What's your best military-related story?

ok this did not happen to be but it did happen in my basic training unit. We are out on training .. so in the middle off the night the Drill Sgt starts yelling GAS GAS .. next thing you hear is the little voice going "bur Drill Sgt I can't find my gas mask." that and when some one opened their gas mask case a pair of sock and a orange go falling out..
When I got to AIT the males decided to call some what off colour cadence .. ok the females decided to return the favor.. problem was WAC cadence was a lot dirtier the male... " oh mam mam cant you see what the army done to me. took away my loving man now I sleep with Uncle Sam."

There is an old joke about riding shotgun on a garbage truck.

In RVN I actually caught this duty one day. I had to pick up an M60 and ride with the semi-solids truck driver to the dump to keep the indig that lived there off of the truck until it could be emptied of its cargo of 55 gallon drums full of semi-solids from our mess that were dumped from the tail gate. They would attempt to swarm the truck as soon as we arrived. This definitely brought home the fact that we were not in Kansas anymore.

Later we would set up a hog farm and those slops would be sent there. The hogs were starving because the Viet's were cutting out the middle man and intercepting the slops. A really sad state of existence.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNySdq6i36c

In lieu of a story here's a clip from my old Super-8 films.
There are quite a few stories therein.

Ok so there I was...no shit......Im in the shopette gettin my pogey bait for class and on my way out I see a SPC. As I normally do with just about every soldier I give him a quick once-over and notice his trousers are falling apart at the seams. Conversation ( however brief) went like this:
Me: Say there highspeed.
Soldier: Yes SSG?
Me: Word of advice. You might want to invest in another pair of trousers, they're falling apart at the seams.
Soldier: Roger, I didnt know.
Me: O_o

Now this is where I have my concern. Normally I'd give a soldier the benefit of the doubt, but his trousers looked as if the family dog got ahold of it. C'mon guy, you mean to tell me that when you got dressed this morning you didnt see your trousers and said to yourself I might need to buy another pair or pick another to wear? Its not the violation that bothers me but the insult to my intelligence. Quit buying 2 and 3 packs of cigs and maintain your basic issue. Mere words doesnt do this story any justice...if I could've taken a picture I would.

Back in the early 90's the last of the Jeeps were sold off from the military. (I don't know how many remember them or the auctions). I was assigned to 'assist' at the motor pool with prepping them for auction. The base price was something like $200 (correct me if anyone remembers). Basically they were cannibalizing some and getting as many as they could in proper condition.

The motor pool Sergeant said to me and my fellow 'volunteers' pick out a jeep and trailer, they would give them special attention (of course at their own pace). At the time I was maybe 19, I didn't want some old jeep (yeah I know). Well we all said no thank you. Several months later I got tasked to assist in the motor pool again (now I had time to reconsider) I asked the motor pool Sergeant if he had enough left to put together a good one. He said yes, if not he would be able to scrounge up what was needed... however... they were no longer allowed to sell them. Someone had deemed them a safety risk and the remaining ones were to be cut in half and sold as scrap! (at least that's what he said, and I had no reason to doubt him.)

My last deployment was with a black hawk flight company. We had brought a handful of maintenance support with us. When we got to A-stan, the CAB that we fell into took our non-flyers and put them in their maintenance company. Well those guys weren't a huge fan of that idea and after a few weeks had gotten pretty ornery.

One day one of our more sarcastic crew chiefs went over to say hi and ended up in a verbal altercation with one of our mechanics which ended with the mechanic telling the crew chief to "go eat a spaghetti bag of D's".

Fast foward a few weeks... the bag o' D's thing had caught on in the flight company and turned into a big joke. One evening after returning from a flight, I was having some issues with the visor on my helmet not working right. Since I had been out flying all day one of the other CCs offered to clean it for me so I could go get chow and crash. I didn't think anything of it and said "ok, thanks".

Next day I had a 0400 showtime for a 0600 take off. I went through the routine I had developed and got ready to go. We take off and start our taxi service route for the day.

