What was your biggest breach of military etiquette?

[Griff Murphey]

When I was on Okinawa in 1975, the Navy Captain commanding the 3rd Dental Company came down to tell me I was leaving - like, right then, to go to Viet Nam on the evacuation with 1-4. For some reason (maybe watching too many war movies) I stuck out my hand to shake his. Like Her Majesty the Queen, he did not shake my hand, which I tried to put back down as inconspicuously as possible.

I kind of felt like I was being put on the last plane back TO Bataan.

[TomSudz]

I called the battalion commander by his first name. Later he asked why and I told him, "Because, sir, the hajjis all around us didn't seem willing to bother with a couple of plain old GI's, but they know what colonel and sir mean and you'd have started looking mighty good to them." I got away with it.

[dave]

I once saluted an officer in a parking lot, he had right hand full of files and some loose papers, he saluted back! I spent some time helping pick up papers, not much wind blowing but enough. He was a young 2nd. Lt and I was a young Crp. No, I did not do it on purpose!

[edpm3]

As the Group Commander and I were walking into a building, he was giving me some instructions on something. I had already responded every so often with a "Yes, sir." Maybe the way he said it triggered an autonomic response from me, but at one point I heard myself respond to his latest instruction with "Yes, dear." I saw the Colonel's ear twitch a little bit and his head started to turn, but to his credit and my relief, he didn't say anything. Maybe he understood from personal experience how naturally easily and often that response comes to a long-married man.

[Michael Tompkins]

I didn't do it, but my buddy did. To this day, I STILL laugh to myself about it.

Sitting on Post 2/IDA of our Nike-Herc site, there was a partioned wall behind us both of us. Both of us, young MP's, were seated. I was looking out over the site and Shoemake was reading a book (a big no-no on duty). Our brand-new Lt comes down to visit us on site. Shoemake had never met him...yet, but I knew him from sight. He walks up behind us and attempts to get into the Security Office. Shoemake had set his flak jacket on the partition, but it had fallen off onto the floor in front of the Security Office door. Lt Kirkpatrick bends over and picks-up Shoemake's flak jacket. He holds it out in front of him and says, "Specialist Tompkins, whose flak jacket is this?" I respond, "I believe it is Shoemake's sir." He doesn't realize Shoemake is the one seated beside me. He says, "Well, will you tell Shoemake to take better care of his equipment." "Yes sir!", I say. With that, Shoemake who had been reading his book with his head down, smacked his book down on the table. Slowly, he starts to turn his head in the direction of the voice. As he is turning his head, out of his mouth comes, "Well, why don't you just suck on my......" His eyes fell on the Lt just as he got "my" out of his mouth. His jaw fell open and he just froze. He turned beet-red! The Lt tilted his head forward and just gave him a look that could kill. Stunned, Shoemake just stared. The Lt calmly opened the Security Office door and went inside. I quietly laughed my freakin' ass off!!! Joe was sooooo embarrassed, but I thought it funny as Hell!

[phil441]

Goose Bay Labrador, winter of 1962.
I was a lowly Airman 2nd Class working feverishly on a maintenance stand to get a frozen MG-10 radar on a F102 ready for a scheduled 1400 flight.
A voice from the ground that sounded like one of my shop mates asked if I was going to be able to get it ready in time.
That did it! I was totally frustrated at that point and I let loose with a long string of expletives (none deleted) without even turning around. The voice then said, "I'll just wait here." Still taking voltmeter readings I turned around while still on my diatribe to find the CO looking up at me. I just finished up my spiel with, SIR!
I got the bird working.
Funny thing, he always remembered me whenever we crossed paths......

[madsenshooter]

One of the pilots in my squadron had a party at his house, enlisted guys included. T'was quite a night, pretty good party, the Wing Commander even stopped by. As the Commander was leaving he put on his cowboy hat, and some young Airman thought it would be funny to tip the brim of the cowboy hat down over his eyes. Coordination was a bit off and it feel flatly the floor. Of course, before it hit the ground the Airman had taken a few steps around a corner and disappeared into the crowd. Everyone knew who did it, but amazingly nobody said anything. Honest sir, I didn't mean to do that, I was trying to catch a fly! Hey Dave, if my right hand was full, I just used my left, they never noticed.

