What is your funniest salute story?

During my first command as a second lieutenant our infantry company had to deploy to Ranger Annex Field 7 in Eglin Air Force Base, Florida to act as guerillas against the Ranger students. When we arrived there we discovered that the barracks that we were to occupy still contained the previous company of acting “guerillas” so we had to repair to main post to find quarters. Once there, we parked our convoy of trucks on the street and our company commander went into the HQ. The other officers and I dismounted ourselves and the troops. We fell them in and then gave them “At Rest!” so they could stretch their legs after the hours long ride from Ft. Benning, smoke and joke. This allowed us officers also to stretch our legs, smoke and discuss French poetry and German philosophers.
Though I was aware, as all of us in the Army were, that protocol in the Air Force is somewhat less formal than in the Army we were not quite prepared for what happened next.
A few minutes after we had dismounted an Air Force Lt. Col. approached us en route to the HQ building. Following Army protocol I called the company to attention turned on my heel to face the Lt. Col., snapped out a smart salute and greeted him with a resounding “Good Afternoon, Sir!” He looked up at me, waved casually and said, “Hi there, Lieutenant” without even a pretence of a salute! We all looked at each other a little bemused and silently concluded that he must have been a doctor or something that he didn’t observe protocol. I gave the men “At Rest” again. A few moments later a full colonel came the other way and again I called the company to attention, saluted sharply and sounded off with, “Good Afternoon, Sir!” He looked at me a little perplexed and says, “Oh, hi, same to you too.”
I returned the men to “At Rest” while they and the other officers remarked on the informality of the Air Force.
Yet again a few minutes later another Lt. Col. came our way but this time I was ready for him. As he passed in front of us I waved to him casually and said “Hi there, Colonel.” He smiled and said, “Hi there, Lieutenant. It’s a great day isn’t it?” and sauntered on his way.
Indeed, it was a great day or at least an bemusing one.

More than 20 and less than 30 years ago we were some hard charging Marines in our MOS school aboard FT Sill. When we had lunch we had to wait for at least 10 other before we marched back to the classroom. So we would hang out on the grass and wait. Several officers would walk by, we yelled ATTENTION ON DECK!!!!!!!!!! and saluted. One time a well rounded Army Major walked out of the chow hall. We watched him kinda put on his cover correctly. He walked by us eating an ice cream cone he held in his right hand. We yelled ATTAENTION ON DECK, saluted and waited. He looked over and smiled and waved at us with his left hand. Being boots we just kinda stood there holding the salute for bit watching him walk away.

About six months out of Annapolis, and down at P-Cola during API, I was reporting to the TRAWING shack and not wearing my glasses (SNFO, but that didn't mean I didn't want to look "cool" like the SNA's). I saw this towering mass of khaki with "gold" shining off the collars and just "knew" I was crossing the beam of a fire-breathing, ensign-eating O-4 and snapped a sharp salute from about eight paces away. The bemused Senior Chief smiled, saluted back and said, "Thank you Sir...be sure to check the cover for two not one, ok?"

When I was home-ported in Sasebo, Japan in 1966, my wife and I rented an off-base apartment from an elderly Japanese couple. When interacting with Japanese, at least in those days, it was customary to exchange bows, and with our old-school landlord this could be an elaborate ritual of bowing back and forth. So I would pay the rent and the landlord and his wife would bow. I would bow back, but then they would bow again. After several rounds of bowing, I would straighten up and salute... and then exit before the landlord figured out how to respond.

I reported to Mather AFB as a 2nd Lt with a silver dollar in my pocket to give to the first enlisted member to salute me (as is the "well known" tradition). As I walked up to the CBPO/Wing HQ building a Staff Sgt was walking toward me. He gives me a salute which I return and I then promptly thank him and hand him the silver dollar. Without hardly breaking stride he takes it and says "you do know, sir, you don't have to pay us for salutes." He just kept walking, so I didn't even get a chance to explain the tradition. It wasn't quite the response I was expecting...I always wondered if anyone ever told him why the snot nosed LT handed him a silver dollar.

I was once eating a cookie while walking out of the building and was caught off guard when a group of Specialists approached and saluted me. I regretfully saluted them with the cookie in my hand, but quickly transferred the cookie to my left hand and rendered a proper salute after the initial blunder. Very embarrasing.