At one point we had an operator on board that was sitting in the seat to my left. It was cold out so my nose was running. I flipped up my visor and opened my face shield so that the inside was facing the operater. As I was wiping my nose I saw the guy laughing about something but I shrugged it of and closed my face shield.

Later on in the day we had landed at one of those bases with all the Afghans and their US "advisors". We were unloading on my side so I was out of the aircraft. The ground controller.. a female SFC.. came out to the aircraft and was trying to ask me a question. I was having a hard time hearing here with the helicopter running and all so I flipped up my visor and opened my face shield so I could pull my helmet away from my head. As soon as the inside of my face shield was visible to her SHE started laughing. I was like... wtf is so funny today. I unclipped my face shield from my helmet and looked and lo and behold... the crew chief that had so kindly squared away my visor had apparently gotten bored and found a label maker.. On the inside of my shield was a label that read "BAG O' D's". At least a couple of people were able to have a laugh that day even if it was at my expense.

During the 03-04 deployment we had a great group of guys that played this "slap game". We all had shaved heads and if you caught the other guy "slipping" you would walk up behind him and just SMACK the back of his head open palmed. It would create this extremely loud slap noise, as if you were clapping your hands. (no it didn't really hurt, just scared ya mostly). So we were playing around one day and my buddy puts like 3 packets of peanut butter on a piece of bread and we snuck up on one of the other participants. Just when he was about to smack him he saw what was going on, so we chased him for a minute and then after he was caught, ole boy smacked him with the peanut butter and then rubbed it all into his bald head and left the bread stuck to him afterwards. <br><br>Fast forward some time, in retaliation, the guy decides to get him back. So when the first guy went out to the porta potty we filled up a bucket of water and basically broke open the door to the porta potty, once it was open you see this look of fear on the guys face as he looks up from his newspaper and of course he cant just run away with his pants around his ankles, sitting duck, and next thing ya know lol, he is catching a whole bucket of water all over him.<br><br>And not to forget the time we dumped a bucket of dirt on another participant as he was taking his shower.... ahhh&nbsp;&nbsp; good times.<br>

I had PCS'd to Korea in DEC of 11' and was working with FDC on bringing our Paladin Howitzer up Digital. (getting the systems to talk via digital comm's) The FDC NCO was speaking with one of my Soldiers on the radio and he wasn't able to accomplish the task the FDC NCO was asking him to do. So, I hopped in the gun and jumped on the mike and asked what it was he needed. (FDC didn't know we switched out) He asked for something and I started scrolling through our PDFCS (computer) looking for the data and he started getting more and more impatient. So when he came back up the next time it was like he was yelling through the mike to get the info. So I told him through the radio that,"yelling won't get it done any faster". He asked who he was talking to because he thought it was one of the joe's "disrespecting him" lol... I told him it was "1-7 actual" (me) and he completely changed his tone. I went over and spoke with him mostly because I had just arrived at the unit there and didn't want to get off on the wrong foot, especially with FDC. Once we talked about it we both started laughing hysterically because of the situation. But ever since that day we would laugh our butts off. If something was going on with one of us yelling at the Soldiers we would just walk by and be like, "yelling wont get it done any faster". <br>

Another great story is from basic training. During the class portion most of us found extreme difficulty trying to stay awake yet everyday somebody would slip away to "lala land" and we would suffer whatever consequence the particular MTI wanted to bestow on us. Our favorite though was one MTI would make everyone and everything silent for about 30 seconds and count to 3. On 3 we would all scream to wake up the sleeping beauty. One day one of my fellow trainees fell asleep and we did this to wake him up. Instead of him being startled he flew out of his seat at full attention and then fainted, falling and hitting his head on a chair and landed on the ground with blood coming out of a sizable gash. he was fine and actually was allowed to eat ice cream that day.

It would have to be, while working the desk at the MP Station, I overhear what seemed to be quite the crazy-sounding traffic stop late at night after Halloween this 1 year ago. A car was stopped during a mids shift around 1300 for speeding. When asked to step out of the vehicle for sobriety tests/exams, the officers found out that the 3 people in the car were not only drunk, but in costume to resemble power rangers. I can't say that I'll forget that one.