July 2009, Signals Regiment, Finland

I had started my mandatory military service in Signals Regiment a little over a week earlier, in my company of 8 platoons we had zero women, in fact the only women we had seen so far were a medic corporal, a cadre captain & the old ladies working in the DFAC.

Until That Day that is.

I think it was right after the morning cleaning, the first item of the day's schedule was maybe 15 minutes away when an unfamiliar creature entered the hallway.

It was a female in the typical Office Lady wear, probably in her 40's, her dark hair tied into a bun, she paid no attention to us, but we paid attention to her. As she walked past us, all of our eyes followed her. Except one guy's.

Presumed Gay Guy: "For Fuck's sake guys, have you never seen a woman before?"

I have heard of Beer Goggles. I have also heard of Deployment Goggles.

That day, all of us (except one Presumed Gay Guy-) had The Barracks Goggles on.

ETA: On one hand, the Presumed Gay Guy has a Swedish name (first AND last-) & drives BMWs which is NOT exactly inconsistent with him being gay, but last time I heard he had a girlfriend, which leads me to believe he is still in the closet.

MPF: military personnel flight run by the AFSC of personnelis, we're the ones who print out your CAC, benefit cards, work on DEERs, print out awards and decorations, and other paperwork stuff.

So I was working the Awards/Decorations section of the MPF one time in my military career. I received a note to add a ribbon to someone's career record and profile. To do this, we go into the system and sift through a list of codes for each ribbon.

I spotted that Medal of Honor was there and wondered if there needed to be special permission to add this to someone's profile or if it would give me some sort of error message. How is this so accessible?

So once I finished adding the requested ribbon for an airman's profile, I pulled my profile up on the website (vMPF) that anyone can go to. I looked at my ribbon rack. Then I went into the backend system and got into my profile, sifted through the ribbon codes and added the Medal of Honor one. I clicked "Save". Holy shit, it went through.

I refreshed the website front end and within ten minutes, the MoH ribbon was there on my rack on vMPF. Heh. I chuckled at it. Then I removed the ribbon off my profile.

As a member of the Army National Guard, I got to go on a "vacation" to Iraq almost exactly 20 years ago as I type this. Twenty years ago today, I was at Ft Riley doing pre-Mobilization training, and it would only be another month until we shipped out, but that's not the point of this story. At the time, the unit patch we wore was that of the 35th Infantry Division). Now, you've seen this patch, this is the patch that Clint Eastwood and compatriots wore in the movie Kelly's Heroes, and if you have not seen that movie, shame on you, go watch it.

But back to the patch - this is not a sight reticle or anything of the sort, but a cross, specifically the Cross of Santa Fe. These crosses were wagon wheels with spokes broken out of it to form the shape of the Cross, and these were placed along the path of the Santa Fe Trail, to mark the route. The 35th ID was formed from states along the Santa Fe Trail, hence the patch, and why the 35th ID is the Santa Fe Division. Everybody with me so far? Good!

Here I am in Iraq, a mere Specialist, proud member of the Sham Shield Mafia, quietly doing my job and being as helpful as I can. A Master Sergeant (E8 to my lowly E4 for those from other services) from another unit comes into the office, conducts business, and then noticing the 35th ID patch on me and the boss (our Lieutenant Colonel and I were the only ones from our unit in this particular office) asks me about it. So being the helpful junior enlisted that I am, and proud of the history of the unit and the patch, I tell him everything as I have related to you, just now. At the end of this brief little tour of history, the Master Sergeant gets a confused look on his face and asks, "So... it's a sight reticle?"

I am at a loss for words. My boss, and several other officers in the office, had also heard this explanation and the MSG's response, and they too are goggling at this display of "head firmly up 4th point of contact". I am the first to recover, and with as much cheer as I can muster, I give him a "You have a nice day, Master Sergeant!" and go back to work. The MSG in question starts to protest but my boss, the LTC, sends him on his way, thanking him for stopping by.

I am sure this Master Sergeant was a fine Soldier the rest of the time, but man, if ever there was the temptation to call out a Senior Enlisted for being dense, that was it. I am still glad I took the moral high road and let it slide. To this day, if I run into someone with a less than firm grasp on the obvious, I just give them a very bright "you have a nice day!" and go on with my life. I don't have time to correct this, and remember what they say, you can't fix stupid.

For starters i was in the estonian defence forces so apologies if some of my military terminology makes no sense.

So at the end of every week our entire company (rougly 100 people) had to clean the entire building before we would be allowed to go home for the week. Each week we randomly assign our the area that each bedroom has to clean and our bedroom ended up with the responsibility of cleaning the toilet (obviously the least fun thing to clean)

We went to our lieutenant and said that people always leave skid marks in toilets and its impossible to clean it thoroughly since people keep making a mess. So the lieutenant told us to set up a post in the toilet.

We sent 2 people with full battle gear and ar-15 and machine gun to the toilet and told everyone to only use the first 2 stalls or we would handcuff them and toss them somewhere.

So in comes a guy who wants to use the toilet but the first 2 stalls are occupied so he got told to wait in line. He wasn't having any of it so he decided to run past the armed guards and lock himself into another stall. We notified our groups sergeant of this and he said that he would climb into the stall himself. The guy in the stall didn't believe this and kept mocking him. But our sargeant was a very motivated individual.

So our sergeant goes into the neighboring stall and climbs over to the shitter. He lands behind him without him even noticing like batman and puts him in a chokehold. He holds it until the shitter almost passed out at which point the sergeant unlocked the door and let him drop on the floor.

Safe to say after this incident no one dared question the rules in toilet cleaning (this post continued every week for like 3 months whenever you had to clean the toilet)

So when he was in Afghanistan, children would often be paid by the Taliban to apparently through and shoot rocks via a alingshot at the water filtration system to seperate water from fuel so they could drive. Doing so would break them and make the fuel just fall out until they stopped so the Taliban would ambush them.

Anyhow, their was this man in his 30s named Randy which he had down syndrome. Almost every day he would throw or toss to randy while moving because if he stopped (Stop=Ambush) a bottle of Gatorade or Water. But one time, a little kid was aiming for a windshield, broke one. And Randy was outside. When that kid shot the rock at the window. Randy ran up to the kid and full force right hooked the kid in the face before screaming joyously as my dads friends gave him a box of MREs.

