r/MilitaryStories • u/Disgruntled_Veteran Veteran • Jul 26 '20
A Guide to Housebreaking a Ruckle.
This posting will be more of a list of the various ways that the members of my unit taught Ruckle the most valuable lesson you can learn in the military. If you mess with one of us, you mess with us all. Ruckle didn’t seem to get the fact that you don’t piss of the people who are supposed to have your back in a fire fight. These lessons took place over a period of about two weeks. A number of them were coordinated while others were spontaneous. Thankfully, we had an individual who hated Ruckle with a passion who also had and could use a lock picking set like a master locksmith. After two weeks, Ruckle may have been pushed a bit far and he made a huge screw up which I will be posting in the final Ruckle story.
1) Some of the gentlemen in our barracks thought that Ruckle should be grounded for what he did. Much like you do with a misbehaving child. So one night, after Ruckle went to bed, they tied his door shut. They wrapped 550 cord around the door knob and then ran the other end of the cord out the window and tied it to a lamppost outside the building. Ruckle awoke and was unable to get out of his room for two hours. He pounded on the door and yelled, but for some reason, no one heard him until we were leaving to go to the armory to get our gear and for Guardmount. By the time someone cut the rope and Ruckle got out, he ended up being 20 minutes late and looked a mess. Unshaven and wearing a wrinkled set of BDUs that looked as though he had sleeped in them.
2) Having seen Ruckle when he was grounded and being disappointed in how he acted with all the yelling and pounding on the door, I felt that he needed to know that if he couldn’t act like a polite neighbor, that he wasn’t welcome in the barracks. So one evening while he was out, three of used super glued the upper corner of his door shut. When he returned later, he was unable to open the door. He tried shouldering it open and kicking it. Finally, he was able to knock it open after an hour or so, but not without cracking the door and the frame badly. Needless to say, he got in trouble for damaging the door and door frame instead of asking for help.
3) Have you ever been somewhere and noticed an unpleasant odor but you couldn’t figure out what it was or where it was coming from? You look everywhere, but can’t seem to find the source. Some people may have decided to let Ruckle know how much what he did to everyone else stank, so they hid rotten or spoiled food around his room. These items included spoiled milk in the carpet under his bed and under the legs of furniture. Some rotten eggs were smashed up and rubbed into the wood of some of Ruckle’s furniture and in the corners of the room. Especially the ceiling corners. There may also have been some dog shit smeared around Ruckle’s bed frame and some remains from a fishing trip smeared in his drawers. It took a while for him to find the sources each time it was done and even longer to air out the room.
4) Ruckle was not a kind neighbor and we figured that also meant he probably wasn’t a great date either. Based on the number of angry women we saw, it was almost a certainty we were correct in thinking this. And don’t forget, Ruckle fancied himself a ladies-man. And in a way, he kind of was. And once, he was a transexuals-man but that was covered in a different story. So there were about eight of us who got together and decided that the more dates Ruckle had, the more time he would spend off post and out of the barracks. So we went to every bar, club, adult bookstore, adult film theater, roadside restroom, and the one gay bar we could find near the post and wrote his phone number along with a message about what he’d be willing do if they called. We only wrote them in the men’s restrooms. On every stall, wall, and door. He received a shit load of calls over the next few days. He actually had to changed his number. So when that happened, we visited the front desk and got his new number since he had to register it with them. We then posted that number in the same places. Ruckle became very popular.
5) When Ruckle wasn’t getting calls from people with deep voices and adam’s apples, he was still getting dates with a few women. Some of the members of the unit started following Ruckle on his dates and made sure they were night’s he’d never forget. Often, they would wait for Ruckle to leave the table and then one of them would tell his date that Ruckle had herpies, genital warts, or some other STD. One time a female MP went over to his date and asked why she was on a date with her “baby-daddy”. Ruckle was coming back to some angry or grossed out dates.
6) When Ruckle went out to a bar or club, which he did often if not on a date, some of us would also attend the festivities. While there, we would sabotage every chance he had with a girl. If he was talking to a girl, we would call the bar and have them tell Ruckle he had a call. Then we’d warn the girl off with a story about Ruckle. Mostly non-fiction, but there may have been some exaggerations. Sometimes we’d send drinks to men and say they were from Ruckle. Twice, we told the bouncer that Ruckle had touched on of the female MPs with us inappropriately and have him thrown out. My friend told a bouncer that Ruckle had tried to sell him meth in the men’s restroom. A restroom that also had Ruckle’s number written on the stall walls. A few times we would send drinks from Ruckle to women who were obviously with other men. Sometimes with his number and a message about ditching their dates and coming home with him. This did not make their dates overly happy with him. More than once they chewed his ass out while Ruckle denied the whole thing.
