What is your funniest salute story?

When I was in officer boot camp at Hamilton Field in California prior to coming on active duty, I was walking from the mess hall to my barracks, looking straight ahead as I walked. Suddenly I heard a yell coming from my right about 50 feet away. Startled, I looked and it was the camp commander, whom I had not seen and saluted. I quickly stopped and saluted and the commander said, "Brown, you have the worst tunnel vision I have ever seen!"

LTC James R. Brown USAFR (Ret)

I (CPT) was walking on base near a picnic area in civilian clothes. Four senior NCOs at a picnic table cat called me as I passed them. I went straight home, put on my uniform and returned to their picnic area. I returned and saw that they were still there. While approaching them they all stood up and the most senior of them said, "Hello Ma'am, can we help you?" I took off my hat and very politely told them that a woman walked passed them about an hour ago and they yelled toward her and that woman was me. They collectively got very uncomfortable, raised their eyebrows in surprise, shuffled around and one by one apologized. I told them thank you, put my hat back on and left. I took about 10 steps and one of the NCOs called my name. I turned around and saw the 4 of them standing in line, shoulder to shoulder, at attention, saluting me. I saluted back, did an about face and smiled to myself as I got back into my car and drove away.

While at RTC Greatlakes in the middle of a winter storm I had all four of my wisdom teeth removed. On my way back to the barracks I passed a Lt., and a Masterchief I saluted but didn’t address them they turned around and yelled at me get back her recruit, I turned around and approached them like ordered and the Lt. said have they not taught you how to address an officer as you pass them, I shook my head, he then told me to answer him, so with my mouth full of blood and gauze I tried to address him properly and blood started running down my the side mouth and all I could do was mumble. The Lt. just shook his head mad as he could be and said just get back to your barracks recruit. I saluted done an about faced and went back to my bunk. When my chief came in she called me down to her office and said don’t you know better then to ignore an officer so I tried talking agin and blood from the gauze came out of my mouth again and she just died laughing and said don’t worry I just wanted to see if you were the one the master chiefs were talking about in the mess hall they enjoyed watching the Lt. get so frustrated and have to tell you to just go back to your bunk.

So, while serving with the 506th, in Korea, late 90's, we had a new 2LT. One of the PVTs in the company was walking and about to turn the corner of one of the barracks buildings at the same time the new LT was approaching the same corner from the opposite side. PVT did not have enough reaction time and passed right by LT. LT proceeds to chew into PVT. Several of us us Senior SPCS happen to catch the exchange. For the next few weeks we made sure to travel around camp in packs and greet new LT with tactical salute formation. 5 meter interval and staggered. LT finally caught on and begged the mafia to cut it out.

Basic Training, I had to escort a sick kid to the clinic at dawn. As we turned a corner of the building we literally crashed into the Squadron Commander (A Major). The other guy dropped the bag he was carrying and I bent down to pick it up, at the same time the sick kid snapped to attention, saluted and said Good Morning Sir! My MTI chewed my butt for about a week for that one.

3 years later walking across the Flt Line (No saluting required) I saw my former CC, now Lt Col…I walked right up and almost SCARED the guy when I snapped a salute! He asked why was I saluting him on the Flt Line and I told him I've owed him that since Boot Camp 3+ years ago!

He remembered the collision then and laughed his butt off. We were never in the same unit but we'd run into each other here and there and he was a real nice guy, and often as not, he’d salute me before I could get to it when we’d cross paths.

When I was at Ft. Rucker, as a W-1, we told a bunch of 2LTs that the W-1 rank they were seeing was a 1LT(P) and they were running around saluting the W-1s. Yes, true story.

I once knew a Thai officer who told me that 2nd Lts in his army wore one silver star as their rank insignia. He enjoyed his time in the Joint Korean Command headquarters being saluted by full colonels on down.

So after nearly nine years as an enlisted troop, I went to OTS and earned the coveted gold bars. Still driving my old beater from my enlisted days, I drove to my Tech School at Keesler and as I approached the main gate, the guard popped a salute (this was pre-911 so you were still able to roll through without stopping and showing ID if you had the blue sticker). It was about this time that I realized the one thing they didn't cover in OTS was saluting at the gate. My beater was a standard shift and apparently driving and saluting is the rough equivalent of a second lieutenant walking and chewing gum so when I saluted, control of the clutch went out the window and I stalled the car dead in an embarrassingly conspicuous manner. The guard approached to see if I was drunk or just an idiot but when he saw the gold bars, he saluted again and said I might want to practice my gate salute a couple more times and then returned to his post.

One of the funniest ones I can think of was when I was at a small unit competition as a SPC and while entering the armory early in the morning, I got saluted by a 2LT who was younger than me.

I guess the combination of my age and the SPC rank on my ACUs at dawn made him think I was a LTC. I of course returned the salute and as I passed the 2LT I heard him whisper under his breath, "aw, shit."

I just had a direct commission to 1LT and was in Officers basic at Ft Sam Houston in San Antonio, TX in 1976.While walking down the sidewalk, a whole group of very young enlisted approached me. I watched them spread out so I would have to salute individually. As I passed the first one, he rendered me a left hand salute. I returned with a snappy left hand salute. This continued thru over 20 more enlisted. As I passed the last one, I turned around. All of them had stopped and were looking back at me realizing they had all got a left hand salute. I called them all back. I told all of them, next time that they probably be as lucky. Not all new officers are "green" as some of us were prior enlisted. I was stuck as a PFC for over 4 years as my rank was locked while going to school.