Humor in Uniform

[golddigger14s]

We were in the back of a deuce and a half, watching an e-4 walking down the sidewalk with a laundry bag over his right shoulder. He was meeting a captain walking the other direction. When they met, the e4 saluted smartly and said, "Good morning, sir." The captain returned the salute, walked a few more steps, stopped, turned around and gave the e4 a really funny look. Did he really salute with his left hand???? All of us in the truck were about to bust a gut laughing. I guess it ended up, no harm, no foul.

I've done that a few times on purpose to mess with the new LT's.
We used to send troops to the motor pool with a hammer and a piece of chalk to check for soft spots on the armor and mark it with an X.

 

[Snattlerake]

Speaking of young impressionable LTs. While on a deployment to the sand box it was my turn to watch the LT while in the local town.

Being somewhat new to the Army he was trying to decide just what his "image for the troops" would be, and I, being a faithful member of the sham shield mafia couldn't in good faith, allow this poor soul to struggle with such an important task on his own .

Walking past a Tobacco shop it dawns on me (as he was a smoker). LT, I say, what you need is a Tobacco Pipe! Question is which one. Puzzled he looks at me and says "shouldn't I smoke cigars instead?". No Sir! Cigars are an NCO thing!

You see, there's a deep traditional culture of Tobacco use in the military, and it has levels just like everything else. Think about it LT, you always see us Enlisted guys with cigarettes, dip, or chaw. You ever see Tops, or any of the Platoon Sargents without a cigar? Nah, you definitely need a pipe, all the greatest Officers had them! MacArthur, Grant, Burke, Puller, hell, even Patton smoked a pipe! (Was really laying it on thick at this point).

Sooooo, after what seemed like an eternity I found it! The gawdiest Calabash Pipe ever made by man. Oh my God! This is it, this is the one you need LT. (At this point I had the shop owner and other customers in on it.) It says you are a thinking man's man, sophisticated, educated, and driven. Others will value your advice because they will know the amount of thought you have put into it. In short, respect.

Fast forward a few days you find yours truly getting an ear full from the Platoon Sargent (as I'm on **** burning detail) because the! GD LT is smoking up the whole ****ing area with that mother ****ing pipe and nasty ass tobacco!

THAT is funny!

 

[RETOKSQUID]

THAT is funny!

I developed quite a rep for corrupting junior officers that followed me into the Navy.

 

[Snattlerake]

My cousin was a Navy Lt and had obtained his commission at the end of his graduation from OSU's veterinary school. Yes, he was a vet in the Navy in Vietnam. He was the meat inspector for all the troops in the Southeast Asiatic Theater. This duty sometimes included inspections of local eateries and as a gesture of goodwill, the local farmers. There were several stories he related to me. One was about the delicacy Nuoc Mam which was evidently made from fish dried on corrugated roofing, scraped off into barrels then blended and bottled. He said if you brought some of that into a bar and gave it to the owner you could have about anything in the bar including his wife.

The second was about the local farmers always asking him to, "You come, you come, you come now, pig very sick".
When he got to the farm the pigs were found to be sick because the ground was polluted. He instructed the farmer to make a bamboo platform to keep the pigs off of the ground and they had no more sick pigs.

The funniest was while he was inspecting the eateries and bars he kept noticing the owners pointing out the small green stamps on their windows and mirrors. Upon closer inspection, they were indeed S and H Greenstamps. Apparently, some young enterprising GI had been getting inspection fees and handing these to the owners to proudly display on their windows as approval stickers from the USARMY Sanitation and Health.

 

[TerryMiller]

HOW TO SIMULATE THE LIFE OF A SAILOR
(In case you have forgotten!)

• Buy a steel dumpster, paint it gray inside and out, and live in it for six months.

• Run all the pipes and wires in your house exposed on the walls.

• Repaint your entire house every month.

• Renovate your bathroom. Build a wall across the middle of the bathtub and move the shower to chest level.
When you take showers, make sure you turn off the water while you soap down.

• Raise the thresholds and lower the headers of your front and back doors so that you either trip or bang your head every time you
pass through them.

• Disassemble and inspect your lawnmower every week.

• On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, turn your water heater temperature up to 200 degrees.
On Tuesdays and Thursdays, turn the water heater off.
On Saturdays and Sundays tell your family they use too much water during the week, so no bathing will be allowed.

• Raise your bed to within 6 inches of the ceiling, so you can't turn over without getting out and then getting back in.

• Sleep on the shelf in your closet. Replace the closet door with a curtain.
Have your spouse whip open the curtain about 3 hours after you go to sleep, shine a flashlight in your eyes, and say "Sorry, wrong rack."

• Make your family qualify to operate each appliance in your house dishwasher operator, blender technician, etc.

• Have your neighbor come over each day at 5 am, blow a whistle loudly and shout "Reveille, reveille, all hands heave out and trice up."

• Have your mother-in-law write down everything she's going to do the following day, then have her make you stand in your backyard
at 6 am while she reads it to you.

• Submit a request chit to your father-in-law requesting permission to leave your house before 3 p.m..

• Empty all the garbage bins in your house and sweep the driveway three times a day, whether it needs it or not.

• Have your neighbor collect all your mail for a month, read your magazines, and randomly lose every 5th item before delivering it to you.

