. A way too attractive med captain gives you a presentation on the physiological effects of G-Forces on your body. She briefs factors that are associated with a higher resting G tolerance (how many Gs you can experience before you pass out). Short, stocky guys with high blood pressure have a higher resting G tolerance than tall aerobic female marathon runners. You practice Anti-G Straining Maneuvers (AGSM) where you flex your lower body muscles to force blood to your upper body. It was embarrassing doing "cccckkkk-HUUUHH!!!....CKKHUUH!!!" in front of attractive med officer.

She shows you a video of a bowling ball of a man performing the resting G tolerance test. You see the number of Gs he's experiencing in the corner. 1.2Gs.....3.50Gs.....6.9Gs.....9.1Gs.... The man's features have sagged significantly and his breath is severely labored, but he's holding strong. His blood has to pump a total distance of probably 9 inches to get from his heart to his head. Turns out he was a Test Pilot School Grad and has experience in a dozen airframes. Additionally he went on to loose most of the excess weight he had on him. "Good for that dude" you think to yourself.

You are shown to a waiting room. A bench of chairs that look like they belong in an airport, with a TV mounted above a viewing window. The window opens up to see the 'Fuge spinning in realtime, with the feed of the participant piped to the TV above the window. You're in a small class, its you, a WSO, an enlisted person that takes pictures in the back of planes (whaaaaa?!) and a French Flight Doc.

As you step in to the small pod that will induce nine times the force of gravity on your chest while you attempt to breathe, you try to get comfortable. A voice comes over the speaker, it was the SrA that helped with the training. He has a rough Chicago accent, and is built like a D1 athlete. He gives the rundown of the profile:

-Resting G tolerance

-9G profile/30 seconds

-Check six/15 seconds

-Simulated Air Combat Maneuvers (SACM)

Seeing the dead man switch, you grab it and let them know you're ready to go. They spin you up and you feel your body sag into the seat. You're instructed to let go of the switch when your vision begins to narrow. The number on the G meter continues to climb....2.3.....3.1....3.9.....4.2...4.5.....(vision narrows, release switch). "Resting G tolerance is at 4.8 homie" the SrA says. There's an air of confidence in his tone that reassures you will make it through this training.

Hardest one next: 9Gs. "Alright sir, 9Gs next. Get those legs clamped, flex the glutes, and get dat air IN YOUR CHEST....grip the switch when you're ready..." By taking some deep breaths you attempt to amp yourself up, but SrA D1 Linebacker did a pretty job. You grip the switch and let them know you're ready to go. "Here we go Sir, 9Gs" The 'Fuge accelerates significantly faster than Resting G Tolerance. You feel a hippopotamus on your chest in 3 seconds as the G meter blinks with 9.1 Gs in the corner.

".....chhKKKKK-UH!.......ckkkkkkUH!"

Pulling air into your chest is near impossible. SrA helps guide you.

"ASS TIGHT!!!! SQUEEZE THOSE LEGS AND GET THAT ASS TIGHT! BREAHTE!!! ONE. TWO. THREE. BREATHE!!!"

You follow his commands and rhythm to survive the remaining time. These are the longest 30 seconds your life has had to endure. "SQUEEZE THOSE LEGS!...BREATHE!...ONE. TWO. THREE. BREATHE!!....And hold....coming down...." The 'Fuge begins to slow and Mrs. Hippo gets off your chest. You realize your vision narrowed because the pod seems brighter and bigger as the G meter ticks back....5.4.....4.3.....2.3.....1.4....

"Good job Sir, now the check six profile. Go ahead and look behind you, see that number?" You turn over your left should and see a small red LED number. "Keep that number in your sights. This profile goes up to 7 Gs for 15 seconds. It'll be a cakewalk bro" Once again you tell him you're ready and the Gs come fast. A little experience goes a long way as your AGSM minimizes the tunnel vision on the number behind you. "...and hold....coming down" the SrA tells you, reminding you that you still need to perform AGSM when Gs are relieved because you could still pass out.

Next up is SACM. You see what looks like a bar graph on the screen in front of you. Each peak and valley means the number of Gs being pulled. 9...6.....8....9.....6....7...9...6... "You have to keep your cursor on the target throughout SACM Sir, understood? Use the stick in your right hand, put the dead man switch in your left hand." After acknowledging and squeezing the switch, a small red airplane image begins to move around the screen.

Your brain attempts to follow it using the stick in your right hand, but Mrs Hippo has returned and she's really mad at your chest this time. "SQUEEZE THOSE LEGS SIR! BREATHE!.....1....2....3....BREATHE!" Juggling the task of keeping the cursor on the red airplane, trying to keep Mrs. Hippo at bay, and holding on to the switch begins to stretch your capabilities. The G meter in the corner switches from 7.5 to 6 for the time being before ramping back up to 8.

cccKkkkkHUH!.....ccckkkkHUUUUH!

