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Military Humor - And a lot of truth

Redress said:
I forget which ship it was, but one of the tin cans that eventually would be sunk at Leyte Gulf had a newsletter kinda thing with an "Ask the Captain" column. One of the questions asked was "how often do these little boats sink?", to which the captain answered "usually only once".
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I knew enough to never ever volunteer as they say. But exceptions do arise.
Going thru basic training.
Day at the gas hut.
Sgt. asks for a volunteer to check that all the windows are closed in the gas hut. Needs a volunteer.
Up goes my hand.
He picks me, I run down, stop, put on my gas mask.
Enter the hut, come out, come back and tell him they are all closed.

Army has an old saying "1 man, 1 kit" look after & maintain it.
We also played tricks on people who did not check their respirator or filter.
Remove the inside of the filter.
Doing a test for ensuring the mask was fitted properly, placed hand over the intake of the filter. Well it works, mask is sucked inwards, safe secure and fitted properly.
Into the chamber, well you know what happens that first breath.

Another would be to place a plug inside of the filter where it attached to the mask. Only way you can see it is to remove the filter to check it.
Inside the chamber, have to stay, and then fix the filter.
Yes, those were good times.
 
JANFU said:
I knew enough to never ever volunteer as they say. But exceptions do arise.
Going thru basic training.
Day at the gas hut.
Sgt. asks for a volunteer to check that all the windows are closed in the gas hut. Needs a volunteer.
Up goes my hand.
He picks me, I run down, stop, put on my gas mask.
Enter the hut, come out, come back and tell him they are all closed.

Army has an old saying "1 man, 1 kit" look after & maintain it.
We also played tricks on people who did not check their respirator or filter.
Remove the inside of the filter.
Doing a test for ensuring the mask was fitted properly, placed hand over the intake of the filter. Well it works, mask is sucked inwards, safe secure and fitted properly.
Into the chamber, well you know what happens that first breath.

Another would be to place a plug inside of the filter where it attached to the mask. Only way you can see it is to remove the filter to check it.
Inside the chamber, have to stay, and then fix the filter.
Yes, those were good times.
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During basic, I did my service week at the firefighting facility, which at least at Great Lakes includes the gas chamber. At the start of each week, they picked the guy with the highest average test scores to serves as rcpo, and that was me. First day of service week, all new guys get sent into the chamber after the training companies finish as hazing. It sucks. As rcpo, the guys who ran the place carried me in and locked the door for a couple minutes my last day of service week(tradition). 3 days after service week was firefighting/gas mask training, and the bastards got me again. All told I got tear gassed 4 times in a week and a half.
 
Gathomas88 said:
Yeaaah
I feel gipped. Why couldn't we have invaded some place cool... Like Eastern Europe, Latin America, or something? :lamo
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In Dec 2000 I was geared to go to Columbia with a drug interdiction task force. Literally at the airport when they canned the mission. I got back to the base and went into the assignments section and told them I had just been stood down. They gave me a new set of orders and 24 hours later I stepped off a plane in UAE. Stood out quite a bit that first week in my jungle camo. Took over a unified comm element with service components from around the globe. Best deployment ever. Extraordinary group of NCOs. Great leaders. I was in so over my head when I got there and our OIC was a protocol officer from LA Air Base. She didn't last a week. They brought that team together. I was blessed.

We implemented the old Hap Arnold 'smokers'....real Cubans on beer night...grilled rib eyes picked up on the way back from Abu Dhabi. Good times.
 
JANFU said:
I knew enough to never ever volunteer as they say. But exceptions do arise.
Going thru basic training.
Day at the gas hut.
Sgt. asks for a volunteer to check that all the windows are closed in the gas hut. Needs a volunteer.
Up goes my hand.
He picks me, I run down, stop, put on my gas mask.
Enter the hut, come out, come back and tell him they are all closed.

Army has an old saying "1 man, 1 kit" look after & maintain it.
We also played tricks on people who did not check their respirator or filter.
Remove the inside of the filter.
Doing a test for ensuring the mask was fitted properly, placed hand over the intake of the filter. Well it works, mask is sucked inwards, safe secure and fitted properly.
Into the chamber, well you know what happens that first breath.

Another would be to place a plug inside of the filter where it attached to the mask. Only way you can see it is to remove the filter to check it.
Inside the chamber, have to stay, and then fix the filter.
Yes, those were good times.
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Raised your hand....yeah...I did that too. Once. You know the thought that's going through your brain as you see your hand going up. WTF are you doing? Put it down!!! Put it down!!!!!
 
VanceMack said:
Raised your hand....yeah...I did that too. Once. You know the thought that's going through your brain as you see your hand going up. WTF are you doing? Put it down!!! Put it down!!!!!
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But I knew what he was up to.
One time they asked who bowled.
Up went the hands.
Off to cleaning the toilets they go.
The do have a bowl.
 
JANFU said:
The Navy had an old saying. Why March when you could sail
The Army had a saying, the Navy was never more than 6 miles or so from land. Meaning down
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The AF also had a saying. "Where's the remote???" [emoji41]
 
VanceMack said:
In Dec 2000 I was geared to go to Columbia with a drug interdiction task force. Literally at the airport when they canned the mission. I got back to the base and went into the assignments section and told them I had just been stood down. They gave me a new set of orders and 24 hours later I stepped off a plane in UAE. Stood out quite a bit that first week in my jungle camo. Took over a unified comm element with service components from around the globe. Best deployment ever. Extraordinary group of NCOs. Great leaders. I was in so over my head when I got there and our OIC was a protocol officer from LA Air Base. She didn't last a week. They brought that team together. I was blessed.