• Watch no TV except for movies played in the middle of the night. Have your family vote on which movie to watch, then show a
different one.

• Make your family menu a week ahead of time without consulting the pantry or refrigerator.

• Post a menu on the kitchen door informing your family that they are having steak for dinner. Then make them wait in line for an hour.
When they finally get to the kitchen, tell them you are out of steak, but they can have dried ham or hot dogs.
Repeat daily until they ignore the menu and just ask for hot dogs.

• Bake a cake. Prop up one side of the pan so the cake bakes unevenly. Spread icing real thick to level it off.

• Get up every night around midnight and have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on stale bread. (mid-rats)

• Set your alarm clock to go off at random times during the night. At the alarm, jump up and dress as fast as you can, making sure to
button your top shirt button and tuck your pants into your socks. Run out into the backyard and uncoil the garden hose.

• Every week or so, throw your dog in the pool and shout, "Man overboard port side!" Rate your family members on how fast they respond.

• Put the headphones from your stereo on your head, but don't plug them in. Hang a paper cup around your neck on a string.
Stand in front of the stove, and speak into the paper cup "Stove manned and ready." After an hour or so, speak into the cup
again "Stove secured." Roll up the headphones and paper cup and stow them in a shoebox.

• Place a podium at the end of your driveway. Have your family stand watches at the podium, rotating at 4 hour intervals.
This is best done when the weather is worst. January is a good time.

• When there is a thunderstorm in your area, get a wobbly rocking chair, sit in it and rock as hard as you can until you become nauseous.
Make sure to have a supply of stale crackers in your shirt pocket.
• Make coffee using eighteen scoops of budget priced coffee grounds per pot, and allow the pot to simmer for 5 hours before drinking.

• Have someone under the age of ten give you a haircut with sheep shears.

• Sew the back pockets of your jeans on the front.

• Lock yourself and your family in the house for six weeks. Tell them that at the end of the 6th week you are going to take them to
Disney World for "liberty." At the end of the 6th week, inform them the trip to Disney World has been canceled because they need
to get ready for an inspection, and it will be another week before they can leave the house.

Thanks for that....

....all the uncles on my dad's side of the family served in the Navy in WWII. When I enlisted in 1966, they all gave me a hard time for going Army. After reading your descriptions above, now I realize that they were probably jealous, not critical.

 

[ForsakenConservative]

Ask a marine to secure a building-squad HALO jump to the roof at 0030 hours, guns blazing
Ask an army soldier to secure a building-set up multiple rings of containment and cut building power
Ask an air force member to secure a building-negotiate 10 year lease with option to buy
Ask a sailor to secure a building-turn out lights, lock doors and go home

 

[Roadking Larry]

Way back in the long ago I had the privilege of standing watch as Torpedo Room Armed Security Guard while the sub I was on was in port. Now we were only required to post that armed guard watch if we had "special" weapons on board. Well the Friday before we had offloaded all of our "special" weapons but the command had declined/forgotten to stand down the watch. It was later explained as an oversite but we think they were just screwing with us out of spite.
Anyway, I had the last watch on Sunday morning. Sometime during the wee hours of the morning boredom overcame me and I began field stripping and reassembling my issue 1911A1. somewhere around the 6th or 7th go around I managed to launch the recoil spring plug into the starboard torpedo room bilge, Oh Shat!
Lucky for me a good friend of mine that was in the oncoming Sunday duty section happened to be the duty Torpedoman's Mate and the small arms petty officer. He came down to the torpedo room as soon as he came on board and dug spare out of the parts locker. He gave me hell about that the rest of the time we were serving together.

 

[dennishoddy]

Remember Reader's Digest and their little one page vignettes?

How about something military related you did, saw, or heard about that was funny. Maybe it wasn't at the time but is now?

While at Fort Sill I was riding with my MP's as SDO, Staff Duty Officer. We saw a helicopter rise from the airstrip, fly over to the officer's housing area and land in a back yard.
The next thing I saw was a woman running out to the chopper with a paper sack. She kissed the pilot and ran back to the house. The chopper then lifted up and sped away.

My family subscribed to Readers Digest for many years. I remember the humor in uniform section.
One that really hit home as funny was that a cook in one of the base camps in Vietnam was cooking breakfast. In the process of cracking eggs, a piece of the egg shell flew into his eye, so he went to first aid, got it removed and went back to cooking breakfast for the troops.
A month later while in formation for some reason I don't remember he was called out from the formation.
Wondering why he was called to the front, the company captain met him and presented him with the purple heart to be pinned on his uniform. Then the Captain read the decoration that stated he had received a "shell" fragment to the eye.
He returned the medal and went back to work.

 

[Snattlerake]

My family subscribed to Readers Digest for many years. I remember the humor in uniform section.
One that really hit home as funny was that a cook in one of the base camps in Vietnam was cooking breakfast. In the process of cracking eggs, a piece of the egg shell flew into his eye, so he went to first aid, got it removed and went back to cooking breakfast for the troops.
A month later while in formation for some reason I don't remember he was called out from the formation.
Wondering why he was called to the front, the company captain met him and presented him with the purple heart to be pinned on his uniform. Then the Captain read the decoration that stated he had received a "shell" fragment to the eye.
He returned the medal and went back to work.

I remember that one!

 

[GeneW]

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