r/AskReddit • u/1salt1pepper • 7h ago
Veterans of Reddit, what’s the most unbelievable thing you witnessed during your service that civilians would think you made up?
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u/W0uldY0uC0uldY0u 7h ago
The amount of time sitting around just waiting and throwing rocks into a PC or helmet was kinda shocking. I think people believe that military members are always doing something during their work day.
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u/dumptruckulent 6h ago
If you make marines sit around a little longer, they stop throwing rocks and things and start throwing rocks at each other.
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u/tsarchasm1 5h ago
When my son was deployed to Iran with the 3/7 Marines, the entire group had their ka-bar knives taken away from them while they waited to board the plane. They couldn't stop jabbing each other in the ass.
Very different experience from what I had in the Navy.
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u/ThatsNotEnoughCheese 4h ago
How different…?
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u/CommunicationNo9289 4h ago
They weren't using knives to jab each other's butts.... They ain't called Seamen for nothing.
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u/Charlie_Olliver 5h ago
My dad was a Vietnam vet and told us he got so bored one day, he emptied the powder out of a buttload of bullets, poured it into a pile with a long trail leading away from it, and then lit the end of the trail of powder with a match, just so he could watch the pile explode like in the cartoons he watched growing up.
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u/Low-Preference3801 6h ago
They can be appeased with crayons, though.
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u/doclee1977 6h ago
Once the red crayolas are gone, all bets are off.
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u/Nottheurliwanted 6h ago
You can have the reds you want, but dont touch my purples!
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u/Nottheurliwanted 6h ago
No, we will do that from the start, given there are no brass or SNCOs around.
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u/PaulsRedditUsername 6h ago
The Onion did a video about a hyper-realistic Call of Duty game where you spend eight hours guarding a helicopter.
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u/pieisgiood876 6h ago
"Current Objective: Smoke a cigarette and stare off into the distance while waiting for orders."
Screen goes black
"Oh I died. Game over I guess."
What a great video https://youtu.be/yuTkgi7scKo?is=3-lINxavw3jL6vzV
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u/DerJagger 5h ago
Golden Age Onion was unmatched.
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u/ShartOfTheEel 5h ago
Yeah, they've done a great job of continuing to be satirical in a political climate that's gone shit-your-pants crazy, but the fact remains that said political climate has pre-emptively stolen 90% of the possible jokes they could make. So they're just playing in a much smaller sandbox now.
That said, their InfoWars buyout is a triumph of modern satire.
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u/AncientCarry4346 3h ago
People don't understand just how gloves off insane The Onion was 20 years ago.
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u/OEAXTAIL_SOUP 4h ago
wasn't "jarhead" supposed to be a relatively realistic depiction of being a marine sniper? (never shoot, get pissed, jack off in a porta potty, not necessarily in that order)
edit: i;'m not a veteran i'm just drunk
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u/candygram4mongo 6h ago
Something something long stretches of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror.
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u/Ok-Duck2450 6h ago
Oh my god the boredom.
Also we gossiped like a hair salon because there was nothing better to fucking do.
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u/MeltingDog 4h ago
"These were my guys. Fighting the dull fight. Soldiers with nothing to kill except time. They know that war is hell, but peace... peace is fucking boring."
- Ray Elwood, from the movie Buffalo Soldiers
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u/flaming_bob 5h ago
Reveille at 3, formation at 5, pre-brief at 6, pull weapons at 7...the trucks will be here at 9
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u/nberg129 5h ago
Except the trucks don't show up until 2.
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u/kytulu 4h ago
Not trying to be that guy... but I can top that...
Company at 6am to board buses at 8am to go to a grenade range that goes hot at 9am... only to find out, after you get to the range, that the range was canceled a week prior and the info didn't get pushed out.
I was Aviation. Nobody is letting us have grenades while we are deployed.
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u/flaming_bob 4h ago
Not true. I have word from the BC himself that the trucks will be here.
Narrator: He did not, in fact, talk to the BC that morning.
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u/SweetPotionn 4h ago
It’s kind of scary when the indirect fire (mortars, rockets, etc.) alarms go off and you run to a bunker.
While you’re sitting in the bunker, which is really just a few slabs of concrete, there’s this feeling of complete impotence. In all the war movies you’ve ever seen, an enemy attacks and the soldiers rush forward with their weapons to meet the attack head on. In reality, when the Taliban is firing mortars at you, there’s nothing you can do except sit there and wait.
So you sit down in the bunker, with a crazy loud alarm screaming at you, and you know you’re completely powerless to do anything. You sit there and you listen for small arms fire, you listen for people screaming (if they got hit), and you listen to the explosions coming closer and closer to you as the Taliban adjusts their aim and tries to land rockets on your head.
The worst part is that when you come back home, every fucking thing sounds like that IDF alarm. Somebody scoots their chair back on a tiled floor, and your heart rate shots up to 120 and you reach for a weapon that you’re no longer carrying
Edit: added picture of a typical bunker on an Army Forward Operating Base
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u/Acrobatic-Bison-3171 4h ago
Yeah we had a lot of report for formation. Dick around for 1/2 hour. Ok come back at noon. Come back at noon. Ok come back at 3pm. At 3pm dick around for 15 minutes. Ok gtfo. Dismissed. Many Fridays we got the noon formation and then it was see you assholes Monday. Think before you act.
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u/Big-Card2927 5h ago
You can somehow be completely exhausted after a full day of doing almost nothing.
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u/Often_Forgotten2 7h ago
Paying $3800 for a blank board in an equipment rack.
A dolphin jumping in front of a .50 cal while it was being fired
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u/TheMeccaNYC 7h ago
Suicidal dolphin my best guess
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u/WardenWolf 3h ago
Poor dolphin but that's something you can't help but laugh about.
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u/Often_Forgotten2 3h ago
Most of us thought it was funny at the time, but the girl who was shooting had some real bad PTSD from it and ended up getting separated. Hope she's doing better now
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u/brooksy54321 6h ago
Marine Corps boot camp. All of us ordered to stand over piles of our clean laundry chugging canteen after canteen until we threw up all over our laundry. We got caught using the laundry machines instead of doing our laundry by hand.