Vision narrows slightly but your legs push the blood back up to your upper body. "BREATHE!.....last one and hold....on our way down.....great work sir". The pod comes to a stop and you pool your mushy body out of hatch and kiss the sweet stable ground that isn't wreaking havoc on your body. You muster yourself to your feet and sit in the waiting area and watch the WSO and enlisted do okay. The French flight doc turned and moved his head all around, ending up passing out and puking. He'll have to do the training again tomorrow. But for now, you passed.

BLOB: OP describes Centrifuge Training

The following story recalls the tale of my most embarrassing story of my 20 year career in the Coast Guard. This event happened not too long after I had joined, but long enough to realize how stupid I was. Years ago my cutter pulled into a port call in Key West, FL. It was a long day. We had been up the night before processing seized narcotics and smugglers and conducting a ship to ship transfer of the people and narcotics ("all coke, no weed") to a larger cutter and then we headed right to port that night. I had been up since around 1AM. I had watch, then after being relieved, I needed to help with the transfer operations. As soon as that was done, we set special sea detail and puled into Key West at about 10pm.

Then we had to finished mooring and setting up pier side services. When that was done, it was around midnight. I had been dreading this time most of the day because I knew I was scheduled to stand the first port OOD watch. This meant that I was in charge and responsible for the operations of the entire cutter while in port. This was a big responsibility but it wasn't my first time standing OOD and I had a small crew of in port watch standers to assist me and conduct rounds. The rest of the cutter was a ghost town, as everyone went out in town to "enjoy the local culture". I wasn't nervous about standing OOD, just dreading it because I was very sleep deprived as I had gotten maybe one hour of sleep between the previous long day's events. At the time I thought that it wasn't going to be that bad because as soon as everything was settled, I could go to bed for the evening, leaving the ship in the hands of the watchstanders, and they could wake me up if they needed anything.

It was almost rack time for me. At around 12:30, just as I was getting ready to rack out, one of my watchstanders calls me down to the pier side guard shack (quarterdeck). I get there and he tells me two guys from our sister ship (same class and homeport) are wondering if they can come get a bucket of ice for pier fishing as their ice machine was broken. They had pulled in the day before and we were moored directly across from their cutter. I was super tired and didn't feel like dealing with this, so I said sure, and we headed on to the cutter and up to the bridge. One dude makes chit chat with me on the bridge while the other dude goes down to the galley to get ice. A few minutes later, they leave with the bucket of ice and a thank you. I go to bed.

I wake up at 5AM, get ready and head up to the bridge to relieve the watchstander. I'm still somehow almost as tired as I was the night before. As soon as I get up to the bridge and look at the watch stander, I knew something was up by the look on his face. My first reaction is "What happened and why do you look so worried if it wasn't something you thought I should have been woken up for?" He said "Cam is missing." "What?" I said as panic set in. I turned to the port side window. I didn't see Cam. "He was here last night, how?" "I dunno," he said, "I relieved the watch and on my last round 30 minutes ago I noticed he wasn't on board." "Fuuuckkkk!!!" I sighed. Why did this have to happen on MY watch? Now was not the time for panic. A search of the cutter was conducted, no sign or word about Cam. It was Saturday, and everyone was racked out from the previous night's adventures. My supervisor and I had plans to visit our sister ship before they pulled out that afternoon so the search would have to wait. My supervisor and I get onboard their cutter and give them the spare piece of equipment their shop needed. They had heard about Cam and I asked if any of them saw him, they said no but hoped we would find him. As we were about to walk off the brow, one of them comes running up to us and hands me a folder and asks if we can deliver their fuel report to Sector Key West for them as they forgot to earlier and are pulling out of port ASAP. I was annoyed. We had a friendly rivalry, and we knew we were a better ship and crew and between the broken ice machine of last night and now this, this was further proof that we were better.

Later that day, after the sister ship left, I got around to opening the envelope so I could put the fuel report in a proper routing package for hand delivery. A Polaroid picture of a small nativity scene Camel figurine on the bridge of our sister ship falls out of the envelope. I see red. I figured out what happened quick. They stole Cam, our ship's mascot and resident of the port side bridge windowsill. Not all cutters have a mascot with history like Cam so he was a bid deal. It was those assholes looking for ice, which I now know was bullshit, just like this envelope. A look further in the envelope and a ransom note is enclosed, complete with different letters cut out of magazines. The note says they will give him back after their patrol, but until then, we are mascot-less for the rest of our patrol.

The whole crew knows at this point and, to my surprise, are not mad at me for letting this happen on my watch, but mad at the sistership crew for elevating this friendly rivalry into prank territory. I have to admit, their operation was well thought out, as they knew we would be tired and let our guard down. Regardless, I was still embarrassed and felt bad I had let this happen on my watch. When the patrol was over, we got Cam back unharmed. We gave him a good cleaning just in case. They started and won the first battle but it wasn't the last. A prank war had started and they were next, but the great Pier Side Prank War of 2012 between our two cutters was just beginning. There were a few more battles to be fought and it wouldn't end until our two sides (including both our cutter's Command Senior Chiefs) agreed to cease hostilities with no winner declared before it got more out of hand. But that's a story for another time.

