Servicemen & Women: Share Your War (and Peacetime) Stories, Win a Sweet GameDay package for Army game

As a vet this I truly appreciate this.  My time in the Air Force was short and without any real adventure (Early 90s didn't have a lot of military action going on) so I'm sure that there are much more deserving vets and active duty service members on the board for this package.  

The most exciting stories I have all start with, "So we got a keg...."

'91 somewhere in northern Saudi Arabia.  I served with an Armor Battalion of the 1st Cavalry Division.  We had done a night move from Hafar Al Batin up to the Iraq border.  We had a few more vehicles break down along the way than we had recovery assets available to tow them along with us.   So after the bulk of the battalion completed the move and was set up at our new location, we took a small group of maintenance assets (wheeled and track tow vehicles) to collect the broke down vehicles and their crews.   While we were gone, less than 24 hours, our battalion moved again, and we were directed to recover a couple vehicles from our sister battalion, which took us quite a bit out of our way.   On our return we were running low on fuel and met up with a French Foreign Legion unit.   We were able to mooch enough fuel to get us back and we swapped rations, stories, patches, etc with these guys.  The French rations were a hell of a lot better than MRE's, but they were all to happy to trade.  

Just a couple weeks later the ground war was under way.  What was arguably one of the best prepared and executed land assaults in military history liberated Kuwait in just 100 hours and reduced the self proclaimed 5th largest military in the world to a fraction of their pre-conflict self.

Joining the Army at 17 was the best decision of my life.  I wasn't mature enough for college and 4 years of serving our country was exactly what I needed.

In Puerto Rico (Rosey Roads), a few of us, staggering back to the boat, took an American flag flying on a barge.  As luck would have it, Shore Patrol just happened to be watching.  WTF?  At 2 AM???  Anyway, they chased us across the base.  We finally lost them in the landfill - two guys ran into the fresh dump to hide, and I crawled under a dumpster.  I remember listening to them and seeing their boots as they walked around looking for us.

But I'm not sure that's what Jordan is looking for...

I did have lots of fun running around the Barents Sea, three miles off the Kola Lighthouse (12 miles?  LOL - militarily, we recognize 3 miles...).  Followed lots of (then) Soviet warships and submarines, did a bunch of SPL's (sound recordings) and underhauls (visually recording the keel of a submarine or warship), ran from some open comms telling the unidentified sub to surface (in plain English), and shot some water slugs (fake torpedo shots) at a Soviet sub (the CO didn't believe us in SONAR, and took it as a British boat also partaking in the op).  Even popped through the Artic ice cap at/around the North Pole a few times.  I tell everyone I've traveled around the world in 15 minutes - and it's true!  

But I'll leave the tickets to guys that weren't as smart as me*, and actually got shot at.

(* - The guys who chose to avoid the air-conditioned comfort and undetected safety of a submarine)

Most Frustrating story:

I don't want tickets, but my least favorite memory is seeing my QRF and primary infantry battalion pull out of Baghdad after our commander in chief said the war was over. Unfortunately, the enemy didn't get the memo and we took a massive influx of rocket fire, mortar fire, and a new wave of IEDs. On everything I keep sacred, had we not pulled out that battalion so they could continue their route clearing methods instead of pulling them out, the 2x Puerto Rican National Guard troops that were killed by a shape charge IED would be alive today. But hey, politics...

'\_( ' - ')_/'

Favorite story that is funny:

1A. We just took a crap ton of indirect fire on Thanksgiving 2010 on FOB Taji and in FOB Kalsu. My buddy who was the other LT in the CO over the maintenance platoon was a little on edge the next day. He walked out to the port-a-john in the motor pool for his morning BM, and was resting comfortably. I respectfully requested that SPC Palmer go up to the port-a-john and drop a large rock down its vent pipe. He did so, and it made a huge splash and a large impact noise. My LT buddy ran out of the port-a-john with his weapon loaded, and his pants down thinking we were getting hit again. It was really funny unit he kept the magazine in and started yelling at us (me really) for doing the sick prank. 2nd best part was all the "blue water" that splashed up on him from the "indirect rock fire". 