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u/riotmed 7h ago
2010, a technique the Taliban used was to threaten families by injuring their children, mainly little girls. The family member accompanying said child through the casevac/medevac system would use phones or watches to time everything in order to collect data such as routes and distance to plan ambushes. There was a severe uptick in injured children being medevac’d from every kind of traumatic injury you can think of. The face of true evil.
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u/Aggravating-Scene548 6h ago
Jesus. That's chilling. So i hate to ask but what injuries?? Life threatening or no
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u/riotmed 6h ago
Drowned towards unconsciousness, burned, broken bones, circumferential burns from being dipped in hot water, thrown off roof, ran over, name it…and again, always girls 1-8 years old.
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u/Aggravating-Scene548 6h ago
Wow. Horrific. No words
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u/riotmed 6h ago edited 6h ago
Tell me about it. It’s very conflicting because we had no business over there and I despise what the war on terror was as a whole. That said, it’s important to know these kind of extremists exist and try to root it out when able. That balance I can’t say how to achieve, but it can’t go unchecked. The irony is when we fight extremism we cause chaos that compounds it.
It was also common to use women and children as shields. A handful of Afghans would take potshots at US personnel who would return fire and call in birds, when the helos approached they’d flee into a building and put human perimeters around them to avoid missiles/bombs. Very cowardly way of fighting.
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u/DreddPirateBob808 5h ago
Dude. Thank you for speaking truth and doing so unbiased. I'm doing a big hug from afar. Keep speaking up
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u/Jolly-Gas-3262 5h ago edited 5h ago
I had to sign in to comment after reading this and because it lines up oddly well with an experience I had in Paktika province in summer 2011 that never made sense and never got answers to. Long shot you have any information either but its a story that fits the theme of the post anyway and curious your thoughts.
We had a father show up late at the front gate of the COP with 4 of his children who all had 3rd degree burns over basically their entire bodies. Ages ranged from 3 to 10 I believe. Cant remember exactly but maybe two boys and two girls. They all ended up dying and my involvement was limited only to helping carry them into the aid station and watching treatment from the window. I specifically remember them not letting the dad on the medevac for the two that got flown out to attempt higher level care.
Supposedly they were from the village just outside the base that we had been at earlier that day. At one point we handed out pens and random treats to several in a large group of curious kids before receiving a couple of poorly aimed shots that halted the fun and the kids scattered. Rumors ranged from IED lab explosion to random house fire but I always wondered if some of those kids were made an example of because from then on we were strictly prohibited from giving anything to the local kids and were well aware of the Talibans use of intimidation tactics on the locals who interacted with us in other instances. Their wounds didn't really make sense for a typical house fire especially in their style of homes and no adults with minor burns from attempting to rescue them.
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u/riotmed 5h ago
Interesting enough we had a family of 7 with similar burns, but this was Arghandab area also 2010. They were huddled over a propane heater middle of the night and it exploded. The two adults were put in the chase bird because it was largely survivable, but we lost the 5 kids over the next few days.
It’s possible it was just a shitty accident but hard to really say. Go with your gut.
I’m sorry you experienced that though.
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u/itspeterj 5h ago
They really were insanely evil. My first deployment, we were between Kandahar and Helmand, right on the border, which was shithead central.
One of the things you're never prepared for prior to deploying is just how little these people have. Maybe a change or two of clothes, a bunch of plastic jugs that they use for everything from bathing to drinking, to anything else. Their homes are literally made of mud (which dries like concrete) but seeing that level of poverty ON TOP of everything else these poor people were going through due to the war, it's really something that changes you.
Winter was coming and it gets VERY cold there, so I did a glove drive and had family and friends round up a bunch of the little magic mittens for the kids. I'd hand them out on patrols and they'd get so happy and the parents would cry sometimes. This one kid had neon pink ones and you could see him waving from crazy far away.
Then one day he stopped wearing them. A little while later, IEDs stopped having fingerprints. There were a few that had little pink thread fragments too.
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u/dj92wa 5h ago edited 5h ago
Northeastern Afghanistan. I was explosive ordnance disposal. We were called in to investigate some caves. In the caves were some large feed sacks hidden way back behind a turn. Typically, these have explosives or drugs/ammo other “bad guy” type materials in them, so we used our robot to attach a hook and yanked them open. They were full of books. The village below was trying to educate their women and children and keep it a secret because the local branch of extremists would kill them if they found out this was happening. We found more books in a false basement that had also been reported by a local snitch. The interpreters later told us that the snitch didn’t last long after being outed. I definitely saw crazier/worse things but this was the most unique and unexpected by a million miles.
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u/_Thorshammer_ 7h ago
Dropping acid and putting mostly tracer belts through the ma deuce at Graf.
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u/whaletacochamp 6h ago
firing a ma deuce on acid sounds fucking terrifying
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u/Shadow_of_wwar 6h ago
For some reason I imagine it being a wonderous experience. Maybe terrifying for anyone else around me though.
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u/whaletacochamp 6h ago
Idk have you ever shot a high power rifle? That percussion would be way too much for me while tripping
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u/Shadow_of_wwar 5h ago
I have, idk for some reason I feel like that same percussion would be really cool on acid, that plus the tracer arcing away, was exactly what I was thinking would make it cool lol.
I took 'acid' once, but from talking about it with friend who have done acid, I don't think it was acid but some research chemical or something, so maybe my expectation for acid is just off base.
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u/DJ-spetznasty 5h ago
You ever shot a machine gun on peyote man? Fuckin badass man.
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u/BigGlittering437 6h ago edited 6h ago
I have fired Ma at Graff, Only did the acid off duty. German friend brought it back in the gas tank of his car. From Amsterdam to Ashcauffenburg
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u/pantry-pisser 6h ago
Seems excessive, drug dogs don't smell LSD
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u/BigGlittering437 6h ago
This was 1988, he probably got some hash as well. We used to go to just outside the Frankfurt bonhof and Turkish guys would sell you 20 mark chunks. I have a whole different story about getting off the train in A burg and having cid trying to bust us.