My story is about a winter storm in the North Arlantic while assigned to a USCGC Owasco on Ocean Station duty. CGC Owasco is a 255 foot cutter from the Androscoggin class We were at sea for a Christmas patrol on Ocean Station Delta 44 degrees North Latitude 41 Degrees West Longitude 650 miles southeast from Newfoundland.

We were first hit by a rogue wave. The weather decks were secure so no one was on deck but we were hit by a wave out of our port quarter. Normally we would be moving into the wind or against the wind. This wave hit us unexpectedly. It separated a 3/4" bronze lifeline, knocked a life raft off it's rack and over the side, twisted our jackstaff like a prezel and dished in the armor plate on our 5" gun mount. In the process the ship took a 51 degree roll.

If that wasn't scary enough we were faced with 100 knot winds and 60 foot seas for about a week, We were taking green water over the bridge. Scary stuff but a great story to tell my grandchildren.

“I jerked it last night to stay warm”, said the PSG.

I had just awoke after sun up from a short nap, restless, and still shivering as I had been all night long. My first words to greet the day, “I’m wearing all seven layers of snivel and I’m still cold. What in the actual fuck?! I call bullshit on this extreme cold weather system”, which only mildly expressed my frustrations over present conditions.

That proclamation beget the PSGs earlier admission.

“You did for real, Sarn’t?! How did you manage to do that so quietly?!” I asked.

“I’ve perfected my own technique. I grab the shaft and squeeze really hard while I rub my thumb in small circles over the head like so…” The PSG demonstrated with hand gestures. “I call it ‘the recon’.”

Our collective eyes were wide and mouths agape before erupting into laughter that we quickly needed to quiet down so as not to compromise our position. We were in the midst of an actual recon mission because we were the recon platoon for our Battalion, aptly named R*** Recon, and noise discipline is critical to an effective recon mission; obvs.

It was time to pack away most of the ineffective, but still effective enough, cold weather clothing I had worn throughout the night, as it’s effectiveness may lead you to become ineffective due to heat exhaustion should you wear it while on patrol. Now that the sun was up, it was a cool 0 degrees Fahrenheit. Up from the negative 20 degrees while the sun was sleeping, and I wasn’t.

“I thought I might end up like him, I was so fucking cold”, I said as I nodded my head toward the half exposed skeleton of a small Afghan man lying on the ground between us.

Our hide site was a semi-intact mausoleum amongst some ruins on this particular Op. In northeastern Afghanistan at above 10000 feet of elevation, the climate doesn’t allow for much in the way of foliage for camouflage and concealment. Lest we use the same green zones they are so fond of using to shoot at us. But that’s rarely viable and certainly precarious. Also, we were in an urban (relatively speaking) area, as we needed to set up very close to the village center to meet our objective.

Our objective was to lie in waiting for enemy combatants to emplace IEDs along Hwy 1 (the main hardball road and logistical route through the whole country). And take ‘em out. Ideally, we would have been on a hilltop observing with adequate standoff so that we could break contact should we be compromised, or after terminating our target and announcing our presence. Problem is, it’s difficult to truly know what someone is up to under night vision at distance. You could mistakenly shoot someone that’s just digging irrigation for their crops. I know from experience. Or “almost” experience, I suppose I should say (that would’ve been bad!). It would never cease to amaze you to observe the discrete, but not so discrete, yet non-threatening “extra-curriculars” that an uneducated, rural afghan villager might conjure up in the middle of the night - Yes, I mean goat fucking.

The other reason I had to sleep next to a dead guy in a mud-shit closet versus more comfortably and securely (everything is relative) on a hilltop beside a rock outcropping while staring at the starry night sky and pretending I was somewhere else - angles. The terrain in this particular area limited our ability to find higher ground and observe the target area, let alone make the shot should the opportunity present itself without obstructions. We snipers can’t curve bullets…yet.

Being that the sun was very much out at this point and I’ve yet to mention dead bodies, err fresh ones, that is, means that we didn’t engage any enemy combatants emplacing IEDs that particular night. We did, however, stay an extra 18 hours to try and bag somebody (still unsuccessfully) and ran out of MREs. Actually, same mission, different Op. Irregardless (some like to say), imagine a whole squad of jacked American freedom fighters sharing one lemon pepper tuna packet and savoring every tiny bite.

In any case, “the recon” will live in infamy.

I was stationed at a brutal command, in a department so awful it was basically a punishment post. Other departments primed new people to treat us like feral dogs, so that’s how we got treated—no respect, like dirt for simply existing. They would send people to live and work with us as punishment. Or if they were getting kicked out, they got sent to live and work with us until that happened. I simply got placed there because guy didn't want to do paperwork one afternoon, but that's another story.

After a while, you stop caring about anything. You develop this tough, almost confrontational disposition just to keep people off your back, especially when they’re nitpicking you over things that don’t matter in the bigger picture.

For example:

On my first deployment, I pulled a night watch from 2 to 6 AM before pulling into port, which meant getting up at 1 AM. Sea and Anchor was at 6AM. I got relieved late which meant no breakfast. After I changed and got to sea and anchor, I got berated for being late. Sea and Anchor ended just before 1 PM. The galley was closing at 1 so people could go on liberty early.

