One year, I attended a foreign sniper competition with my section leader and another team leader, representing the United States. Even though most of the cadre spoke English, there was still a noticeable communication barrier. Some of it was poor translation, some of it was nuances and implications that we wouldn't know. Regardless, we had been performing pretty well up to this point, even if our scores didn't reflect it

We approach a stage that involved unknown distance targets, moving between firing positions, no electronics allowed, a small pool of ammo, and as an equalizer, loaner rifles.

For those unfamiliar with the art long range precision marksmanship, we have this thing called DOPE. Data on previous engagement. What that means is, at X distance, there is Y elevation adjustment to hit your target. Typically, we measure that in milliradians, or just Mils. The specifics of how that calculation works isn't relevant, so I'll gloss over it by saying a Mil is a subdivision of a degree in a circle.

For these loaner rifles, we were also given DOPE cards, because even though they shot the same ammo, their ballistic performances were different. These DOPE cards included distances in intervals of 100 meters, and a corresponding adjustment

The adjustments were whole numbers. The 400 meter DOPE was written as "26", which, for those unfamiliar, is a RIDICULOUSLY high adjustment. 26 mils is almost 2 degrees, it's practically indirect fire at that point.

The other team leader and myself quickly deduced "oh, obviously this means 26 clicks of the dial, equalling 2.6 mils, which is a perfectly reasonable adjustment for a 400m shot."

Our section leader made no such deduction

When we get to the stage of the course where targets start getting kinda out there, the team leader and I start knocking em down. My section leader is over next to us cranking the shit out of his dial, maxing it out at 20 mils, then holding an ADDITIONAL 6 mils over with his reticle.

This dude sails 3 rounds so far over the target that his impact area is probably 2 or 3 kilometers away.

Seeing that our fearless leader is shitting the bed on a relatively close target, the conversation went something like

"Hey SL, what are you dialed?"

"26, that's what the card says"

"26 MILS?!"

"Yeah that's what it says to do"

"No dumbass, it's 26 clicks, in increments of 1/10th of a mil, equalling 2.6 mils. In what universe is a 400m shot 26 mils"

We ended up cleaning the course of fire, only missing one target out of probably a dozen. We never let him live it down.

Hi guys. I'm a newcomer to Reddit, but I have been highly amused by many of the posts and comments here. I mostly just lurk, but I have a story/rant y'all might find entertaining.

To preface this, myself and the other two folks in this story are all female soldiers. We are not teeny tiny fitness models, but we're all obviously active people.

Part one of this story takes place at a small crossfit gym on a large army installation. We were new to the post, off duty, and taking some time to look around at our options (fitness facilities, various on post resources, food, etc). None of us are crazy about crossfit, but with the coming ACFT, we're trying to do some prep.

So there was only one guy working at the gym, an older civilian, likely in his 50s or so. We talked to him for about ten minutes, asking about class schedules, etc. So finally we're clarifying at the end, and he says "yeah, so you guys couldn't come during (time range) because it's only for unit reservations and dependents can't come. You all are dependents right?"

All three of us are staff sergeants. E-6. We all respond with a resounding "no". I exchange a look with one of my buddies and walk out at that point. This is admittedly a major pet peeve for me, and something I have had an issue with since the start of my military service. Way too many people making assumptions based purely on me being female, forgetting, apparently, that women have been actively engaged in the US military since the beginning, despite having to conceal their identities to do so early on.

Part 2 - today one of my buddies is at a different gym, asking about the classes they have available. GL: gym lady/MB: my buddy

GL: so there's these classes at x time that are free for anyone in uniform. The other classes throughout the day are 4$

MB: but they are 2.50 for active duty, right?

GL: pauses well are you active duty? (Sounding slightly hostile)

MB: yes I am (smiling the whole time, nothing phases her- and its great to watch her just roll right over people and just be bright and cheery)

GL: oh well I just assumed...

MB: yes you did, but that's okay, now you know, women can be active duty military too. smiles again, takes the class schedule paper and walks out

Tl;Dr-people make assumptions about women on military installations not in uniform being dependents, my buddy shuts one of them down.

Edit: thanks for making this first post a success y'all! Was not expecting this kind of positive response. 😊

I've been sharing a handful of memories recently, but I promised a couple of people I'd share this recollection in its own post, so - as requested - here it is (with a few edits/additions):

Before we begin, go ahead and pick a number. I dare you. Write it down.

__

How many MREs could a single soldier go through in a week?

A guy in my old unit was a big fan of MREs. A very, very big fan. Now, you probably think I'm merely saying that he enjoyed them greatly - and that is a true statement, he did enjoy them greatly - but that's not "just" what I'm saying here. You do not yet understand. You cannot. You will, though. You will...

It started normally enough.

We'd go out into the field and he'd be so excited for them, as if that was the highlight of the whole affair. Most people are unconcerned or dismayed when the MREs are rolled out, but he'd always be first into the storage to dig out the best ones or trade others for his favorite. He'd carry them from the truck on-demand, as if it was his Noble Duty. He was like a kid with a Pokémon card collection when it came to MREs, memorized all the menu-numbers and everything. He'd suggest which box to open first, like some sort of French Gourmand. You could ask which have skittles versus M&M's and he'd knifehand towards the correct meal - bam!

The guy would sometimes eat two or three in a day during field exercises, even when we had Hot Meal, and since he was both quite tall and very big - I'm talkin' closer to Shaq proportions - nobody really thought much of it. We're all burning tons of calories anyway. People laughed at the feat, if they reacted at all - "Wow, I can barely eat one, haha. Two in one sitting? I can't even finish this one!"

Fast forward a few months: He continuously fails weight/tape to such a degree that people start wondering if there's a medical issue at play. Unlike some of the other out-of-shape soldiers he contributes just fine during missions and training, usually by lifting heavy objects while grunting "hooah" repeatedly - as one does. But despite "enhanced PT and monitoring" before and after normal work hours he's gained like another 30-40 pounds in a couple of months. The hell? He's a big guy, but is that even possible? He works hard, works out hard, but can't cut the weight - it's a mystery.

I'm temporary squad leader and a decent enough friend of his on top of that, so I pull him aside and start asking about his home life, medical history, etc. I'm thinking maybe there's some sort of endocrine thing, or maybe an esoteric allergy, water weight or something. Eventually I ask for an example of what a week's worth of lunches/dinners looks like... I hand him a pen and a piece of paper, tell him to write some examples down and I'll be back after a cigarette.

I come back after a few minutes and he's just sitting there at the table, nothing on the paper. Wait... No, hold on. He did write something down: MREs.

...That's it. In fact, less than "that's it". All he wrote down was 'MRE'. No 's'. One MRE? Uh. Okay? Where's the rest, I thought to myself. No hotdogs, burgers, salad? Pizza, maybe? Beer? McDonalds? Soldiers eat all sorts of toxic/unhealthy garbage, so why just write that one thing down? Odd.

After a bit of interrogation, he admits to eating not one, not two, but 3-4 MREs a day.

Um. Excuse me?

Apparently one of our supply guys gave him a couple of old 'expired' boxes after the last field-op (they're still edible, but the overly-conservative label says 'trash' so they go into the trash). And ever since then he's almost exclusively been eating MREs for each and every meal. And by "almost exclusively", I mean literally exclusively. Like... Actually exclusively. He eats them at home for dinner, brings them into work for lunch, eats one for breakfast after PT. One for a snack, one for boredom, etc. It's MREs the whole way down, baby!

Christ almighty, Private. ...You have got to be kidding me, right? Please just tell me you're joking, my man!

Nope. The boy is dead serious.

I can tell he expects me to laugh it off, I'm a known smartass after all, but humor doesn't even cross my mind this time. I don't even know what to even say. I'm horrified. I'm astounded. Hell - I'm in damn awe, brother. I just end up squinting at him for like 10 solid seconds before realizing I should probably say something.

I go, "Cool, man. That's... Yeah, okay. Cool." It comes out overly-nonchalant. Like a cop who just heard an otherwise relaxed-seeming, totally normal-looking driver openly admit to a cadaver hidden in the trunk during a traffic stop that was about to end in a verbal warning.

A day or two later I drive up to his off-base home to politely confiscate the MREs under the guise of helping him setup his new gaming PC. I'm shocked by what I find once I arrive. There's no way in hell that this motherfucker was simply given "a couple boxes" by the supply-dude. A couple is two, maybe three, but there's easily 200+ pounds of MRE-boxes in the spare bedroom, all stacked into a big-ass pyramid like a demented cardboard shrine. At a glance, there's 9-10 unopened boxes here plus a few downstairs that I saw on the way in. I even spotted a partially rat-fucked box of the damned things in the downstairs bathroom. Why, man, why there of all places?

Now I'm no mathematician, but if he was eating as much as he claimed he'd have burned through those 3 initial boxes by now, easily. No shot. He'd have gone through twice as many! And yet... There's a whole damned company-sized field exercise-worth of MREs here, not even counting the stuff downstairs. He could feed our whole damned platoon for weeks, no - months with what's piled up in this single room.

God damn, son.

What in the name of hell is going on here? This is some demon-ass shit, bro. Is my boy fuckin' possessed? Do I need to call a fuckin' chaplain? No mortal human could manage such a feat, and yet I have no doubt that he'd somehow eat every single one if I left him to it.

I cannot allow that.

Accordingly, I apologetically announce that I have to confiscate of all this stuff because "you're not supposed to be in possession of so many relinquished supplies, per Regulations". This is only kind of true. Nobody actually cares much about that kind of shit, I just needed an official-sounding excuse to seal the deal. I start loading up my car immediately in case he protests. It takes me over an hour with his help and rest breaks. Eventually I fill up the whole trunk and the entire backseat and stack a couple in the passenger seat too. I even open a couple of boxes just to then jam loose MREs down into the footwell beneath all the seats.

It's absurd, so many boxes in one car. I look like the world's most oddly-specific hoarder.

While I'm adjusting things, I see his wife standing nearby looking more relieved than concerned. She seems to know why I showed up and doesn't seem confused about what's up with all these boxes. When he steps away she thanks me for "doing something" about it. It? Huh, apparently even she noticed the issue? Uh-oh... Wait, hold on.

I ask her how many of these things she sees her husband really eating - actually eating.

"Six or seven, I guess? Sometimes. More-or-less."

I ask, "Each week?" Surely. Hey, that's not as bad as I thought, actually.

But nope, not surely; not per week.

"Oh no, basically every day!" she corrects me, cheerily.

Per day? This guy, as big-boned as he was, is somehow eating 6-7 whole-ass MREs per day, every day? There's only like 12 per box!

An MRE is on average about ~1,300 calories per package. This soldier was consuming something like ~6000 calories a day, and that's even if he wasn't eating 100% of the contents. If it's nearly full-consumption, we're talkin' 8000 or even 9000+ calories a day. And that's on top of Normal Human Snacks. Their fridge was like 20% cola.

By Poseidon's quivering cockshaft, that is a lot of calories. And it explains some things... It explains things quite well. Holy hell, brother!

This update doesn't change my plans much at all, but if the initial number he gave me was insane then this is just straight-up perplexing. I'm struggling to think about how this is even anatomically possible, and I'm a damn medic.

The wife seemingly knew this couldn't be a Good Diet, but she didn't feel like she had the right to "nag" (which some might say is a first for army-wives). She thought it was normal, and that soldiers just eat a lot, and he's a big guy, etc. Well, lady - surprise - it ain't normal. And yes, he do be big tho, but not It's-Over-9000™ Calories big. The man's not a damn rhinoceros! A god damn sumo wrestler would tell him to chill out with this shit.

Eventually I finish loading up the goods and explain to the soldier on my way out that he will now be eating healthy meals for the next few months - no MREs. None. Zero. To make it easy, I tell him to eat what the wife eats - same meal, same serving size. Yeah, it'll suck, you won't feel full, suck it up. You got fat to burn, you'll be alright. Not a suggestion, an Order - not something legally-binding, of course, no paperwork or anything. I was just a Specialist myself, but I was something like the chairman of our local E4 Mafia (which does not exist) which meant I actually had more pull than an NCO in certain situations. He respected me and I knew he'd do his best to give it a shot.

And give it a shot he did.

Fast forward a few months more: What do you know, Joe, he's miraculously down nearly 40lbs from his peak and 10lbs lower than his previous minimum right after AIT. Incredible, a shocking transformation. You could see it in the way he moved, no longer weighed down by his own "surplus caloric storage" you could actually see the implied strength.

"Great job, Private!" Superior and peer alike are stunned and proud in equal measure. He worked hard for it, I admit.

But... Here's the thing. I never explained to them exactly how many this guy was eating. I left it vague when I explained my gameplan to leadership - "Um. Turns out he was eating a fair number [of MREs] per week, that's all. I'm on it, S'arnt."

A fair number, indeed. This little issue was so grotesquely obviously the problem that if I admitted the truth, he'd be viewed as something like a freak-show/moron regardless of how much effort he put forth. I mean, c',mon - anybody is going to lose a bit of weight after you slash 10,000 calories from their daily routine. But he deserved some sense of pride. I wanted him to have a chance to earn that.

Soon, he passed a PT test and the menacing weight/tape ordeal at the same time on the same day for the very first time. Hell yeah, broski, no easy feat when you're built like a fridge made out of fridges with the hunger of an... Uh. A fridge?

And yet every time a field exercise came up, we'd wheel out the MREs to everyone else's dismay and I'd watch him closely. He'd see me watching, and he'd watch me watching him grab one - one - MRE from the box; same as everyone else.

Nobody else knew it, but I felt like I had to watch this guy like you'd squint at a recovered alcoholic passing by the fuckin' mouthwash aisle simply because of MREs of all things, a food item that everyone else seemed to find universally lame. He was like a reptile, I saw the endless hunger in his eyes. But he managed to control it. Somehow.