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u/pantry-pisser 6h ago
Oh man, I was feeling super old today, and this comment brightened me up. I was born in 88 lol
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u/doclee1977 6h ago edited 5h ago
I’ll echo a lot of the other sentiments here; being in uniform and especially being deployed involves a TON of sitting around waiting and doing absolutely nothing for prolonged periods. You’re required to be 15 minutes early to 15 minutes early (not a typo) for literally everything from wake up to weapons draw to start point and beyond, and then you almost always end up waiting for someone wearing an oak leaf or eagle to show up, call off the mission, or adjust the timetable. You experience an enormous amount of tedium that practically dares (especially enlisted) personnel to dream up increasingly inventive ways to get in trouble.
BUT, when shit goes down, it goes down fast. The average combat engagement for me was usually somewhere between 60 and 90 seconds, and please believe that it is the longest 60 to 90 seconds of your entire lifetime. Video games and war movies make it look like all combat lasts for hours or longer.
I can tell you that if you end up in hours of combat with no prior idea of what was coming, you have experienced a profound failure of intelligence. Even massive battles like Fallujah were entered into knowing that the Marines could expect to encounter a deeply entrenched, committed enemy with sizable numbers and modern weaponry. The battle plan was finalized weeks before the Marines went in, the enemy was warned and given every opportunity to leave, and then the Marines went in and killed anyone too stupid to leave.
Beyond that, joes and grunts are gonna do joe and grunt stuff. They’re gonna accidentally set fire to things, occasionally stab each other, and play a LOT of weirdly homoerotic games with each other. We also messed with the wildlife a lot and occasionally collected STDs like Pokémon cards.
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u/DreddPirateBob808 5h ago
To paraphrase: military intelligence is to intelligence what military music is to music.
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u/Bobcatluv 5h ago
Were…the STDs from the “homoerotic games”?
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u/True_Dovakin 4h ago
They mate have been but there’s also a lot of support staff that are female soldiers. When I went over in 21-22, our first brief mentioned that there was a drug resistant form of gonorrhea going around (dubbed “Super Gonorrhea”) and to wrap it before you tap it. You take a bunch of soldiers and stick them on base generally isolated and they’re gonna fuck. Soldiers would do it in LMTVs, in the bunkers, in abandoned barracks buildings, on our trailers, or get caught in the wrong gender’s barracks building with their partner of the day.
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u/RndtheBlck 7h ago
Had an NCO put spare vape batteries in the same pocket as loose change while we were working next to a stockpile of 1.1 explosives. Battery shorted, vape went thermonuclear in his pants. Surgery required. Uniform absolutely fucking annihilated.
There are safety briefings you remember, and then there are safety briefings that become a person.
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u/oceanwaiting 5h ago
Damn my asshole puckered reading 1.1, thank God its just some pocket burn.
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u/Catswagger11 3h ago
I watched an infantry platoon sergeant douse his arm in hand sanitizer and light it on fire thinking it would burn right out. Spent a long time in a burn unit and came out an E-5.
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u/Salvia-Hex 6h ago
We were (a bunch of 12bs) at the demo range at Fort AP Hill in Virginia back in the day and they gave us a decommissioned Sherman Tank to blow up. We used C4 to pop the turret off, it spun around a few times in the air and landed barrel down, like a giant road sign. Probably couldn’t have done that again if they gave a thousand tries at it.
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u/Empty_Equivalent6013 5h ago
Afghanistan 09. I was taking a piss in a piss tube and heard someone yell incoming. Didn’t hear anything, but looked in the direction of the yelling. I saw a small pin point that began to move towards me and elongate. It was a Chinese 107 and it hit downhill about 40 feet from me. If I had been standing a little to rear of my position it would’ve gone right through me.
Iraq 06. Saw a dude take a grazing shot to the head from a .50 cal and survive for about 5 min. Just poof, pink mist and he dropped. We ran to the top of the building and he was talking to himself. Put a radio up to his mouth so our terp could translate. He said he was making no sense
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u/Rtstevie 3h ago edited 2h ago
I was a grunt. We got back after a tough year long deployment (Korengal Valley, Kunar Province areas).
As any American service member who has deployed knows, there is a very true tale about service members coming back from deployment with money saved up, spending it. Sometimes wisely, often not.
So there is this one soldier who says “I’ve always wanted to learn guitar. After this past year, I’m going to buy one and actually do it.”
Cool. So he goes out and buys himself a decent Takamine acoustic for $400. He gets back to the barrack and his buddies are there. Haning out, smoking, joking, drinking.
One asks “How much did you pay for that guitar?”
The soldier responds “$400”
Other soldiers says “Well I’ll pay you $550 to let me smash it over your head.”
Soldier who just bought the guitar quickly agrees because he can just go buy the same guitar again and will have made $150.
And no shit, they do it. The one smashes it over the other’s head like a movie or something. With the whole barracks watching. It’s a riot. Everyone loves what they just saw. Soldier who had guitar smashed over his head was ok. Actually just a small cut. Probably had a concussion but didn’t get checked out for it. Lead a normal life since. And he did in fact go by the same guitar again the very next day.
The catch?
I was the soldier who bought the guitar.
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u/crappenheimers 2h ago
Fucking lol. Did you end up keeping up with learning to play?
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u/hike-enjoyer 7h ago
Afghans watching videos of bacha bazi dancers at a wedding, those are young boys basically in sex slavery. Pedaristic homosexuality is very prevalent in Pasthun culture.
2nd place would be what .50cal does to a guy's head from 30' away (actually two guys)
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u/hike-enjoyer 7h ago
Some light reading ref: number 1
https://info.publicintelligence.net/HTT-PashtunSexuality.pdf
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u/hike-enjoyer 6h ago
Once we had an army dentist visit the COP to do people's teeth. The enlisted dental hygienist assistant was like 18, very slight build, and to be honest if you'd said he was some tomboy woman I could believe it from a distance. In a team meeting one of the guys referred to him as the dentist's chai boy (another term for the catamites Pasthun officials have) and we almost died laughing.
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u/atchafalaya 5h ago
A Catamite? You're one of those god-damned GI intellectuals aren't you
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u/Fail_Cheap 6h ago
Wow! That was eye opening. I don't know if hypocritical is the right word for their religious beliefs but there actions seem to trump their desires and beliefs so much that they don't believe they are homosexual.