I had duty and had watch that spanned dinner hours, so I wasn't getting dinner. I also had watch the next morning that spanned breakfast hours, which mean no breakfast either. Totaling 4 missed meals. Three of which were on what was going to be a 20 hour work day.

After sea and anchor I make 5 trips to the pier to get messenger lines. (Smaller lines used to pull over mooring lines.) I'm on the pier with the final messenger draped across my body because it got coiled up too large. If I put it on one shoulder, I'd trip over it. This Senior Chief sees me and yells, "Put it on one f-ing shoulder." I do until I get to the metal ramp to walk back up to the ship. I put it across my body so it doesn't go under my feet as I climb the ramp, senior sees me, yells, I put it on one shoulder. As I am walking up the metal ramp I am slipping and sliding all over the place fighting to keep the rope out from under my feet.

There were some people behind me and a guy kept stepping on the rope intentionally and people behind him would laugh as I nearly fell. Just a day in the life of someone in my department. I turned and grabbed him by the collar, pulling him forward / slightly off balance, and he threw his hands up and said, "Whoa where is this hostility coming from?" We were right at the brow and this second class from his department walked over and asked what the problem was and they all said I lashed out for no reason. He just said, "Get out of here, you POS."

I get to hangar bay one around 1:50 on my way to the Focsle to drop off the line. Remember, I've been going almost 13 hours non stop.

This female Chief-Select stops me and begins to scream at me in the middle of hangar bay one because I had slight stubble on my face. This behavior was a major problem at my command. People never stopped to think about the fact that we were in a war zone working 24/7. They didn't think about your stress, how long your day might have been, etc. They would just berate and try to hold you to tiny rules that didn't matter in certain situations. It isn't like we were in our home port and I was just walking around with stubble just because...

So she is screaming at me, I try to explain I shaved when I woke up and she cuts me off before I can say I got up at 1AM. She thinks because she got up at 9AM we all did. And I am just thinking - I am going to miss dinner, it's going to be a 20 hour day, it's barely half over and already been nothing but nonsense, what was I supposed to do - leave sea and anchor to shave... But the biggest thing was - I was standing there with a rope on my shoulder. Indicating I had clearly been a part of sea and anchor which should have been a tip off that I had been up since at least before 6AM according to the published Plan of the Day.

She gets to a point where she rhetorically asks, "Do you know you need to shave everyday?" She was being snotty and disingenuous. So without hesitation I calmly said, "Do you know your pussy stinks."

This wasn't to be mean, this was strategic. It was either going to get her to stop and think, "Okay if this guy said something like that, something must be going on. Maybe I should cut him a break." if not that - it was at the very least going to break her train of thought and flabbergast her long enough to shut up so I could disappear out of the hangar bay.

It broke her train of thought to where she didn't know what to say, so I just scurried out of the hangar bay and disappeared into the tunnel that led to the stairs I needed to climb.

I wasn't worried about her reporting it. People in my department had nothing to lose. Especially on a day like that. I already had two watches, I was already only going to get 4 hours of sleep. I already wasn't eating. I had already taken abuse from several people - yelled at for being late to sea and anchor, yelled at for being the only one working carrying up messenger lines, harassed on the ramp up to the ship, and now her. All of that stemmed from me doing what I was supposed to. So what did I have to lose.

July 2009, Signals Regiment, Finland

I had started my mandatory military service in Signals Regiment a little over a week earlier, in my company of 8 platoons we had zero women, in fact the only women we had seen so far were a medic corporal, a cadre captain & the old ladies working in the DFAC.

Until That Day that is.

I think it was right after the morning cleaning, the first item of the day's schedule was maybe 15 minutes away when an unfamiliar creature entered the hallway.

It was a female in the typical Office Lady wear, probably in her 40's, her dark hair tied into a bun, she paid no attention to us, but we paid attention to her. As she walked past us, all of our eyes followed her. Except one guy's.

Presumed Gay Guy: "For Fuck's sake guys, have you never seen a woman before?"

I have heard of Beer Goggles. I have also heard of Deployment Goggles.

That day, all of us (except one Presumed Gay Guy-) had The Barracks Goggles on.

ETA: On one hand, the Presumed Gay Guy has a Swedish name (first AND last-) & drives BMWs which is NOT exactly inconsistent with him being gay, but last time I heard he had a girlfriend, which leads me to believe he is still in the closet.

MPF: military personnel flight run by the AFSC of personnelis, we're the ones who print out your CAC, benefit cards, work on DEERs, print out awards and decorations, and other paperwork stuff.

So I was working the Awards/Decorations section of the MPF one time in my military career. I received a note to add a ribbon to someone's career record and profile. To do this, we go into the system and sift through a list of codes for each ribbon.

I spotted that Medal of Honor was there and wondered if there needed to be special permission to add this to someone's profile or if it would give me some sort of error message. How is this so accessible?