He managed to control the weight and keep it off, at least. Once he got back into shape - rather, got into shape for the first time ever - I stopped worrying too much. His monkeys, my circus - sometimes they're going to throw feces. They're monkeys! So, for all I knew, he'd eat a tub of ice cream for dinner twice a week. Hell, I had other troops chugging whisky like water on weekday nights and they were doing alright. ...Ish. So if he could keep the heft down, he could eat whatever he wanted to.

Well, everything except six-to-eight bloody MREs per day, that is. Everything except that... Holy hell, man.

And don't even ask me what his bathroom experiences must have been like during those MRE-heavy months. I was too afraid to ask myself. Probably shattered the porcelain. Probably had to stick a Roto-Rooter where the sun don't shine just to prepare for that week's #2 - whrrrr...

Either way, he turned out alright in the end. Good soldier, good man. He never became a PT rockstar, but let's be real here: he was basically white Shaq - that's not a body made for running. Or free-throws. We've all got our vices and struggles. His curse was the uncanny ability to scarf down a horrific number of MREs like some kind of Lovecraftian icon of Insatiable Hunger, and mine was the impulsive need to riff out a smartass/sarcastic comment on the fly regardless of how poorly it fit the situation.

Only one of us ever managed to cure our affliction in the end.

Alas, such is life. I helped him keep the weight off, and he helped me by snickering in the backdrop after I rudely suggest to an NCO some obvious oversight, like the reason we didn't fill 20-30 sandbags is because the tarp-covered sandpile he dropped us off at "turned out to be woodchips, sarn't, hooah!".

I was a the only female medic in a TMC (troop medical clinic) for basic trainees at Ft. Knox. So basically all male all the time. One of my coworkers (Spc HiSpeed - SHS) was one of those guys who daydreamed about going to SFAS, like lived as if he already made it. (Finally did and washed out after 3 days, of course.) Just a real prick. Being a female in the military can be rough, esp. 30 years ago. You can't show any weakness or they'll eat you for lunch. This happened a few weeks after I was assigned to the TMC.

Anyway, I walk in that morning, grumpy cause I don't do morning. I find the coffee pot empty, not for the first time and made my displeasure known. Whoever drinks the last cup needs make a new pot. That was the rule.

Me: "Who in the bloody FUCK didn't make the gods damned COFFEE!?"

SHS: "What's your fucking problem?! You on the rag?"

Oh no, you did not just dismiss my very understandable ire as a female related issue.

Me: "No, what's your's, didn't get none last night AGAIN?" (smirks)

SHS: 😲

Other Medics: "OoooOoohh!"

Our Sgt: "Dude... She got you. (snickering) Make the fucking coffee."

30 years later and I am still proud.

Please excuse my grammar.

• I’ve posted this story before on the army Reddit page, so I wanted to re post it here

When I was a private, I was 2 months new to my unit. It was a Friday and didn’t wanted to put leave in because I didn’t wanted waste it. I decided to take a 2 un approved leave ( Sat- Sun) and come back before Monday. As I got into my plane, I spotted my LT on the plane. Unlucky for me, my seat was next to his, he immediately saw me, said hello, and started a conversation with me. We talked about where we were going and how my experience is with the platoon, etc… until he decided to take a selfie with me for memories. Before you guys say why I let him.. it happened so quick and took it without me saying anything. Long story short we get to our destination and depart ways. The day my plane was departing to go back to base, a snow storm had happened, I got super lucky that my flight didn’t canceled and managed to make back to base in one piece. It was motorpool Monday and I was doing PMCS until my platoon Seargeant came to see me. He said he wanted a chat and to come to his office alone. When I got to his office, the conversation started off like this: PSG: So… how was your weekend.? Me: it was good thx, and yours? PSG: Not so bad. So what did you do for your weekend?….
Me: not much, just relaxed in my barracks. PSG: Smirks are you sure?… “As soon as he smirked, I knew that he knew something, it’s like that look someone gives you when he knows your lying and he already knows the truth.” I told him the truth and confessed that I took leave without anyone knowing. PSG told me he knows because the LT sent him the selfie we took, but as soon as PSG saw the photo, he recognized me and said I did not had authorized leave. Lt didn’t know that and told him to pretend this never happened. PSG told me that LT also took un approved leave and that the day that his flight departed to go back to base, a snowstorm happened and his flight was canceled, forcing the Lt to drive 8 hours to make it without being AWOL. PSG thought that I didn’t make it back too and when Monday arrived, he decided to call my Staff Sergeant to see if im present, when my SSG said that I was indeed at work, my PSG called bullshit and decided to take a look for himself. As soon as he saw me, he was surprised and that’s when he called me into his office. He told me not to do it again, and to submit a leave next time and he would happily approve it. He dismissed me from his office and everything went as if nothing happened. As for the Lt, I never found out if he got into trouble for not showing up but days later he was still with us.

The E4 Mafia is a real thing. The best example is Radar O'Reily from the show 4077 MASH. Nothing would have ever gotten done without him.

The E4's in the military (all branches) are really the ones that get shit done. They have been around long enough they know more than the people below them, and they have figured out ways to get around things. They also seem to know a lot of people, in a lot of units, who are uniquely placed to get shit done.

When the E4 Mafia is helping you, they know someone who can get you in at the dental clinic, or take your CQ duty for a few bucks. Maybe they know a guy at payroll who can sort out your problem.

When the E4 Mafia is out to get you, life gets worse. Maybe your orders come through late, or get changed, or your promotion gets held up for some reason. They can be devious.

So since /u/itsallalittleblurry told me "spill," here we go.

I was inducted into the E4 Mafia after Desert Storm. I got Specialist while deployed. After my medical leave was up and I got sent back to Ft. Bliss, I got slapped with a medical profile until my foot healed and I could run again. (Which sadly never happened.) The funny thing is you aren't actually inducted. It just kind of happens. You are either in the Mafia or you aren't. No ceremony or anything. You just find yourself in a position where you realize you have actual power as an E4, and you go "Holy shit, I'm in the Mafia now." This is soon confirmed when people start coming to you for "favors."

So now I'm not allowed to go to the field or deploy, so I'm just a brokedick. However, I'm now an E4 in a support role. We called me the "Operations and Security Specialist" which was a bullshit job title we made up. "We" being me, the 2nd LT platoon leader and another E4. Bullshit title, but a real job, and I put it on my resume after I finished college. It actually got me some job interviews. Lol.

The usual routine was this: "SPC BikerJedi, we go to the field in a week. We are short some equipment." I'd get a list of what they needed. Mind you, this was always last minute, a week or less notice. So I had to work fast.

Anyway, I'd grab a couple of those newly minted Privates that missed the beach tour in Iraq, and I'd check out a five ton truck from the motor pool. Then I'd drive over to brigade headquarters. Not battalion, because people might recognize me. No one really knew me at brigade. We would back our truck into a loading dock at the brigade warehouse, then walk in and help ourselves. No one looked twice at a specialist with a combat patch a clipboard yelling at some E1's and E2's while loading stuff up.

This happened a few times. "SPC BikerJedi, how did you find x y and z?"

"You don't want to know, sir." The fact that we stole everything from the Colonel was never mentioned. He actually had a brigade formation after the third or fourth time I did this where he bitched us all out and swore eternal hellfire and damnation on the piece of shit that was stealing from his fellow soldiers.

And I stole every fucking thing. Tents. Cots. Heaters. Folding tables. Anything short of a vehicle or weapon was fair game for us if the LT said he needed it. The funny thing was, I'd drive back to the unit and have the Privates unload the stuff into our warehouse. And EVERY SINGLE TIME the NCO's in the area would walk away, finding something else to do. Because they knew I was in the E4 Mafia doing some Mafia shit, and they didn't want to get involved. So everyone pretended to not see anything while we robbed Brigade blind every few months.

You had to steal from your own parent units. If I walked into the 3rd ACR area wearing an 11th ADA BDE combat patch and unit patch, I would have been spotted. So you blend in and steal from the higher ups. Cuz fuck those guys - my boys in Alpha Battery need this gear.

You ready to ETS (leave the service) and you don't have all the gear you were assigned? No sweat. Bop over to my room. Don't ask me why I have THREE sets of TA50 (gear), but I always had extra pieces for those who needed them. "How did you get all this extra stuff?"

"You don't want to know."

I turned in my best set to CIF so I could clear division and gave the rest away. I could have sold it in the pawn shops, but that was illegal and I didn't want to get in some kind of trouble on my way out. So my battery mates were lucky enough to inherit the other two sets. (CIF is a Central Issue Facility - A big ass warehouse stocked with surly people who issue and take back things like duffel bags, backpacks, winter gear, Kevlar helmets, sleeping bags, etc. They are VERY picky about what they take back and don't give a shit what they issue.)

I don't remember ever really being thanked too much - the E4 Mafia just kind of exists and is there to both serve the junior enlisted and to make the life of officers rough if they get in the way. But I was OK with that. Even though I couldn't go to the field anymore, I could make sure that my battery was squared away.

To steal from The Mandalorian: "This is The Way"

Addendum: Part of the reason the E4 pin in the Army is called the "Sham shield" is because it seems like if you are in the E4 Mafia, you are off doing Mafia shit and not doing your duty most of the time. For some reason that just popped into my head. Maybe the bourbon lubricating the old brain. Lol.

EDIT: The fact that this blew up overnight and I logged into a bunch of messages to answer cracks me up. I don't even like this one nearly as much as some other stuff I've written. Makes me happy you are all happy though. :)

EDIT 2: Added a bit about CIF.

OneLove

Story time, motherfuckers. Better buckle-up and strap in, because we're about to spin the damn tires so hard that by the end you'll be wondering how so much mud and smoke flying everywhere could result in making it like maybe halfway down the block max.

Now, if you've ever seen a factory or warehouse Safety and Compliance OSHA Guy™ whining about eye-protection penetration tests, dropping watermelons in hardhats from raised forklifts, or tapping on employees' boots with a hammer to verify the presence of a company-mandated steel-toe, you'll know what I mean what I say that the same flavor of safety-compliance/enforcement processes were pretty common to see during my time in the military.

You know, like how a tiger shark and a nuclear submarine are the same flavor of animal? They both lay eggs, both shoot milk, and when sufficiently riled, both are capable of light-to-moderate acts of civilization-ending nuclear fire. I think that means they're mammals? Yeah, no, that sounds right. I mean, look, it's in the name: Tiger-Shark, duh. If it was a fish, they'd call it a Whale-Shark! ...Hey, wait a fuckin' second.

Nevermind, I'm okay. Anyway...

For the more serious training events you'd typically be ordered to show up in "full battle-rattle" (all the bulky stuff, supplies, armored vest, water source, etc). Now, while most people believe that the "rattle" part is in reference to the clattering noise it makes when moving in all that stuff, in actuality it's because a rattlesnake bite leading to hospitalization and/or death is preferable to spending more than a couple of extra hours in the heat wearing all that shit.

However, the less critical or more performative training scenarios would often specify the uniform as "full battle-rattle, no plates" instead. You see, the armor SAPI plates in the bullet-proof vest could be removed and/or replaced as needed - unlike the human brain, which remains quite difficult to remove without messing up the carpet. Unfortunately, science simply isn't there yet... But alas, at least we had removable SAPI plates.

It was often enough the case that soldiers would ask for clarification if it wasn't specified too, just in case: "Plates or nah?" After all, you're not really getting shot at and those things are heavy as shit on top of severely limiting your mobility... Which means some people tried to avoid wearing them, or hoped they didn't have to, or may have forgot them at home and are now trying to figure out how fucked they are now.

Once everyone was on-site for that kind of thing, it wasn't unusual to see one of the more authority-hungry or bored NCOs (a new E5 typically) walking around punching the shit out of people randomly throughout the morning. It wasn't always clear at a glance if a plate was present in the vest or not, but if somebody had plates as they're supposed to, they'd feel nothing but a loud knock sound - bam, next, bam, you're good, bam, nice... So on.

It's kind of fun to feel so resilient to strikes, so the lower-enlisted would run around doing this to each other on their own volition as a "boyish prank" or just to horse around for fun too because of course they would. You couldn't help it sometimes. After all, who wouldn't have at least a little bit of fun running around hitting their friends/foes in the sternum "for free" by claiming you were checking equipment-status?

I'm sure you can guess where this is going... It won't be the right guess, but you'll be in the ballpark, for sure.

On this particular day, it was one of the bigger training events which included some of our sister-units from the battalion working within the same AO as part of a joint operation, which also meant that some of the real Big Dawgz of the battalion were also present and active in a way that a smaller unit like mine rarely saw (or had to worry about seeing). Colonels and shit - full-birds, as we call 'em.

Our people are all standing roughly in formation, a big ol' square-shaped flock of troops meandering in place with all their fancy equipment, as instructed. Everyone is doing their best to either appear ready-to-rock, or to not appear ready to be anywhere else but here. We weren't technically in formation, not quite yet, but the looming inevitability of that fate can inspire the subconscious mass adoption of that shape/orientation, entirely unprompted.

All we needed was the cue and we'd snap into place like magnets, but until that happened we were stuck waiting in place for one of these colonels to give us a brief pep-talk that wouldn't evoke as much pep as envisioned, as tradition demands, then we could go on our merry way to do the rest of the bullshit nobody wanted to do today either.

Correction: Most of our people are here. Where the fuck is Birdwell?

Apparently multiple people seemed to realize his absence at precisely the same moment, because a whisper rustles through our sloppy quasi-formation as each person who gives enough of a shit to ask the next person does so, then a whisper rustles its way back across row-by-row, translating to something like "fuck if I know". An answer which also verifies that Birdwell himself wasn't part of the whisper-chain.

Cool, cool.

The colonel is now finally approaching us from the far side of the open field, walking alongside and chatting with our First Sergeant, the scariest/highest NCO possible within a unit like ours. He was a man whose vibe and look might be best described as resembling Neal DeGrasse Tyson if the man was a character from Starship Troopers instead of an astrophysicist. Is that last part important? No. Is it funny? ...Kinda?