In the nineties, when Poland was in the process of integrating into NATO, a group of American and British Paratroopers and Special Forces went to the Polish military base in Warclaw (formerly the German town of Breslau) to participate in a parachute jump with our new NATO colleagues.
This base was, among other things, the centre for their officer and paratrooper schools with their Special Forces school located a short distance away.
There were soldiers from various other NATO countries on the base performing other integration functions.
One morning before leaving our sleeping quarters to go to the mess hall I happened to look out through the windows of the swinging doors to see standing, just off to the right side of the steps, a group of about 15 German army engineers headed by a full colonel.
For those of you who may not know this, military engineers are very much like their civilian counterparts. They smoke pipes. They are a very methodical group of people. They have to have all the information before they make decisions. They have to think everything through before taking any action. They are the antithesis of paratroopers (and for that matter regular infantry and cavalry as well). We never have all of the information; we take action under the fire of the moment; we don’t have the luxury of time to ruminate. We smoke cigars.
Engineers consider paratroopers to be reckless Neanderthals to be disparaged and avoided when possible; we consider them to be a bit stuffy to be made the butt of fun whenever possible.
Seeing so many engineers with their pipes a puffing I couldn’t resist the temptation - as usual.
Turning to my paratrooper colleagues I said, “Look, there are a group of German engineers out there. Let’s have some fun. Everyone come out of the double doors in single file at five second intervals and do as I do. Let’s see how long before they move off.” Childish grins spread through the group.
I banged my way through the double doors causing the engineers to look up. I shot down the short flight of steps, saluted sharply and boomed out in my parade ground voice, “Guten Morgen, Herr Oberst!” (Good morning, Colonel!) Then without breaking stride as I strode past and away from the group I nodded to the other engineers saying, “Herren” (Gentlemen).
There was a moment of stunned stillness in the group. They were not expecting an American Special Forces officer to materialise from nowhere in Poland and address them German.
This was followed by a moment of befuddlement as pipes were snatched from mouths or shifted to left hands as they sought to return my salute properly (It is true, Germans are very thorough people – that is why they make so many good engineers.)
Five seconds later Mill Biller, a six foot three Scots paratrooper bounded through the doors and down the steps, snapped out a sharp salute and boomed out a “Good morning, Sir!”, not dignifying the occasion by saying these words in the language of Goethe.
The engineers had hardly recovered from my passing at that point and were clearly rattled by this second arrival and went once again through the pipe befuddlement “ritual”, etc. By this point the engineers were beginning to shift on their ground uncomfortably.
Before they could complete their pipe ritual another British “para”, Mark Blackridge, came out the doors and down the steps duplicating his countryman’s performance. The engineers visibly gave ground not certain that there would be not repeat “paratroop drops”.
The coup de grâce was the fourth paratrooper, an American of Chinese origin, Erwin Tong, who banged through doors and down the steps, salutes and says “Good Morning, Sir” in Cantonese (at least I presume that is what he said)
That broke them, the engineers abandoned their ground completely, moving to a position out of saluting range so they could discuss quantum physics or whatever it is that engineers discuss among themselves.
One of the officers in our group observed that if one Chinese could shift 15 Germans then what could the Chinese shift if they all got together to which Erwin Tong replied, “They’d all have to be paratroopers though to get that result, sir.”

A 2LT at Fort Ord I was talking to two of my Soldiers as we walked to the DFAC. Two privates approached and nervously saluted. Before I could get my hand up, SGT Perez, one of unit section chiefs, sneaks up behind me, grabs my arm and salutes saying, "I got that for you, sir!" One of the funniest guys I ever knew...

As a 2LT one day at Fort Ord walking to the DFAC, I was talking to two Soldiers in my unit. Two privates approached and saluted me but before I could get my hand up, SGT Perez, a section chief in my unit, grabbed my arm, saluted saying, "I got that for you, sir!" One of the funniest Soldiers I ever knew...

Reserve Army Nurse Corps Officers always provide some humor. One of our enlisted went to salute what he anticipated was a nurse, until he couldn't figure out her rank. She was wearing a 2LT bar with COL rank underneath. Well, she was an LTC after all.