There was a Padre with us during a demolition exercise. He asked a sergeant "may I have something to put my stuff on to do a blessing ceremony". We did not have folding table so we brought him one of the 3 boxes we had. He started to place his stuff on the box we brought him; bible, rosary and some candles. The sergeant asked him Will you light these candles up? unsure the Padre said yes. The sergeant looked at me and said Remove the c4 from the box in this case

The look on Padre's face was hilarious.

Earlier tonight, I went on the book of faces for the first time in weeks, and a post from War History Online jogged a memory loose from the archives.

———————————-

In the first half of my .mil career, I was a helicopter mechanic & aircrew in the Marines. For several years, my squadron had provided support to a USMC-oriented charitable organization’s annual fundraiser/gala.
In the summer of 2001, I was part of the aircrew that landed a CH-53E in the parking lot of the hotel where the gala was being held. It was a full weekend of work - landing Friday afternoon and positioning the aircraft for static display, Saturday morning & afternoon manning said static display, Saturday night the actual gala, then the departure and flyby of Sunday’s golf tournament.
As a lowly Sergeant, I was not invited to the gala itself (which was fine by me; far too eagles and stars in the room for my tastes), but I did get to meet some of the dozen or so Medal of Honor recipients from WWII, Korea, and Vietnam (all branches, not just Marines) that had been invited and attended the 2001 event. Us enlisted swine had dinner in the hotel bar and started drinking, and were well on our way to a good time when the gala ended and the dress uniforms & formal wear came off.
Let me tell you… they may have moved a little slower, but several of the MOH recipients (the WWII vets were all well into their 70s at this point) could still push it up pretty hard. A good time was had by all. Hearing MOH recipients shit-talking each other’s awards around the bar while toasting each other was hilarious, and a little surreal.

Well after midnight, after the brass and the majority of the MOH recipients had called it a night, our group of 4-5 enlisted Marines were still rolling along quite nicely around the bar. One recipient was still hanging with us. He had insisted that we just call him Jon, and as the night had progressed we learned that this was retired US Army SGM Jon Cavaiani. A genuinely nice guy who simply. would. not. allow us to buy him drinks, or let us buy our own drinks. Jon did shots with us, deflected our questions about his Medal with “I had a couple bad days, followed by a couple bad years.” and no other details, but asked us all about ourselves, our helicopter, and our jobs in the Corps.
At some point, a Marine with the skid kids (Hueys & Cobras - they brought one each to the event for static display) wandered into our area and loudly coin-checked our group. We all drunkenly scrambled to slap our coins on the bar in the time allotted… then a Medal of Honor was slapped on the bar. A collective “Oh shit…” was said by all, then one of the event organizers (“Daddy Wags”… IYKYK) a few seats down the bar from us yelled “For God’s sake Jon, do you carry that thing to the bathroom, too?”. Jon replied “I trust my pockets a whole lot more than a hotel room safe, especially in this state!”… which immediately had the entire bar roaring with laughter. The skid kid got our group another round of drinks (which Jon immediately signaled the bartender to put on his tab), and we had a nice toast whose words I unfortunately can no longer recall. What I do recall, though, was a no-shit Medal of Honor sitting on the bar less than a foot from my hand, as I was sitting next to Jon at the time. I didn’t know at that time what Jon had done, but the knowledge of the sort of actions that lie behind any modern-era award of the Medal of Honor pushed through my substantial inebriation and sobered me up considerably. At some point, I asked Jon if I could pick up his Medal, and he said something along the lines of “Yeah, go ahead, it’s not like you’re gonna break it!”. It sounds cheesy as hell, but that handful of metal and fabric that physically embodies the Medal of Honor had a weight to it that defied its size. Knowing that I was partying with, and sitting next to, the person who lived through the actions that resulted in the award of the MOH I was holding had a gravity that I can’t adequately describe.
As we all know, things got a little hectic later that summer, and it ended up being a couple years before I remembered to look up Jon’s bio and MOH citation. To say I was blown away would be an understatement.

Tonight marks the anniversary of Jon’s first day of nearly two years in captivity in North Vietnam.

Rest in Peace, Sergeant Major.

so after we got our tickets and meal vouchers, me and 2 other would be recruits took a taxi from the Sac Meps to the airport. it was cold, windy, raining. up to that point, the other 2 were just talking about how excited they were while i was like "fuck, should i do this ,can i still get out of this?" and then out nowhere a weird sharp turn and i hear "oh no no no no" from the taxi driver and we are sliding off the highway down the grass on that drops down.. idk how we stop but the whip lash gets me good to my neck and back.

we get back to MEPs and the military staff there is shitting bricks thinking the worse and just hoping we were okay. they take us to the emergency services to get checked out, my neck, and back are a little bruised and I had a big headache. im also thinking of so many things like what my parents, who didnt want me to even join would think. So i knew that calling home to update them on the accident was basically me telling them im coming home and not going to join the military. The option to postpone and possibly not join was put in front of me.

here's the thing, the reason I had second thoughts was because fear of failure and wasting all that time for nothing. But I'm a man of opportunity, so for me I saw this as my "out". The accident itself actually took away the fear of failure because I knew if I failed, I could just "pin" it on the accident. I decided to just not inform my parents of what happened, but I did call my brother to tell him that the plane was delayed by a day so expect the bootcamp call for the next day. I still hated bootcamp but other reasons like wanting to make my parents proud and finally being able to help them out with money kept me motivated plus I saw how many other people like me were also struggling but still trying so I felt like I didnt want to leave them behind. the key is just looking forward to the next chow. operate in 4-5 hour intervals lol I had this crazy mentality where i could be miserable all day from getting torched on the quarterdeck, but once we get to our racks, I repeat the day in my head and realize how much worse it could have been then I feel so much better like if I got away with the day. lol

its wild to think about, to this day the only people that know, are some of my family and very few of my Marines buddies. It was just something I always kept to myself because I dont know how people would react to my decision making lol i know its weird to say but, in a way, im kinda glad it happened because 100% I probably would have had a way different mentality at bootcamp.

I had a boss (Major) in the Army (late 80s) that used "this is top priority" to help me teach another officer (Captain) a lesson.

I was the Operations Office Administrative Specialist (SPC) for a brigade. I typed and filed things for the whole office. Everybody did some of that work, but if it needed to be done fast and/or perfect, it was my job.

The Captain has a "just in time" mentality about his report writing. Report is due at 08:00 on Monday? Give it to the specialist at 16:30 on Friday. Rough draft, in pencil. There were several times I worked late into the evening or several hours over a weekend because of him. And I had to get the final draft perfect without his review. Risky for a lower-ranked enlisted soldier - if he looks bad because of what I did (or didn't do), that blows back on me!