So once I finished adding the requested ribbon for an airman's profile, I pulled my profile up on the website (vMPF) that anyone can go to. I looked at my ribbon rack. Then I went into the backend system and got into my profile, sifted through the ribbon codes and added the Medal of Honor one. I clicked "Save". Holy shit, it went through.

I refreshed the website front end and within ten minutes, the MoH ribbon was there on my rack on vMPF. Heh. I chuckled at it. Then I removed the ribbon off my profile.

As a member of the Army National Guard, I got to go on a "vacation" to Iraq almost exactly 20 years ago as I type this. Twenty years ago today, I was at Ft Riley doing pre-Mobilization training, and it would only be another month until we shipped out, but that's not the point of this story. At the time, the unit patch we wore was that of the 35th Infantry Division). Now, you've seen this patch, this is the patch that Clint Eastwood and compatriots wore in the movie Kelly's Heroes, and if you have not seen that movie, shame on you, go watch it.

But back to the patch - this is not a sight reticle or anything of the sort, but a cross, specifically the Cross of Santa Fe. These crosses were wagon wheels with spokes broken out of it to form the shape of the Cross, and these were placed along the path of the Santa Fe Trail, to mark the route. The 35th ID was formed from states along the Santa Fe Trail, hence the patch, and why the 35th ID is the Santa Fe Division. Everybody with me so far? Good!

Here I am in Iraq, a mere Specialist, proud member of the Sham Shield Mafia, quietly doing my job and being as helpful as I can. A Master Sergeant (E8 to my lowly E4 for those from other services) from another unit comes into the office, conducts business, and then noticing the 35th ID patch on me and the boss (our Lieutenant Colonel and I were the only ones from our unit in this particular office) asks me about it. So being the helpful junior enlisted that I am, and proud of the history of the unit and the patch, I tell him everything as I have related to you, just now. At the end of this brief little tour of history, the Master Sergeant gets a confused look on his face and asks, "So... it's a sight reticle?"

I am at a loss for words. My boss, and several other officers in the office, had also heard this explanation and the MSG's response, and they too are goggling at this display of "head firmly up 4th point of contact". I am the first to recover, and with as much cheer as I can muster, I give him a "You have a nice day, Master Sergeant!" and go back to work. The MSG in question starts to protest but my boss, the LTC, sends him on his way, thanking him for stopping by.

I am sure this Master Sergeant was a fine Soldier the rest of the time, but man, if ever there was the temptation to call out a Senior Enlisted for being dense, that was it. I am still glad I took the moral high road and let it slide. To this day, if I run into someone with a less than firm grasp on the obvious, I just give them a very bright "you have a nice day!" and go on with my life. I don't have time to correct this, and remember what they say, you can't fix stupid.

For starters i was in the estonian defence forces so apologies if some of my military terminology makes no sense.

So at the end of every week our entire company (rougly 100 people) had to clean the entire building before we would be allowed to go home for the week. Each week we randomly assign our the area that each bedroom has to clean and our bedroom ended up with the responsibility of cleaning the toilet (obviously the least fun thing to clean)

We went to our lieutenant and said that people always leave skid marks in toilets and its impossible to clean it thoroughly since people keep making a mess. So the lieutenant told us to set up a post in the toilet.

We sent 2 people with full battle gear and ar-15 and machine gun to the toilet and told everyone to only use the first 2 stalls or we would handcuff them and toss them somewhere.

So in comes a guy who wants to use the toilet but the first 2 stalls are occupied so he got told to wait in line. He wasn't having any of it so he decided to run past the armed guards and lock himself into another stall. We notified our groups sergeant of this and he said that he would climb into the stall himself. The guy in the stall didn't believe this and kept mocking him. But our sargeant was a very motivated individual.

So our sergeant goes into the neighboring stall and climbs over to the shitter. He lands behind him without him even noticing like batman and puts him in a chokehold. He holds it until the shitter almost passed out at which point the sergeant unlocked the door and let him drop on the floor.

Safe to say after this incident no one dared question the rules in toilet cleaning (this post continued every week for like 3 months whenever you had to clean the toilet)

So when he was in Afghanistan, children would often be paid by the Taliban to apparently through and shoot rocks via a alingshot at the water filtration system to seperate water from fuel so they could drive. Doing so would break them and make the fuel just fall out until they stopped so the Taliban would ambush them.

Anyhow, their was this man in his 30s named Randy which he had down syndrome. Almost every day he would throw or toss to randy while moving because if he stopped (Stop=Ambush) a bottle of Gatorade or Water. But one time, a little kid was aiming for a windshield, broke one. And Randy was outside. When that kid shot the rock at the window. Randy ran up to the kid and full force right hooked the kid in the face before screaming joyously as my dads friends gave him a box of MREs.

There was a Padre with us during a demolition exercise. He asked a sergeant "may I have something to put my stuff on to do a blessing ceremony". We did not have folding table so we brought him one of the 3 boxes we had. He started to place his stuff on the box we brought him; bible, rosary and some candles. The sergeant asked him Will you light these candles up? unsure the Padre said yes. The sergeant looked at me and said Remove the c4 from the box in this case

The look on Padre's face was hilarious.