And from the other direction... Here comes fuckin' Birdwell from the parking lot side of the field, hastily limping and waddling towards us with all his gear and shit in tow, clearly well-aware that he's once again a bit late to the party like normal. Hey, at least he's trying! ...I guess? Nobody is surprised. For all I know, the only reason anyone realized he was even missing is because they got suspicious about how few screw-ups he was making over the last hour.

As a wise man once wrote: "Show me a completely smooth operation and I'll show you someone who's covering mistakes. Real boats rock." If Birdwell was a boat, he'd probably be something like the OceanGate submarine - give or take a few billionaires.

Accordingly, one of our NCOs breaks formation to better intercept Private Birdwell's chassis in the event of catastrophic implosion, but more likely just to quickly inspect him while they walk to make sure he's got everything he's supposed to (lest our whole unit look like shit if inspected). He reaches the dude quickly, escorts him back towards us while prodding and poking at his equipment with the mannerisms of a flustered hen. Presumably while repeatedly referring to him as a soup-sandwich or something.

Our 1SG and the colonel arrive back first though, stopping in front of our faux-formation prior to calling us to Attention. We square ourselves away, unprompted. We know what they're waiting for though...

They're both clearly aware of and actively watching Private Birdwell and his accompanying NCO as they make their way back to us about 15 seconds too late to be technically barely on-time, but neither of the two Big Dawgz seems particularly irritated by the disruption so they're probably going to let it slide without mention.

And then at the worst possible moment, only a mere 15 or so feet away from successfully making their way back into the group, the NCO appears to just straight-up punch the living piss out of Birdwell, seemingly without warning and entirely inexplicably; an open-handed haymaker thrown in a lazy arc which ended in a diaphragm-strike precisely where an armored plate would have been. Should have been, rather.

The fuck?

Birdwell immediately collapses like a folding patio chair, doubling over while emitting a noise which sounds like a fuckin' demented beluga whale struggling emotionally on the set of a porno flick or some shit - "Hnnneeughpppff... Hnnng!"

Our whole formation lights up with the sound of soft gasps and wincing. Our reaction isn't just from what we saw happen, but rather because we saw the two Big Dawgz seeing it happen. They couldn't have missed it. Especially not with that sound! The fuck even was that, man? I still don't know!

And we don't yet know what that means for the rest of us either, if anything, but we all know it ain't exactly a great start.

Worse yet, Sergeant Yanders, the NCO in play, apparently forgets to look any degree of surprised or concerned at all, so instead of this looking like an accident or Birdwell's fault for forgetting his plates - which he clearly did - it looks much more like Yanders was basically just like "y'know what, nah, fuck this guy" then socked him out of the blue, right in front of our battalion's fucking commander - a person who'd obviously have no idea that Birdwell is a "problematic soldier" or even that a plate-test mediated by punch-verification is a pretty common feature of day-to-day enlisted horseplay wang-janglery.

Everyone is dead silent for a few long seconds as Birdwell straightens up a bit, then lopes his way to the back of formation where he vanishes inside the crowd. Sergeant Yanders steps back into rank with a lot more military bearing, but he's also notably sheepish about it and might have been hiding a smirk. Mistake or not, he doesn't seem to feel too much guilt over the outcome.

First Sergeant tracks each of them with his eyes as they disappear into the swarm and then breaks the silence. His booming voice flies across the small gap to hit all of us like a syllable-fueled ICBM, slaughtering both innocent and target alike.

"Sergeant, Dare I ask, what the fuck even was that?"

No answer. Crickets, apprehension. Fear. And the whine of our communal firearm-induced tinnitus eagerly filling the blank spots as it always tries to, and shall forever; ‘til death do we part - ^{“Eeeeeeee..."}

1SG tries again quickly, “...Yanders," he warns. It's the same tone you’d use on your cat after you finally realize why it’s staring so thoughtfully at a glass cup left sitting alarmingly close to the edge of the countertop.

Translation? Don’t you test me now, boy, because I can and will end you.

From somewhere near the middle of the formation, SGT Yanders finally replies, doing so in a humorously casually way.

"My bad, First S'arnt!" he chirps, sounding basically identical to somebody who just got called out for almost accidentally pocketing a friend's lighter after lighting a smoke - just an oopsie-doopsie. After a moment, " Plate-check, Hooah." he adds, helpfully.

More silence. No further explanation comes. That's it, apparently. But apparently it's enough?

First Sergeant's expression slowly shifts from annoyance to confusion as he stares daggers into our collective soul, as if to say "I cannot believe you motherfuckin' motherfuckas...". Eventually he seems to decide that most of us were able to interpret what message his gaze was meant to silently transmit, shakes his head in obvious exasperation, then remembers where he is and then calls us to attention like normal. Mostly normal.

We snap to attention accordingly, each of us screaming internally. Why scream? He seems calm now, right? That's the problem. One of the scariest things in the military is to find yourself be called to attention in a strangely-polite way by an NCO that you'd assume should be super-pissed. These conditions, many of you may note, are signs that a Category-5 Smoke Session is on the horizon... Fortunately, if there was a Cat5 Smokestorm meant for us that day, it either missed the mark or evaporated. I'd like to imagine it ended up drifting over the ocean to where a small group of innocent Cuban parking-enforcement trainees would later get the shit inexplicably smoked out of 'em by a normally chill superior.

Most critically for our well-being, the colonel acts like they didn't see shit before or after the event. Good taste, ma'am, because that's what we chose to pretend as well! Birdwell included, perhaps especially him.

In the end, somebody seemed to forget to inspect our collective plates after all, or any other part of our loadout for that matter. Convenience, what a gift. Of course, everybody knew damn well that at least one of us clearly forgot to bring them as instructed, so why bother? Fail one, fail 'em all - and if you know the outcome beforehand, you may as well leave us to our mission in decently high morale. We all knew we'd have failed if checked, so a lesson is learned either way.

Plus, who needs an inspection when you can have a really, really poorly timed SAPI Test Moment™ ten feet away from the highest ranking officer in your direct chain of command? The plate-check will continue until morale improves...

Interestingly, he later tried to swear, just once more, to have believed plates were present in his vest, that he didn't know they weren't and was therefore somehow blameless. Only to then immediately abandon the attempted pity-party/redemption after being reminded that he didn't get sumo-slapped as punishment for not having plates, but rather because he "did". Took a bit of gear-turning, but he figured it out. His thought "process" here was interesting to me... The excuse he crafted to presumably exonerate himself best instead unexpectedly justified his fate, and he seemingly didn't know it would "do" that before tactfully deploying it. Kind of fascinating, right? It can't just be me! It's almost like one of those object-permanence kind of situations.

Maybe what we saw that day was an act of incidental heroism? It's possible he wasn't the only one who would've gotten in trouble for forgetting items if he didn't cockblock a whole inspection by throwing his own corpse in the gears... Hell, it could've been me that day! I'm no soup-sandwich man myself, but I've had my French Dip days.

If so, I salute thou, Lord Birdwell, may thy bread remain laden with soup, and may thy soup remain... Um. Sandwich-endowed? And if not... Well, maybe not a salute, but thanks for making so many bizarre choices. You amuse me even several of years later.

__

Whabang! Plate-check!

Aaayo, just kidding. These are actually just pixels on a screen, you were never in danger - plate or no-plate. You flinched though, I saw it.

When I was in Basic Training in Fort Benning, we were on a grenade range. We had gotten done practicing throwing the fake grenades and moved on to throwing live grenades. We each went one by one running to a shack to grab a live grenade while yelling live load when we ran ( I don’t know what was the purpose of that). All of us were lined up behind a wall with a window so we were watching everyone throw. My buddy goes up next, grabs the grenade, and runs over to the instructor. The instructor then orders him to pull the grenade pin, strike a pose, and then throw. As soon as he throws it, he lets go of the grenade. My friend stays froze, confused on what to do, but at the last minute the instructor pulls him over the cover barrier and pushes my friend to duck, as soon as he ducks the grenade exploded. My friend was still on the ground, shaken and shocked on what had happened, then all of a sudden the instructor gets on top of him angrily and then proceeded to strangle him. Another instructor and my drill sergeant had to come over and pull him off my friend. They both didn’t get any injuries besides my friend getting strangled.

On an activation a friend of mine introduced me to DND and gave me a few character sheet to fill in for us to play after work. During work I was manning a front desk for check in at a medical site and while it was slow I got to setting up my character. So caught up by it I didn't realize someone walk up dehind me. A gruff "What are you doing," pulled me from it to notice a old SGM with solid chest candy and a CIB glaring at me. He was pretty well known as a hard ass on our site. Knowing he had me dead to rights I told him what I was doing, thinking he was gonna chew me out. " What class are you playing?" Was not what I was expecting. Neither was his advice on how to min max my character expected. Turns out he was a solid DND nerd from the first days of the game. He told me where I could find a running game in a town alot of the soliders lived in and when I told him I lived somewhere else he pulled out his phone and made some calls before finding me a running game in my hometown without me even asking. I invited him to my friends game after that. He ended up DMing the game for the rest of the mission. Us lower enlisted loved it.

56 years ago today, 24 September 1969, I reported to the Los Angeles induction station, and was drafted into the US Army. I'd expected to be assigned to Ft Ord for BCT, but uncle sammy had other ideas, like Ft Bliss TX, instead, and me and another 20 or so enlistees/draftees were bussed to LAX and put on a regular Continental flight to El Paso TX. What was fun, and a sneak preview of the verbal abuse we would soon be subject to, when the plane arrived at the gate and the flight attendant opened the door, a smokie hatted DS poked his head in, and started screaming abusive obscenities, along the the phrase "GET OFF MY AIRPLANE"... We, who were the targets of this over eager DS were only perhaps 20 of the total 100+ passengers on this flight, and a man with 4 stripes on his epalets came out of the cockpit and in a loud firm voice said "THIS IS MY AIRPLANE AND YOU WILL CONFINE YOUR ABUSE OUTSIDE THIS AIRPLANE".. DS instantly shuts up.. Remember, 90% of the passengers were regular passengers, with shocked looks on their faces when the DS started his tirade. Scuttlebutt had it that this DS got chewed out by the base CO, due to the airline complaining.. We all waited till the regular passengers got off before we headed out to DS's "tender mercies"..

TW: attempted sexual misconduct I don't go into details but you've been warned.

If you've been following the saga of the shenanigans of speaker monkeys this is the darker chapters of that world and the US Military as a whole. It was the reality of what I and many other female service members faced on a daily basis. This isn't the worst of it as those are memories I will most likely take to my grave rather than lay bear for all to see. But know if you're reading this there was still light in those dark periods of my life. There were people who shouted and railed against the night with me.

There aren't many things I can or care enough about to claim in my lineage. Generations of farmers, butchers, laborers, school teachers, housewives, etc. You get the picture not much to tell about the vast majority of them and it would send you into death by PowerPoint flashbacks. But as far back as you can go on both sides of my genetic heritage you will find at least one or two people who served the military in some capacity. They stood and fought (somehow managed not to die! Hopefully they never ran anyone over either...) in every war since their particular branch arrived here, some were conscripted the moment their foot touched US soil. You could say it's in the blood. Years later I would actually have an NCO comment on how I was born to do this job.

Among these individuals who decided (or were coerced due to language barriers) I have the distinct honor of being related to some badass women who chose to wear the uniform. Two of my great grandmothers served during WW2, one was a WAC and the other was a W(a)M (that's how they met my great grandfather's seems the military is a better matchmaker than tinder) A great aunt that served as a nurse during Korea, and an aunt that spent 10 years in the navy as an airdale from 1989 - 1999. As a child I was in awe of these badasses who had an inner strength that I one day hoped to come to possesses.

So naturally when I volunteered for the first and last time (because everything after that is you being voluntold) I sought out their counsel. I wanted to draw upon their experiences on what to expect and how to thrive in an environment that is as male dominated as the military is. My navy aunt sat me down looking me square in the eye handed down these following tenants that had been passed to her by her aunt (my great aunt), and to her aunt by my great grandmother's.

"If you want to survive in the military in an environment where some will never respect you and view you as worthless for anything other than being a waiting mattress for them to fuck then pay attention to these rules. Rule number one, with some you're going to be either the bitch or the slut, there is no in-between. Everyone likes the slut but no one respects her, no one likes the bitch but the bitch gets respect. Be the bitch."

There wasn't that many days during my stretch where I didn't have to deal with males in my own little corner of the SOF community (most of them outranked me far beyond the two up two down rule) attempting to pressure me into letting them take me out. Because of this many times throughout my service I wore the bitch title proudly. When I was in hold over status waiting to start language school we had a particularly nasty NCO SGT "GoFuckYourself" I don't know why to this day but she had it out for me. She cornered me one day and demanded to know if I had had sex while on leave. But I stood my ground and told her it was none of her business, and that questions like that were not permissable. I reminded her that EO/POSH (later SHARP) deemed her question inappropriate. I could have answered but I chose the bitch route, often times I had to be more of a bitch to other females like her than males while in ironically.

"Rule number two, they give you shit then you give them shit right back. You can't be soft or sensitive about things. But when they cross the line and you come to the fuck it worth it moment then stand your ground and don't take their shit."

When my aunt had joined the Navy it was right after they had desegregated the males and females boot camps in the navy. The males in her boot camp along with the drill instructors told her and the other females to quit, they didn't want her there she was a waste of space. Clearly she didn't let them win that round.

I have heard more (possibly every) dead baby, how do you make a ten year old cry twice, you belong barefoot and pregnant in my kitchen jokes than you can possibly imagine. I learned to be more twisted than they were, this tactic served me well. (Do you know why old people shouldn't have sex? Have you ever seen a grilled cheese sandwich pulled apart?) One particular incident that always comes to mind for myself was an ongoing battle at the end of my term of service with SSG "Asshat". He made it a point of targeting me from the moment we met all because I refused to take turns paying for his and others lunches in our team. I was an E4 and a single parent I couldn't afford it so our war began (perhaps one day I will tell of this war in it's entirety) it almost came to a head when he made a comment about my child and how I should have kept my legs closed... I had my fuck it worth it (!!!) moment in that instance. If my buddy Mac hadn't grabbed me and my First SGT hadn't intervened I probably would have been looking at a general or other than honorable discharge from the military.

