Military Anecdotes, Anything Goes.

My better half's uncle was on a sub during WWll. Someone had brought in the crabs and soon everyone had them. The men had great difficulty looking at the captain with a straight face as he stood before them clad only in his captain's hat and a diaper.
 

I had just been assigned to the 2nd Bn, US Army Security Agency Training Center and School at Ft. Devens, MA. I'd been there maybe two weeks - fresh out of basic and cook school/AIT. My duties were, not surprisingly, as an ASA cook for the students going through various intelligence MOS training, including Morse code.

Anyway, I'm standing in the PX and I observed a guy who had a buzz haircut. Feeling especially jaunty, I asked him if he had just gotten out of basic training. He sneered at me and said, "I got more time in the chow line than you have in the Army." I still laugh about that one, 49 years later.
 
My late husband's brother and family pronounced their last name differently than the rest of family did.

The name wasn't pronounced as it was spelled but BIL's family DID pronounce it as spelled.

I asked him why when we first met and he replied, " After six years in the Marines of being told by a D.I. Sergeant 'IF I SAY YOUR NAME IS ____________, MAGGOT, THAT'S WHAT YOUR NAME IS! NOW DROP AND GIVE ME FIFTY!!!!', I decided it was easier to say it that way...." and so he did.
 

When I was stationed at the 483rd Hospital at Cam Rahn Bay I was assigned to the Internal Medicine Ward. I would say a good 90% of the GI's we got in as patients were grunts that had gotten hepatitis or malaria from being out in the bush. But one day we got this old army dude wheeled in from the ER that had had a heart attack. When I say old, he was probably in his mid 40's which is older than dirt in the military.

Anyway one of the nurses, Captain Berry was checking him in. Carolyn Berry was her name. She looked a lot like Kate Jackson from Charlie's Angels although that show hadn't come out yet. And she was one of only a few of the nurses that treated us enlisted medics decently. Most of them looked down their noses at us. Nurses came in as second Lieutenants. But I digress. Back to the story. Captain Berry was talking about this dude to one of the doctors, I think it was Dr. Ellenbogen and she kept refering to him as Major so and so. She didn't really say so and so, I just forget the guy's name.

Anyway all of a sudden this dude on the stretcher starts to motion to me frantically. I figure maybe he's having another heart attack. So I go over next to him to hear what he's saying.

And he gasps' out "Tell the nurse" pause, gasp, I'm a Lieutenant Colonel, pause, gasp, Not a Major!

See, the Insignia for Lieutenant Colonel is a silver oakleaf, while the insignia for Major is a gold oakleaf. Military insignia being one of the few places that silver is more important than gold. But on the jungle fatigues that we were issued in Vietnam the insignia were camoflaged. So the Oak leaves for Major and Lieutenant Colonel were all black. And the only way to tell them apart was that the Major insignia had a faint gold lining around it while the Lieutenant Colonel insignia had a faint silver lining. It was easy to confuse them.

What I thought was hilarious was that this dude was having a heart attack and the most important thing to him was that the nurse got his rank correct.
 
I was a newly minted Navy Corpsman, stationed at the Bethesda Naval Hospital Eye Clinic. The doctor asked me to get a "VDRL" report on the Admiral's wife. So, I called. I was at the front desk in front of about 40 patients waiting to see one of the 6 docs. That's when I saw the doctor, and I told him , very loudly, that the Admiral's wife's "VDRL" was "positive". Of course, I had no idea what a VDRL was, but everybody there did.
Got chewed out good.
 
Damn! I missed by anniversary of my return from Vietnam. It was 53 years and 6 days ago (15 August 1971) that I left DaNang on a Freedom Bird (that's what we called them) heading "back to the world." (More Vietnam slang). First stop was Kadena Air Base in Okinawa to refuel. It was daylight then and I remember it being beautiful as we came in for a landing. Then it was on to Honolulu for another refuling. I'm not sure what airport that was. Maybe Hickam? Couldn't see a thing as it was in the middle of the night. Could have been Cleveland for all I could tell.

From there it was non stop the rest of the way to Norton AFB in California. All I remember is that it was out in the frickin desert. There were no welcoming crowds cheering us, no ticker tape parade, and no hippies spitting on us or calling us baby killers either. Just a line up of taxi cabs looking to make a quick buck driving GI's in to L.A. International for $15 bucks a head. They crammed us in like sardines. 7 of us counting the driver. So 6 times 15 bucks of $90 to drive us about 80 miles. That would be a bargain today, but in 1971 that was a lot of money.