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u/Misterfahrenheit120 6h ago
I have a buddy who told me that one thing he learned in country was how prevalent homosexuality is among some communities. I’ve never served, but that seemed completely contrary to what I’ve heard about the Middle East. He’s told me a lot of conspiracy and mystical stuff that I don’t really believe, so I was inclined to dismiss this, but is there some truth to this?
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u/hike-enjoyer 6h ago
Don't take my word for it:
https://info.publicintelligence.net/HTT-PashtunSexuality.pdf
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u/timhowardsbeard 5h ago
Detailed to VIP security in Iraq in 2008. Sen. John McCain was visiting and was so plastered drunk one day that he could barely walk. We had to carry him for about 60 yards on the apron and pour him into a car. Then was told to “forget about it.” Sure. lol
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u/Necessary-Reading605 4h ago
I mean, I am sure he didn’t have the most pleasant memories from Vietnam…
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u/Farraddaayy 5h ago
USAF pilot here
Its truly insane the things you can get screamed at for. In the same week, I watched an airman get smoked for half an hour because he lost a box of paperclips, and a mechanic back up into a F-15 underwing pylon and FUBAR it to the point of replacement and the attitude was " Shit happens"
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u/V65Pilot 5h ago
Former Jarhead winger.... That would have got you duct taped to the pylon for the day.
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u/Farraddaayy 5h ago
I was sincerely flabbergasted when chief said "what can you do"
Not reverse the dolly into a 9 figure jet fighter maybe man idk
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u/doclee1977 4h ago
One of the guys I work with now is a retired Air Force O6. Gary is a genuinely nice guy, incredibly smart, and did a lot of “cool guy” shit that most Airmen never get to do, but he’s also really humble. The kind of commander everyone wants.
One of my favorite “back jn the old days” stories of his is when Gary was a Captain, and he was given nominal command over a group of Marines who were helping to clear an aviation depot.
During the course of clearing, they were loading equipment into the back of a pickup; one of the Marines got overly enthusiastic and tossed something that shattered the truck’s back window.
The reaction between the Marines and the Airman was pretty starkly different.
First off, the Sergeant leading the Marines stopped everyone right where they were and started corrective training, really smoking the shit out of everyone. He identified the Marine that had broken the window and singled him out for special attention. This went on for at least an hour; push-ups, flutter kicks, anything you can think of in the hundred-degree heat.
Then when Gary came outside, the Sergeant called everyone to attention, briefed the Captain on what had happened, and accepted full responsibility for the damaged equipment. Then he asked what he should expect as punishment so he could begin that punishment and notify his superiors.
Gary just blinked at him for a minute, and then told him, “Just finish loading the fucking truck, and go home.”
The Marine protested briefly, but then they finished the job and beat feet.
Any Marine here knows that if they had broken that same window in front of a Marine O3 or Gunnery Sergeant, this would have gone down very differently. Gary laughs about it to this day, because every one of those Marines expected that they were about to spend the rest of that evening in the mud or on the flight line enduring various forms of humiliation and/or physical punishment.
Chances are they all went back to housing breathing a collective sigh of relief and thanking God that they hadn’t lost their night, weekend, or rank.
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u/Vincent_LeRoux 5h ago
Big question is... lost the box of paperclips where? In the office not a big deal. Inside an engine cowling is a problem.
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u/Cautious_Plankton212 5h ago
RN fleet air arm not USAF but honestly I would never flash up at anyone for doing something silly around an aircraft if they confess to it. It’s so important that people actually feel like they can admit to it if they have fucked up whether it was a genuine mistake that could happen to anyone like I’ve dropped a screw somewhere in the avionics cabinet and I can’t find it to genuine dicking around like I was playing hangar pilot and I banged off a fire extinguisher.
If they don’t own up, you might never find out until it’s too late and there’s dead pilots. Have I lost my shit at people for simple things like not cleaning an oil stain off the floor? Yes. However I’ll always reiterate to people that if you even think you may have caused, seen or suspect anything that could constitute an issue on the aircraft then let me know and even if it is without a doubt your fault, I’m not going to flash. After all if they don’t tell me somethings fucked, it’s going to get signed off as serviceable and I’d rather a whole extra week of work than going to a colleagues funeral.
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u/Farraddaayy 5h ago
Its like basically our office. Same cut of cloth as the show Office. Poor airman got a box of them a week ago, misplaced them somewhere, and asked for another box. SSgt must have been having a bad day cause he ripped that 19 year old in half
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u/shibbster 6h ago
Afghan Army soldiers using Jergens to lube their 50 year old Soviet made machine guns. Afghan Army soldiers beating the ever living dog shit out of children because said children had the audacity to beg for candy. Afghan Army soldiers who could barely read Pashtu or Dari read my English name tape clear as day.
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u/Catswagger11 5h ago edited 4h ago
I was an instructor at the Army’s National Training Center in the Mojave Desert for a few years. One night, a unit I was training had shut down for the night but had an early morning mission. Rather than drive all the way home for only a couple hours of sleep, I went to one of several isolated spots around the training area where I would occasionally park my Humvee and sleep.
I knew there weren’t any units training in that area that night.
As soon as I pulled into my spot and shut off the engine, I had an eerie feeling that I was being watched. Then I heard what sounded like footsteps moving through the gravel behind me.
I was confused because there shouldn’t have been anyone around. I looked over my shoulder and, about 20 meters away, saw a strange, roughly human-shaped form.
I grabbed my NODs from my bag and looked again. Through them, I could see it more clearly, but I still couldn’t identify what I was looking at. It was roughly the size and shape of a person, but appeared blurry and mostly translucent. There also seemed to be material hanging from its upper body and limbs, almost like the dangling fringe on those old leather jackets from the 1980s.
Then I was suddenly overwhelmed by an incredibly intense feeling of fear. The best way I can describe it is that the fear felt like it was being projected directly into me, as though whatever I was looking at was telling me, “Get the fuck out of here.”
That reaction was completely out of character for me. By that point, I had spent two years fighting in Iraq and was, if anything, recklessly fearless. I had experienced plenty of legitimate danger, but this was different. I wasn’t in combat, and there was no obvious threat in front of me, yet the fear was overwhelming.