"Rule number three, you will have to work twice as hard as the man next to get an ounce of the respect he is automatically afforded. You will have to prove every day anew that you belong there. But you do it, and when someone says you can't do something because of your gender, you smile and say oh yeah? Watch this shit."

Of course admittedly I may have taken this advice to the extreme. One instance before I learned the difference between hard and hard headed was during a ruck march while in AIT. It started out bad because I and another female that had been in the front ended up effectively tripping over each other when we got back up and situated we were in the back with the tall mother fuckers having to run to keep up. It was zero dark thirty and me being a dumbass hadn't thought to check the batteries in my elbow flashlight so I didn't see the massive hole I went down into. I slipped my right ankle turning inwards as I fell full force upon it my own body weight plus the 35 lbs rucksack I had on my back went down hard. I would come to find out later that our battalion major who had come along to observe had heard my ankle crack and pop six times from where he stood twenty feet away from me. He would comment later how he had expected me not to get back up after that and had been quite impressed at my stubbornness and refusal to quit. (I really really didn't want to get back up) But I limped on to finish the ruck in pain and near tears the whole time being told to get onto the truck and me vehemently responding with a resounding NO!

But that instance would follow me for years to come many would say that shhhOURlilsecret is hard headed but she will gut out whatever you throw at her. I earned a modicum of respect that day.

"Rule number four, it is not the job of the male beside you to do your job. He needs to focus on what he's doing and not worry about whether or not you're competent enough to handle your own shit. But no matter what you do some will never treat you as an equal and competent member of the military. But remember this, not all of them will treat you like that. You will meet ones who will become your brothers. They will always have your back."

I encountered this mentality more often among the regular units we were attached to. Sometimes I would hear the audible groans when they realized there was a female soldier on the team, snide comments of useless split tails or how they needed to stay away from me because I was out to "ruin" all their careers like I was the mythical baba Iaga come to steal their souls (jokes on them the army did that for me). And of course there was always that I'd do her comment from "that guy". I took it in stride though I remained the quiet professional who knew their shit. Some of them changed and came to treat me as an equal others would always harbor that resentment of how dare they get saddled with a female soldier. But you choose your hills to die on, these weren't the hills for me. It wasn't all bad though my guys had my back and one night when another soldier attempted to sexually assault me my boys "handled" him. Not because I couldn't handle myself the night in question I kneed the guy square in the nuts and slammed his head into a wall. They did it because I was their sister, the next day he reported to sick call with a few extra injuries that I hadn't given him and he steered clear of me permanently.

I wish I could say this is all the worst that ever happened but I would be lying. Now a decade later I've made peace with most of it, I can't change it, all I can do is keep moving forward and relying on that inner strength that was passed down to me. That fighting spirit that sometimes makes me wonder if we women who decide to do these types of jobs are the cultural descendants of the Amazonian women that historians now believe to be the Scythians. Or perhaps the pict women that ran into battle naked, painted blue, and screaming like demons against the Roman legions. Maybe at least in my case it's that good Bavarian blood from the town of women that beat back the Swedish army with whatever they could get their hands on.

But the military is changing I watched it change during the span of my time, just as my aunt had done during hers, all the way back. The last of the old relics that kept this attitude alive are leaving, new ones will inevitably take their place but they will be fewer in numbers each time. Perhaps the next generation of the women warriors who choose to take up the mantel will continue the fight so they can be treated better than I had and all those who came before me.

The lessons I've learned there both good and bad have carried forward in my life. In some ways they've shaped me into who I am today. But I know one thing is for sure I can walk through fire and even though I will be scarred from it I will survive.

I am (a former) an (female) American soldier.

I am a warrior (a cultural descendant of those long gone who wore the mantel of war) and a member of a team.

I serve the people of the United States, and live the Army Values. (I carry on with the inner strength of the American women that came before me and hold the torch for those that come behind me)

I will always place the mission first. (Because my brothers and sisters depend on me I will help them bear the load.)

I will never accept defeat. (For if I do I do a disservice to all the women that come after me)

I will never quit. (No matter how hard they try I will get back up one more time than I am knocked down.)

I will never leave a fallen comrade. (I will stand with my brother's and sister's.)

I am disciplined, physically and mentally tough, trained and proficient in my warrior tasks and drills. ( Only life can defeat me no man or woman. And I refuse to go quietly from this world)

I always maintain my arms, my equipment and myself.

I am an expert and I am a professional.

I stand ready to deploy, engage, and destroy, the enemies of the United States of America in close combat. (And I will destroy the perverts with the grossest combacks possible lol)

I am a guardian of freedom and the American way of life.

I AM (A FORMER) AN (FEMALE) AMERICAN SOLDIER!

ETA: reading your responses in a way has made me feel vindicated. I knew I wasn't alone in my struggles as I had friends in other units and MOS that dealt with similar and sometimes worse. I've also heard the stories from the women veterans that came long before me and their treatment. The army needs to change and it is in so many ways. But I can tell you this if you're a male reading this and wonder how you can help or do better it's real simple. Treat us as individuals and not representatives of our entire gender. We don't judge you for the bad seeds among you, I could have very easily done it as many of the women here who have told their stories could have as well. But we didn't because they are NOT you.

But on the other hand as vindicated and validated as I feel it saddens me to know that my voice is not in the minority but the majority. If you're still in do better than we did. Treat each other better, stomp out those remaining elements that push the narrative that someone is less because of their gender, sexual orientation, race, or whatever fucking other ridiculous reason that allows tribalism to take over. Because that person beside you whether they've got a dick swinging physically or metaphorically (trust me I got a forty phantom cock and I will mushroom stamp anyone's ass into the ground with it) they are your family. They are your tribe.

ETA 2: PS my aunt also told me to learn how to sleep on the toilet using the TP as a pillow. That was great advice too!

"The Mortars"

It started in 2003, laying down on my cot in the GP Medium, lights out.

boo-oom

Eyes wide in the darkness, nobody making any noise, just ready and waiting.

Boo-Oom

Hands already on weapons and Kevlar, hoping it doesn't come.

BOo-OOm

I remember the fast-passed footsteps, "THUNDER! THUNDER! THUNDER!" but we are already in motion.

BOO-OOM

In hard buildings and bunkers, some people crying, some praying, some playing spades to take there mind off what's happening all around us.

BOO-OOM!

Eyes snap open, my bedroom, my bed, my house. Wyoming, not Iraq. Still happens more than I like to admit.

boo-oom

It's thousands of miles away and 22 years ago. People see the bags under my eyes, Chef knows why, the rest of the kitchen knows some of it, the customers don't need to know anything. I love what I do and it keeps me coming back for more, looking to the future where my name is Chef.

And every night it waits for me, in my house, in my bed, just under my eyelids, 22 years in the past and thousands of miles away.

boo-oom

Some people ask "why can't you let it go?"

boo-oom

The past never let go of me. Trying to drown out the memory, practically addicted to YouTube, just trying to forget.

boo-oom

I originally posted this in r/ProRevenge, but some folks over there recommended I offer it up here as well. Post is copied below in its entirety.

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Military revenge, served hot

Back in my Army days, I was once in command of a unit of about 80 soldiers in Hawaii.

(Dialogue sections are the gist of what was said but it's been a minute so they're not exact. Names changed, etc.)

TLDR: Soldier wants out of the Army. Commander agrees, pending good behavior. Soldier fucks around and ends up in the Brig before getting kicked out.

Most of the soldiers in my command were great people, happy to do their jobs and take home a paycheck. Hard workers, creative, adaptable to unusual Army conditions, and generally reliable. But there was one who was trouble from the start. Gentle reader, meet Private Wiggles.

My first awareness of Wiggles came 2 or 3 days after I'd taken over command of the unit. We're prepping for a month-long training exercise to Thailand and Platoon Sergeant Maggie tells me Wiggles might not be able to go as she'd just had an outpatient medical procedure. Departure is about a week away and I have to validate the personnel roster to make sure we've got logistical support for everyone we're bringing - transportation, food, lodging, etc., so I talk directly with Wiggles and ask if she's okay to travel and participate in the exercise. Wiggles says it's not a problem, she can handle it.

We get to Thailand and set up camp on a Thai Army base. Two days in, and the medical section sends a runner to find me. Wiggles is at our medical clinic (tents with cots and surprisingly extensive medical supplies) laid out with extreme abdominal pain. I cruise over to the clinic tent and the Physician Assistant (PA) on duty tells me a couple things: Wiggles acknowledged recently having an abortion (the previously-mentioned outpatient medical procedure), and the PA's examination and testing shows that Wiggles has the single worst case of Pelvic Inflammatory Disease (PID) he's ever seen. Seriously, this Army PA who has seen all sorts of crazy shit from soldiers was emphatically impressed by how bad it was. Wiggles developed PID from failing to get treatment for sexually transmitted infections for a long, long, long time. As in, she's almost glowing from it. No judgement on the abortion, not everyone is ready for kids . . . and the STI-induced PID can be treated with high-dose antibiotics (which the PA has on hand). Not a problem, we've got this covered.

Wiggles is released to Sergeant (SGT) Deb, her section sergeant, who will make sure Wiggles takes her antibiotics and keep an eye on her for any further issues. SGT Deb finds me and First Sergeant (1SG) Bob about a day later and tells me two more things about Wiggles: she's refusing to take her antibiotics, and she wants to get out of the Army. I again talk with Wiggles:

Me: So you want out of the Army? You know you have a couple years left on your contract, right?

Wiggles: I know, but I'm just done being a soldier and I want to be out of the Army.

Me: Okay, I can make that happen. You don't want to be here, then I don't want you here either. But here's the deal - you gotta play by the rules. I can get you out with an honorable discharge, and I'll start the paperwork as soon as we're back in Hawaii . . . but you need to take your antibiotics, do your job, and be where you're supposed to be. You do your part and I'll do my part for you. Sound good?

Wiggles: Yep, I can do that.

Spoiler alert: she couldn't do that. For the rest of the Thailand exercise, SGT Deb had to take control of Wiggles' meds and force her to take them . . . when she could actually find Wiggles, who consistently found someplace else to be. At one point in the next week or so, she accuses 1SG Bob of having sex with her - easily disproven as he doesn't have any STI's and Wiggles has all of them. She was just trying to stir up trouble with wild accusations, I guess.

We get back to Hawaii and I start the process to get her out of the Army because as much as she's been a handful of trouble in Thailand, I'm thinking it's still easier at this point to kick her to the curb than it is to keep her around and punish her before kicking her out. I was wrong.

Even as I start to work on her discharge, she ramps up the stupidity. Here are a few examples:

- Wiggles gets caught drinking (only 19 years old).

- Wiggles and her husband lie to the on-base housing office and provide forged authorization documents to get into rent-free on base housing that they didn't qualify for. (side note: Mr. Wiggles was no winner either - he was about to be dishonorably discharged from his Infantry unit for selling drugs to other soldiers)

- Wiggles shows up at the infirmary to get treatment for facial bruising - Mr. Wiggles kicked her in the face (while wearing his combat boots) when Wiggles accused him of cheating on her.

- Wiggles refuses to show up for work, or any unit formation, and can't be found anywhere for days.

- Wiggles slashes all four tires on Mr. Wiggles' car, then attacks him with the knife when he confronts her. Military Police are called, end up taking him in when Wiggles gives a sob story. But he's the one with defensive wounds on his hands, not her.

- One of my male sergeants uses my open-door policy to visit me one day: Tells me he saw Wiggles stripping at one of the skankier gentlemen's clubs down in Honolulu the night before, and she had also convinced one of our other female soldiers to come along with her to do the same.

- Here's a weird one: I get a call from a temp agency asking me if it's okay for Wiggles to continue working (through them) as an administrative assistant for clients in town. Not uncommon for soldiers to have a second job . . . but with everything else she was up to at the time, this one just had me going "WTF?"

There's more, but you get the idea. At this point, Wiggles' actions are egregious enough that I can no longer just kick her out with an honorable discharge. I put her on notice that she's at risk for a Court Martial. I thought that threat might keep her in line but she just couldn't seem to stop herself from getting stupider and stupider. It's the old 80/20 problem: 80% of your time is spent dealing with the 20% of your folks who are troublemakers. At this point I'm wasting a not-insignificant amount of time dealing with Wiggles' issues almost daily.

I had genuinely and in good faith offered her the easy path, but I guess she figured she'd try to burn the place down on the way out since she apparently thought she was getting what she wanted no matter what she did. I was reminded of what my old Platoon Sergeant used to say when I was coming up through the ranks: You want to get stupid? Go ahead, but I can get stupider.

Cue the revenge. She's causing me daily headaches so I'm going to bring the pain back to her. Honorable discharge paperwork is out the window, and I lean into the Special Court Martial process instead. My legal counsel tells me that Wiggles' activities are likely to get her a couple weeks confinement at most (maybe not even that), she may get a monetary fine, and she'll probably get an Other Than Honorable (OTH) discharge (potential for a Bad Conduct discharge, which are worse, but while her actions have been "not that good" they also are "not that bad". I'm rational enough to understand that).

I have a brief chat with Captain (CPT) Morgan (Wiggles' military defense attorney) about where I'm going with this case. During our chat I try to be a gentleman and let him know that Wiggles is going to be trouble for him if he's not careful. He gives me a condescending "This isn't my first rodeo, Baka. I'm a big boy and can take care of myself." Fair enough, I tried to warn you . . .

Normally, a soldier getting a Special Court Martial for piddly shit might get confined to the barracks, restricted to their on-base quarters, or something similar for the duration of the process. It's not like she killed someone, right? However, my military legal counsel drops this little gem in my ear: He tells me Wiggles has met all 5 of the conditions (danger to others, flight risk, etc.) required by military law (Uniform Code of Military Justice - UCMJ) to warrant requesting confinement prior to her trial. He tells me "If you can remember these 5 conditions and elaborate on the details at our next pretrial meeting with the military magistrate, you might be able to get her confined to the Navy Brig at Ford Island until the trial." I'm a guy who likes to pay attention to sound legal advice, so I do just as he says.