[Guamsst]

As the Group Commander and I were walking into a building, he was giving me some instructions on something. I had already responded every so often with a "Yes, sir." Maybe the way he said it triggered an autonomic response from me, but at one point I heard myself respond to his latest instruction with "Yes, dear." I saw the Colonel's ear twitch a little bit and his head started to turn, but to his credit and my relief, he didn't say anything. Maybe he understood from personal experience how naturally easily and often that response comes to a long-married man.

One of my favorite tricks is to say "OK, love you, buhbye" before hanging up the phone at work. The married guys will almost without fail reply with "Love you too" Before letting out some expletives to express how bad they got reeled in. The best is when they hang up then call back later to see if they just said what they thought they did.

[Guamsst]

Well, I was explaining to my squadron commander why I felt that Airman Leadership School was a huge waste of six weeks of my life. He asked "Well, did you learn anything?" I replied with "Well sir, I found out her ass (harass) was only one word" He flipflopped between correcting my attitude and laughing for a while but he never forgot me. Every function for the next two years he would drag me over to some other commander, 1st sgt or chaplain and have me explain to them what I learned in ALS.

On a probably bigger breach of protocol, I was in Saudi and missed the bus to work. An SUV rolls up to the bus stop and the passenger asks if we want a ride. We hop in the back and take off. I recognize the passenger but I don't know where from. On the ride in to work he asks my buddy and I how long we have been there and how we like the base. I don't see any rank so I figure he is a contractor. I tell him the base sucks ass but it could be worse. He starts asking all sorts of questions about our opinions on the base and we answer very honestly with allot of yeps uhhuh's and I guess so's. The guy is smirking and grinning allot and I see the driver look at me like I am out of my mind. The driver by the way has a CAR-15 strapped to his chest. Only time I saw a 10"barrel in the Air Force. We get out and thank the guy for the ride. As we are walking away I suddenly realize where I have seen the guy. His picture was all over the base. I missed the rank on his uniform because his collar rolled up a bit from the seatbelt and covered his general's star....LOL I looked at my buddy and said "Did we just tell the base commander this base sucks?" He looked at me and said "OH $%^#, I'm pretty sure we just did" We verified him with the pic on the wall when we got in the building....lol I hope he atleast appreciated such honest feedback.

[badsbsnf81]

I was on an exercise in the the southwest during a very dry summer. Pryo was strictly controlled (two people, 1 meter pit, observed from birth to death of flame, smoke, etc.). Ambushes and raids during day light hours didn't result in any fires of any size for which we were glad. As we ramped up to do night ops, we went through the safety briefings on the use of pyro again. I was an OC and thought all was going to be good when I heard and saw multiple red star clusters going off. For the next hour or so I had all the OC's chasing down those little glowing circles of fire and putting them out, myself included. We were lucky and got them all out. I headed back to the TOC in rare form and let everyone in hearing distance know the vengence that was about to be dealt on some soldiers. When I got inside the TOC, I broke all radio procedures telling all the unit commanders to assemble. After I put the microphone down I made one last statement that challenged the birth, brain power, and soon to be nonexistent ablity to have sex with any warm blooded animal. I also remarked that the only thing Heaven would get would be a small piece of their collective hind ends. The Brigade Chaplain got up out of a chair, turned around, smiled and said " I'll see what I can do about getting their souls into Heaven. The rest I'll leave to you, CPT". The Brigade Cdr held it unitl the sky piolt left and busted a gut. After he regained his composure he smiled and said "Good job keeping the fire situation under control".

[Hardcase]

About 20 years ago, I was on an FFG doing ASW ops in the North Atlantic. I was the Sonar Supervisor and my division officer was the ASW Evaluator. We were sorting out a couple of Soviet subsurface contacts and I was having a devil of a time getting the ASWE to understand which contact was on which side of the ship and what course and speed they were on. We knew exactly what was going on in the shack, but he kept coming up with completely wrong data. Finally I got exasperated enough that I said, "If you want to come in here and do my [expletive deleted] job, come on over and I'll just go hit my rack." Then...nothing. So I looked around the corner through the door to CIC to see every eye in the space fixed on me. Then I looked back at my console to see that not only was the button for the 61JS phone net on, but so was the 1JS - the entire CIC, including the XO, had just listened to my tirade. The ASWE, bless his heart, said, "No, that's OK, I'll take your word for it," and we continued on.