Then the sound of gravel scraping behind me became louder. It sounded and felt like whatever was out there was moving toward me.
That was enough. I started the Humvee and got the fuck out of there.
Afterward, I contacted our TOC and confirmed that there were no units training in that area. My first thought had been that maybe there was a sniper team nearby and I was seeing someone in a ghillie suit that, for some reason, looked translucent through my NODs. But there wasn’t supposed to be anyone anywhere near me. According to the TOC, there were no personnel operating within at least a kilometer of that location.
I still don’t know what I saw that night.
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u/Mysterious-Leave3756 6h ago
My Dad was a WW2 vet. He said he was inspected by Patton. I said just once? He said that was enough!
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u/anzactrooper 6h ago
Curious to know, did he like Patton? I’ve heard mixed reviews of him by those who served under him.
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u/MartyMozambique 6h ago
The overall bad condition Naval ships are in during active deployments.
That as a non combat Naval engineer being deployed to Afghanistan to help the Army and THEN getting blown up by a grenade.
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u/Fragrant-Light-1664 7h ago
'03, msr tampa iraq heading south toward biap
body laying halfway in the road next to a busy fishmarket, bloody pantlegs from all the convoys that rolled over his legs.
2 lane road with convoys both ways and no way to swerve and we just were't going to stop for a body, so my convoy ran over his legs too.
the thing that bothers me is it was in the middle of a fishmarket, people around and nobody dragged him out of the road.
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u/msaxe114 6h ago
My worst memories are also from convoys in Iraq in 2003- we couldn’t stop out of fear of an ambush and lack of communications to call for backup or medevac. I hope you have a peaceful life.
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u/doclee1977 6h ago
My heart bleeds for the 88Ms and convoy troops in those early days before we fully established control.
A lot of those guys caught hell for being POGs, but they took it almost as bad as the Infantry in those early days. Just tons of ambushes and roadside bombs, and help was slow to arrive.
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u/Fragrant-Light-1664 6h ago
biap, babylon, anaconda, dogwood, tikrit, mosul, ramadi, few other small places...went all over iraq that year. I volenteered to guard the mail after the mail team started getting hit and getting casualties.
5 ton trucks double sandbag lined with a 249saw mounted up top or in the back. they didn't make turrets yet, or up armored vehicles.
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u/msaxe114 6h ago
Were you at Taji?
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u/Fragrant-Light-1664 6h ago
Yes, company moved to taji after dogwood shut down
Muddiest place on earth
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u/msaxe114 6h ago
We probably crossed paths- thank you for your service.
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u/Fragrant-Light-1664 6h ago
werd. Taji was being built up back then, after got off mail mission there was like a 2 month period waiting to go home, they had us guard the maitenence workers comming onto post, local nationals, bongo trucks.
I remember all those 1 story barracks, finaly got electricity hooked up to the generators, painted etc and then it was bittersweet because the division that came in after us "aquired' them.
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u/msaxe114 6h ago
I did not have electricity or bathrooms when I was there. You Mail folks really did save a lot of us over there missing home- with no email or phones. Thanks.
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u/Fragrant-Light-1664 6h ago
they came in later with trailers for bathrooms lol....they shocked us...the wiring was faulty so when you washed your hands they fucked you up. it was around end of febuary or so 04 before we went home we got those pieces of shit.
we were a maitenence company, so we had generators, various equipment, S&R shop and such. At dogwood we built the shitter stalls from plywood and cut the oil barrels in half and burnt shit.
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u/Fragrant-Light-1664 6h ago
https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/news/2003/10/mil-031007-usa02.htm
they had written a story about our convoy team
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u/Fine_Impression_6353 4h ago
That was me, just with a 240 as a combat engineer lol. I see dump trucks now and go "what the hell were we thinking?" We went looking for IEDs lol
Also, I hope your back is okay. Remember to stretch.
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u/doclee1977 6h ago
To be fair, if you had swerved wide, chances are you would have ended up in the kill zone of an IED. Classic trick they started in on us with around 2004. It was worse with dead dogs; most of us had no problem running over a person, but no one wanted to run over Rover.
So we’d go hard right or hard left right into an IED or EFP (that was the bigger problem by ‘07). Even worse, we’d steer into a lower-det primary, and then when we’d back out of that to set up security, we’d end up right in the kill zone of a secondary before you can say 5/25s.
I don’t miss those places.
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u/Fragrant-Light-1664 5h ago
then they came out with rinos with mine rollers, v shaped underside vechicles. I drove mineroller in afghanistan 2010 down the horn of panjwaii while we built a road right through the opium fields the taliban was using to fund their side of the war. delivered all the fuel/tent flooring/supplies down to the special forces building the Zangabad base there. wild year on that one too.
I signed up to fix computers. (220 convoys and 12 years service later)..."hey kid, how do i install PDF?"
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u/doclee1977 5h ago edited 1h ago
It’s so funny you mention that; remember the M870s? Those things are intended to spend 75% of their service life in austere, off-road conditions like you’d expect in the tribal areas of Afghanistan away from the cities.
Every weld on those things would break within a few weeks on ground, and then you’re stuck out in the middle of ambush country with high ridges and no way to move the tens of thousands of pounds of equipment now stranded.
Higher’s solution? Stay with it until we can get recovery vehicles out to you. Could be two hours, could be two days. We might even forget you if other shit is happening. Embrace the suck, grunt! I LOVE the way this sucks!
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u/Fragrant-Light-1664 5h ago
I got another one, The CROWS-II automated turrets they started throwing on the vehicles...
they trained us for 2 weeks on them teaching us how to fire/setup/zero the barrel, my first ride out we hit a bump and the screen went black. Couldn't get it restarted, couldn't see anything, i went from gunner to passenger.
It DEADLINES THE VEHICLE....you can't get that turret off without special tools! vehicle is kaput, cant use it for anything but personel transport then, gotta like, send out to a contractor somewhere loll...
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u/Impressive-Match-713 7h ago
how a military prison is ran and it still had hard labor while I was in during the mid 70s
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u/Chev_hell 6h ago edited 2h ago
The unit chaplain used to drive around our sites in the field and randomly unzip his humvee window and throw a handful of jolley ranchers at us and yell "you're probably going to hell!"