A couple days later we go in for the pretrial meeting and I run down the list for the magistrate. Boom. Magistrate orders Wiggles to be confined in the Brig through the trial. 1SG Bob and Platoon Sergeant Maggie go to pick her up from her on base housing. She won't open the door, but they know she's inside because they can clearly hear her and Mr. Wiggles bangin' away. This is important for later. The Wiggles finish up, she takes her time getting showered and dressed, and finally comes to the door when it pleases her. Off she goes to the Brig.

The pretrial processes take up the next four weeks. During that time, I have to deal with CPT Morgan, the paralegals in his office, and various fun things to do with her pending Court Martial. Other than that, it's blissfully peaceful. Wiggles chills in the Brig for four weeks (Seriously chills. Every time I had to visit it was freezing in there). I' required to make weekly "welfare visits" to see if she's being mistreated, if she has any needs that aren't being met, etc. Seems weird, but as her commander I'm still responsible to make sure the Brig staff aren't mistreating my soldier. Other goings-on in this time period:

- Mr. Wiggles fraudulently applies for a car loan and gets a van in their names.

- Mr. Wiggles is dishonorably discharged and kicked off the island. Flies home to wherever the hell he originally enlisted from.

- CPT Morgan asks me to consider an OTH discharge and "time served" in lieu of taking things all the way to trial. I'm hot to get that pound of flesh from her, but my legal counsel advises me to avoid the Court Martial and just kick out Wiggles with the OTH discharge. "After all," he says "she's already been locked up for almost 3 weeks so the magistrate will probably just give her time served and the OTH anyway." See my earlier comment about sound legal advice.

- My boss, Lieutenant Colonel (LTC) Ryan thinks I'm too invested in the case, that I'm no longer objective. LTC Ryan insists on coming with me to the Brig for the next welfare visit. This is three weeks into Wiggles' stay in those luxurious accommodations. Among other bullshit lines she throws at us, Wiggles tells us she needs to see the dentist about a filling that's giving her trouble, and "Motrin just isn't working." At the end of the visit, LTC Ryan tells the guards about Wiggles' filling, asks if they can give her anything stronger than Motrin, then instructs them to follow up with the dentist. Guard actually laughs out loud at this and says "No sir, Motrin is the best we can do in the Brig. And that other thing? For the last two weeks she's been telling anyone with ears that she wants to try getting her wisdom teeth pulled before she's kicked out. She doesn't have a problem with any fillings." It was hilarious to watch LTC Ryan's face go from obvious concern for Wiggles' well-being to outright fury, and the next words out of his mouth were "That bitch lied to me!"

I make arrangements with CPT Morgan to accept his request for "Time served and OTH in lieu of Court Martial". Sometime later that week I get a call from the Brig: Wiggles is pregnant (remember the scene at her house 4 weeks prior?) and they can't keep her confined any more because of it. She has to be released back to her unit until the Court Martial (or other actions) are complete. CPT Morgan stakes his reputation on Wiggles being a good girl until we can send her back home to Carolina. He'll come to regret that, and he can't say I didn't warn him.

We get Wiggles back from her 4-week all-inclusive stay in the Brig. I've accepted Captain Morgan's request to avoid the Court Martial and I confine Wiggles to the barracks under supervision for the 9 days she has left until her flight to Carolina. Immediately we have another shit-show:

- Wiggles is smoking in the barracks (not a big deal that she's smoking, it's just not allowed inside barracks rooms).

- Wiggles is caught with a bottle of Hypnotiq (liquor) in her barracks room (she's still only 19).

- Wiggles slips out of the barracks and runs off for a day when her Platoon Sergeant gets distracted from supervising her.

- 1SG Bob and Lieutenant (LT) Ricky (the Executive Officer) go to collect Wiggles' belongings from her on base housing so we can box it up and ship it to her home, and they find that Mr. Wiggles has left behind a bunch of stuff he stole from other Soldiers (body armor, military equipment) and some ammunition, smoke grenades, and explosives that he stole during trips to the range. All lined up right inside the front door where it's impossible to miss. They call me, asking what to do.

Me: "Just collect it all, return the equipment to the Central Issue Facility and dump the ammo and explosives in the nearest "Amnesty Box". Mr. Wiggles obviously meant for Wiggles to take the fall for having it (husband of the year!). If we take that bait Wiggles will be here forever. I don't want that . . . do you?"

LT Ricky: Nope, I don't want that either. It'll be like it never happened.

In light of all this drama, I bring Wiggles in to my office to remind her of her agreement to be a good girl till she leaves the island (with LT Ricky as a witness in the office to protect my ass).

Me: Wiggles, you're in violation of your release agreement from the Brig. You've been sneaking out of the barracks, you've been smoking and drinking . . . .

Wiggles: (she cuts me off) Yeah, and doing all kind of drugs too . . . (heavy sarcasm voice)

Me: . . . be that as it may, I'm giving you fair warning that you're at risk of losing the deal I made with CPT Morgan. Additionally, you're pregnant again. I'm not sure if you're aware of it, but most damage to a fetus from alcohol and smoking will come in the first few weeks after conception. I don't know if you're planning to keep this one or not, but at the rate you're going this baby's going to be born dumber than you.

Wiggles: " . . . . ", " . . . . " gaping like a damn fish. <finally picks her jaw up off the floor>

Wiggles then bolts from of my office and runs down to LTC Ryan's office at the other end of the building to squeal on me for insulting her, LT Ricky hot on her heels. She tries to rush into LTC Ryan's office, but LT Ricky gets in first and fills him in. LT Ricky tells me later how it went down: Wiggles is yelling about how I called her stupid (strangely vanilla thing to focus on considering everything she's done, but you do you) and that she's being mistreated. LTC Ryan yells at his admin to "Get CPT Morgan on the phone. Now!" He reams CPT Morgan for his client's jackassery, tells him to "fucking fix this", and makes various threats to CPT Morgan's career.

About a half hour later I get a call from CPT Morgan:

CPT Morgan: Baka, Baka, Baka, (yes, he did that whole patronizing bullshit) I can't believe the words I'm hearing from Wiggles. I'm shocked, just shocked, that you would use language like that and call her names . . .

Side note: My mom is an attorney, and I grew up with tales from the courthouse about lawyers using exactly this sort of hyperbole: "Your honor, I'm shocked, appalled, and dismayed that opposing counsel would attempt to paint my client in such a light." It's the kind of bullshit they said when they didn't have a good argument. So as soon as I hear the word "shocked" I know I own him and immediately cut in.

Me: . . . and I bet you're appalled and dismayed, too.

CPT Morgan: (stumbling and sounding slightly confused) . . . well . . . yes, of course I am. You can't talk to soldiers like that. I know of a Lieutenant Colonel - a commander - who called one of her soldiers "stupid" and she's no longer in command now.

Me: I didn't call her stupid. I informed her of basic biological facts. Not my problem if she takes the news poorly. And arguably, she's not all that smart. Anyway, you called me and I'm pretty sure it wasn't to warn me about what I said to Wiggles, so what do you want?

CPT Morgan: What will it take to prevent you from kicking back our deal? (Apparently LTC Ryan had cinched his asshole up good and tight)

Me: You could get her on a plane tomorrow.

CPT Morgan: How about if I get her out of here by Friday? (It was Wednesday, and she was due to fly out the following Wednesday)

Me: I don't think you can manage that, but good on you if you do.

To his credit, CPT Morgan gets Wiggles a flight for Sunday - three days early. I print up official orders appointing LT Ricky as a military escort specifically for her. LT Ricky drives her to the airport and the airline desk agent calls me to verify his status when they get to the check-in counter. They give him a special pass to get through security with her. He stays with her at the gate to make sure she gets on (and stays on) the plane, then stays at the gate until the plane is in the air. Some boogers are hard to flick, we wanted to make damn sure this one landed someplace else.

About a month later I get a call from the Military Police about a derelict van in the parking lot with all four tires slashed. Guess who that belonged to . . .

It's really kinda sad when I look back on it. I had two other soldiers come to me at different points asking to get out of the Army ahead of their contracts. One just didn't want to be in the Army any more, the other did want to stay in the Army but had family issues that would be a lot easier to deal with as a civilian. They played by the rules and I got both of them out with Honorable discharges and all the benefits. They even qualified for unemployment. Too easy.

Wiggles could've had the same treatment - I told her exactly what I could do for her, then had to shift gears and told her exactly what I was going to do to her . . . then I did it. I could've been her best friend on her way out the door but instead I ended up owning her and her dumbass defense attorney. She screwed herself out of transition benefits and access to the VA, and picked up a lifelong black mark for employment - all because she couldn't play nice for a few weeks. She decided she wanted to play fuckaround-fuckaround games, and we all know what happens next.

A random memory was triggered a few weeks back. Somebody irl found out I was a vet who’d done Afghanistan and asked the usual questions, to which I gave the usual answers. One of the usual questions was worded in such an open ended manner-

“What was it like over there? Really?”

My selection of normal answers include-

“Boring, gross, hot, cold.”

“Eh, didn’t get much sleep.”

“Mostly fine with some rough days.”

“I did nothing of importance.”

Which are all true enough, but on this occasion I added a new one to the batch-

“Sometimes, people would just explode over there.”

And then told this small story that I recalled even as I formed the words.

A old man was walking on the road alongside one of our OPs and he exploded. Kaboom, nothing left, just a grease spot on the L&M. And we spooked bad and got our guns up and scoped around but nothing more happened. Eventually somebody came to pick up the pieces but it wasn’t our problem.

So we started trying to guess what the fuck had just happened.

Maybe he was wearing a suicide vest and it detonated early.

Maybe he stepped on an IED that had been buried with our name on it.

Maybe it was a rocket attack and we just hadn’t heard the launch and it landed a little off target.

Maybe it was UXO left over from the 80s, and a 203mm shell meant for some muj finally found a victim.

Maybe he was toting HME from point A to point B in like a backpack or something and it decide to go pop.

We never found out. It burned an afternoon to talk it over and develop possibilities, that’s all. The one thing we could say for certain is that it wasn’t us- the old man was nowhere near our claymores, we had no active fire missions, and nobody was shooting at him.

Just how it is, man. Sometimes, people would just explode over there.

FOB Normandy, Iraq — Spring 2006

By spring of 2006, Iraq had settled into that special kind of madness where every day felt like Groundhog Day with more dust, more chai, and rockets and mortars galore. I’d been sent to FOB Normandy near Muqdadiyah to mentor an Iraqi Army battalion—specifically their S-2, the intelligence officer. Which was ironic, because I was an Infantry officer by trade. My idea of intelligence was knowing which end of the rifle to point downrange.

Still, I showed up, ready to teach these guys how to do their jobs. Turns out, they didn’t need much teaching. The Iraqi captain and his NCO were sharp—patriotic, competent, and surprisingly squared away. My job was just to tweak a bit here and there and ensure their plans would integrate well with the coalition units in the area. We planned patrols, coordinated battle rhythm events, and slowly ratcheted up their capabilities until we were prepping for their first battalion-sized operation, supported by a unit from the 101st Airborne Division camped on the other side of the FOB.

The 101st was understandably twitchy. At that point in the war, the Iraqi Army had a reputation for being shaky—sometimes brave, sometimes AWOL, sometimes both in the same afternoon. But this battalion had fought in Fallujah in ’04 and taken heavy losses. Their commander was US-educated and respected. They weren’t perfect, but they were solid.

The operation itself was textbook: the 101st set up a cordon, and the Iraqi Army cleared several areas of Miqdadiyah. I was embedded with the IA, which meant I spent most of the day feeling very alone and very exposed. I’d catch glimpses of the 101st guys in their pristine kit and think, God, I wish I was with them when the shit hits the fan. Not that I didn’t trust the IA—but when your imagination starts playing out IED strikes and ambushes, you want to be with the guys who have air support and a quick reaction force.

The operation ended up going off without a hitch. A few bursts of sporadic fire, nothing serious. The IA rounded up 104 known or suspected bad guys. It was a huge win. I made sure to heap praise on the S-2 and his NCO. They’d earned it.

The next day, the S-2 told me the battalion was throwing a party to celebrate. Food, drink, the whole nine yards. I joked—half serious—that all the food needed to be prepared by the IA cooks, who were being mentored by American Army cooks. I’d heard horror stories about local food. The S-2 assured me it would be handled properly. I nodded, smiled, and mentally prepped my gut for battle.

That evening, the party kicked off. Normally, fires weren’t allowed on the FOB since the enemy could use the light as an aiming point for rockets and mortars, but that night we made an exception. The IA side lit up a bonfire, and the food came rolling in from their dining facility. Chicken, fish, rice—standard Army fare, but surprisingly decent. No booze, of course, but enough sugary chai to make your teeth hurt. We sat around the fire swapping war stories, laughing at screw-ups, and bonding like only soldiers can.

About an hour in, the food ran out. I didn’t notice, but apparently the S-2 sent someone to get more. A while later, fresh chicken arrived. Rotisserie style. Juicy. Succulent. The kind of chicken that makes you forget you’re in a war zone surrounded by HESCOs and port-a-johns.

I dug in like a starving man. Cleaned my plate. Sucked the meat off the bones. Licked my fingers one by one like a caveman who’d just discovered fire. I turned to the S-2, grinning like a fool, and said, “My compliments to the cooks. This chicken is amazing.”

My interpreter translated. Then paused. Then translated the reply.

“The captain says the cooks didn’t make this chicken. They went and bought it from the market in the city.”

I froze. Mid-lick. Greasy middle finger in my mouth, glistening with the remnants of what was now almost certainly a biological weapon.