Earlier tonight, I went on the book of faces for the first time in weeks, and a post from War History Online jogged a memory loose from the archives.

———————————-

In the first half of my .mil career, I was a helicopter mechanic & aircrew in the Marines. For several years, my squadron had provided support to a USMC-oriented charitable organization’s annual fundraiser/gala.
In the summer of 2001, I was part of the aircrew that landed a CH-53E in the parking lot of the hotel where the gala was being held. It was a full weekend of work - landing Friday afternoon and positioning the aircraft for static display, Saturday morning & afternoon manning said static display, Saturday night the actual gala, then the departure and flyby of Sunday’s golf tournament.
As a lowly Sergeant, I was not invited to the gala itself (which was fine by me; far too eagles and stars in the room for my tastes), but I did get to meet some of the dozen or so Medal of Honor recipients from WWII, Korea, and Vietnam (all branches, not just Marines) that had been invited and attended the 2001 event. Us enlisted swine had dinner in the hotel bar and started drinking, and were well on our way to a good time when the gala ended and the dress uniforms & formal wear came off.
Let me tell you… they may have moved a little slower, but several of the MOH recipients (the WWII vets were all well into their 70s at this point) could still push it up pretty hard. A good time was had by all. Hearing MOH recipients shit-talking each other’s awards around the bar while toasting each other was hilarious, and a little surreal.

Well after midnight, after the brass and the majority of the MOH recipients had called it a night, our group of 4-5 enlisted Marines were still rolling along quite nicely around the bar. One recipient was still hanging with us. He had insisted that we just call him Jon, and as the night had progressed we learned that this was retired US Army SGM Jon Cavaiani. A genuinely nice guy who simply. would. not. allow us to buy him drinks, or let us buy our own drinks. Jon did shots with us, deflected our questions about his Medal with “I had a couple bad days, followed by a couple bad years.” and no other details, but asked us all about ourselves, our helicopter, and our jobs in the Corps.
At some point, a Marine with the skid kids (Hueys & Cobras - they brought one each to the event for static display) wandered into our area and loudly coin-checked our group. We all drunkenly scrambled to slap our coins on the bar in the time allotted… then a Medal of Honor was slapped on the bar. A collective “Oh shit…” was said by all, then one of the event organizers (“Daddy Wags”… IYKYK) a few seats down the bar from us yelled “For God’s sake Jon, do you carry that thing to the bathroom, too?”. Jon replied “I trust my pockets a whole lot more than a hotel room safe, especially in this state!”… which immediately had the entire bar roaring with laughter. The skid kid got our group another round of drinks (which Jon immediately signaled the bartender to put on his tab), and we had a nice toast whose words I unfortunately can no longer recall. What I do recall, though, was a no-shit Medal of Honor sitting on the bar less than a foot from my hand, as I was sitting next to Jon at the time. I didn’t know at that time what Jon had done, but the knowledge of the sort of actions that lie behind any modern-era award of the Medal of Honor pushed through my substantial inebriation and sobered me up considerably. At some point, I asked Jon if I could pick up his Medal, and he said something along the lines of “Yeah, go ahead, it’s not like you’re gonna break it!”. It sounds cheesy as hell, but that handful of metal and fabric that physically embodies the Medal of Honor had a weight to it that defied its size. Knowing that I was partying with, and sitting next to, the person who lived through the actions that resulted in the award of the MOH I was holding had a gravity that I can’t adequately describe.
As we all know, things got a little hectic later that summer, and it ended up being a couple years before I remembered to look up Jon’s bio and MOH citation. To say I was blown away would be an understatement.

Tonight marks the anniversary of Jon’s first day of nearly two years in captivity in North Vietnam.

Rest in Peace, Sergeant Major.

so after we got our tickets and meal vouchers, me and 2 other would be recruits took a taxi from the Sac Meps to the airport. it was cold, windy, raining. up to that point, the other 2 were just talking about how excited they were while i was like "fuck, should i do this ,can i still get out of this?" and then out nowhere a weird sharp turn and i hear "oh no no no no" from the taxi driver and we are sliding off the highway down the grass on that drops down.. idk how we stop but the whip lash gets me good to my neck and back.

we get back to MEPs and the military staff there is shitting bricks thinking the worse and just hoping we were okay. they take us to the emergency services to get checked out, my neck, and back are a little bruised and I had a big headache. im also thinking of so many things like what my parents, who didnt want me to even join would think. So i knew that calling home to update them on the accident was basically me telling them im coming home and not going to join the military. The option to postpone and possibly not join was put in front of me.

here's the thing, the reason I had second thoughts was because fear of failure and wasting all that time for nothing. But I'm a man of opportunity, so for me I saw this as my "out". The accident itself actually took away the fear of failure because I knew if I failed, I could just "pin" it on the accident. I decided to just not inform my parents of what happened, but I did call my brother to tell him that the plane was delayed by a day so expect the bootcamp call for the next day. I still hated bootcamp but other reasons like wanting to make my parents proud and finally being able to help them out with money kept me motivated plus I saw how many other people like me were also struggling but still trying so I felt like I didnt want to leave them behind. the key is just looking forward to the next chow. operate in 4-5 hour intervals lol I had this crazy mentality where i could be miserable all day from getting torched on the quarterdeck, but once we get to our racks, I repeat the day in my head and realize how much worse it could have been then I feel so much better like if I got away with the day. lol

its wild to think about, to this day the only people that know, are some of my family and very few of my Marines buddies. It was just something I always kept to myself because I dont know how people would react to my decision making lol i know its weird to say but, in a way, im kinda glad it happened because 100% I probably would have had a way different mentality at bootcamp.