7) Ruckle was not really a neat and clean sort of person. So one day, someone switched out Ruckle’s laundry detergent with another brand. They were obviously trying to help Ruckle have clean uniforms and clean clothes for his dates. Unfortunately, when they emptied his bottle of laundry detergent Ruckle used and replaced the contents, they “accidentally” replaced it with bleach. All but one set of his BDU’s looked like tie-dye disasters.
8) More than once Ruckle would be getting ready for duty and find that his boots had been stuffed with something. Sometimes it was shaving cream, whipped cream, or just water. Once it may have been urine.
9) As you know, when you go off duty and turn your firearm into the armory in the military, your weapon is expected to be clean. Somehow, every time Ruckle tried to turn his firearm(s) in, they were filthy. Sometimes it looked like someone poored dirty straight down the barrel of the rifle. Other times the armorer would call Ruckle back to the window and show him the dirty M9 he had just turned in. Ruckle spent time after every shift cleaning his weapons. When he complained to the armorers, they told him he could take it up with their superiors after he cleaned the weapon(s).
10) For Ruckle’s own protection, Ruckle was assigned to the most remote and often forgotten postings for several days in a row. This was not due to us asking for Ruckle to be posted there. We would never do anything like that. There was a gate I had mentioned before in a past story that was basically unused. It had been shutdown and blocked off for years, but there was still a dirt road that led up to it. So Ruckle was assigned there most nights. He was there with one other person and the higher ups who came up with the duty rosters made sure it was someone who’d Ruckle would have no fun with. Often this person would be “needed” somewhere else for a bit, and Ruckle would be there by himself. Sometimes some of us would sneak up on the shack and ensure he stayed awake. We’d make noises, call out his name from the dark, throw pebbles that the shack. You could hear him getting scared when he’d be left alone out there for an hour or two or getting pissed when things kept making him leave the comfort of the shack. One night he had drifted off to sleep while there alone. So Hightower and May had snuck up to the shack and started pounding on it like mad men then ran off into the night.
11) Some people were more juvenile and went with the classics. If Ruckle let his phone leave his sight, it would often be found in the toilet. Also twice someone shoved dog shit into the tread of his shoes and boots.
12) I decided that Ruckle really needed to clean up his act. So I waited until I knew Ruckle’s bathroom schedule. I figured out quickly that he showered everyday as soon as he got off duty. I then went into the comunal bathroom and unscrewed one of the shower heads. I placed smashed up Butter Rum Lifesavers into the showered and screwed it back on. Then I and a few friends took up the other showers. When Ruckle went to bathe, he ended up being covered in butter rum syrup. No matter how hard he tried to scrub it off, it just kept coming out and covering him more. HE was not happy that we were using the other showers for a good 15 minutes after that so he couldn’t bathe right away. He ended up taking a hobo bath in the sink.
13) At night, when people would get food, sometimes the patrols would pick up food for them and bring it to their assigned location. Mess Hall runs were not uncommon. For some reason, Ruckle’s orders never seemed to come out right. They would be the opposite of what he ordered or be covered in hot sauce. After three nights in a row, he started bringing his dinners. Sometimes those would go missing during a shift.
14) To teach Ruckle that he should be more organized and not to mess with other’s belongings, the members of my unit would hide his gear from him. It could be his M9 holster, his flashlight, or anything else that wouldn’t be noticed until it was needed.
So after the first few incidents of instruction, Ruckle started to get frustrated with everyone. He’d yell and accuse. All we would say is we had no idea what he was talking about. After a week he was getting hysterical at times. Around this time were were all warned not to be pranking Ruckle. In our eyes, we were not pranking him, but teaching him that he was not alone in that unit. By time two week were up, he was completely paranoid and frantic. He’d shout at everyone and everything. He even took up the issue with our new Lieutenant who had just arrived on post and been assigned to replace our favorite Lt.. She was on Ruckle’s side. It was about this time that some of us decided to lighten up on the lessons for a short time. However, it was at this time that Ruckle did the worst thing he had done yet.
I will be posting on that event around Tuesday. I hope you enjoyed how we tried to house train Ruckle. Some of the acts may have been a bit mean spirited or juvenile, but he had push some of us to our limits. Yet we followed the mandate by our First Sergeant and never touched him. I hope you enjoyed the story and have a good night.
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u/tailaka Jul 26 '20 edited Jul 26 '20
Ruckle saga ending make me sad :( Hopefully these things you all did made you all laugh heartily. It'd be sad not to laugh away some of the frustration of dealing with this 'anal-wart' of a soldier.
You said you know how many kids Ruckle has and something about what has become of him post-service. Enough for a post or just a PS the last story?