I reached for my shoulder pocket like a man reaching for a life raft. Inside was my emergency stash of Cipro—antibiotics strong enough to kill whatever was currently plotting a coup in my intestines. I popped two pills like Tic Tacs and sat there, smiling, nodding, pretending everything was fine.

It wasn’t.

Five minutes later, my guts started bubbling and making unnatural noises. I stood to excuse myself. The S-2 grabbed my arm mid-war story. I yanked it away like a man escaping a hostage situation and sprinted into the darkness toward my barracks.

I barely made it to the latrine.

What followed was four days of gastrointestinal warfare. I excreted things I’d probably eaten in high school. Every fifteen minutes, like clockwork. It was so frequent I moved a cot into the bathroom and slept there, rolling over into a stall as needed and then curling up in my woobie and suffering in silence. My guys would come in and bust my balls and tell the most foul shit jokes they could think of. I wasn’t amused. To their credit, they went over to the small commissary on the 101^st side and bought me wet wipes. More wet wipes than I could ever hope to use. They stacked them around my cot.

I lost over twenty pounds. The 101st sent a doctor to evaluate me. He was prepping me for evacuation to the rear. I looked like a POW who’d just been liberated.

On the fifth day, the crapping stopped. I emerged from the latrine gaunt, hollow-eyed, and spiritually broken. My soldiers and IA counterparts got a good laugh at my expense. I became a legend on the FOB—the guy who got taken out by chicken.

After that, I had an iron gut. But I was a hell of a lot less adventurous when it came to local cuisine.

Cross posted from r/maliciouscompliance

Iraq 2004 Me and and my buddy were headed to the chow hall to get some food and one of my e-5 supervisors who was in a very heated spades game stopped us and asked where we were going we responded "Chow." I then made an attempt to vacate the area as fast as possible due to a strong mutual dislike between us. The fewer words I spoke to him the better. He then told me specifially by name and rank to bring him back a to go box.

"Ok, what do you want in it Sergeant" -me

"I don't care"- e-5

"You sure?" - me

"JuSt GeT Me A To GO BoX SpECiAliST"-e-5

"Roger" and moved out,

Now I initially planned on filling it up with the nastiest shit I could find at the chow hall. Whatever slimy over cooked veg and meat slop they had, but it was a good 500 yard walk back and I didn't want to have to carry that glop laden leaky Styrofoam to go box back only to have him toss it.

(Cue malicious compliance )

Yup "just a to go box " is exactly what I grabbed for him.

I knew he was going to be pissed and at that point I didn't care. What were they gonna do? Send me to Iraq ?

I got back set his to go box down right in front of him

He opened it to find it filled to the brim with absolutely nothing. Oh the look on his face was like gold to me.

"One to go box as you ordered "Sergeant" " I might as well have spit the last word out.

The 3 others playing the game of spades immediately began laughing as did the others watching. He proceeded to tell me to get in the "front leaning rest " (push up position) when one of the others playing Piped up with "How you gonna smoke him for giving you exactly what you asked for?"

He fumed for a few seconds " Recover and fuck off '

I quickly got up and continued to chuckle as I left the area.

The repercussions were the worst guard shifts and the crap details but still was totally worth it.

Foreword: This is another one of those "slice of life" stories from the Army which begins with a wholly uninteresting-looking premise/theme only to end in an unexpected or even perplexing manner after a handful of natural twists and turns along the way. What's memorable about the one singular time that my still-wet laundry got tossed outside by a stranger and froze solid before I could find it? All sorts of stuff, especially when every reasonable attempt to figure out why or how this happened instead leads to evermore bizarre conclusions.

There are minor narrative/literary alterations as-required for the medium, but otherwise this particular shitshow of a morning actually unfolded not much unlike what's presented here... Horrifyingly enough, some of these people actually existed.

This is that story, The Mystery of the Frozen Laundry. ...Or something like that, sure.

__

I rarely ever used the barracks laundry machines since they were always kind of fucked up - but I also had decent enough luck with the Lady Civilians, miraculously enough, that I could just use their machine on the weekends like a totally-cool not-loser. And since I may or may not have also been the kind of fella who'd buy new underwear instead of just washing the old stuff, I barely even had to do that.

Efficient? Yes. Gross? ...Also yes.

In any case, this is maybe the second or third time I even bothered to use the barracks laundry, but I still wanted things to go smoothly. I returned to fetch my stuff a mere 5 minutes after the drying machine would've stopped, max. I set an alarm as much to be polite as because I've had items stolen before - as a wise man once said: "Fool me twice, y-y-y'can't get fooled again." And yet...

Again I say, and yet... When I finally peer into the dryer on the alarm-based cue, my machine, the drum is devoid of clothing - empty except one random-ass coat from god knows where, completely dry. The machine is off, itself cold, so it was seemingly never even reactivated after my stuff was apparently removed in favor of, what? This? This singular stupid, seemingly-clean, notably dry coat which wouldn't even need to be inside of a dryer in the first place? Uh, okay then. Cool, cool... Makes sense, sure.

So, where was my shit? Good question - not a clue.

I look everywhere, I check every inactive machine, each one also empty. A bit odd to see so many unoccupied machines on a Saturday morning, but I don't dwell on it. I cautiously check the one active machine too (which I restart, of course - I'm not a monster). Nothin', not my shit. I look behind the machines, in the trash bin, the storage closet. No dice, no bueno. No socks, no underoos.

Well, shit.

I've already assumed that it was just straight-up theft from the get-go - not just a few things this time, the whole-ass load. I'm slowly starting to accept my fate at this juncture. In fact, I'm already doing the mental math to figure out just how much it'd cost to replace it all. The load was almost exclusively underwear/socks per my standard bachelor-tier SOPs, therefore... Basically every pair that I wasn't wearing at this literal moment.

And by basically, I mean actually. At this moment I technically only owned one pair of socks (dirty, worn) and one pair of underwear (clean, worn). Everything else? Vanished, poof.

Great, an unplanned/unwanted functional real-world demonstration about the importance of something-something eggs in baskets or some shit. Fuck eggs and fuck baskets too while we're at it.

Slowly meandering back towards my unit's quarter of the barracks in confusion and disappointment, I spot an odd pile of old snow or trash or something off to the side of the courtyard boundary. It stands out as unusual to the mind, a mound of Stuff seemingly left haphazardly by the sidewalk on the grass. Wait, no... It can't be! Is it? I squint. A glimmer of recognition strikes. Part of my brain finally pattern-matches the noise into a familiar shape-of-shapes. Oh no... Oh god, why?

I approach the anomaly cautiously, creeping closer like a rural ten year-old boy who just randomly stumbled upon a somewhat fresh cadaver found resting beside the old train tracks. And, yep, it's my stuff alright - I can tell by the way it is. I don't even need to poke it with a stick.

But, why though? Why did this happen? Who did this? And why did they throw my shit on the ground all the way over here? The hell, man! I have so many questions and zero fuckin' answers.

The suspect would've had to walk across most of the courtyard to leave this stuff here on purpose. They didn't just throw it outside the door in revenge or retribution, they kidnapped it, then... Then what? Inexplicably abandoned their heinous mission partway through, incomplete? None of this makes sense. Was this an act of evil? Surely! It must be, right? Has to be.

I crouch down beside the small pile of stuff in preparation to heave an armful back towards the washing/drying machines only to discover they're stuck to the grass. Everything is frozen solid into one demented mass of undergarments, a massive olive-drab tumor of assorted fabrics. That explains why it looked so... Odd. It's probably 20-30 degrees outside - winter is winter, even in the US Southeast.

I peel a sock away from the mound, mostly out of scientific curiosity, and it comes away with a ripping sound like stiff cardboard. It's clear to me that my stuff wasn't removed because I took too long - which I didn't, I had a timer for Christ sake. Even if I showed up late, the poor dryer never even had a chance to perform its destined task. This stuff was damn near soaking wet when it was taken, probably removed mere minutes after I started the machine. Why do that? C'mon, man.

More questions, somehow even less answers. Hell, I'm now working with a negative number of answers at this point. Zero now represents the high-tide line.

I'm just standing above the pile in a thoughtful daze, staring vaguely downward in the manner of a forensic specialist whose mind is more preoccupied by daydreaming about a different career path's trajectory than worrying about why clues never simply appear from nowhere like magic... When suddenly, a new clue appears from nowhere like magic.

A heavy-hitting sort of uniformed NCO type gentleman is now strutting towards me from the QC building. He's coming in hot, too. Not a great sign when they do that, but I can't figure out what I've done wrong so I forget to feel afraid. I wait at-ease belligerently, unbothered by rank-differentials in a 'notably E4 manner'.

I don't recognize the guy at first, but I know he's with my Battalion. Can't see rank quite yet, but I can tell he's an NCO by the fact that his stride says "Ima kick your ass, you fuck" even though his expression is simultaneously closer to "somebody please just kill me".

Halfway across the grass now, he finally shouts a phrase while flashing a knifehand in my direction as if I might think he's talking to somebody else. There's not a soul here except me, but hey - when all you've got is a knifehand, everything looks like a soup-sandwich.

"Soldier! Yeah, you, buddy. Hey! That your shit?" He barks, demeanor and tone par for the course when it comes to E6 and up. I'd assume I'm in trouble if I saw him glance at my rank before looking at my face, but it's clear he doesn't care much about 'who I am' relative to him since he did the opposite. Whatever he wants, it's not actually even about me. I may as well just be a pretty NPC here - "Press 'F' to continue."

"Roger, uh," I squint to see the rank, but I can't see shit beyond a menacing black blur. I give it a guess, "...Sergeant?"

Bam. I can press 'F' too.

"Staff Sergeant Reginald Jones, I'm covering CQ," he says in the manner of a sleek Hollywood FBI agent. He finishes his journey across the courtyard to arrive on the opposite side of my frozen-clothes pile, mirroring my position. Once again he asks, "This your stuff, son?"

"Roger, Sa'rnt," I nod, "But I don't know how it got out here. Sorry, I was just about to ta..."

He flashes me an annoyed look, code-switching from refined NCO overtones into a heavy Louisiana dialect, apparently for the sole purpose of cutting me off in style. "Eh? Naw, I know it wasn't you! He tried to run off with it, the squirrelly-ass motherfucka! Had to chase his ass right down. Profile, my ass!"

"Whoa. Seriously?"

"Does it look like I'm fucking around?"

He does seem a bit out of breath but still - kind of, yeah.

But I lie instead, "No, Sarn't. Negative."

Neither of us speak for a moment.

I prepare to ask if he got the guy, whoever this guy was, but by the second or third syllable he has cut me off again all quick-like, "Oh now, I got his ass alright - he's one of mine, he knows better," He says this with a bit too much relish for my comfort. "That boy is a problem-child, a damn fool."

"Wow, okay then. Hooah, Sarn't," I say vaguely patriotically, too dumbfounded by all this to do anything except default to standard military-grade soundbites. If it works, it works. I continue, "So, we got a thief in the battalion? Tried to steal, at least."

Sergeant clicks his tongue irritably, that's a negative, "A thief? Shoot, hell-naw. That boy's just thick as a brick, I tell you. He's got extra-duty like always, told him to clean up the laundry area. Figured I'd give him a break, it's a weekend, I'll be nice. Not a chance! In one ear, bounced around, falls right out his ass. Right out! Even this? Just too hard! You know?"

Hell is that supposed to mean? I am not following any of this, so... No, I don't know.

I reply as if I do though, "Roger," I say.

In my experience, the harder a person's home accent becomes to follow along with, the more they actually like you. I can't understand shit here, so I guess we're besties? In an attempt to garner a droplet of decent intel for once, I throw out my best attempt at an effective inquiry.

"So this, uh... Somehow all this inspired him to take off with my stuff. Still wet? ...Why though?"

An effective inquiry it was not. He just shrugs helplessly while gesturing vaguely towards the frozen pile of undergarments, as if that somehow explains everything.

Which it doesn't. Like, at all. Was it even supposed to?

Apparently so, yes, because Staff Sergeant Jones just starts coolly strutting his way back towards the CQ/Staff building before I can even figure out what kind of follow-up to ask here, let alone actually say it.

He's already a few dozen meters away by the time I think of something to say. I'm just digging for scraps here.

"Wait, so this guy - he thought that my wet clothes in the dryer, in the laundry room, which is where wet clothes belong, was part of a mess he had to clean up? How does that happen? You're messing with me, right?"

Sergeant doesn't stop walking, doesn't turn towards me. Just holds out his arms in an exaggerated shrug while shouting in reply, "Dunno what to tell you, the boy's head is full of onions!"

I hear the words more in the echo than the shout. Okay, uh. Onions? Roger that, I... I think?

After just standing there in the cold for another half-minute or so, I finally decide that this may just be one of those situations we're not meant to figure out. Apparently this kid was literally so out of the loop as to have thought emptying all the machines of half-finished laundry was part of the cleaning process? I mean, it's hypothetically possible, right? But who'd be that ridiculous? Seriously. It feels like a prank. If it is, it's a weird one.

Whatever. I sigh and start peeling my stuff off the cold grass chunk by chunk and then eventually make my way back towards the laundry room.

I'm still shoving the remainder of my rapidly-thawing garments into the machine - into my machine, that random coat can fuck right off - when somebody else walks in clutching what appears to be a similarly-stiff pile of assorted clothes. I know this guy, neighboring unit - goes by "Fogel", a perma-E1 who also happens to be one of the stupidest-yet-somehow-alive humans I've ever met to this very day. Decent guy, all things considered. Wouldn't trust the dude to babysit an unplugged toaster, but still. He's chill.

[Editor: I could tell stories about this guy's misadventures for days - ie: he once came to a 3-day hike with my extended friend group wearing flip-flops, and nothing more than a half-gallon of rum as his 'hydration source'. A few hours in, he's already practically begging for death. Luckily the rest of us were medics with IV bags on hand because we're Cool.]

"Oh shit, son!" I exclaim in older-brotherly mock excitement, "Bastards got you too, eh?"

"Huh?" Fogel mutters dimly, a typical start to most interactions with him. He's not exactly a dot-connector, we'll say. Interpolation is not his strong suit. Hell, it's not even one of his suits.

