Pretty Pretty Princess

One of the few things that was neat about the living in the barracks was the whole communal movie experience. Basically you had a bunch of poor young people cramped together, and one of them rents a movie. Rather than pay to entertain themselves, everyone just piles into the renters room and watches with them.

Well one evening my roommate came home with a copy of the animated Anastasia movie. And being responsible and mature young adults, we proceeded to get drunk and watch cartoons.

One of the things that we noticed, is that when the Princess is leaving the orphanage, she is wearing a dark green trench coat, and what appears to be the hat from a set of dress blues.

As it happens, I owned a dark green trench coat, and was in possession of the hat from a set of dress blues.

My roommate points out to the people in the room, that I am in fact, in possession of a Princess Anastasia costume. The movie is paused, and I am made to go and put the outfit on.

I threw the clothes on, and weaved my way up to the television. For effect, I adopted the same pose that the cartoon princess was in.

Well right about then, my roommates supervisor barges in. Everybody freezes. And the NCO looks at me. Then he looks at the cartoon. Then he looks at me.

“I’m Princess Anastasia?” I suggested helpfully.

“Right. Does anyone else have an explanation for this?”

“He’s the lost heir to the Russian throne…and he’s got a talking bat but we haven’t seen that yet,” offered my roommate.

“Uh-huh….I’ll just try again tomorrow when you’re sober.”

By the next morning, my supervisor had heard the story. And if you’re reading this then you can probably guess how that part turned out.

11/1/2007 12:47:13 AM

[wordzzz]

11/1/2007 12:49:54 AM

Cephalopod Surprise

This story is specifically why people I know thought I should keep writing stuff. It never made it to my list, because I never received any orders governing it.

Early on in my military career, way back when I was a PFC, my Battalion would occasionally have “Fun Runs”. A Fun Run is just like running for several miles. Except that it’s fun. Because people that outrank you say so.

This is pretty much the Army equivalent to declaring “Our office is so much fun! On Friday we get to wear Hawaiian shirts!” It’s awesome if you happen to love Hawaiian shirts, but just kinda sucks if you have taste.

One of the features of the Fun Run was that afterward the Battalion would gather together and hold a pie auction. The point of the pie auction was that if you bought a pie, you could pick any soldier who was present, and hit them with the pie. So as you can imagine, an awful lot of repressed rage got transferred into pie kinetics after these runs. The important thing to know here is that by tradition, the first pie always got thrown at the Battalion Commander.

This whole exercise was to raise money for the Battalion Family Support Group. In theory, this was an organization that would help the families of deployed soldiers manage during the long separations that military life often inflicts. But in reality, FSG was more like a cross between the homeowners association from a sit-com, and a social club for unemployable wives of military officers. And when I say social club, imagine the kind that gets taken down a peg by a scrappy band of misfits in an 80’s comedy movie.

To sum this up: the Family Support Group was not very popular with most of the soldiers.

The night before one of these delightful Fun Runs, I received special instructions.

“Bring in a pie for the auction.”

I’m not sure how much the pay has gone up, but back in those days if a Private First Class had a child he automatically qualified for food stamps. So I didn’t have much money. And most of what I did have was generally earmarked for important things, like strippers and alcohol, and more strippers.

A pie doesn’t cost that much I guess. But it was the principle that bothered me. The Army has billions of dollars and I have barely any. And now they want me to buy stuff for them.

Now technically, it wasn’t an order. It would be against regulations for my supervisor to *order* me to spend my own money on the Family Support Group. It was just, technically, a suggestion. And it’s just peachy to make suggestions. And if soldiers choose not to follow the suggestions, well, someone has to be assigned to that toilet cleaning detail.

So that night, I went out and I bought a premade pie crust. And a tub of Cool Whip. And then I stopped by a Korean grocery store and purchased a whole, frozen squid. And sprinkles.

I got back to the barracks, and started the preparations for the morning. Which pretty much just means I started thawing the squid in a shower stall. My roommate was a bit surprised when he got back.

“Is that a squid in our shower?”
“Yep.”
“What’s it doing in there.”
“Thawing.”
“Goodnight.”

The next morning I packed it all in a cooler, and set out for the Fun Run. After about three miles of fun the Battalion gathered for the auction. I quickly assembled the secret weapon, and added it to the pie table. I then notified the auctioneer about my special pie. Of course she selected my pie for the first auction.

The bidding started fairly briskly, as many people wanted to hit our Commander with a pie. But soon enough bidding started to peter out, and that’s when the auctioneer let everyone in on the secret.
“This is a special pie.”
“What’s so special about it?” called someone in the crowd.
“It’s a squid pie.”
“I beg your pardon?” said the Commander
“I said it’s a squid pie sir.”
“There’s no such thing.”