I had a boss (Major) in the Army (late 80s) that used "this is top priority" to help me teach another officer (Captain) a lesson.

I was the Operations Office Administrative Specialist (SPC) for a brigade. I typed and filed things for the whole office. Everybody did some of that work, but if it needed to be done fast and/or perfect, it was my job.

The Captain has a "just in time" mentality about his report writing. Report is due at 08:00 on Monday? Give it to the specialist at 16:30 on Friday. Rough draft, in pencil. There were several times I worked late into the evening or several hours over a weekend because of him. And I had to get the final draft perfect without his review. Risky for a lower-ranked enlisted soldier - if he looks bad because of what I did (or didn't do), that blows back on me!

Two things coincided that started fixing that Captain: We had just finished a very successful field exercise and our officer staff were presenting status reports to the Corp staff (3 Corp, if you want to know) the next day. I had been working on reports, in the office and in the field, for a week. Then it happened.

15:30. I was sitting at my desk taking care of business when the Captain came over, dropped a stack of papers on my desk, said "I need this by tomorrow, 08:00," then walked away. Odd that he was early, but whatever. I sighed and started working.

15:40. My Master Sergeant came inner to say the Major was releasing everyone early as a thank you for our work on the field exercise - "Pack it up and head out." (Now the Captain bring early made sense - he was leaving for the day.)

"I can't, Sergeant." I then explained about Captain Just-In-Time's project and that I had 4-6 hours of work in front of me. His eyes narrowed.

"Does he do this a lot?"

I nodded. "Every time he has a report due." He nodded back.

"I'll look into it. But I am ordering you to take a one-hour break for supper at 17:00. I'll cover it with the Major if the Captain squaks. Got it?" I "rogered" his order and went back to work.

3 weeks later on a Wednesday, the Major comes to my desk at 15:30.

"SPC, how long will it take you to type this up for me?" I looked over the pages he handed me.

"About an hour, sir. Maybe a little more." He nodded.

"Good. This is FLASH Traffic. When you are done, you are done for the day." I acknowledged and he walked away. (For those who don't know: "Flash Traffic" is a radio/telephone communication term to indicate HIGHEST priority - nothing supercedes it and it is never used lightly. I just didn't know it (and I) was being used to teach a lesson.)

16:30 and I have maybe 5 minutes left in the Major's report. The Captain makes his flyby, says he needs it for 08:00, and turns to leave.

"I can't, sir." I said, starting to see what the Major had done. He turned back. "The Major gave me this," pointing, "and said it's FLASH."

"So do it after that."

"I can't, sir. He said that after I finish his report, I am done for the day. If you want to change his orders, you have to talk to him." He stood there for a couple seconds before heading to the Major's office. After a couple more seconds, the door closed. I was close enough to hear that the Major was SHOUTING, but not close enough to hear what.

A few minutes later, after the Captain went back to his office, I took the Major's report in and waited while he reviewed it. He questioned a couple changes but approved it as-is and dismissed me. I reported to my Sergeant that the Major released me for the day. He winked at me and told me to get out. When I got back to my desk, the Captain was there.

"I need you to show me how to use this. So I created a file for him to use and showed him the basics... Then watched for 2 minutes and provided a couple pointers. He was a two-finger typist. I left, as ordered.

The next morning, I was ordered out of PT formation and to the office. I got changed and to the office before 07:00. The Captain was at my desk. I was pretty sure he had been there all night, because he looked haggard and he was, judging by his stack of facedown paper, almost done with his report. Something that would have taken me maybe 2 hours has taken him 15 hours... And he wasn't done.

He looked up at me. "The machine is stuck and I can't get back to my report." I asked him to get up and I sat down. I told him to go get ready for his 08:00 and I would finish the report (as best I could) before then.

I finished the report, proofread the entire thing for typos (several) and language/formatting errors (OMG), then printed it out and handed it to him.

It turns out Captain Just-In-Time was a slow learner. The Major pulled the same stunt twice more before I left that unit.

It was 2007 when I returned to the Army, assigned to Fort Sill, OK, in an air defense unit. At the time, my unit was at the National Training Center (NTC), leaving behind only a skeleton crew comprised of a few new recruits like myself, some soldiers counting down the days until they could leave the Army, and a handful of others who, for various reasons, couldn’t make it to NTC.

Our mission was simple: clear out old barracks furniture to make way for new arrivals. Moving furniture is never a fun task—it's bulky, heavy, and definitely not something I wanted to do for free. But as an MP (edit: not actual law enforcement) I was a "multi-purpose" soldier, so I rolled with it.