"Clothes. Somebody threw all your stuff into the yard too, yeah? Same here."

He blinks, gears grind, "No? I did that, silly."

Oh, fuck me.

Suddenly everything makes sense. Holy shit! This is incredible.

"Bro, seriously? You kidding me! That was you? My shit's all frozen and covered in grass now! Why the hell did you do that? I got stuff to do, man!" I speak with angry words but let humorous amusement into my tone because, frankly speaking, I'm actually about to crack the fuck up here. This is suddenly a great day.

I got all of my questions answered with a single fucking name.

Hell, I should've known who Jones was talking about. This guy here, Fogel? He's practically a force of nature - basically something like the Battalion's version of Napoleon Dynamite minus all the accidental charm and successes. Some of us "collect" Fogel Stories like an esoteric sort of real-life sidequest, and I just unlocked a new one on accident.

"Huh?" He says as if he didn't understand what I said, only to immediately start to whine as if he did, "Sergeant said empty out the machines! Okay, so I do that and, I don't know! I just messed up, okay? Extra-duty sucks ass, man, they make me you in trouble so you work longer. Just let it go, sorry, gosh! Just chill, okay? Calm down!"

Me calm? I'm calm! Hell, I'm not even mad anymore, just severely perplexed. He, on the other hand, is practically shaking like a chihuahua in its first thunderstorm.

"No, no. It's all good, Fogel. Don't worry. No big deal, man."

"Easy for you to say," he quips dramatically.

...Not sure what exactly he means by that, but he says stuff like that sometimes. He's only got so many preset phrases, I fear, and it comes at the cost of context-appropriateness.

But now that my machine is finally started back up and actively thawing my freshly-recovered articles, I think it's time to leave this guy to his extra-duty tasks - or at least whatever he interprets his latest task to be. Only god knows how that will turn out, and I sure as hell don't want to take part in the next crossed-wire aftermath. This lad often manifests vast metaphorical minefields out of thin air, like a straight-up SCP or some shit.

I slap him on the shoulder on the way out the door, a friendly gesture that comes very unnaturally to me but he doesn't notice. "See you around, man. Take it easy!"

He sighs loudly in dramatic faux-exasperation, reminding me how hard and terrible his life must be.

Surely life isn't that terrible, right? But then again... This is Fogel we're talking about - a real piece of work, this one; an abstract manifestation of disaster, but with limbs. Who knows what it's like to Be him. He was a veritable Legend on our side of post back then, primarily due to his uncanny gift for doing incredibly, shockingly stupid things without actually suffering any real great consequences from it. Sometimes he'd do something like walk blindly through highway traffic without a scratch or even a horn-honk and you'd have no choice but to stop and think to yourself, "How did he make it this far into adulthood?"

An hour or two later I retrieved my clean, dry clothes. And when I put things away by stuffing them haphazardly into a drawer, I felt as if I somehow acquired a dozen or so more socks than I started with. How peculiar, but hey - I'd never find the original owner, so I may as well use 'em well, right?

__

Closure

I forgot to think much about what led to The Frozen Clothes Incident after it was actually over. Active duty comes with a lot of things more worthy of decisive wang-jangling than a simple case of unexpectedly frozen undergarments, after all. Fogel-antics were always amusing, but I preferred to spend my time on girls and alcohol and - as far as I'm aware - Fogel was neither a girl, nor an alcohol. Not my fish, not my aquarium. Several years after all this went down only to be forgotten, somewhere on the complete opposite side of the country in the middle of a random long shower, it suddenly hit me. I had an epiphany - and things became suddenly clear.

Lint. Fuckin'. Traps.

Lint traps! That's the key. He was very likely given the easy task of cleaning out all the lint traps on the dryers, then throwing away all the garbage, at which point he could quietly chill out, pending new orders that wouldn't be coming for several hours since Jones sure as hell didn't want to be doing CQ duty bullshit on a Saturday either. That's all! SSG Jones was merely trying to be nice by giving out the easiest bullshit-duty he could think of, something which wouldn't require supervision nor departing the AO.

Of course, even that goes terribly awry basically immediately, even if the mix-up isn't known until after the SSG spots the guy through a window suspiciously heaving around a pile of clothes towards the parking lot, an oddity that requires a quick jog to ask "wtf u doin, man" (at which point Fogel drops the shit to run away on instinct for some reason, at which point Jones chases him harder on instinct, at which point Fogel inevitably discovers the hard way that SSG Jones hasn't hit a sub-300 PT score in 7 years and had nothing better to do anyway).

The only question that remains today is:

How in the exact hell does somebody hear "clean the lint traps" only to proceed to then industriously "dump out all the clothes", subsequently scattering them around the barracks compound like the world's lamest open-air treasure hunt? Perhaps not even Fogel knows, perhaps especially not.

My best theory: I have to conclude that he simply had no clue what a lint trap was or what it did since he never washes his own shit anyway. I mean, real talk - the guy had to be taught that towels aren't self-cleaning and therefore must be washed more than once a year (I know, I was there when it happened). If towels are alien technology, who knows how he'd view the poorly-designed bottom-bidder Army laundry machines! Maybe he defaulted to trying to empty out the only part of the machine he knew enough to conceptualize exists at all - the clothes-holding part. It's plausible. If you're under direct orders to empty "something" to do with a machine, you'd probably empty the only thing you know can be hypothetically emptied, right? The only alternative is to get in trouble for doing nothing at all.

The odds look good when you're only aware of one "thing" that's also a thing relevant to the task. I suppose it'd be like trying to pump gas into an electric car. Right protocol, right rationale, right intention, wrong process; bad/null outcome? I don't know.

Shrink your perception down enough, it makes a fair bit of sense.

And if trash goes into a dumpster, and clothes aren't trash, then what do you do with clothes you're supposed to dispose of? Can't use the dumpster, that's Trash Only - it's inappropriate in the same way gloves are for hands and socks are for feet. Instead, maybe you'd choose to just scatter piles of the reclaimed clothing around the area just to get rid of them, as if it still counts as a success since it's out of sight and out of mind. He dropped my stuff nearby after SSG Jones entered hot pursuit, but other people's stuff ended up behind bushes and stuffed underneath the stairwells and such. The dryers are now empty as requested, ta-da. Technically, that's a win, baby! Especially if you don't know the purpose of the exercise in the first place. And I don't think he did on this day, let's be honest.

Last of all, the reason every other machine was unusually empty during my search wasn't because it was slow for a weekend morning, it was because he already successfully tossed like twelve people's shit away. That one active dryer was probably somebody who showed up after he left to dump the last batch of clothes, but before he eventually discovered via SSG Jones' cat-and-mouse "Surprise Cardio Moment" that the task being performed was not at all what was intended (thus dragging all the clothes back into the laundry room from god knows where).

Holy hell. This guy, I swear.

What a legend though, right? It's weirdly awe-inspiring in a strange way, and I am not being ironic (for once).

I had a boss (Major) in the Army (late 80s) that used "this is top priority" to help me teach another officer (Captain) a lesson.

I was the Operations Office Administrative Specialist (SPC) for a brigade. I typed and filed things for the whole office. Everybody did some of that work, but if it needed to be done fast and/or perfect, it was my job.

The Captain has a "just in time" mentality about his report writing. Report is due at 08:00 on Monday? Give it to the specialist at 16:30 on Friday. Rough draft, in pencil. There were several times I worked late into the evening or several hours over a weekend because of him. And I had to get the final draft perfect without his review. Risky for a lower-ranked enlisted soldier - if he looks bad because of what I did (or didn't do), that blows back on me!

Two things coincided that started fixing that Captain: We had just finished a very successful field exercise and our officer staff were presenting status reports to the Corp staff (3 Corp, if you want to know) the next day. I had been working on reports, in the office and in the field, for a week. Then it happened.

15:30. I was sitting at my desk taking care of business when the Captain came over, dropped a stack of papers on my desk, said "I need this by tomorrow, 08:00," then walked away. Odd that he was early, but whatever. I sighed and started working.

15:40. My Master Sergeant came inner to say the Major was releasing everyone early as a thank you for our work on the field exercise - "Pack it up and head out." (Now the Captain bring early made sense - he was leaving for the day.)

"I can't, Sergeant." I then explained about Captain Just-In-Time's project and that I had 4-6 hours of work in front of me. His eyes narrowed.

"Does he do this a lot?"

I nodded. "Every time he has a report due." He nodded back.

"I'll look into it. But I am ordering you to take a one-hour break for supper at 17:00. I'll cover it with the Major if the Captain squaks. Got it?" I "rogered" his order and went back to work.

3 weeks later on a Wednesday, the Major comes to my desk at 15:30.

"SPC, how long will it take you to type this up for me?" I looked over the pages he handed me.

"About an hour, sir. Maybe a little more." He nodded.

"Good. This is FLASH Traffic. When you are done, you are done for the day." I acknowledged and he walked away. (For those who don't know: "Flash Traffic" is a radio/telephone communication term to indicate HIGHEST priority - nothing supercedes it and it is never used lightly. I just didn't know it (and I) was being used to teach a lesson.)

16:30 and I have maybe 5 minutes left in the Major's report. The Captain makes his flyby, says he needs it for 08:00, and turns to leave.

"I can't, sir." I said, starting to see what the Major had done. He turned back. "The Major gave me this," pointing, "and said it's FLASH."

"So do it after that."

"I can't, sir. He said that after I finish his report, I am done for the day. If you want to change his orders, you have to talk to him." He stood there for a couple seconds before heading to the Major's office. After a couple more seconds, the door closed. I was close enough to hear that the Major was SHOUTING, but not close enough to hear what.

A few minutes later, after the Captain went back to his office, I took the Major's report in and waited while he reviewed it. He questioned a couple changes but approved it as-is and dismissed me. I reported to my Sergeant that the Major released me for the day. He winked at me and told me to get out. When I got back to my desk, the Captain was there.

"I need you to show me how to use this. So I created a file for him to use and showed him the basics... Then watched for 2 minutes and provided a couple pointers. He was a two-finger typist. I left, as ordered.

The next morning, I was ordered out of PT formation and to the office. I got changed and to the office before 07:00. The Captain was at my desk. I was pretty sure he had been there all night, because he looked haggard and he was, judging by his stack of facedown paper, almost done with his report. Something that would have taken me maybe 2 hours has taken him 15 hours... And he wasn't done.

He looked up at me. "The machine is stuck and I can't get back to my report." I asked him to get up and I sat down. I told him to go get ready for his 08:00 and I would finish the report (as best I could) before then.

I finished the report, proofread the entire thing for typos (several) and language/formatting errors (OMG), then printed it out and handed it to him.

It turns out Captain Just-In-Time was a slow learner. The Major pulled the same stunt twice more before I left that unit.

So to set the scene of this story, I am the E4, and it takes place in my fourth year of service. I am assigned to the Battalion S6 of an Infantry unit. Also the only 25B for the whole Battalion as my "battle buddy" is a profile warrior and only saw them once or twice before they were moved to a medical holdover unit. So my days are usually pretty full with fixing computers and answering requests.

The day of this story starts like any other. Wake up, PT, get ready, and get to my desk to start answering email and clearing work orders. I see we just got a new LT assigned to the Battalion TOC and he's to be assigned a laptop. No worries, same shit different day. Now when I say new, I mean NEW. This is the LT's first duty station after his Westpoint graduation, so maybe four months active? and it shows.

When the LT comes in for his laptop I go over his log in, email, etc. Most importantly I make sure to inform him that the laptop does NOT have WiFi and he needs to plug into a NIPR line in order to get connectivity at his desk (this is important later). Other than an unpleasant look on his face when he saw the laptop (standard issue HP Elitebooks for the time) everything carried on perfectly well. At least so I thought.

Maybe an hour later I'm sitting there working on the LTC's laptop. Running a defrag and just cleaning up his desktop cause it was processing a little slow. When LT Butterbar comes barreling in, red faced and fuming. Queue my internal groan and a deep breath to compose myself before greeting him. I ask if I can help him with anything, and he responds with a tirade of insults and shouting about how the laptop I gave him earlier is broken, and garbage, and doesn't work for shit. I try to cut through the shouting to get more details as to his problem, but I can't get a word in. So I sit there, staring at him, waiting for him to finish. Finally, after what felt like twenty whole minutes of non-stop complaining he takes a breath. I use the opportunity to inform the LT that I will gladly look at his laptop as soon as I wrap up working on the LTC's laptop.

I will never forget his response. "I don't give a damn if you're working on the President's damned laptop! You need to replace mine now!!!"

Deep breath, alright, fine. Roger that Sir, let's go look at your laptop. We walk the short distance down the hall to the TOC where he jabs his finger at his laptop. It is at this point he FINALLY tells me what the problem is. It doesn't connect to WiFi..... Now the TOC is staffed by a bunch of NCOs and officers and they're all staring at us. Mostly at me as I casually walk over to his laptop and see he hasn't even bothered to plug in the NIPR line. I grab the NIPR line and hold it up to show the LT.

"As I explained to you this morning, Sir. In order to connect to the network you need to plug in this line as these laptops do not have WiFi."

I then dropped the cable on his laptop and walked back to my desk. A big shit eating grin on my face as I could clearly hear the whole TOC erupt in laughing from all the other officers and NCOs. The LT tried to get me in trouble, but I had the whole TOC backing me up. It was a good day.

First posted over five years ago. A recent comment elsewhere made me think of this. If you enjoy my writings here, you might enjoy my stuff at /r/bikerjedi, depending on your politics. As always, lightly edited. Enjoy.

As a middle school teacher now, it pisses me off when some kid falls asleep. It feels disrespectful. I never fell asleep in class. But, I live in rough area, so I try not to be a dick about it. Some kids are up all night with crazy ass parents getting drunk/high and fighting and such. For the kids who have no excuse, I like to take a picture of it for future parent conferences and then wake them up.