I had a 30 day leave coming and I was heading to South Jersey where my ex wife had been staying with her parents. So I managed to get a military standby ticket out of L.A. for a flight to Philadelphia. When I got on the plane and found the seat that I had been assigned to there was this little mutt that looked like maybe a Yorkshire Terrier sitting in a pet carrier right in the middle of it and this little old lady in the seat next to it.

So I pointed to the little mutt in the carrier said something to her like "Mam, that's my seat". And she replied "Oh no, I paid $12 extra so that I could have a seat for my dog." So I went and found a stewardess (that's what they were called back then) and told her about it and she went back to the little old lady and explained to her that the $12 extra that she paid was so that she could put the little mutt in his carrier on the floor in front of her seat and not in a special seat of his own. She wasn't very happy about it but I did get my seat.
 
Upon my assignment to the 298th Army Band in West Berlin, Germany, I had occasion to go to East Berlin. I didn't make a habit of it because, frankly, East Berlin didn't appeal to me. Crappy surroundings, Soviet-style architecture, the list ran on. Occasional shopping went okay, if you could find what you were looking for. I confined my purchases pretty much to classical record LPs and sheet music scores. Oh, and a set of crystal sparkling wine glasses and schnapps glasses, which I still have, 40 years later.

So I'm standing on Alexanderplatz, the central point of East Berlin at that time, minding my own business (but in uniform since that was a requirement), observing the various clocks around the place, and I'm accosted by some Eastie Beastie who evidently had a problem with me. He railed on me up one side and down the other and it took only a second or two for me to realize that this guy was only trying to elicit a reaction from me. Cameras were everywhere, of course (Cold War and all), and I knew that. So my only response was to briefly look at this schmuck (I understood every word he said as I was a linguist and a musician), and walk away.

The photo below was from the Allied Forces Day parade in June 1983.

Steger - AFD 1983.jpg
 
I‘ve told this story before, a tale about my departure from the military. I served for 3 years on an aircraft carrier during the Vietnam war. When my time was up I was offered shore duty of my choice if I would extend for 2 years, so it was off to Spain.

During my last six months there I took over the fleet brig. The officer I relieved told me that a Marine guard transferred in from Vietnam told him of seeing a prisoner, an enemy soldier, pushed to his death out of a helicopter. When I was discharged and returned to the States, I read the news that I had been insulated from while in the Service, and wrote the Secretary of the Navy about the helicopter story. He wrote back and said it was just a “sea story”, in other words a tall tale and lie. Whereupon I resigned my reserve commission. That sea story has later been proven to be true.
 
ElCastor said:
I‘ve told this story before, a tale about my departure from the military. I served for 3 years on an aircraft carrier during the Vietnam war. When my time was up I was offered shore duty of my choice if I would extend for 2 years, so it was off to Spain.

During my last six months there I took over the fleet brig. The officer I relieved told me that a Marine guard transferred in from Vietnam told him of seeing a prisoner, an enemy soldier, pushed to his death out of a helicopter. When I was discharged and returned to the States, I read the news that I had been insulated from while in the Service, and wrote the Secretary of the Navy about the helicopter story. He wrote back and said it was just a “sea story”, in other words a tall tale and lie. Whereupon I resigned my reserve commission. That sea story has later been proven to be true.
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I'm surprised that the SECNAV actually wrote back (presumably under his signature?). Of course, that was a different era of sorts. Today, letters like you wrote are generally ignored, unless they're written by an attorney.
 
Eupher said:
I'm surprised that the SECNAV actually wrote back (presumably under his signature?). Of course, that was a different era of sorts. Today, letters like you wrote are generally ignored, unless they're written by an attorney.
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Before taking over the brig I was a personnel officer, familiar with various methods of bitching and moaning. As to whether the response was actually the Sec Nav, who knows, but that it expressed an official position I have no doubt.

As for the truth of the helicopter story, I have read that the technique was used to extract information. An uncooperative prisoner believed to be the bearer of important info was second or third in line. After witnessing the fate of those ahead of him his willingness to converse changed.
 
ElCastor said:
Before taking over the brig I was a personnel officer, familiar with various methods of bitching and moaning. As to whether the response was actually the Sec Nav, who knows, but that it expressed an official position I have no doubt.

