Practical Jokes

[Rick]

The old ships had sea water running down a trough under the commode seats. So you could drop a lighted wad of news paper in the first and sing hair all the way down the line. Never saw these myself ,ours flushed, but the Chief told me the story. If I was lighting the paper I sure would of wanted running shoes on but how fast can guys be in the sitting position with their pants around the ankles.

Maybe an old salt will chime in and tell us if this ever happened.

[Dan In Indiana]

Does a guy taking a dump in an empty GI coffee can, putting it under the Hut Commanders [me] bunk while I was out to the pisser before hitting the rack count? This was in Nam, during the "warm" part of the year when it might get down to ninety degrees of a night. I tossed and turned for a half and hour before I started looking for whatever was making that gawd awful odor. Finally looked under the rack and then started a string of words that might be in a dictionary today. Then all the lights came on and the laughter started. Lots of field days, and racking the "grass" [ the sand at Chu Lai] for a couple of days after that. Walked into the shop next day, the MSgt. in charge must have heard of the incident as he was chuckling big time.

[Griff Murphey]

Rick, if you ever get the chance to visit the USS TEXAS BB-35 in Houston, it has those old fashioned "trough" heads with seats above the troughs.

We had the same arrangement ashore at the MAU camp in Subic bay, near Cubi Point, but since the structure of the head was wood I never heard of anyone trying that burning paper bit.

[sop2510]

The brown-water sanitary tanks on the 616 Class ballistic missile subs were blown to sea with high-pressure air. This was accomplished by the Forward Auxiliaryman from the pipe tunnel below decks in the Operations Compartment. There was a manhole in the deck just aft of the crews' berthing area where he would climb down into the pipe tunnel. The tunnel was about six feet deep.

One day, an auxiliaryman was blowing the sanitary tank, not knowing that someone had isolated the pressure gage. He would open the air valve, tap the gage, open it some more, tap the gage . . . . There was a 700 psi relief valve right next to his head. When it lifted, it filled the pipe tunnel with a brown mist full of toilet paper particles and other unmentionable items. The stink was what you would expect. The poor guy came crawling up out of the tunnel covered with the nastiest stuff you ever saw - or smelled. No one would go near him until he wrapped himself up in plastic and headed into the showers.

[Liam]

In support of wargames in West Germany in the 1980's our little team of two Jeeps with trailers would be wrapped in white engineer tape and posted on some high ground with line of sight to the platoon CP. The white tape made it known to both sides of the "war" that we were to be left to do our jobs and not be messed with. Well, this white glove treatment led to some long shifts with little excitement. On one occasion, without going into too much detail, we managed to simulate the loss of a CEOI from one of the participating infantry units. Losing one of those COMSEC bibles was worse than losing a weapon, as was made evident by the lengthy and intense search of that unit's previous bivouac site. As I recall, a notional arty strike was called in - before the COMSEC NCO could gather everyone and do a physical count - and the recipient's of the faux barrage were let in on the joke.

[Hal O'Peridol]

Did sort of the same thing with our Morse intercept operators. When one took a break and went to the can, "someone" would wander over to their radio, pick up the headsets and rub carbon paper over the earpieces. You could tell who had been around a while. On returning, first thing they did was rub their headset earpieces over their trouser leg.

They were STILL doing this at Gablingen when I got there in 1983. Another couple at the time for those who ended up snoozing on a mid shift was to either tie their boot strings together or paint the cap on their Corcorans with white out.....

[ejallbaugh]

in 1993 my unit was doing an artep. We had just finished up and staged our vehicles for the 9hr drive back to our post. Everyone went into the px and got some drinks and then checked our trucks one last time before we left. Our commander told us to get in the trucks and lets go. We were about an hour down the road when I noticed only one person in the HMMVEE in front of mine. My Commander was not there so we got on the radio to see if he got into another truck. He was not with us and his drive suddenlhy became real scarred. The SSG that I worked with and I went back to post we left and found him with a 12pack sitting outside the px. When he told us to go he decided to go inside to buy another drink. Best joke I have seen someone pull on themself. When he got back in the truck he was a little upset, I looked at him and said S@%* happens. We all started laughing and decided to mess with the rest of the unit. When we caught back up to the rest of the unit he told them we were going right back to the field for a couple more weeks. His driver did not look at him for next 8hours until we got back to our post. When we got there he bought pizza and beer for everyone. He was one of the best commanders I worked for.

[John Sukey]

Germany. 15 folks on the firing line with M2 carbines and 30 round magazines. The usual thing, we don't want to bring back any unfired ammo. Someone yelled, "There's a rabbit!" They ALL MISSED.

[John Sukey]

Enyone ever send a newbie out for spool of Flight line? or a can of dihedral?

[Nick Riviezzo]

How about a bucket of rotor wash? When the dupe arrived with a bucket of water youl'd send him back to get the the new blue kind![that was a bucket of water with Cheer Detergent in it. Of course, the further the dupe had to go both ways the better the joke. Nick

[TomSudz]

We'd send guys to supply for a box of grid squares. Sometimes the supply guy would send him back with a box of white target pasters.

[Rick]

Back in the day Photographers developed B&W prints by hand. Your hands were in developer all day and it would eventually turn your nails brown. So when a new boy would ask how do I get this brown off my hands you would sprinkle some powdered purple chemicals on their hands. Now this turned the hands purple and doesn't wash off. Pulled this on a new boy and took it to the next level. Gave him the OMG you are having a reaction you better go to sick bay right now before it spreads. So this guy goes screaming into sick bay and the corpsmen scrubbed him for a couple hours to get him somewhat back to white.

A couple months later the same guy asked again how do I get my hands clean. I'm thinking the guy is messing with me as no one could be this stupid. So I did it again and it was back to sickbay. This time the corpsmen sent him back purple. So I showed him the second chemical that took out the purple and also the brown stains.

[dave]

Not me but my brother-in-law, while stationed at some stateside post, living in on base quarters with his teen age son. The son and some friends got into the Officers swim pool one nite and 'spiked' it with tad poles. The wifes and kids showed next day for their day at the pool and the screaming started. Story soon was all over the base, of course, and later that day the boy was cutting the grass when the MP's showed up to see B-in-L about an unrelated matter. The boy about sh*t his pants, when the MP's left he was right up asking Dad what they wanted, etc, etc,. Tom told him they were investigating the pool incident, the kid was really worried then! Tom had a suspicion, but know he knew. He just let the kid stew. Funny thing is when story is told to-day the kid (now in his 40's) always say he does not remember anything like that!

[Dan Shapiro]

When working in the comm center, we'd send new guys down to "See Sgt Greenleaf in supply and tell him we need a couple of fallopian tubes for the Prick 90's" (PRC90 - emergency radio).

[wayne]

I believe it was on the USS Boxer, we put a brand new butter bar lieutenant in the bow for "mail buoy watch". He was told not to leave his post until properly relieved. Everyone forgot about him until the next morning when a man overboard drill was called and he couldn't be found. Someone finally remembered where he was and went and retrieved him.
We were in rough seas at the time and he looked like a drowned cat. He turned out to be a pretty good guy as he never ratted out who put him on "mail buoy watch".