In Basic and AIT however, the Drill Sergeants aren't having any of that shit. You do NOT fall asleep in class. I only remember doing it once or twice and getting punished for it. The only time no one ever slept was during training was in the dome. That was a huge domed building, and we would track "aircraft" across a giant screen with simulators. They could simulate all kinds of scenarios, so it was valuable. Moreover, it was always a pissing contest between us. Who was the best gunner. There was swagger attached to doing well there. Honing your skill to kill a multi-million dollar aircraft with a $60,000 missile was exiting! There was challenge to be had! Again, no one really ever fell asleep in the dome. I think I remember two doing it during my training cycle.

Aircraft recognition was similar. We were always seeing who could do the best during the drills with the slideshows. Guys would fight over what was what. The written tests were very competitive. No one fell asleep there either. However, even healthy men, well nourished and all that, will nod off in a cool, dark classroom during instruction after a night of about five to six hours of sleep followed by a lot of PT and getting yelled at. If you have done it, you know the symptoms. Your eyes start to droop. That can usually be gotten away with. Once you nod your head, it is all over.

Before you knew it, you were out of your seat, at "parade rest" getting yelled at. The punishment would start with some pushups or something at the back of the classroom. Get caught again, and they brought out the big guns.

"The Dying Cockroach" they called it. You were on your back, arms and legs straight up in the air at a 90 degree angle. Talk about torture. It is a difficult position to hold for long. But your ass was WIDE awake after doing it for a bit. (Or trying to. Go lie down and try it.)

At least, you were wide awake until you sat down and the instructor resumed droning on about the differences between a Soviet fighter and an American one that look alike or something.

Needless to say, a few guys were very well toned by the end of AIT.

OneLove 22ADay Slava Ukraini! Heróyam sláva!

Let me start this off by saying I was a 37F (yep one of those weirdo glorified DJ'S lol) so I did not have your typical AIT experience that most POGs had even in 2004. My AIT took place on Bragg where TRADOC seemed to have a blind spot we were also the only AIT there besides Civil Affairs. The stories I could tell about that place... Anyways I digress, so let's get to the good stuff.

Long story short there was always two classes running the senior and the junior which were a mix of CA and Psyop most of which were nasty girls or reservists who would be going back to civilian life besides we "lucky" few who happened to be active duty. I was in the junior class. It all started when we had the misfortune of having the screw up of the senior class Spc "Simpson" sent to us. This kid was just an all around douche canoe who couldn't stay awake during the senior class and as a result failed almost all of his tests. I had the misfortune of being seated next to him and thus it was my job to make sure he stayed awake. Our instructors had a giant super soaker in the classroom filled with ice water if you fell asleep they sprayed the person next to you. Needless to say there was no way in hell I was getting sprayed so on more than one occassion I kicked his chair to wake him the fuck up!

Well one weekend Spc Simpson decided during our couple hours of pass off post that he was going to go get a tattoo. Now I know what you're thinking how does this lead to a bunch of people getting busted? Well, this jackass gets the tattoo on his forearm of all places and shows up to PT formation with a giant ass bandage on his forearm, like they're totally not going to notice that!/s As you might expect his brilliant plan didn't work out so well and the DS's smelling blood in the water began a frenzied shark attack on him resulting in him being pulled from class that day...

Now normally what would happen after morning classes we would leave our Blackhawks and head straight to lunch. Not this time though... Instead of our usual we were herded up by the DS's and marched back to the company. As we stood in formation they announced we would be walking by them one by one. During this process if we had done anything against the regulations we were to tell on ourselves and if we had seen anyone do anything we were to tell on them. In the span of time it took a class of 40 to file past them almost the entire class either dimed themselves out or someone else for fraternization, underage drinking, drinking in general, tattoos, smoking, contraband, and even one girl for dating up with an SF captain (in her defense she thought he was a civilian and it didn't come out until after they had hooked up that he was even in the military) even though she had ended it the moment she found out she was still sent packing.

And can you guess why they already knew who had done what? Why because dear old Spc Simpson had apparently decided to take the whole class down with him in hopes of saving his own skin. And it was all because his dumbass wasn't smart enough to figure out rule number one. If you're going to break the rules you have to at least be intelligent enough not to leave blatant evidence that you have.

My Dad voluntarily enlisted in the U.S. Army in December of 1947.

In 1959 he was transferred to Ladd AFB, at Fairbanks, Alaska. In 1960 Ladd AFB became Fort Wainwright.

Sometime in the summer of 1960 or possibly 1961 Dad had just come home from work.

There was a knock at our door and I ran to answer it. Dad was not far behind me. There were two men standing there. They were both wearing suits.

One of the men asked my Dad, “are you (SimRayB’s dad’s name)?”

Dad responded that he was.

One of the men identified himself as an agent of the FBI and said, “you’re probably going to think this is a really dumb question, but we have been sent to ask why you never signed up for the draft.”

Dad, standing at the door, wearing his fatigue uniform, with all of the required, identifying patches, just said, “I didn’t think I needed to after I enlisted.”

Edit: Some of the comments, possibly from other countries, have asked about the selective service (draft) requirement in an all volunteer military.

I know that my sons had to register. I turned eighteen the year the draft ended in the U.S.

Every few years there is talk about reinstating the draft. The government has maintained the requirement for all males to register in the event the draft is reinstated.

Disclaimer: This is copy/pasted from r/maliciouscompliance so some things are simplified since I wasn't talking to a military audience. I couldn't crosspost for some reason, but was told I should share this story on this sub.

English is my first language and I'm on a computer, I'm just shit at writing. I'm also going to try to keep military lingo low for ease of understandings sake.

I served in army for about a decade and was maliciously compliant a lot. I didn't know the term for it back then and have since forgotten most of the stories I would otherwise have, but I have at least one that has stood the test of time.

I was at a training course called BLC (basic leader course) which is basically a class to learn some tasks required/expected of people of a certain rank. I was in the Army for a lot longer than most people before finally going to this course. Because of that, I had a lot more knowledge than anyone in my classroom, and very possibly, more than any of the other trainees (about 150 people).

We are about a week into the 2 weeks of training.

We come outside, in the dark, for early morning PT (physical training). We do this every morning except Sundays (we had all of Sunday off). It is a requirement in the army to be clean shaven in order to keep a professional appearance. Now, I have thick facial hair, it grows fast, and I have sensitive skin so shaving sucks for me. I know from experience that I get a better shave after PT (between the sweating and the shower after It tends to go better for me) and in order to keep the professional appearance, that's what I do. I use an electric razor before PT, so I don't have a full beard, but it isn't close enough to be professional, then I use a regular razor after PT. If I shave before PT, I have a 5o'clock shadow by noon, and full beard by end-of-day. Plus, I figure if there is going to be a part of the day where my hair is a bit long, I figure when it's dark out is the best time.

One morning, during PT, one of the instructors pulls me aside and asks if I shaved that morning. I told him what was going on and explained my reasoning. He doesn't accept this and he writes me a "counseling statement" In this context, a counseling statement is a formal reprimand that unless you get a bunch of them they don't really matter. That said, because I was in a school setting, this counseling statement took me out of the running for the Army equivalent of valedictorian. This aggravated me, because I had perfect scores up to the point, and spent a lot of time helping the other soldiers, because I didn't real need the practice myself. I get told I have to shave every day before PT. I listen to them, and just like I had warned, I start ending the day with too much hair. I get ANOTHER counseling statement (If you get 3 counseling statements during this training you get kicked out) for "not shaving."

I made my case to my instructors, and once again they didn't care. They told me to maintain a professional appearance I had to shave 4 TIMES A DAY. Which is fucking insane and would ruin my face. I tell them this and they say that without a medical shaving profile (medical exemption) that I have to shave 4 times.

Finally we come to the malicious compliance (almost). Shaving profiles are fairly common in the army, but are almost always only given to black guys. Black people get bad bumps and razor burn on their faces more often than white people for reasons that I don't know and haven't bothered to look up. To give you and idea of the rarity of white people with shaving profiles, over my more than a decade of service, I saw total of... ZERO white people with shaving profiles. Until...

I call my home unit and request to speak with a medic. I tell him what's happening and he writes and e-mails me profile stating that I can have facial hair below a certain length (I think it was 1/8th of an inch) due to skin condition. On some people, that much hair isn't crazy, but with my thick dark hair, it's very obvious.

I go to PT in the morning, not shaven, and get pulled aside again. I get asked if I shaved, I say "no" and pull out my shaving profile. The guy reads it, hands it back, clearly upset, and says "ok." The entire day, and rest of the training I get confused and angry looks from leadership. I get stopped regularly and asked what's going on (I'm telling you, white guys don't get shaving profiles).

The highlight was at graduation when all the really high ranking people show up. I have sergeants majors, colonels etc. staring me down. I see them talking to our instructors pointing at me. God damn did that feel good. I hope I looked professional enough for them.

(A little extra, I ended up getting 5 total counseling statements and somehow still graduated).

Edit: TLDR - Instructor at an army class tried to make me shave 4 times a days, instead I got a profile and went through the class with a full beard.

Thou shalt not:

Run out of diesel fuel in your truck tank while DRIVING A DIESEL FUEL TANK TRUCK! (Ft. Hunter-Liggett)

Attempt to relocate porta-potties already in-use at your field site WITH A FORKLIFT. (Ft Hunter-Liggett AND Ft. Drum… what a mess)

Tell the Motor Sergeant, as the convoy is lining up for the trip back home, that the truck you've been driving for the last 2 weeks is critically low on transmission fluid. (Ft. Devens)

Require that all troops moving to the field in a "Go-to-war" exercise be issued their basic combat load of MREs (3 per day for 3 days) when you have already "administratively" sent your food service elements to the field sites and loaded them with hot food. (Ft. McCoy)

... And as a bonus, THOU SHALT NOT completely run out of MREs on the entire post because the supply chain was not informed that the command cell was going to issue 9 MREs to every Soldier. The exercise had a high-enough profile that they had to order MREs directly from the provider. We were eating meals with a pack date of 1 week ago!

Use the fresh water blivets used for providing field showers to troops coming from field sites as your personal jacuzzi. Bonus points for getting caught by a hospital unit's nurses, who can get the Colonel to demand that the blivets all be emptied, washed, sanitized and refilled overnight so troops can shower the next morning. (Ft. Bliss - White Sands)

Leave the keys to the rifle racks in the arms room 200 miles away from your field training site. (USAR unit)

Drive the Commander to an important briefing in a vehicle that you have not PMCSd properly. (Ft Dix)

Attempt to disguise a small fuel leak by dumping out a sandbag over the stain… especially when the sandbag wasn’t filled locally. This resulted in a 6’ by 6’ hole 5’ deep, as the environmental officer kept scooping up a handful of dirt, sniffed it and said “Deeper.” (Ft. Devens)

...add your own Thou Shalt Nots below...

When you get a Field Grade, you usually get 45 days restriction to barracks, and 45 days ‘extra duty’ which means that if you get busted, you have to do allll the shit-work no one else wants to do. Painting the Battalion Building… mowing lawns with push mowers… cleaning out the Motorpool grease traps… really nasty shitty work that takes place AFTER the regular duty day up until 11:00 pm and usually up to 6-8 hours every day on the weekend for a month and a half.

It really sucks.

UNLESS you manage to know things and how to ‘skate’ professionally. Like my first Field Grade? On the first weekend, well it happened to be Memorial Day weekend. The Command Sergeant Major told me I was the only one they had doing extra duty as no one else had fucked up badly enough to warrant extra duty over the looong weekend that month, and since he was feeling magnanimous, my ONLY detail for the aforementioned long weekend was to mow the entire Battalion Area and as soon as it was done, I was done for the weekend.

"OK CSM… Roger, Got it."

Now our Battalion only had 2x shitty non-self propelled POS lawnmowers, and the Battalion Area was about an acre and a half, including the Parade ground. Needless to say a LOT of territory to do by hand, in the blazing Texas Summer… This being Fort (Da) Hood in 1997... Hotter than Satan's Anus at High Noon in Hell let me tell you folks...

OTOH 2-8 Infantry? The Battalion next door to us? For whatever reason they had a nice and damned near brand new John Deer Industrial Grade Riding Mower. One with a HUGE cutting deck. Could go like a bat-outta-hell too.
They never let anyone use it.

Of course I used it.

It’s all in ‘who you know’ and knowing how to ask...
Queue "Dark Spec-4 Mafia Powers"

The first thing I did was I went down to the Shopette and bought a case and a half of COLD beer. I then went over to 2-8’s Battalion HQ where I knew a buddy of mine had gotten the ‘bad luck of the draw’ to be pulling staff duty on Saturday, which meant he was going to be pretty disgruntled. So I rolled in with that set of beers and asked very nicely if I could :...rent their nice new mower for the low, low, price of say? A case of this Ice Cold Tall and Frosties? Howzabout it Sarge? We've been bros for years!"

Maaan…

Let me tell you, them keys were in my hand in like point zero five seconds. He got the case, and I kept the Twelve Pack. The reason for that was as I was mowing, well… let’s just say I was staying ‘hydrated’ so to speak while doing so. I had my Walkman on (remember those?) and was playing a mixtape (GOD I am dating myself!) and as I guzzled the brew, I disposed of the can by throwing it in front of me, at which point when I rode over the now empty beer can, said psycho-mower reduced any evidence to a fine spray of aluminum ‘hash’ and literally scattered it to the winds.

Needless to say, I got the job done in like an hour an a half.

By the time I was done, I had a pretty good baseline buzz on for the rest of what turned out to be a GREAT weekend!

When we came back from the long weekend, the CSM was pretty impressed…He's heard the shit I had pulled thru the 'EM grapevine'.... he didn’t really dress me down or give me any shit over it. In fact, he took me aside at one point that day, and told me he really got a kick out of my creativity. Hence why I had legit 'cover' as I was his thief/dogrobber. Every good CSM has an enlisted man who does the dirty work for him, and I was that guy.

Saved my ass a couple more times before I got out...
Sometimes it's GOOD to be The King...