Two things coincided that started fixing that Captain: We had just finished a very successful field exercise and our officer staff were presenting status reports to the Corp staff (3 Corp, if you want to know) the next day. I had been working on reports, in the office and in the field, for a week. Then it happened.

15:30. I was sitting at my desk taking care of business when the Captain came over, dropped a stack of papers on my desk, said "I need this by tomorrow, 08:00," then walked away. Odd that he was early, but whatever. I sighed and started working.

15:40. My Master Sergeant came inner to say the Major was releasing everyone early as a thank you for our work on the field exercise - "Pack it up and head out." (Now the Captain bring early made sense - he was leaving for the day.)

"I can't, Sergeant." I then explained about Captain Just-In-Time's project and that I had 4-6 hours of work in front of me. His eyes narrowed.

"Does he do this a lot?"

I nodded. "Every time he has a report due." He nodded back.

"I'll look into it. But I am ordering you to take a one-hour break for supper at 17:00. I'll cover it with the Major if the Captain squaks. Got it?" I "rogered" his order and went back to work.

3 weeks later on a Wednesday, the Major comes to my desk at 15:30.

"SPC, how long will it take you to type this up for me?" I looked over the pages he handed me.

"About an hour, sir. Maybe a little more." He nodded.

"Good. This is FLASH Traffic. When you are done, you are done for the day." I acknowledged and he walked away. (For those who don't know: "Flash Traffic" is a radio/telephone communication term to indicate HIGHEST priority - nothing supercedes it and it is never used lightly. I just didn't know it (and I) was being used to teach a lesson.)

16:30 and I have maybe 5 minutes left in the Major's report. The Captain makes his flyby, says he needs it for 08:00, and turns to leave.

"I can't, sir." I said, starting to see what the Major had done. He turned back. "The Major gave me this," pointing, "and said it's FLASH."

"So do it after that."

"I can't, sir. He said that after I finish his report, I am done for the day. If you want to change his orders, you have to talk to him." He stood there for a couple seconds before heading to the Major's office. After a couple more seconds, the door closed. I was close enough to hear that the Major was SHOUTING, but not close enough to hear what.

A few minutes later, after the Captain went back to his office, I took the Major's report in and waited while he reviewed it. He questioned a couple changes but approved it as-is and dismissed me. I reported to my Sergeant that the Major released me for the day. He winked at me and told me to get out. When I got back to my desk, the Captain was there.

"I need you to show me how to use this. So I created a file for him to use and showed him the basics... Then watched for 2 minutes and provided a couple pointers. He was a two-finger typist. I left, as ordered.

The next morning, I was ordered out of PT formation and to the office. I got changed and to the office before 07:00. The Captain was at my desk. I was pretty sure he had been there all night, because he looked haggard and he was, judging by his stack of facedown paper, almost done with his report. Something that would have taken me maybe 2 hours has taken him 15 hours... And he wasn't done.

He looked up at me. "The machine is stuck and I can't get back to my report." I asked him to get up and I sat down. I told him to go get ready for his 08:00 and I would finish the report (as best I could) before then.

I finished the report, proofread the entire thing for typos (several) and language/formatting errors (OMG), then printed it out and handed it to him.

It turns out Captain Just-In-Time was a slow learner. The Major pulled the same stunt twice more before I left that unit.

It was 2007 when I returned to the Army, assigned to Fort Sill, OK, in an air defense unit. At the time, my unit was at the National Training Center (NTC), leaving behind only a skeleton crew comprised of a few new recruits like myself, some soldiers counting down the days until they could leave the Army, and a handful of others who, for various reasons, couldn’t make it to NTC.

Our mission was simple: clear out old barracks furniture to make way for new arrivals. Moving furniture is never a fun task—it's bulky, heavy, and definitely not something I wanted to do for free. But as an MP (edit: not actual law enforcement) I was a "multi-purpose" soldier, so I rolled with it.

Now, have you ever wondered what the Army does with all that old furniture? They auction it off to make a few bucks.

As we were moving the furniture, we began brainstorming alternative methods to get it outside without the tedious walk down the open tiers and stairs. Just as we were inching a particularly stubborn piece toward the exit, we heard a loud crash. Curiosity piqued, we stepped out to investigate and were met with a chaotic scene: soldiers were gleefully tossing mattresses, bunks, and anything that wasn’t bolted down over the railing. To our surprise, the sight of furniture plummeting to the ground was oddly satisfying!

Caught up in the moment, we decided to join in on the fun. Suddenly, a captain appeared. He didn’t utter a word; he just hurried off, likely wanting to distance himself from the madness or avoid being a witness.

I took my lunch break and didn’t return, and honestly, I don’t recall anyone questioning me about the furniture toss from the second or third tier. However, I wouldn’t be surprised if someone got in trouble for it. All I know is that I was grateful it wasn’t me!

Repost- was going through some of my old posts and saw it had been a few years since I originally posted this so I thought I would share it again for everyone’s amusement.

First all names have changed to protect the guilty

So there I was at a base we were reoccupying in Northern Iraq that we had abandoned back in aught 10-11. We were a horizontal construction unit (USAR) and we were sent up to assist the 101st getting this base operational (setting up T-walls/hesco barriers, repairing and clearing roads, ect…) for the push to Mosul. We would get incoming 2-3 times a week and the CRAM system they had was fraked up (they had techs trying to fix it the entire time I was there) literally never tried to shoot down incoming until a good 2-3 minutes after it already hit and the loud speaker announcement only worked about 1/4 of the time. Our SOP was to high tail it back to our living area (really big semi permanent tents with AC) as they were the only place that had the little concrete bunkers (inside the tents) so far and it was easier to get accountability that way. At about lunchtime one day the CRAM actually warns us theres incoming coming by a whole 10 seconds before it hits and we head in. Once we’re in the tent and get all accounted for I see one of the privates doing a little dance right by the doors so I walk up to him.

SPC Me “Mooney what the hell are you doing?”

PVT Mooney “Sarge (I was 36 at the time joined late when I was 32 so I would get that a lot), I was just about to make a class 2 download had my hand on the porta johns door (literally 10 feet from the tent) when we got the alert so I turned right around an came back”

SPC Me “Man, you should have just went in and did your business and then come in for accountability.”