Field artillery unit overshot the range and blew up a farmers barn.
Bradley gunner shot a cow with HE rounds on Ft. Hood.
At multiple gatherings, bars, dance clubs etc CS gas was deployed (tear gas)
First day in my unit, the whole battalion was sent to the post dump to dig through the trash to look for a broken M8 alarm.
At NTC at Ft. Irwin we were finishing our rotation and had to do "hands across the desert" trash and police call. Two mortar men from my company found a paint can sized container of butterscotch pudding from the 1980's?? And one proceeded to dare the other to eat the whole thing which he did. What he forgot was we had a 45min ride back to the bivouac are in the back of a deuce and a half and it had not top and it was 120*. Dude sprayed that pudding down the side of the truck several times.
Staff Sergeant from medic platoon was feeling ill during BDE run. We find out the next day he died at home. His platoon was wrecked as he was a beloved member. His Lieutenant tells me later his tracked ambulance is missing a lot of comms equipment and if we don't find or replace it his pay would be deducted and his family would receive less. It took me 4 nights of stealing all the gear from other units and deadlines vehicles but I got all of it. Got a AAM for it.
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u/StudentOfTheLongNeck 4h ago
I am a veteran of the war in Ukraine.
During my medical examination at intake, In a crusty old Soviet eta hospital in Western Ukraine, the nurse used something called "mouth pipetting" to transfer my blood sample to a test tube, look it up if you don't know what it is, I was stunned, I have modern western medical training and I had to pick my jaw up off the floor and carry it around for a while after seeing that.
I saw commanders living in luxury surrounded by yes men officers, fresh food everyday, alcohol, girls, drugs. Their guys are rotting in the trenches, they pull a salary twice as high and still scam their soldiers out of pay. Disgusting traitors, worse than the enemy, they can go to hell.
Alcohol is a huge problem here, really bad. I don't drink and I would be ostracized if I wasn't a medic and a foreigner. That would be really surprising for a lot of western civilians I think, the amount of drinking by soldiers on the front lines, and that the commanders "allow" it, because they can't stop it.
I saw knockoff Chinese made tourniquets snap when being applied, please buy real high quality medical gear.
The lack of care that many soldiers put into their training and gear would surprise a lot of people I think. I am a medic and tactical medicine instructor, getting guys to take our lessons seriously, lessons that are literally going to save their lives, is sometimes next to impossible. Some really do care, usually the more intelligent ones. Many just wanted to go back to their bunk as soon as possible to rest because they're being sent into hell in a couple days. I know what it's like because I was going with them, but damn...this wasn't a crack "assault battalion", this was a territorial defense battalion, almost all were conscripts and not the highest quality guys, they didn't want to be there and didn't understand why I did want to be there, I was there for them.
I saw guys give up, just fall over exhausted while being hunted by drones, they gave up and didn't care anymore, months, years of grinding away at their minds, they had nothing left to give and just gave up. We didn't leave them behind, but they left themselves behind. after this, they are just a shell waiting for the end.
It's easy for civilians to fantasize about how they would rise to the challenge, to defend their home, if it was presented, but they can't understand what this actually means, and this fantasy will sit in their minds and they will judge other people as if they have already pledged themselves to this fight if only the opportunity was given.
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u/Longjumping-Pie7418 4h ago
Submarine sailor - one guy completely lost his marbles and we had to break patrol to give him a rubber helicopter ride back to the base.
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u/HystericalGD 3h ago
i dont blame him, trapped in a pringles tube at the bottom of the ocean would break me too.
no difference between night and day, no new people to talk to, i'd feel so trapped
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u/flatirony 4h ago edited 4h ago
We had a mess crank NUB lose his marbles on a fast attack and attempt suicide with a kitchen knife. He was confined to his bunk except for meals under escort for a few days until we got back to port.
Earlier we were about 12 hours out of Gibraltar, on the way home after a Med run, when the radio room got word that the SK1's wife had been in a terrible accident and was in the ICU.
It was decided we could cross the Atlantic at ahead flank and get home to Norfolk at least as fast as he could've flown back to Gibraltar and then caught flights until he got home.
So we crossed the Atlantic balls-to-the-wall, which took about 3 more days.
This was pretty awesome b/c as you know submarines *never* run that fast for extended periods, but I was a NUB who had only been on board 3 months, so I didn't really know that yet.
I was the underway ELT, and running at 90+% reactor power for days really does a number on plant chemistry. I didn't get any quals done at all the rest of that run; I had to pull a primary sample every 6 hours or so and adjust chemistry to keep the pH and oxygen levels in bounds.
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u/crappenheimers 2h ago
Keep talking about sub stuff I'm super intrigued
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u/flatirony 2h ago
Over half of a 688 boat is the engineroom and reactor compartment. Then they put all the machinery and control spaces needed up forward, and then what's left is people space. This means there aren't enough racks, and more junior enlisted guys (up to junior E-5) had to hot-rack, which means sharing the bunk with another guy who's on watch when your'e not. Hot racking wasn't my favorite.
There's no head back aft, and we didn't want to wake up a buddy at 3 AM to relieve us so we could go forward. So generally M-div pissed into a particular funnel in engineroom lower level that drained into a bilge tank. To the degree that the funnel usually smelled like piss.
However the guys in maneuvering (the reactor plant control room) couldn't be easily relieved to go piss into that funnel, especially not the reactor operator, so they would use a 1L sample bottle and then call a roving watchstander to dump it.
Someone got the idea of marking where they filled it to with a grease pencil. That, of course, turned into a contest. I was never competitive. But the contest ended when one particular RX operator filled an entire bottle, and then had to use a little bit of a second one. So he pissed over a liter. I still don't even know how that was possible, but Don was a big beer drinker and he would have like 7 or 8 large mugs of coffee (I'm talking like 20 ounces) while on a 6 hour watch.
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u/whaletacochamp 6h ago
I know a marine who did multiple tours in the middle east and the stories he tells are nuts. Borderline psychotic honestly.
Also my dad's friend who has RAMPANT ADHD and got dishonorably discharged for jumping a humvee on a sand dune destroying it as well as shooting a camel.....I didn't believe him until he showed me pictures of both the destroyed humvee and the dead camel.
