What Were The Worst "Field Problems" You Participated In?

I have two examples, both involving cold weather.

1. As a young CPT (mid-90s), I went on a JRTC rotation with the 101st where a big ice storm hit Central Louisiana. We had a nice 3" layer of sleet on the ground. After a brief thaw, followed by a quick refreeze, we would up with a 2" sheet of solid ice on top of everything. It was so bad that the helicopters couldn't fly. After a few days, they had to make emergency convoys into the box because all of the troops were running out of food.

2. As a young PFC stationed over in Germany (mid-80s), we had a surprise alert and rolled out into the German countryside for 10 days. Snow was everywhere, it was cold as heck, and since it was a surprise alert, nobody had any pogey bait. That sucked.

FT Hunter Liggett, CA will always take the cake for my worst field problems. The first time we went there, some how or another fuel for vehicles was an issue.......yet somehow there were 3 or 4 5K fuel trucks going around fueling the generators at the base camp. We had to roll out on a convoy one morning and when we went to fuel up (and we were not the only vehicle trying to get fuel) we were turned away by the fuelers because their orders were to ONLY give their fuel to the generators. Pissed a bunch of people off. The shower point would work one day and be down for 3. Same for the laundry point. With explicit instructions that NO MALE would ever walk into a female tent no matter the reason, females were constantly walking into mine. One particular time, a female walked in while a guy a few cots away from me was changing his clothes and everything on him was swinging free of clothes. Ended up having a chat with her AND her team leader. They in turn reported me to their LT who also resided in my tent.......and they were MPs. The porta-johns were not enough for the amount of people on the base camp and were not cleaned on a regular basis.....on top of the fact that some people would drop a deuce on top of the lids. Speaking of deuces and shower points. After so many times the field shower points broke down, it was decided that a contractor company would bring in some very nice shower trailers. Well, that went nice and all for about the first two weeks. Then they were completely shut down after someone dropped a deuce in one of the stalls in one of the male AND female trailers. This on top of the many females that were leaving their used feminine products laying free willy nilly in the stalls. I could go on and on and on about that sh*thole, but I won't. Just that from a Preventive Medicine standpoint.......uber worst place I had ever been.......worse than Iraq in my opinion.

The only Field Problem that I ever felt was an issue is the Failure Rate of SM-2 Surface to Air Missile and it's love of trying to come home. Never a good thing watching one you just launched do a U turn and come back.

Too many to count and not the time to tell them all. If it ain't raining then you ain't training. Korea, Ft. Benning, Ft Hood, NTC, and JRTC.

2nd Lt. using DAGR at Hohenfels instead of the map and protractor, getting entire platoon lost after batteries died.

It was OCS, raining and cold.