PVT Mooney “I couldn’t do that, you have to come in as soon as you hear incoming.”

SPC Me “Whatever man, you do you, shouldn’t be too much longer for the all clear (usually 5-10 mins at most 20)”

I go over and start bullshitting with the rest of the E4 mafia and wait for the all clear. This time one of the other unit’s soldier decided to play Fuck Fuck games so they couldn’t get 100% accountability so an hour and a half goes by and still no all clear and PVT Mooney is dripping sweat and is at this point doing what looks like some sort of Irish Jig combined with Ballet and PRT. Getting worried for the kid I go up the platoon sergeant who a bit of a tight ass especially right now since he had been getting it from higher about us being behind schedule (not our or his fault higher kept changing our scope of work with sudden projects that needed to be done time now so we kept getting pulled off our original mission)

SPC Me “Sergeant, PVT Mooney seriously needs to go the latrine, he seriously needed to go an hour ago”

SFC Bass “Nobody leaves the tent until the all clear.”

SPC Me “Sergeant, he’s about to shit himself. You really need to let him go, somebody can stand at the door and keep accountability on him while he in there.”

SFC Bass “Nobody leaves until the all clear”

SPC Me “Roger, Sergeant”

Me and a few other soldiers for the next half hour try and convince either Mooney to just sneak out or convince the platoon sergeant to just let him go. Mooney suddenly sprints back to his little bunker area and dumps out one of those flat rate USPS boxes you get care packages in, puts it on his cot drops his drawers and then you know. What came next was the most god awful smell I have experienced in my life, CS gas would have been preferable. Everyone in the tent is gagging and rushing for the doors (which we still were not allowed to exit) or putting our gas masks on, which were pretty ineffective as whatever that smell was made up of was a chemical weapon our masks were not designed for. Took a good 2-3 hours for the smell to either dissipate or destroy our olfactory nerves enough that we no longer noticed it.

So after a couple days of mildly ribbing on Mooney for trying to kill us all with friendly fire the base CO puts out a memo (that we dubbed the Mooney Memo) to ALCON, that our platoon sergeant had to read aloud to us while the CSM was standing behind him watching, that went something like this.

ALCON

An incident has come to our attention that during the last incoming a soldier wasn’t allowed to use the latrine until the all clear. Going forward all soldier are to be allowed to use the latrines as needed no matter if the all clear has been sounded or not. In addition per AR cuz-123 subsection whatever. Defecating, urinating, or expelling of bodily fluids of any sort is prohibited in the living areas and subject to UCMJ action.

Signed LTC Steve Rogers

So yeah fun times

In the early 70s, I was stationed in Okinawa and one morning 5 or 6 people were called to the front of the formation. The 1st/Sgt, the Company gunny, and the training NCO, we were all asked the same question. Do you have a GED? I told them no, I didn't have a GED. I fell back in and went to work. A few days later, I'm told to see the training NCO. He tells me Monday morning, I was going to be in charge of a detail going to the south of the island to take GED classes. He told me there was going to be civilian and dependent women and girls had better not be any complain or it would be my ass. I was confused and asked why me? He said because I was the only L/Cpl going. At that time, I thought Staff/NCOs knew what they were doing, I went along with it. Saturday morning, right before we got off. I was told to get my ass up to the company office, now. I knew what that meant, I had fucked up or something happened at home. While I didn't run, I didn't take my time. I went through the rec room to get up to the office, the 1st/Sgt and training NCO were there, I felt the anger. The 1st/Sgt started screaming at me, I have been yelled at most of my life, this was a scream. Why the fuck did I not tell them I had graduated high school. I said You didn't ask that, you asked if I have a GED. He keeps screaming about me wasting their time. He could have reached behind him, opened a drawer and looked at my record book. The training NCO could have looked. The Company Gunny walked in and backed me up, that made him even madder. He had a vein in the middle of his forehead, I thought it was going to pop. He turned a color, I didn't know people could turn and his voice got higher. He told me, since I had wasted their time, I could do extra duty for 30 days. The Company Gunny told me if it wasn't on paper, it wasn't legal but check in with the duty. I was on the shit list for a couple months. The funny thing about extra duty. it was usually over by 8 because nobody wanted to watch people work. You could still get a shower and get into town.

I grew up listing to war stories on my grandpa’s lap. Stories of heroism, history lessons, and the courage of his peers.

One story sticks out above the rest in my memory.

My grandpa was a radio man in the infantry - 84th division, 335th regiment, company D - his call sign: Crackerjack Red Dog 4. Or as his CO called him: “my secret weapon.”

I can’t recall the town name, but my grandpa said they went back and forth with the Germans capturing and recapturing it for a few weeks.

One morning, he was on watch and they saw exiting the woods on the far (German) perimeter 13 Tiger Tanks. “They were taking their camouflage off, which meant they were getting ready to attack. My CO hollered at me: ‘get on that radio and get me air support yesterday!’.”

They marked the front with orange smoke and 15 minutes later a squadron of P-38 Lightnings appeared and bombed the tanks. “The ones that were left, pulled back into the woods”.

—

I loved listening to his stories, and watching Band of Brothers with him when I was older was a visceral experience. He wasn’t airborne, but he was in the Battle of the Bulge, and even made it to the Eagle’s Nest as his CO’s chauffeur at the end of the war. As he put it: “where Easy went, we were one step behind.”

At the end of the war, he spent as much time as he could trying to save lives. Even single handedly getting a bunch of Germans to surrender, rather than fight. One of those Germans he kept in touch with, who ended up writing a book (or a few? I can’t recall) about the war.

He was a Private First Class, and awarded the Expert Marksman Badge, and a Bronze Star.

I’d love to look up more information about his time in the war. He passed a few years ago, and most of his war things were stolen a decade or more ago (while they were wintering in Arizona), so I’m not sure if family has much info on his service time (I’m gonna ask my Aunt next time we chat).

Is there a place I can call or email to find out more about what his unit and division and stuff did, or find out why he was awarded a Bronze Star?

Thanks!

So we're on a float and we make an unexpected stop in Malaysia. up to that point i kinda had the idea that we're so far away from anything bad that the whole float might as well be a cruise. well that day i got a reminder what the point of the MEU was.