2. Shared a bathroom with a copper head while at Fort Sill, while trying to take a piss at the land nav range. 

3. Got my hand stuck in a pool table at my promotion party in a drunken stuper. My wife was really impressed.

Nothing too noteworthy from my service but hey somebody might get a laugh.  So I served from 2011-2015 as a Finance officer in the Marine Corps.  Almost all of it out in Okinawa, Japan.  So during one of my deployments as part of the 31st MEU, we went to the Philippines and I was aboard the USS Peleliu(now decommissioned).  As a Finance (Disbursing) officer, I was responsible for quite a bit of cash in case of contingency operations during the float.  Anyways, anyone who was part of the navy or has spent time on a ship knows that ship life gets very monotonous, you start eating the same meals over and over and there really isn't much to do or see after about a month of doing circles in the middle of the Pacific ocean.

I should also point out that there is a friendly rivalry between each branch of service as well as between different commands and often resources are sometimes stretched.  So in this instance, navy personnel and Marines lived together on this ship but while Marines are there, there is naturally a much higher chance of friction due to limited space in the living areas, longer chow lines, more crowded gym, etc.

  So about a month into the deployment, it's time for the Marines aboard to do an amphibious landing by going ashore and do an exercise.  

As disbursing officer, my job was not to go ashore and was to remain behind with the money.  (Could be helo-ed in if necessary).  I was one of the very few Marines in the battalion not to go.  Not really much of a story but like I said, the food on ship was not anything to complain about, but certainly nothing to write home about either.  (Good not great).

The day the Marines left the ship, the Captain of the Peleliu announced that the ship would be having steak and lobster!  So the rest of the Marine battalion was gone for about a month in the field on shore of the Philippines (eating MREs...Meals ready to eat- YUCK) while the ship continued off shore providing support.  Anyways the good food as well as ice cream and movie nights continued the whole time the Marine contingent was gone, and so I ate pretty good!

So when it's time for my buddies to come back to the ship, the good food goes away and it's back to how it was before.

Long story short, the Navy kept their really good food for themselves and only served it once the Marines went ashore.  My friends were in almost disbelief at how nice I and the navy personnel had it.  I stay in touch with some of them and still joke about how the navy eats steak and lobster while the Marines had to eat veggie omlette or chili mac MREs.

Good times

I would be grateful to get back to the Big House but I'm hoping this thread can generate much crazier stories than mine!

In April 2003 I was deployed with the 506th Air Expeditionary Group to Kirkuk, Iraq to build an air base – AKA Krabtown. While there I supervised a young man from LA, Lower Alabama. He was a mule of human being – his work ethic was unreal he really had no limits it was impressive. We worked nights and every morning we would come back to an abandoned Iraqi barrack that we were living in. We used mosquito netting over our cots to keep the cockroaches away. Every morning LA would go through his normal routine of taking off his dirty ass BDU’s, take a baby wipe shower, put on basketball shorts, take his pad of paper and pen then head to the outhouse (AKA shit pit) to take a dump and write his wife. We had no running water, so we built two seat shit pits behind the barrack. This shit pit was built with 2x4s, plywood and old paneling for walls so you weren’t shitting in the open. Somehow, we had toilet seats – which is shocking as the supply lines were very slow getting stuff to us since we were the most forward deployed base at the time. The shit pit sat over a 20-foot-deep hole dug by a backhoe – the hole was 3-foot-wide and 10-foot-long. The dirt that was pulled from the hole was piled behind the shit pit with a shovel in it because when you were done doing your business you would throw some dirt on top to keep the flies down or ‘flush’ the toilet. One morning LA didn’t come back in his normal time. I got up from my cot and went to look out back. I ran into LA next to a pallet of bottled water right outside the barrack – he looked like he got stuck in a mud slide. LA was frantically pouring bottles of water all over him. Trying to assess the situation, unsure if he was hurt, I asked if he was alright to which LA responded with the classic “you’re not going to believe this”. Poor LA got done taking his dump and then in usual fashion grabbed the shovel behind the shit pit to essentially ‘flush’. While shoveling he got a little to close to the side of the hole and the wall caved in sending him plunging 20 feet into the shit pit. Instead of yelling for help, due to his embarrassment, he found the shovel had fallen in too and with his mule like work ethic dug himself steps to climb out of the shit pit. I’m not sure how many bottles of water it took LA, now nicknamed ‘shit pit’, to clean up as I was laughing to hysterically to really help out. That night I told the CO about the “dangers” of the shit pit to which he made LA give a squadron wide “safety briefing” about the dangers of taking a shit in Iraq. He was a great sport about it. I will never forget LA for as long as I live. I still laugh about it today and he does too because when it was all said and done this was our story of going to war. Imagine someone asking LA if he was shot at with him responding – no, but I fell into a 20 foot hole full of shit!  