We implemented the old Hap Arnold 'smokers'....real Cubans on beer night...grilled rib eyes picked up on the way back from Abu Dhabi. Good times.
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Oh, I can imagine. UAE, Bahrain, and Qatar are all supposed to be pretty nice, as far as I've heard.

Kuwait could probably be similar, but they're much too strict about letting people off post. You basically wind up spending the whole damn deployment in a giant sunbaked and hot windswept sandbox, sealed off with barbed wire on all sides, full of sheet metal shacks and concrete warehouses that have been repurposed into barracks and office buildings.

Feels like freaking prison. Lol

And, of course, Iraq and Afghanistan are like that as well... Only with the added fun of mortars constantly falling out of the sky in the middle of the night. :2razz:
 
JANFU said:
But I knew what he was up to.
One time they asked who bowled.
Up went the hands.
Off to cleaning the toilets they go.
The do have a bowl.
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My very first day there. Still in civ's. The TI was being everyone's buddy as we were all just sitting around getting to know one another. He asked 'who's ready for lunch?' and my hand went up. Congrats...I was the chow runner. When we got to the chow hall he instructed me on what to say, where to stand, how to look, etc. I went in there and was in line with people that had been there weeks. The guy in front of me was in blues which meant he was at least 4 weeks in. He was stuttering and stammering and just getting mauled by the TIs. They made him stand next to the podium and suck his thumb while they called me up. They asked me what I wanted and I gave the reporting statement (one time and I think I still have it memorized perfectly). Nailed it. Silence. All of a sudden they erupted on the poor bastard in blues again. I felt so bad. The TI called me to the podium, told me to go get my flight, and then told me to tell TSGT Perry that he said I couldn't be chow runner anymore.
 
Gathomas88 said:
Oh, I can imagine. UAE, Bahrain, and Qatar are all supposed to be pretty nice, as far as I've heard.

Kuwait could probably be similar, but they're much too strict about letting people off post. You basically wind up spending the whole damn deployment in a giant sunbaked and hot windswept sandbox, sealed off with barbed wire on all sides, full of sheet metal shacks and concrete warehouses that have been repurposed into barracks and office buildings.

Feels like freaking prison. Lol

And, of course, Iraq and Afghanistan are like that as well... Only with the added fun of mortars constantly falling out of the sky in the middle of the night. :2razz:
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Were you at Doha in Kuwait? I was at Salem. Not bad for us. I was there before they brought in the modular trailers. Really preferred the tents. I was off site there more often than not.
 
JANFU said:
But I knew what he was up to.
One time they asked who bowled.
Up went the hands.
Off to cleaning the toilets they go.
The do have a bowl.
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Similar experience. Guy came in and called out a bunch of people's names. Told them they had been selected for a contest with the other flights. They had to climb a telephone pole. Up, down, congrats on your new career field. You are a linesman.
 
VanceMack said:
Were you at Doha in Kuwait? I was at Salem. Not bad for us. I was there before they brought in the modular trailers. Really preferred the tents. I was off site there more often than not.
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Camp Arifjan. It was nice as far as such things go; we had a smallish theater, some big chow halls, a full-sized PX, a couple of fairly nice gyms, and even a swimming pool and a football field (though I can't imagine why anyone would want to use either, given the heat, the sun, and the dust outside at all times).

Still though... When you're basically boxed into a tiny little area like that for a year at a time, it gets pretty grating.

Kuwait could probably be a bit like Korea if they actually let you explore off post a bit. Lord knows we've been there long enough! Being cooped up on a post out in the middle of the dunes just makes it feel like prison.

Officers might be a bit better off than us enlisted in this regard, admittedly. :mrgreen:
 
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soot said:
Spades with us too.

And horseshoes for when it was nice out.

Spades and horseshoes made "hurry up and wait" something to look forward to.
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When I was deployed it was spades mostly, followed by frisbee golf around the tactical vehicles, and last resort we would put a dixie cup on top of a truck and try to throw rocks into it from about 30 feet away, it surprisingly burned many hours.
 
RetiredUSN said:
Some of you never ate on a Navy LST class ship. :( I did 5 years in the engine rooms on LST's, and I swear to god that we cooked better meals on the ALCO diesel exhaust manifolds. I'm not kidding either. We always had some thing cooking down in my "hole"

When I first got to the Inchon LPH-12 ( Helo Carrier )...................I thought I had died and went to heaven.
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My father retired from the navy on the uss inchon, funny he hated the food there. Though he still to this day complains about some of his previous ships and when they stocked food that would say not fit for human consumption, military use only. Ofcourse sometimes I wish the army would put that label on mre's.


He actually loved the food when they first left, but they only went so far on fresh food and fresh meat eggs and veggies before they had to start using dehydrated canned and frozen stuff. I myself was in the army, and I know what a dining facility serves fresh is always different from field rations. I personally remember army dfacs being good, until we deployed, and the first half we got nothing but preserved food the local dogs would not eat.
 
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