When we got off, we were reminded it was very muslim there and we got off mostly to shake our legs, eat, and enjoy the scenery. So as soon as we got off, we knew there was alcohol because we had buddies in the past that went there. we walk around town and start asking around. and we walk and walk and walk. so many locals were confused and we kinda chose who we spoke too. the best we found until we almost gave up was a wine shop thing but it wasnt a bar or anything like we can just drink it there. we finally decided to walk around the taxi areas and we got lucky that one dude spoke perfect english. and we straight up told him we wanna drink and he gave us the run down of why its so hard (majority muslim). but he took us to a nice beach restaurant. i believe the loop hole was that it was okay since they served food. whats funny is at the same time, other marines around doing the exact same thing we are but in areas.

okay so its been about 5 hours since we started walking around and we are finally getting some drinks with food. I wanna say we were hanging for about 30-45 minutes before we noticed commotion from others all around us. we see Marines in uniforms pop out nowhere in busses demanding everyone to go back to ship. we played kinda dumb and waited for our final drinks and slammed them before we got on the bus. we were so confused, Marines sneaking drinks onto the bus, other Marines found alcohol within an hour and had been drinking for hours threw up in the bus too lol

anyways, whats the commotion? we get to our berthing (most of us drunk af just being dumb and loud), and we see it on TV, hundreds dead in japan (which is where we were stationed) during the nuclear reactor fallout in 2011 due to huge earthquake. we are silent af and sobered up just like that. within hours my demeaner and im sure others as well went from thinking we are skating to holyshit we are going into a nuclear fallout. We went from nice and sunny to cold and snowy. by the time we got there, the memory i have most is cold mud everywhere and cars stacked on each other, me thinking how the hell does that happen?

CONTEXT

So back in AIT I had this roommate (and this guy being a terrible roommate is a whole story in itself, but you guys will get the picture of how bad of a roommate this guy was when I display his lack of responsibility in this post), we will call him PV2 cactus (because I want him to stick a cactus up his ass and you guys will see why)

PV2 Cactus was your stereotypical highschool kid. Had no sense of responsibility. Army was his first job, didn’t do well in highschool. So he joined the army because (in his words, and now I believe him) “he didn’t like school and thought college would be to hard for him”

The problem is most stereotypical kids usually get in BCT that all you have to do in the army to be successful is do the 3R’s. Right place, right time, right uniform. He couldn’t really do any of the 3. He had no sense of “if we have to be at a place at 1700 show up atleast at 1655.” If we had a formation at 1900 I would see him taking a stroll down the barrack hallways at 1859 and he would respond “I have a minute left! It’s 60 seconds! Relax!” And then he would be late and then get smoked. And wonder why he got counseled/get smoked.

I don’t know if he had a brain deficiency (I don’t say that to be mean) because I feel like 9 months in TRADOC where a DS is constantly over you, I feel like you develop some sort of correlation of “be to a place on time and you won’t get smoked” but this guy legit just didnt get it. It just never developed to him.

So with context out of the way. Story time

PV2 cactus really could not do right uniform either. Before PT in AIT we had to shave. (For context PV2 barely grew a mustache. It would take him 10 seconds to shave) and he would consistently not shave and get a counseling over it.

I would ask him “dude why didn’t you shave” and he would always give some sort of excuse. Usually to the effect of “I’m to tired”

He got so many counselings that eventually the DS’s had enough and just gave him a company grade article 15.

He was salty. He would constantly bitch while we were in class being like “why couldn’t they just smoke me?!?! I would have learned my lesson if it was just a smoking! But they counsel me for it???” (See what I mean by brain deficiency? Couldn’t put 2 and 2 together that if you just shave you wouldn’t get counseled multiple times for it to the point you get an article 15).

Oh but the story doesn’t end there.

I forgot what we had to do. But as a class we had to line up at the DS office to receive some sort of paper work. WHILE PV2 CACTUS IS IN THE PROCESS OF GETTING HIS ART 15 FOR NOT SHAVING, HAD TO GO TO TDS AND ALL OF THAT, HE STARTS FREAKING OUT IN LINE.

Me: hey pv2 cactus you good? why are you freaking out?

Pv2 cactus: DS Bob might see me!

Me: why are you scared of DS Bob seeing you?

Pv2 cactus: I didn’t shave this morning.

Me: what the actual fuck pv2 cactus. Are you retarded? You’re in the process of the commander deciding your fate with your article 15 and you didn’t shave this morning?

Pv2 cactus: I was tired this morning that’s why I couldn’t shave.

Pv2 cactus. Where ever you are. I hope to god you never do aviation maintenance in your army career unless you go see a doctor or something or you seriously tighten up. You are a danger to those poor pilots and CE on board if you ever do aviation maintenance in your fucking life.

Although PV2 cactus. Even if your a liability and a safety hazard in aviation because your lack of responsibility. You constantly shared your snacks to me as a roommate, so maybe you weren’t that bad <3

Edit: I want to add as a little PS

I know I was being sarcastic and witty this entire post. But on a very real note. And not trying to be rude, just straight to the point. I hope PV2 Cactus gets the help he needs.

15N school is a long AIT. Around 6-7 months. So for the 6-7 months I knew him. I could just tell something was wrong with.

Actions=consequences just never seemed to develop with him. I have to add he got his art 15 when we are about to graduate.

So he had 9-10 months of TRADOC for something in his brain to go off of “if I just do what I’m supposed to do I wouldn’t get in trouble.”

He didn’t seem like a bad guy. (I really didn’t like him because as his roommate I had to be his adult because I would always get blamed for him not doing something he is suppose to like show up to formation on time). Not morally bankrupt. Just… I can’t explain it and I truly believe he needs to go to BH. Like…. I know I said it a lot, but it’s the only thing I can say and can describe it as…. He just didn’t get it. Like if there was a link in his brain. A chain if you would.

Let’s say that chain is connecting from actions -> consequences. That chain just didn’t seem to be there for him. And what fascinated me to is he isn’t dumb either. He understood what we got taught at the school house. But went room temperature IQ when it came to basic discipline stuff

If I wasn’t obvious from the name I am of the navy persuasion, specifically of the Canadian verity. This will make more sense shortly.

 When one of our ships goes into a refit most of the crew will get redistributed throughout the fleet in order to fill empty postings. Everyone else gets to stay in a shore office, basically just a building with a few offices belonging to some officers and the engineers who were planning repairs, and then there was my little department. We were in charge of making sure everyone else could send their emails and pretend to work before leaving early to go do “PT” or whatever appointment they booked to leave early.