     This is my best sham story of getting out of a training deployment. In 2006 I was schedule to ETS (Exit) the Army. After returning from Iraq in 2005 it started to become clear that I was most likely going to be stop lossed and made to stay in longer than I would have liked. This was perfectly legal at the time because I had technically signed up for eight years with four active and four inactive but stop loss was still a shitty thing to have happen and I believe Obama had told the Army to stop doing it.

     Anyways, this came to be true and along with the stop loss I was switching units and likely going back to not just Iraq, but the same fucking area of operations I had just left about a year before. I had ankle problems pretty much since basic and I decided I was going to get them checked out with maybe the hope that they were bad enough to allow me to be discharged. I ended up getting a permanent profile for my ankle which left me non-deployable. My new unit was scheduled to go to the National Training Center in California for month long training with leave after before they went to Iraq. At first, I tried my hardest to reason my way out of it, but it wasn’t happening, my NCOs continued to tell me I was going. I knew they only wanted me to go to help with manning the radio and doing other bullshit details as I couldn’t even do the training with them. Plus, I really didn’t want to spend a month in the desert with a bunch of people I didn’t even like.

     So, I had heard of a rear-detachment (people not going with the main unit) formation at the brigade headquarters from a friend. I had assumed that every battalion had turned in a list of people who were staying back and this was just a formation to brief everyone on what they would be doing while the unit was gone. I decided I was going to report to this formation in the hopes that I could talk my way onto the rear-D roster. I was super nervous because the brigade sergeant major was a short guy with napoleon complex who yelled and screamed a lot, I imagined him yelling at me in front of the whole brigade for pulling some bullshit! The day of the formation I was nervous all morning, I head over to battalion and comingle with other people I know hoping to not get called out because I wasn’t supposed to be there. We form up and there is a short briefing and then the most magical thing ever happens, they state that they are going to go around and collect all the rear-D names to turn into brigade, so they have a rear-D roster! I was so relieved and couldn’t even believe all of this was happening, I was sure this stunt was going to be the end of me!

     After they collect all of our names and give us our little briefing on when and where to be, I headed back to my company and proceed to tell my team leader that I was on the rear-D roster and definitely wasn’t going to NTC with them. He was of course extra confused and wondered how I even got on there. I told him it must have been because I had a permanent profile, so they just added me to the list. He even ran it up the chain of command trying to get me off the list. They all told him the list came form brigade and there was nothing they could do! The cherry on top was that because at first, I was scheduled to go, I was getting two weeks of leave with everyone else afterwards. I had to quickly go through all the leave paperwork the day they were leaving and find my leave packet and was still able to take my leave without having to spend a month in the California desert sucking!

It was the Fall of 1997, and I was stationed in Bosnia as a young PFC in an Infantry unit, patrolling the streets of Brcko, north of Tuzla. 

We had a patrol scheduled for the exact time of the Michigan/Ohio State game, and I begged my NCO to let me listen to my headphones, and drive, instead of my typical scenario where I would get out and walk. For whatever reason, he let me drive, with one headphone in, while the game was on, then I would have to get out and walk. Patrols usually lasted anywhere from 6-10 hours based on unit needs, etc... 

The game starts, and I have my walkman with new batteries in, and several others in my possession. As we all know, it was a defensive struggle, the game was tight, and I was on the edge of my seat the entire time. I was yelling, my NCO was getting agitated, and everyone else in the Humvee was ready for the game to end! When Woodson returned that punt, I am pretty sure everyone riding along with me, thought that I had something wrong with me as I have never been as excited for a moment in sports quite like this before. I yelled, I sang the fight song! 

Michigan football that season, was more than just games to me, it provided me with time where I could be normal, in a situation where normalcy was not really happening. Their victories, that season, all culminated for me on that one patrol in a small town in Bosnia, and for all of eternity, that game will be vividly etched in my brain. 

That year, Barry Sanders rushed for over 2000 yards, the Red Wings won the Stanley Cup, but Michigan, on that cold night (time difference) in Bosnia against OSU was the highlight! 

You can certainly include me in the running, but there are definitely better stories on this board than mine! GO BLUE! 

Baghdad in the late summer of 2006, I was Army intel, planning nighttime kill/capture missions against militia members committing extra-judicial killings and what-not. I would try to figure out where the person of interest bedded down and then link up with a cav scout team to direct kinetic forces to the right address. Afterward we'd toss the house, looking for weapons and other evidence before questioning the guy and taking him to the division holding area.