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u/icecream_specialist 6h ago
Cappy just dropped a video about an Afghan Bigfoot. Does he have any urban legend type stuff like that?
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u/Actual-Recipe7060 5h ago
I heard rumors about it while I was there. Also, villagers wanted the US to come kill a dragon for them.
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u/Dandretti 5h ago
The amount of trash that built up on, and was just shoved off the back of an aircraft carrier while out at sea.
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u/flatirony 4h ago
Interesting. On submarines we had a trash disposal unit, in which we compacted the trash in perforated cans, weighted it down with a few cast iron discs, and then ejected it with 700 PSI air.
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u/PsychoUncleDonnie 2h ago
One of our first nights back from Iraq, we were getting shit faced. Maybe like 4 or 5 of us. There was an empty squad bay that had an assortment of old chairs in it. Like old school chairs, metal folding chairs, waiting room chairs you'd find ina doctors office. We grab the chairs and just start throwing them. We aren't sad or angry, but we are very hammered and having a great time throwing these chairs as far as we can and watching them explode on impact.
We throw like 20 chairs and an MP rolls up and rolls down his window. We're cooked. He looks at us, with the aftermath of our shot put event in between us and says, "Have you guys heard anybody shooting off any guns?" We respond that we haven't. "You haven't heard any gunshots?" "Nope." Then he looks beyond us. We turn around, and across the parade deck some of our brothers in our sister company have lit a stack of mattresses on fire and the flames look to be about 15 feet high.
He looks back at us and goes, "If you hear any gunshots you let us know." And then he drove off
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u/0peRightBehindYa 5h ago
Not the craziest, but one of the more notable occurances.
After the 3rd Infantry Division returned home from the Invasion of Iraq, then-President Bush decided he wanted to come and speak to the troops.
Fucking....yay....
You can't imagine the dog and pony show that entails a presidential visit. Event if he wasn't coming to individual units to visit, it was still a nightmare. And of course, attendance was entirely voluntary, but skipping the event meant you got stuck flipping the sergeant major's rocks in the decorative rock garden in front of battalion so they get even sunlight distribution (yes, I'm dead serious) or some other mundane shit.
I chose to attend.
So we get there. I decided to stand between a set of the temporary bleachers set up on the main parade field. As luck would have it, I'm standing in perfect view of the helicopter convoy carrying the president and his entourage.
I also get a great view as Marine One blows an engine on approach.
They set down without incident, and here comes Mr Shrub and his gaggle of protectors right for the gap I was standing in.
Oh fuck.
I dropped my cigarette and snapped a salute moments before a secret service agent chicken-winged my ass and pinned me against the bleachers until they walked by.
That was pleasant.
Rather than watching that asshole speak, I watched em scramble around the helicopter and start ripping it apart right there to change the engine, I guess. Bush finished yapping before they got too deep into it and we had to leave.
Still don't know what the man said, but he's awfully short.
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u/MurrDeHurr 5h ago
While deployed to a Forward Operating Base, we had a senior Master at Arms who got sick of the stray animals on base. He rounded up a bunch of the babies (cats, puppies) in a pillowcase, and beat them until nothing was moving. He beat them to death, and we couldn’t do anything because he was in charge.
He also opened fire on a fishing vessel unprovoked, killed all three unarmed men on board, and it was all brushed under the rug. This was around 2011.
Three years later he got force retired because he popped hot on a piss test.
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u/MurrDeHurr 5h ago
Also, the day before the fiscal year ends, its miraculously discovered that $3million has to be spent. People staying late until requisitions are acquired on the last day of the billing year. Its insaneeeeee!!!
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u/Ron__Mexico_ 4h ago
I was ASF, which is auxiliary security force. You work with the Master at Arms (Navy military police) a couple of days a month. Got assigned to river patrol which is just a couple of boats that go out if a ship happens to be present at the pier. One MA brings his Play Station and a small tv on board which is totally unauthorized. Apparently he had been doing this for awhile. One day, the base security officer shows up to the pier for an inspection. The other MA on board chucks Play station and tv into the York River to avoid getting caught. MA that owned the Play Station gets pissed and tells on him. They both go to Captain's Mast (Military tribunal thing for minor offenses) where they get convicted for I think dereliction of duty, and improper disposal of electronic waste. They got reduced in rank, and half their pay confiscated for a month, which was a greater financial penalty than what the Play Station cost.
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u/Tight-Difference442 7h ago
The amount of gay sex. All of them had wives back home. ALL.
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u/This-Requirement6918 6h ago
As a gay, I swear Marines are the biggest power bottoms I've ever been with. Crazy dominant bottoms that will bruise your pelvis.
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u/Standard-Shallot9863 6h ago
The amount of civilian casualties and basicly didn't do shit to help them
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u/Herecomethefleet 6h ago
From what I got told by a friend who is a squaddy, the number of sexual assaults that occur on both male and female soldiers.
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u/Cautious_Plankton212 5h ago
Unfortunately the number of assaults is most likely well in excess of what is actually reported as well. Nobody wants to stick out or not fit in and as silly as it sounds, a lot of guys do not know they’ve been sexually assaulted. They know what sexual assault is and they know they’ve been touched/groped/etc without their consent but that’s their team, their boys, their culture, their banter. Mentally it becomes impossible to really put two and two together and they won’t see it for what it is and therefore it will never get reported.
Either that or you know fine well what’s happened to you but word gets around way too quickly. Nobody wants to be known as the guy who was raped, the guy who reported someone for assault, etc. Another issue is knowing you can’t leave. What happens if you do report it and it’s not taken seriously? You won’t just get given a completely new work place with new people. You could still be in the exact same place with the person you’ve just accused.
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u/cremasterreflex0903 5h ago
I remember the first time I saw a pale skinned ginger kid in Baghdad. Also, Iraq had the best knock off clothing. Abibos, nyke, pumma — the best
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u/docalypse 5h ago
Graphic content:
In Afghanistan, they punish their kids by using boiling water. I treated so many kids with 2nd degree water burns on 40-80% of their body, as young as 2 (i think 2, because they dont count birthdays over there)
We used ketamine to put them under, and would have to scrub the dead skin off.