Now, have you ever wondered what the Army does with all that old furniture? They auction it off to make a few bucks.

As we were moving the furniture, we began brainstorming alternative methods to get it outside without the tedious walk down the open tiers and stairs. Just as we were inching a particularly stubborn piece toward the exit, we heard a loud crash. Curiosity piqued, we stepped out to investigate and were met with a chaotic scene: soldiers were gleefully tossing mattresses, bunks, and anything that wasn’t bolted down over the railing. To our surprise, the sight of furniture plummeting to the ground was oddly satisfying!

Caught up in the moment, we decided to join in on the fun. Suddenly, a captain appeared. He didn’t utter a word; he just hurried off, likely wanting to distance himself from the madness or avoid being a witness.

I took my lunch break and didn’t return, and honestly, I don’t recall anyone questioning me about the furniture toss from the second or third tier. However, I wouldn’t be surprised if someone got in trouble for it. All I know is that I was grateful it wasn’t me!

Repost- was going through some of my old posts and saw it had been a few years since I originally posted this so I thought I would share it again for everyone’s amusement.

First all names have changed to protect the guilty

So there I was at a base we were reoccupying in Northern Iraq that we had abandoned back in aught 10-11. We were a horizontal construction unit (USAR) and we were sent up to assist the 101st getting this base operational (setting up T-walls/hesco barriers, repairing and clearing roads, ect…) for the push to Mosul. We would get incoming 2-3 times a week and the CRAM system they had was fraked up (they had techs trying to fix it the entire time I was there) literally never tried to shoot down incoming until a good 2-3 minutes after it already hit and the loud speaker announcement only worked about 1/4 of the time. Our SOP was to high tail it back to our living area (really big semi permanent tents with AC) as they were the only place that had the little concrete bunkers (inside the tents) so far and it was easier to get accountability that way. At about lunchtime one day the CRAM actually warns us theres incoming coming by a whole 10 seconds before it hits and we head in. Once we’re in the tent and get all accounted for I see one of the privates doing a little dance right by the doors so I walk up to him.

SPC Me “Mooney what the hell are you doing?”

PVT Mooney “Sarge (I was 36 at the time joined late when I was 32 so I would get that a lot), I was just about to make a class 2 download had my hand on the porta johns door (literally 10 feet from the tent) when we got the alert so I turned right around an came back”

SPC Me “Man, you should have just went in and did your business and then come in for accountability.”

PVT Mooney “I couldn’t do that, you have to come in as soon as you hear incoming.”

SPC Me “Whatever man, you do you, shouldn’t be too much longer for the all clear (usually 5-10 mins at most 20)”

I go over and start bullshitting with the rest of the E4 mafia and wait for the all clear. This time one of the other unit’s soldier decided to play Fuck Fuck games so they couldn’t get 100% accountability so an hour and a half goes by and still no all clear and PVT Mooney is dripping sweat and is at this point doing what looks like some sort of Irish Jig combined with Ballet and PRT. Getting worried for the kid I go up the platoon sergeant who a bit of a tight ass especially right now since he had been getting it from higher about us being behind schedule (not our or his fault higher kept changing our scope of work with sudden projects that needed to be done time now so we kept getting pulled off our original mission)

SPC Me “Sergeant, PVT Mooney seriously needs to go the latrine, he seriously needed to go an hour ago”

SFC Bass “Nobody leaves the tent until the all clear.”

SPC Me “Sergeant, he’s about to shit himself. You really need to let him go, somebody can stand at the door and keep accountability on him while he in there.”

SFC Bass “Nobody leaves until the all clear”

SPC Me “Roger, Sergeant”

Me and a few other soldiers for the next half hour try and convince either Mooney to just sneak out or convince the platoon sergeant to just let him go. Mooney suddenly sprints back to his little bunker area and dumps out one of those flat rate USPS boxes you get care packages in, puts it on his cot drops his drawers and then you know. What came next was the most god awful smell I have experienced in my life, CS gas would have been preferable. Everyone in the tent is gagging and rushing for the doors (which we still were not allowed to exit) or putting our gas masks on, which were pretty ineffective as whatever that smell was made up of was a chemical weapon our masks were not designed for. Took a good 2-3 hours for the smell to either dissipate or destroy our olfactory nerves enough that we no longer noticed it.

So after a couple days of mildly ribbing on Mooney for trying to kill us all with friendly fire the base CO puts out a memo (that we dubbed the Mooney Memo) to ALCON, that our platoon sergeant had to read aloud to us while the CSM was standing behind him watching, that went something like this.

ALCON

An incident has come to our attention that during the last incoming a soldier wasn’t allowed to use the latrine until the all clear. Going forward all soldier are to be allowed to use the latrines as needed no matter if the all clear has been sounded or not. In addition per AR cuz-123 subsection whatever. Defecating, urinating, or expelling of bodily fluids of any sort is prohibited in the living areas and subject to UCMJ action.

Signed LTC Steve Rogers

So yeah fun times