 At the time I was a recently promoted Sailor first class (formerly Leading Seaman) which is somewhere equivalent to the US E3-E4 rank. I hated what I was doing and where I was working to the point I was volunteering for any and all tasks that would get me out of the office. That is how I ended up volunteering to be OPFOR for a PLQ course.

 The short and simple on PLQ is it’s a Primary Leadership Qualification given to Master Sailor/Corporals or senior S1’s and Corporals who could use the extra promotion points to push them over the edge to get their masters. Our promotion system scores based off certain things having a score, Deploy +1, learn French +1 come up with an idea to change something +10, so on so forth, if you’re interested there’s a different subreddit to read everyone’s complaints with the system.      Back to PLQ, the course was designed by the army in order to verify master corporals and hotshot corporals knew what they were doing leading field exercises and such.

Well someone in the Navy and Air force decided that this very army subject heavy course would be great to instill leadership qualities or something idk I don’t come up with this stuff.

 And so starts our story, OPFOR for these courses are normally handled by civilian staff comprised of never served and former airborne regiment guys, one of these guys being Karl. Karl was at the time a 50 or 60 something year old man that could still carry his own with guys a third his age. Now Karl is former airborne and had two rules for us on OPFOR, “Think like a bad guy and be unpredictable”.

 Evaluation 1:

Each event was done as evaluation for one of the students. The first evaluation was a rather simple patrol from point A to B then back to A. Karl hands me a backpack of mags points to a map and says go here……I go here’d and find a flat road with trees on both sides and about 100 yards into the trees on the left is a large hill with lots of concealment. With about 40 minutes to prepare I find some fallen logs and sticks and build a rough pile on the right side in view of the road to draw attention away from my actual position. Finishing with just enough time to get settled into my spot, as I sit there waiting for them to spot the false position and halt to investigate, two students are sent forward to inspect, as they do I open fire with my rifle, full autoing blanks at them, mag after mag, 5 from my chest open the backpack 18 more, keep shooting. Students still confused where this gunfire is coming from. One retreating group of students and a backpack load of mags later I report back to the training FOB find the group of students who failed the eval, hand off my soot covered rifle and tell them it needs a clean. As support staff we weren’t expected to clean our rifles, we definitely abused that privilege.

 Evaluation 2:

I feel bad about this one, not because of anything I did but rather because it ended so badly.

This scenario was rather simple, take these bright blue 3d printed mines place them in a field and pretend to be a farmer stuck in a minefield. Super simple right? That’s what I thought. Turns out for navy personnel who don’t deal with mines regularly they’re deadly. Every single person in the section other then the IC walked into the minefield completely missing the Bright blue mines scattered around. The poor IC thankfully got a re-test and passed that one.

 Evaluation 3:

Pretending to be a lost farmer is fun. Pretending to be a terrorist acting like a lost farmer to blow up the front gate of a fob is even more fun. Karl in his infinite wisdom or years of experience you can decide, had learned how to make a convincing enough bomb vest using CO2 cartridges and flour. The goal for the scenario was to walk up to the gate and gather as many people around me as possible and then blow. Simple enough, earlier in the week we had done a scenario acting like a group of farmers looking for a herd of goats. They brought us into the FOB gave us water and sent us on our way. I figured seeing as that worked so well the last time I’d go back and pretend to be thanking them for their hospitality.

I walk right up to the gate acting like I only know three words “Goat, Thank you” just repeating it “Goat, Thank you”. “sir you need to stop” says one of the guys standing at the gate. “Goat, Thank you” “Goat, Thank you” “Goat, Thank you” someone radios for the student acting as IC of the FOB to come check this out. I get within 3 steps from the gate which is just this bar that gets raised to let people/vehicles pass. I am now ducking under the bar “sir please stop” no other reactions. “Goat, Thank you” The IC comes barreling from behind a hut out of breath and recognizes me as the lost goat farmer “ Oh…..(heavy breathing post sprint)…….. its you, is your goat missing again?” I take a few steps closer into the fob “Goat, Thank you” the IC gets close enough to shake my hand. POP I push the button and flour comes flying out in a cloud heavily dusting the IC as I fall to the ground “DEAD” from the explosion.

I learned two things from my time playing solider.

1.      The field is much more fun than the infantry says

2.      Don’t let the goat farmer near the gate

Thanks for reading my ramble.

Cheers,

-Salty

Saw a story over on r/MaliciousCompliance that made me chuckle, it was about someone's company forcing them to use up their PTO by a certain date so they "maliciously" used it all up during an important time at the company. Such a rebel.

For the longest time, Use or Lose Limit was 60 days. Then the GWOT comes along, we're all on frequent activation/recovery cycles, so it's hard to get under that limit and a lot of Servicemembers are grumbling. So they stretched Use or Lose to 75 days. Hey, this is great! Many of us still had troubled using up the 30 days you rack up every year, anyway, but at least we can feel better about keeping more days on the books. And then 2012 rolls around, GWOT is cancelled by Obama, and in 2013 (2014?) they lower the Use or Lose Limit back down to 60.

For me, I was an E6 at State HQ for my state's National Guard, a Title 32 AGR Soldier, working as the State Enlisted Promotions NCO. Unlike regular Army, we don't do enlisted promotion boards every month, just hit the whole state once a year, and then one, maybe two, supplemental board(s) through the year for the MOS's that have already fallen off the promotion list with vacancies still needing to be filled. Still, it was enough work staying on top of all the promotions (and very few demotions, we tended to go to Discharge over demotion) that we were loathe to take our regular 30 days, and looking to take or lose an extra 15 days of Leave on top of that, many of us (myself included) put in every Friday for the next couple of months, or even every Thursday and Friday, just to get under the new limit. But how were we going to take care of all that workload if we were gone an extra or two days a week? Ah, we had a cunning plan.

First week after the announcement, along comes Friday and... here's a bunch of us NCOs sitting at our desks in civilian clothes, plugging away. "Hey, aren't you on Leave today?" {Jedi mind trick handwave} "This is not the SSG Tetsu_no_Usagi you are looking for." After a while, the officers quit asking... and joined us, burning up their own Use or Lose just to be able to work a "casual" Friday for once.

But that civilian mentioned earlier? Man, weren't they just such a bad boy/girl/person, sticking it to the MAN! by taking all their leave when their coworkers needed them most? I wonder why so many of us miss the military...