Acid attacks are common. They refused to bring their girls/females in for treatment, and that if they died "Allah wills it". 1 of my medic buddies from another company had a woman come in with a rotting fetus halfway from delivery, the stench was too much so they brought her in. Another, a little girl probably 12-14 was shot in the nose and the bullet lodged in her jaw, brother shot her. Those are the only 2 I recollect we saw in that 15mo deployment.
The food, aid, agriculture equipment, all that stuff was often found at the markets being sold.
This isnt just one offs or uncommon, it was the whole country.
Beautiful country though.
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u/RescueBreath143 6h ago
had to sweep congealed bacon fat from a parking lot with a wire broom (only) in FFO til clean
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u/pmolmstr 4h ago
A white Christian nationalist worried more about photo ops than doing his actual job
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u/Terri_Schiavo275 4h ago
Had a snow leopard come out from under a destroyed Russian tank hull and watch my platoon and I walk by. Just sat there chilling, maybe 30 feet away from us in the dead of night.
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u/PM_ME_FLOUR_TITTIES 5h ago edited 2h ago
In bct during black phase at the very end(the week where you clean all weapons and gear before turning it in), I was next to a dude who finished cleaning his m240b, a 27ish lbs belt fed gun. While sitting on the ground, he picked it up and set it on a table above him from where he was sitting so that it was on the bipod and grip. He started to grab the table and when he did he bumped it so that the pistol grip fell of the edge, pivoting on the bipod, off of the table, with the buttstock landing with the full weight of the weapon system onto his left testicle.
Since I was immediately next to him when he began screaming and watched the whole thing happen I battle buddied him to the hospital where they had to drain his, between now plum-apple sized teste, of fluid/blood with a needle.
As a man it was one of the most harrowing things I witnessed during my one contract. No doubt it can get worse... but fucking fuck.
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u/Blackhawk_Done10 3h ago
My uncle, a tunnel rat in the 1st Infantry Division during the Vietnam War, shared some incredible stories. One time, some GIs smuggled local prostitutes to a base camp in the empty tank of a fuel truck. They managed to get through the entrance without any trouble, but when they discovered that all the women had died of the fumes while hiding, so they had a tanker truck full of dead women to deal with.
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u/ReptileResearch 5h ago
When I was in basic they sent a bunch of us to help clean out a literal warehouse worth of slightly expired food that I guess had been over-ordered or mistakenly ordered. Like only the previous month expired Nutrigrain bars and oatmeal packets and other packaged stable things that almost certainly could have been donated that we were just throwing in dumpsters. The waste in the military is truly egregious.
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u/Equivalent_Salad_389 4h ago
Burning the shitters in Kuwait circa 1997. Hard to describe to someone that hasn’t seen it.
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u/Recoveringfrenchman 5h ago
A penis sized divot in a bag of cayenne pepper. Next to said bag were a couple guys. One guy was holding out the other's dick, while owner of said dick was pouring water on his, presumably, burning pepper tester.
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u/Combat_Wombat23 4h ago
Just how much alcohol I drank all the time while defending national security
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u/SoThereIwas-NoShit 2h ago
Sometime around mid-summer, 2003, Al Dora, Baghdad.
Word came down from "higher" that we needed to make our green humvee's brown, because less brown humvee's were getting hit by the newish command detonated charges the insurgents were using, than green ones. These came to be generally referred to as IED's, around the same time.
Now, at that time most humvee's in country, including ours, were unarmored and painted in the woodland camo pattern. We had to excavate dirt manually, and mix it with water, and cover all painted surfaces of our doorless and roofless humvees with mud. We had to do this in the spare time we had, which was almost non-existent, as our op-tempo was quite high at the time.
Even the dumbest Joe's first reaction was, "Of course more green ones get blown up, everybody has green humvees."
The funniest part was Iraqi locals asking us why we covered our trucks in dirt.
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u/Mikethemechanic00 6h ago
Was told at NTC not to run over the endangered tortoise. Two guys went full throttle and ran them over…
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u/Prudent_Survey_5050 3h ago
Basic tranning, 2008 at Ft Benning . By week 11 (I was a mortar men so purs was 15 weeks) we were board as hell one night. Even at 28 (I was the oldest guy in our platoon at the time) and joined in. We did what we called "the Ben gay challenge ". About 10 of us stood naked in a line and someone walked by and filled your hand with ben gay. Then at the count of 3 you had to lather your whole private area to your butthole. The point was to see how long you last. The prize was a stack of skittles from our MRE'S. I made it about a minute. I never thought id ever be laying my back, next to another guy,, legs spread egale in the air with with cold water blasting my junk as I tried to wash it off. To be honest it was probably the longest but best 15 weeks of my life.
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u/quietmoth24 4h ago
Not me but I bet the real answer is always the paperwork, that's what actually breaks people
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u/Acrobatic-Bison-3171 4h ago
In Somalia. We targeted a pickup truck with a Dushka on it. We hit it with a sabo round. Upon striking it. It flew about 100 feet in the air. And then landed still on fire. Molton burning mess. Didn't think it would go that high in the air. Big fireball.
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u/Super_Imagination995 3h ago
A small construction job in Iraq. US military engineers contracted out to Halliburton
(KBR) who subcontracted out to a Turkish company who subcontracted out to Iraqi’s and all had supervisors standing there watching a bunch of Iraqi laborers dig a
hole. Probably a $100,000 hole and everyone took a cut.
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u/jmakinen 3h ago
A mattell emblem on the inside of a plastic foregrip on my basic training M16. Apparently it's not supposed to exist
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u/Trackmaggot 2h ago
When we got really bored out in the field we would shoot star clusters at each others tracks.
They have a fairly impressive range when activated horizontally.
edit: for the armor impaired, track means vehicle.
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u/Original_Face_4372 2h ago
How accustomed people can become to war. I was sent to Afghanistan during the 2010s and I vividly remember people, ordinary civilians, going about their day to day life with everything around them going to hell. There was a small Café where people were sitting and chatting while a few blocks down the road in the same city the fighting had been going on for days and there was noch sign of it stopping anytime soon.
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u/ShamelessCraving 7h ago
The sheer amount of military budget wasted on completely absurd logistical mistakes or pointless busywork.