So she reached in, pulled out a tentacle, and waved at the Commander with it.
“WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?” asked the Commander with, all things considered, a reasonable tone of voice.
“It’s a tentacle sir.”
“PIE DOESN’T HAVE TENTACLES!”
“Normally you’d be correct. But this is a squid pie sir.”

And the bidding immediately picked up again. My pie raised close to five hundred dollars, which was a new record for the pie auction. I didn’t get into any trouble because nobody wanted to look like a bad sport. And I got to watch my CO take a high velocity mollusk to the kisser, which is a good morning no matter what branch of the military you are in.

11/1/2007 12:57:46 AM

W W WUT WUT WUT WUT
W
U U
U
T
T

11/1/2007 1:00:57 AM

Baaaah humbug

One day, shortly after I returned to the states from Bosnia, my unit got a brand new barracks. This was a big deal because our previous barracks could be politely described as “a cesspool”. Soldiers had doors that couldn’t be shut or locked. Rooms had exposed wiring. One room had a hole into the next room. Some of the common areas had missing windows.

So we get these shiny new barracks. My Battalion moves in and lives happily ever after, right? Of course not.

In the Army, much like in the regular world, if you get something new, people you work with will stop by to look at it. In the regular world this is called “looking at the new stuff”. In the Army this is called “inspection”.

Anyone who has been in the military is familiar with this particular unpleasantness. For everyone else, imagine this:

After a long week at work, your boss announces that Friday will be a half day. Everybody starts to cheer. Then your boss announces that to go along with this half day, he and his friends are going to come to your house. Then they are going to check to see how clean and organized it is. Your shoes need to be lined up under your bed, and places like the top of your refrigerator and curtains need to be dusted. If you fail to keep any portion of your living space less than perfectly clean and tidy, instead of a half day off you get to work unpaid overtime.

So naturally enough, inspection is not a popular event with people that live in the barracks.

Well, because we had new barracks, pretty much every step in our chain of command felt the need to have their own inspection, starting with our 1st Sergeant and going all the way up to Group Commander. For nearly two months, we had weekly inspections.

As I have stated before, this was shortly after returning from Bosnia. Coming home from a deployment is an interesting time for a young soldier, economically speaking. Due to your location, and the various restrictions placed on your behavior, you typically have much more limited access to money spending opportunities than normal. Even if you were able to go out on the town, things were dirt cheap, this being Eastern Europe.

Long story short, when young, single soldiers come home from a deployment, they frequently have a large reserve of unspent cash.

This means that you soon have a bunch of young men, with more money than common sense, released into the local economy.

Which just naturally enough leads to my roommate and me, standing in a novelty shop, discovering that there is such a thing as an Inflatable Sheep.

And we thought about the upcoming inspection. And we looked at the display of inflatable sheep.

So of course we purchased a small pile of these.

That Friday we had another inspection. Our Sgt Major entered the room, looked at our new flock, muttered a quiet “Oh hell no” did an about face, and walked out. Inspection over.

We pulled this routine over several inspections, eventually adding costume pieces to several. I had a Catholic Priest sheep, and my roommate was on his way to getting a full set of Village People Sheep. We’d arrange them differently for each inspection.

The strange thing was that for most of this time our chain of command refused to acknowledge that they were there. They’d spend the entire inspection trying to ignore them and keep a straight face, give us whatever comments our room needed, and then leave.

It turns out that in military circles, having a room full of inflatable sheep is practically a superpower.

Eventually one officer broke down halfway through the inspection and asked, “Why do you have so many inflatable sheep in your room?”. I love this question because it implies that the strange part is the amount of rubber sheep.

My roommate, at the position of attention, and with a perfectly straight face, responded, “Sir, it is my understanding that you are no longer allowed to ask me questions of this nature”.

The officer considered this for a second, said, “Right”, walked out, and started laughing as soon as he hit the hallway. Inspection passed.

[Edited on November 1, 2007 at 1:06 AM. Reason : &c]

11/1/2007 1:06:10 AM

lol. reminds of similar pranks I pulled when I first enlisted.

11/1/2007 3:50:13 AM

I love these.

11/1/2007 7:40:14 AM

i lolled pretty loud at this thread.



10.1/10

11/1/2007 7:53:05 AM

^agreed..that last one really got me going...
i hope i didn't wake my room mate

11/1/2007 8:01:58 AM

Quote :

"But in reality, FSG was more like a cross between the homeowners association from a sit-com, and a social club for unemployable wives of military officers. And when I say social club, imagine the kind that gets taken down a peg by a scrappy band of misfits in an 80’s comedy movie."

nail + head

Quote :

"It turns out that in military circles, having a room full of inflatable sheep is practically a superpower."