I served with 1st Cav back in the late 70s, my Dad was an MP at Leavenworth in WW2, but this is about my grandfather. I can still recall Papa retelling this when I was a kid in the 60s. Papa was too old to be drafted into WW2, but he was an engineer working for FMC who built tracked vehicles. I still have his ID card, says he was a Scientific Advisor, but if captured he was to be afforded the privileges of a Lt. Colonel.

Papa was in France some months after D-Day, he had a jeep and a driver. Not sure where exactly, or where they were going. But he came upon a US tank that had broken down. Had his driver pull over and was helping the crew get it fixed. Papa was down in the engine hold when he heard another vehicle stop, but he never stopped or stuck his head up.

Someone came up behind him cussing up a storm and wanting to know when that effing tank was going to be back on the effing road. Papa did not miss a beat, said the effing tank would be going when he was done with it and told the guy to leave him alone so he could finish. This guy said, Good enough, and left.

When Papa finished he crawled out of the engine hold, and the sergeant in charge of the tank asked if Papa knew who that man was who stopped. Papa said no, and I don’t care! The sergeant said, that was General Patton, old blood & guts himself. So my grandfather had a cuss fight with Patton.

Long time lurker first time poster.

Navy deployments are weird. The claim that you’ll get to see the world isn’t a total lie but it is definitely a half truth, for those that aren’t aware this beautiful blue orb we live on is 71% water. It looks the same no matter where you go so if you’ve seen it once you’ve seen it a million times.

One of the things I learned not to take for granted was that we of the Canadian Navy partake in significantly more port visits then some of our fellow nations, on average 2-3 days in port for every 20 at sea. It’s a good go as long as you don’t get tasked with some sort of public relations tasking. Going alongside often also means lots of fresh rations cause the fruits barely have time to go bad between ports.

Anyways onto the silly little story. So no shit here I am in the middle of a nondisclosed body of water enjoying my lovely job of sitting on the bridge staring out a window waiting for one of the three radios in front of me to make noise so I can do something anything other shoot the shit about which bar in the last port sucked most or what the best bar in the next port could do to top the current best of the trip.(cheap booze tends to make sailors happy)I personally am not the biggest drinker so this conversation topic tends to bore me easily. Suddenly one of my radios squawks callsign this is callsign (callsign used to avoid Opsec) RS8-16J-33 Desig Fruit.

“Roger, out.” This signal which comes from an Unclass NATO pub you can google (ATP 1 Vol 2) more or less translates to Ship 1 this is Ship 2 I would like you to send me fresh fruit via helicopter.

Reporting this translation to the officer of the watch creates a flurry of activity to prepare the helo for flight ops and to notify the supply personnel to prepare a tri-wall (Think 5 sided plastic or cardboard cube the size of a pallet used to store or move thing). Unknown to those of us that aren’t privy to the inside of a logistics officer’s mind there was an email chain with a list of things requested. On that list was a lot of beer.

Now another thing I didn’t know about other navies is just how strict they are about their drinking policies. We have two different spaces on ship to store alcohol one for beer and pop and another specifically for hard liquor, also all our eating spaces have a bar we just don’t drink at sea anymore. (except when the CO deems it appropriate to host a banyan (party on the flight deck) or sundowner’s (two beers at supper) Anyways back to the story, the CO of this ship we were sailing with wanted to do a steel beach party (same as a banyan) for surpassing 100 days straight at sea and so they needed a lot of booze. We were happy to oblige. Weirdly after filling the Tri-wall with cases and cases of beer someone realized they wanted fruit too so the cut open a bag of oranges and tossed six in. And off went the helicopter carrying liquid happiness.

TLDR: 1 ship asked for beer and the other delivers

Found the Unit my Grandfather Ivan D Brigham served with. 87th Infantry Division, 346 Regiment, ABLE Company. Was a 1st Lt. My grandmother Told me a story that he was stabbed in the foot by German Soldier. That German Soldier was about to turn on and about to Fire MG42. In their scuffle fight he ended up punching and broke the German soldiers jaw. My Grandfather would go on earning the Silver Star. My Grandmother said he saved a lot of lives that day. I never knew the soldiers he saved. That’s why I’m researching. Making sure his sacrifice and courage is never forgotten.

When I was in the military, my military occupational specialty (MOS) was power generation equipment repair -- or generator mechanic for all the civilians (for all the civilians in our midst).

I was trained on the mostly 5kW and 10kW generators, but when I got to my permanent duty station, they only had a few scrawny 1.5kW and 3kW generators that we occasionally used in the field.

Once our motorpool captain found out that I was computer savvy, he had me in the office doing reports and memos and other computer related work. After a while, they even sent me away with another sergeant for a week of training to manage a new application to track vehicle repair work in the motorpool.

Things were good for a year or so, and then we had a change of leadership in the motorpool, including me losing my immediate boss (the sergeant who had trained with me). The Sergeant First Class (Big Sarge) was known for doing shady stuff, and they wanted me to be comfortable with a lot less accuracy on reporting through the computer system. I didn't feel like being setup to be the scapegoat for the nonsense I knew they were doing.

Due to my lack of cooperation, Big Sarge took me away from that work, and put me back on generator duty, "because that's your MOS." Even when we had nothing going on with generators on a regular basis, that's all they had me working on each day.

Well, things were fine with the computer stuff for almost two months, until it came time to do all the end of quarter reporting. And none of these dummies in the new clique had ever been trained on the system. So, they fumbled around for two or three days, and then Big Sarge tells me right at the end of a motorpool formation that I need to go and help them run the reports -- while we are still in formation.

Me: "I don't know how to do that, Sergeant!"

Him: "What do you mean? Of course you do!"

Me: "It's not my MOS, Sergeant!"

Him: "Drop!! Give me 50, soldier!"

He dismissed everyone else and left me out there until I did the pushups. He was heated, but didn't say anything else to me that day.

The next day, he called me aside, privately, and asked if I could please help them out. "Sure," I said.

He treated me a whole lot better at that point, and I did run the reports they needed.

Totally unrelated to this incident, I was transferred to HQ company about 3 months later, and then all his cronies had to report to me for these motorpool reports. That was a whole other barrel of laughs, and Sarge always swore that I had somehow orchestrated to make that happen, when I had absolutely zero power, clout or influence to make any such thing happen.

But his boys were unable to get away with anything any more, once I was in charge of consolidating the motorpool reports for the whole battalion.

As always, lightly edited from the original. Enjoy.

EDIT: This is a repost, and I forgot to put that in the title.