One morning, our company commander loans "his asset" (me) to a scout convoy doing a presence patrol in the middle of the day, as some kind of good ole boy favor to them. He then asks me to "come up with a list of targets in the area you can try to find." What?

So I link up with my scout team, who are salty about going out after being back from patrols, and I decide not to tell them that we were effectively going snipe hunting. I direct the driver to the first NAI I had mapped, where we were supposed to link up with the larger convoy, and they weren't there. Our TC, MSG Gymrat, gets on the radio with MAJ Cowboy, the battalion planning officer, who had decided to run this op himself. We explained we had crossed wires, and figure out where they are so we can link up.

I mentioned that these missions were done under cover of darkness, with blackouts, because when we reached the convoy, MAJ Cowboy calls for my TC and me to pop out and rolls his map across the top of our humvee so we can show him our CONOP. No more than 10 seconds later, the driver's side mirror explodes into bits, and the MAJ drops like a sack as a sniper from one of the nearby apartment buildings sent a round past MSG Gymrat's and my heads. We could never be sure who he was aiming at. (We later discovered a divot in the driver's window where a 2nd round had bounced off the plate glass.)

We all took up hasty defensive positions, and after a few minutes mounted back up. The MAJ was lucky enough to have been hit in the carabiner on his vest, which broke, but the round didn't go through the kevlar carrier. After getting back in his truck, the MAJ got on the net and declared, "Needless to say, I'm canceling this mission."

Incidentally, my 1SG during this deployment was an Ohio State fan, and there was no love lost between us. He spent a lot of time in his bunk or the company office watching college football while we were outside the wire. It would have been satisfying had that 2006 Game gone differently. Pass interference my ass.

Well...I've got a couple stories. Some I was directly connected to, some not. But I'll tell what I can. Some of my stories involve...things I can't talk about. Anyway, here goes:

Funniest (dumbest?)- On a TDY in New Mexico, 2017. Getting ready to brief an Army two-star general (I'm Air Force so we were doing our best to respresent well.) One of the not-so-bright lieutenants decided to grab some food on the way while we stopped for gas. He chose gas station sushi. While en route he begins to note that he needs a bathroom. The pains, sweats, and urgency increases greatly as we arrive at the general's building. He quickly exits the car, runs inside in search of a bathroom. The others of us take our time since we didn't eat gas station sushi. By the time we enter the front door, there is no sight of him. Or a bathroom. It's time to brief The Man. We press without the Lt. Briefing is over. We begin our search party. We cannot find him, so we begin opening random doors until we discover an unlabled bathroom. And that's when the smell hit us. We see things we shouldn't see, including a flight suit on the floor covered in...stuff. Turns out, this bathroom that wasn't labeled from the hallway is the general's personal bathroom adjecent to his office. We do our best to clean it up. We go to the exchange and obtain some hot pink workout clothes for the Lt to wear back to the hotel. And then we cristened him with the callsign "Squirt."

Dumbest (pretty low-key, however) - Basic training, 2009. I'm working the "entry controller" position learning to guard and check ID's of all individuals requesting entry to my BMT dorm. My shift was in the evening just prior to lights out. A low-threat, low-traffic time of day. My sister flight's MTI was hanging out in my MTI's office because he obviously can't hang out in his dorm while all the female trainees shower and get ready for bed (this was prior to the BMT sexual assualt scandal). The two MTI's are conversing and I'm eavesdropping by proximity. The sister flight's MTI says to mine, "man I'm tired but I'm not going to leave unless you tell me to go home." My genius brain decides all by itself that he was speaking to me so I promptly look him in the eye and say, "go home." And that's when I learned how to do more pushups than my brain said I could.

I would love to be considered for the tickets. I owe my wife a trip after taking the kids to the SMU game last season. Unless of course Mr. Acker is willing to pony up for 6 tickets to cover the whole family. No worries if that's above his commitment. Please extend my sincere gratitude for Mr. Acker's generosity; and thank you, Seth for facilitating this!

At a party and after much drinking, a fellow Marine dropped a grenade core he smuggled off base into a hotel room toilet to see what would happen. Fucking exploded big time. Porcelain and water everywhere. Plumber was called out for emergency work, replaced it, and no one was hurt or charged. Good times.

I was a former LRRP-Ranger 68-69 in Nam. Snuck around the jungle in 5 man teams, spying on the North Vietnamese army, doing POW snatches and secretly calling in enemy positions. Far to many stories to tell.