I'm going to use this somehow.

11/1/2007 8:12:10 AM

you should, its true.

11/1/2007 9:42:59 AM

so... you should keep a blog of this
I guess its funny

Quote :

"By the next morning, my supervisor had heard the story. And if you’re reading this then you can probably guess how that part turned out."

I'm guessing you were dishonorably discharged for being really gay?

11/1/2007 9:44:34 AM

Flocks of sheep in the room trumps sending n00bs to the supply room for a box of ground guides, canopy lights or a roll of orderwire every time.

10/10

[Edited on November 1, 2007 at 9:57 AM. Reason : .]

11/1/2007 9:56:49 AM

^ I saw a battalion commander once ask a CTLT Cadet why he looked so frazzled. The cadet responded "they've got me looking for grid squares sir" to which the BC said, "tell your platoon leader I've got his grid squares. They'll be on my desk at 0900 tomorrow morning. He needs to come get them himself."

11/1/2007 2:21:38 PM

chemlight batteries ftw!

11/1/2007 2:25:49 PM

That's good stuff...those were the days!

11/2/2007 8:53:46 AM

More!

11/2/2007 9:17:03 AM

i did pranks like whoa when i became an NCO

only because they got me good when i was a pup

11/2/2007 9:19:33 AM

tl;dr

11/2/2007 9:37:29 AM

I'll finish reading this once I find the black smoke for the night jump.

11/2/2007 9:38:54 AM

Quote :

"More!"

http://skippyslist.com/

11/2/2007 9:58:34 AM

Quote :

"black smoke for the night jump"

yep I used that one.

Quote :

"chemlight batteries"

that one too

Quote :

"grid squares"

by far the easiest and best one to get all the newbies.


god that shit was fun watchin them look like hell for that stuff.


had a buddy of mine tell his newbies to get a blank firing adapter for the main gun on his tank. I lol'd at this.

11/2/2007 11:32:22 AM

Do you ever have them go "now, wait a minute...lemme clarifiy" right when you say something?

In an acceptable manner, somehow?

Or is the obedience THAT ingrained that they've already walked off before it clicks?

11/2/2007 11:34:59 AM

holy shit i lol'ed way too loud at these...good thing it's lunch time

soo fucking great and so true...almost makes me miss the military....almost

I did find a sheep stashed in the SPY array room on my ship during a space inspection once...lost it as soon as I climbed down the ladder

Quote :

"29. The Irish MPs are not after “Me frosted lucky charms”."

hahahahahahahaha

[Edited on November 2, 2007 at 11:44 AM. Reason : .]

11/2/2007 11:40:29 AM

Quote :

"Or is the obedience THAT ingrained that they've already walked off before it clicks?"

If the training's done right, oh HELL yeah is the obedience ingrained. That's the ENTIRE point of the training. I didn't make it all the way through basic (story for another day) but even I was doing shit I was told just because I was told it.

I have acrophobia. When it came time to climb that fucking rappel tower, the drill sergeants had to get me so worked up I was more afraid of them than that tower. Why?
I was facing what I believed to be danger. The drills had to get me to do what I was told even in the face of that danger, because, well, that was going to be my job if I had gotten the rest of the way through my training. Do what you're told when you're told to no matter what else is going on, and it just might keep you from getting killed.

11/2/2007 11:52:09 AM

The best students in all the years of my college "experience" were in the service, either before they went to college or during. They took every assignment earnestly, papers were always proof-read and on time, and their grades were outstanding. Top-notch shit, makes me wish I had enlisted before I enrolled at State.

11/2/2007 12:03:06 PM

Quote :

"Or is the obedience THAT ingrained that they've already walked off before it clicks?"

You're also a complete n00b being told what to do by someone with far more authority and experience than you in a world practically bloated with incoherent nomenclature . . . so yeah, why would you question being told to find a blank adapter for an M198 howitzer?



BTW, anyone know where I can find a PRC-E7?

11/2/2007 3:04:30 PM

I was thinking mostly of black smoke for night jumps and chemlight batteries

11/2/2007 3:08:04 PM

this shit made me lol hard

11/2/2007 3:14:39 PM

that lol made me shit hard

11/3/2007 7:30:05 AM

Quote :

"BTW, anyone know where I can find a PRC-E7?"

Damn if we didn't have at least one issued to every unit i've been in.

[Edited on November 3, 2007 at 2:14 PM. Reason : R 8 J ftw!]

11/3/2007 2:13:37 PM

Quote :

"BTW, anyone know where I can find a PRC-E7? "

11/3/2007 2:37:51 PM