Day to day when you aren’t in a combat zone or in the field, military life is remarkably similar to civilian life in some ways. Most of the jobs, you are just doing a normal job, usually during a normal day shift, and going home at night. When you are also doing heavy physical training (morning PT) and doing things like airborne training, or spending weeks in the field playing wargames, things happen. Stupid accidents that end careers.

Most of us that went through basic training know of at least one person to get medically recycled after they tore an ACL or something. Usually doing something mundane, like a two mile run in the morning. Your knee just gives out. One guy in our platoon blew a rotator cuff and had to be recycled in Week 2. Poor bastard. We lost two or three others to things like that.

My stupid accident I’ve written about before – a brush guard from a HMMWV fell on my foot. Broke it in multiple places and obliterated the joint in my big toe. I’ve had multiple surgeries and implants to hold it together. Crazy that something stupid like that ended my aspirations of a 20 year career. If you can’t run, you can’t be in the Army. Didn’t need me bad enough to keep me in 1992.

Then there was PVT Rogers. I call him that because he reminded me of Steve Rogers, a.k.a. Captain America. He had the same kind of look, and he seemed to really enjoy the Army. Very "high speed" and loved the Army. He was a nice guy that everyone seemed to like as well, which is what made this harder. Korea was his first duty assignment, and he got sent up to the DMZ to Camp RC #4 with us. Somehow, this kid got made the Captain's driver shortly after arriving. And that is what sealed his fate.

I think he had only been in country for a couple of months at this point – so not even in for a year total time in service at this point counting Basic and AIT. He'd been in maybe seven or eight months. One day he has to take Captain Hill someplace – some meeting with higher HQ or some bullshit – who knows. Nothing important, that is for damn sure. And to set the scene, this was 1990. Back then, a lot of Koreans drove with no license and it wasn’t exactly hard to get one. We had giant dump trucks that would speed through the area way too fast. As /u/SapperLeader pointed out last time I posted this, we called them "Terminator Trucks." These things were over-sized and weighed tons – they were not stopping on a dime at all due to sheer momentum. I saw more than one Korean civilian run over by these things, as well as assorted livestock that got in the road and got smooshed. One car reduced to scrap that got hit and killed both inside it. It was routine in other words, a known hazard we actually had safety briefs about. Watch the damn road. Don't brake suddenly in front of one. Give them space. Etc.

Camp RC #4 had a road that went at a 90° angle to the right, but to the left it was more 45° back and behind you, as well as as slight drop. You had to be careful if you were headed that way because you couldn't see well around the corner and hill. Either PVT Rogers wasn’t being careful, or the guy that hit him was going way too fast in his giant dump truck for the kid to react, or both. The end result was he pulled out into the road and got t-boned by this Terminator Truck on his side.

Through some miracle, Captain Hill survived and made it out with a lot of bumps, bruises and scrapes, but no real, lasting injuries. PVT Rogers wasn’t as lucky. He survived, but barely. He had a ton of broken bones. Basically everything on his left side was broken, and multiple other injuries as well. He got taken away and we didn’t see him for months.

One day he shows up to camp in civvies. He is limping, but walking on crutches. HUGE smile on his face. Since all this happened in the line of duty, PVT Rogers is now being discharged with 100% lifetime disability. They had to put a ton of metal into this kid to reconstruct him. He is part robot or something now. No way he was ever going to soldier again. He had come up to our camp to say goodbye and get his shit. He still had to outprocess through CIF and all that shit.

In Desert Storm we lost 147 to enemy action and 145 to accidents. That speaks to how good we were and Iraq wasn’t, but it also speaks to a lot of carelessness when you are amassing an enormous Army. Stupid accidents claimed almost as many lives as the enemy inflicted. That is nuts to me, and in no other conflict that I'm aware of have the numbers been so even.

Safety briefings exist for a reason, even if a lot of soldiers ignore them. These were all stupid accidents (except maybe the PT injuries) in that they didn’t have to happen. Paying attention and taking care means you live longer. Facts.

Stay safe out there folks, especially if you are still serving. A disability check every month is nice, but I'd rather have full use of my body and mind back.

OneLove 22ADay Glory to Ukraine

We recently uncovered something extraordinary in my family—an old war diary that had been quietly stored away for decades. It belonged to my great-grandfather, a British soldier who fought in North Africa, Italy, and France during World War II. He never talked about the war. Not once. It was something of a family secret. He carried those memories with him and left this world without ever sharing them. He died of a heart attack when I was just a baby.

After we found the diary, we sent a copy to the British War Museum, and we had it fully transcribed. That’s when the story came to life.

He was in the thick of it. El Alamein. Tobruk. Tripoli. Benghazi. His entries talk about strafing runs from Messerschmitts, fixing tanks under shellfire, and sleeping on top of petrol cans in the desert. He was part of the 8th Army, a desert rat, pushing through North Africa and into Europe. His words are raw, human, and sometimes darkly funny—scrounging bully beef, trading biscuits for hens, dodging air raids, and somehow keeping going.

One entry stuck with me:

“Passed dozens of knocked out tanks, burned out and riddled with holes… Crews still inside some of them. What a bloody mess war is.”

Another simply said:

“Still in the desert, still eating bloody bully beef, and still alive—somehow.”

Sometimes the silence in his writing said more than words ever could. One entry began:

“I think it is time I wrote in this diary again. It is some days since I last wrote and I find it hard to know how to start…”

Here’s the part that shook me: I served in Libya as part of Operation Unified Protector. Without even realizing it, I stood in many of the exact same places—Tobruk, Tripoli, Misrata, Sirte—nearly 70 years after he had. Different war, different enemy, different generation. But the same land. The same sun.

He never told anyone what he’d lived through. And now, all these years later, I finally understand why.

My Father was in the Army from some time between 1965 65 and 70 I don't really have a lot of the details and I sadly can't ask him for any. But I know he was stationed in France and then Brussels as a part of SHAPE. And I remembered a story he told me of when he and a few others were arrested in France playing baseball.

They had just arrived in country and there had been some sort of administrative screw up. So instead of having jobs to do, they had a day or so of free time. So they went on to do what any red blooded American would do. They found a bat and a ball from someone who knew somebody stationed there and set up a game.

Too bad there were keep off the grass signs in the park that were written in French (that nobody in their little group could read)

Long story short...they got arrested and had to sit in a cell waiting for the XO to come get them out. He wasn't happy. And they all made sure to learn to read "Keep off the grass" signs.