As for the truth of the helicopter story, I have read that the technique was used to extract information. An uncooperative prisoner believed to be the bearer of important info was second or third in line. After witnessing the fate of those ahead of him his willingness to converse changed.
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Yep. Just send them up 1000 ft. in a bird with the ROK soldiers. Nothing to say? Then out you go.
Then the brass can say... Oh no, we, (meaning US troops) never did such a thing. (smile). Plausible deniability is what they call it.
 
I have a more humorous story than my last one. I joined the Navy out of college and just before Vietnam. Then it was off to OCS in Newport Rhode Island. With all due respect, one of the members of my unit was a nice guy. Maybe not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but he passed the tests and graduated. Last day we got our orders. I was off to a carrier, home for the next 3 years. He was dejected and sadly announced he would be going to some place called Barbuhdose. Others might have pronounced it as spelled, Barbados. Yikes!!
 
ElCastor said:
I have a more humorous story than my last one. I joined the Navy out of college and just before Vietnam. Then it was off to OCS in Newport Rhode Island. With all due respect, one of the members of my unit was a nice guy. Maybe not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but he passed the tests and graduated. Last day we got our orders. I was off to a carrier, home for the next 3 years. He was dejected and sadly announced he would be going to some place called Barbuhdose. Others might have pronounced it as spelled, Barbados. Yikes!!
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Well, sure, but it wasn't a question of pronouncing as spelled. It was a question of which syllable to place the accent on. He showed his ignorance by being unfamiliar with a part of the world that he lives in.
 
gruntlabor said:
Well, sure, but it wasn't a question of pronouncing as spelled. It was a question of which syllable to place the accent on. He showed his ignorance by being unfamiliar with a part of the world that he lives in.
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At the time and even now the remarkable thing in this story is Barbados, not the pronunciation. Wow! What a way to serve out a three year obligation in the Vietnam war!
 
Shortly after the Berlin Wall fell on 9 Nov 89, the U.S. Commander, Berlin (USCOB), Major General Raymond E. Haddock, put out an edict to not be hammering on the Wall to get chunks of it.

Uh huh.

That didn't last long. Even he, from his lofty, stilted perch, realized it was non-enforceable. So, assuming the statute of limitations has long run out, here's a photo of me taking a few chunks off the Wall in a little-frequented area in Zehlendorf.

Wallchip10001.jpg
 
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We even sat down and gigged with the Soviet Band. I'm pretty sure this was a composite band of several bands put together. They were excellent musicians.

GigwiththeSovietBand-1990 (2).jpg
 
This past Tuesday (Oct.3) was the 55th anniversary of my enlistment in the U.S. Army. My mom dropped me off at the LA Armed Forces induction center, mid afternoon. We traveled upstate by bus to Ft Ord, arriving sometime after midnight. Of course that seemed to be the perfect time to fill out stacks of paperwork. Breakfast was great!
 
When I found out I was being deployed for Desert Storm, my wife wrote a note for me to give
to the Crew Chief of the aircraft we were getting ready to board.
I didn't give it to him, just kept it in my pocket.
It read...

"Please excuse my husband from this assignment as he has already done his one War.
Thank you in advance."

Funny and Sad at the same time.
 
Field exercise in West Berlin. This shopping cart leaped out at me somewhere in the mudhole we were operating in, so I took that to mean that M16A2s were being sold, BOGO, at the local grocery. Snagged a few of 'em.


Hermann - field problem.jpg
 
Nothing special just a memory.
when I arrived in Pleiku I was the newbie. The air traffic radar van was on the other side of the base and runway for obvious reasons, (ie line of site, etc) so we were isolated on a fairly remote stretch of parameter. Our unit and an Army ground radar unit looking into the valley behind us. It was time to make coffee so I had to take the pot to the mule for water.

You needed to walk by the barbed wire and manned outpost facing the valley. For all intents the compound was dark. Black. I'm maybe two days in country. Don't know sh_ _ from shingle. I walk between to Coney boxes to the mule and someone jumps out, starts screaming god knows what. I see shadows, drop the coffee pot and run like hell back towards the rapcon. Then I hear belly laughter. What the !

I turn to see salty walking back, laughing his ass off.
Welcome to nam he said as he walked pass me.
we became good friends.
 

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