Any funny stories from your service life?

[Major Tom]

Mine is: In Vietnam, the Officer's mess and barracks were side by side. Vietnamese mess hall helpers would show up at 0500. One of their jobs was to light the immersion heaters to get hot water for the day. Process was: drip a couple drops of gas into bottom of heater and throw in a lit match. So, when a certain cook saw the Vietnamese coming, he would drip a lot of gas into the heater. Along comes 'ol papasan and drips the usual few drops and throws the match in. KABOOM!! Usually the heaters chimney would go flying AND wake up all the Officers and they would coming running out their barracks ready for combat action. You had to see it to appreciate it. Very funny!

[Andouille]

Been thinking about my late Father today, so I'll share one of his instead of my own. It's quite long; sorry about that, Chief!

When I bought my first M1 Carbine (a Quality Hardware), Daddy somewhat less than politely asked why do you want one of those hunks of junk? He actually used a different turn of phrase, but this is a family program, ya follow?

Somewhat taken aback, I replied, well, it is a gun, as if that explained everything, and anyway, you was in the Navy, what do you know about them?

Plenty, he replied, and proceeded to tell me.

One sunny day on Guadalcanal, he and his squid buddies were using the shower facilities when a Marine 2nd Lieutenant showed up and ordered them out so he could take his shower without exposing himself to the squid enlisted men. When he came out, he had a bar of soap in one hand, and none of his stuff in the other. Daddy and his cohorts had stolen all his stuff. Carbine, field gear, clothes, boots, all of it.

If a job is worth doing, it’s worth doing right, as well as thoroughly.

Predictably there was some stink, and all the squid enlisted men were put in formation for identification of the thieves. But as it turns out, all squid enlisted men must look alike to arrogant Jarhead butter-bars, because he couldn’t identify anyone (does that make him a racist? Ha). He who laughs last, keeps all the jarhead’s xxxx.

Daddy said after a while, they got brave and brought the car-bean out of hiding and started playing with it. They were not impressed, but put it to good use hunting feral chickens. They would pull the bullets, dump out “most” of the powder and reseat the projectiles. How’s that for following the reloading manual? Daddy said he had the opportunity to bring it home with him, but didn’t like it well enough to go to the trouble, and anyway didn’t think he could find ammo.

After “the war”, Daddy tired of the Indiana winters and moved Mother to Harlingen, Texas where it never snows and rarely frosts or freezes, and worked for the Air Farce turning wrenches on T-29 “flying classroom” aircraft. Eventually they hatched me out, but I digress. One day, the Air Police came into the "prop shop" where he worked and needed the bolts in their Car-beans Magnaflux inspected for cracking of the locking lugs. As you know, the AP’s used the Car-bean for many years, and after some failure of bolts had been noticed, a dictate to check the lugs was issued.

Half of the ones he checked had cracked lugs. That was in the 1950’s or very early 60’s at the time (Harlingen AFB closed in 1962).

Anyway, I had heard the legend that the Army switched the original flat bolts out to round bolts due to the additional stress of automatic firing of the M2 Carbine*, and had made the round bolt standard for bolt replacement purposes for all car-beans. So I asked Daddy were they flat bolts or round bolts? They were Carbine bolts, he said. The directive said test them all, without regard to type.

Think on that one think next time you take your Car-bean, if any, out to the range and notice just how far from the tip of your snout the bolt is when firing.

* Later on I read that the round bolts were actually adopted before the M2, but like all the dealers on Gunbroker, "I'm no expert" and don't really give a hoot one way or the other.

[m1ashooter]

I was a Minuteman III ICBM crew member in Cheyenne Wyoming. Our Launch Control Center locations went east to Sydney Ne, North to Wheatland Wy and South to Limon Colorado or close to them. We travelled I80 a lot in USAF blue suburban's usually at a high rate of speed and dodging the state troops was a developed skill set. We couried a lot of classified material to include the documents used to authenticate execution launch messages from the national command authorities, when we did this we were armed and had a official letter saying we couldn't be stopped or searched. So one day a crew is warp speeding down the road and a Wyoming trooper starts chasing them of course these two bright crew members decide they couldn't stop so they ignore the trooper, then they enter Nebraska and a the chase is joined by two additional Nebraska troopers. One car pulls up along side of the speeding crew and gestures to the crew to pull over. The dumb ass crewmember meanwhile is pointing to his letter and shaking his head. While this chase is going on the crew radios to the missile site that they are being chased by the cops. They should have called the command post for guidance but they didn't. The launch control facilities were staffed by two security police fire teams, armed with a M16's, M60's and a M16 quipped with a grenade launcher and an armored truck. Well these highly trained idiots pull up to the facility gate which you can't just enter without authenticating which means you have to exit the truck and right behind them are the three cop cars. The cops come to a screeching halt, and jump out of their cars all pissed off with side arms drawn. While this is going on 8, 18 year old Security Policemen who think the frigging Russians are invading boil out of the facility ready to repel boarders and draw down on the cops. Finally the security controller tells the duty launch crew whats going on and after a WTF moment make the necessary calls to end this event. The cops left pissed after giving the crew a ticket, the missile cops were disappointed because they couldn't shoot anyone and the dumb ass crew got in a lot of trouble and became legends to the rest of the down trodden fellow crew members. I could write a short story of the crazy stuff that went on in the FE Warren missile complex. Some people might thing this act wasn't funny but to us it was very funny. Almost as good as the security team that hired a bunch of hookers from Denver to spend a few days with them on their tour, or the security team that got caught doing their security check from a local Wyoming bar.