The military is supposed to turn children into adults...but that doesn't always seem to be the case. Whether it's an entitled military wife or "that" guy in basic training, these service people just don't get common decency, let alone common sense. Read on for Reddit's most ridiculous military jerks.
1. Crazy For Love
I worked as an employee with the Marines. Got a call that the spouse of one of the officers was in the hospital. The details sounded horrific.
Her place on base housing had gotten broken into, the nine-month pregnant spouse was beaten and taken by ambulance to the hospital. The assault caused a miscarriage. I was devastated and went to the hospital with several officers in the Marine’s chain of command. But I had no idea what I was in for.
One of the nurses tending to her looked me in the eye and said, “I am very interested in how this is going to play out”. I was so confused. The nine-month pregnant assault victim was given an ultrasound and blood work performed upon being admitted to the hospital. That’s when the truth came out.
She hadn’t been pregnant. She wasn’t assaulted. Her “due date” was the next day and she’s been faking the pregnancy the whole time. She beat herself up and made up the story resulting in miscarriage as a way to cover up the nine months of lying to her husband about being pregnant.
I’ve never seen this level of crazy until three months later when said Marine reunited with the crazy girl even after all that.
2. GI Jane
This one's a little bit different. I was in a Co-Ed basic training at Fort Jackson back in the day. There was this one girl, I'll call her Jane, who was extremely smart but was super tiny and weak compared to her counterparts.
She would struggle on runs, push-ups, sit-ups, and ruck marches looked terribly painful for her. She would barely squeak by anything involving physical training. We would overhear the women talking down to her saying things like "you're making us all look weak". I mean she was really trying but her physical stature just made everything super difficult. She was improving over time physically but I remember her for her commitment and heart.
Towards the middle of training we had to hit the bayonet course. It's basically a series of obstacles on a path in the woods with dummies you stab with your bayonet. Everyone got a walk through and went back to the beginning. Each soldier was to go down the course by themselves and there was like a 10-15 second gap between when the next soldier would go.
Jane was behind me a ways, so when I finished she was out on the course. She came running down the course and finished which was good for her. Jane walked over to a Drill Sergeant who was talking to our First Sergeant and interrupted them. This is one of the biggest no-nos you can ever do in basic.
The Drill Sergeant whipped around and screamed "This better be really important Private"! Jane’s answer was not what he expected. Out of breath, Jane said, "My bayonet is in my arm, Drill Sergeant". Sure enough, this big old bayonet is impaled to the hilt through the middle of her forearm. The DS was like "What”? and asked how this happened.
Apparently, she fell over the second obstacle and pierced herself right through the arm. She detached the bayonet from the rifle and completed the course with a bayonet stuck in her arm. Completed the course. I like to think that I was reasonably tough back then, but I would have probably been screaming and completing the course would have been the last thing on my mind.
She came back that day all bandaged up with no lasting damage. She graduated with us on time.
3. Mine, All Mine
I'm not a service member but my brother was. He passed in 2011. At the funeral, it turned into an utter disaster. His wife screamed at my mother and told us all to sit in the back because she was more important. For eight years now she has run around various news outlets and government agencies demanding more free gold star wife stuff.
To date, she has been given two houses, six figures worth of stipends, and multiple televised recognitions. She knew my brother for a total of two years but they were barely together from the first date to his passing. She acts like his family doesn't exist and she squashes any attempt by the rest of us to receive any sort of recognition.
She has alienated all of the other gold star wives in her support circle and constantly belittles other fallen servicepeople. The last thing he said about her, about two weeks before he passed, was that when he returns to the states he's fixing his mistake and divorcing her for being "a real piece of trash”.
4. Dependapotamus To The Rescue
I've been living in Japan for a little over two years with my husband. He was born here and we decided to move to his hometown. It's a small city, but there's enough to do without getting bored. I'd describe us as an AMWF couple (Asian man, white female for those who don't know). It's not so common in Western countries, and it can feel like we are some rare shiny Pokémon as AMWF in rural Japan.
Lots of staring, an occasional secret picture, or even small chats if an old lady is brave enough to approach us. It can feel uncomfortable eating at a restaurant because kids will turn around in their seats and stare at us the whole time with an open fish mouth. Coincidentally, there's a small US base located in this city. The closer you are downtown, the more American families you see.
I'm constantly mistaken for being in the armed forces by Americans and Japanese, which is understandable. Besides myself, I only know five other mixed marriages here. It's always locals who ask about my “American husband” when I'm out alone, which I respond in Japanese "Watashi no otto wa nihonjin desu. Koko ni sunde imasu" (My husband is Japanese and I live here) or something along those lines.
Americans never ask about my marriage as they assume my spouse is American. When we are together in public, we do abnormal couples behavior such as holding hands—honestly, this is abnormal, I’m not being sarcastic. Couples here rarely hold hands in public, let alone say “I love you”. We don't go downtown too often since it's all pay to park and it's a nightmare to find a place.
Anyway, it was a beautiful warm day for the first time in months, and we decided to battle for a spot and walk around the shops. The crowd was heavy since the weather was great and winter was ending. The season for new American families to move here just finished, so I'm sure this was many people's first time leisurely walking and shopping outside.
We find a parking spot and made our way to the outside shops. Of course, we are holding hands and casually talking and laughing. Then it begins. "WOW”. I hear this from an American woman about 10 feet behind us. You should know that a Japanese stereotype against Americans is that we are rude and obnoxiously loud.
And this “wow” was loud enough for me to turn my head around at the noise. She was with two other moms who had like, three kids each. They were staring at me, but perhaps we just accidentally had eye contact at the right time. "Seriously, another little homewrecker is doing this in PUBLIC?" Chill woman, you're so loud even I can hear you.
We find a table nearby at the Starbucks outside. We are enjoying our drinks when the same group of women approached us with their strollers in tow. They definitely had some sort of purpose with something to say to us. But the words out of her mouth shocked me. Let's call her Onna (woman in Japanese).
Onna: "Excuse me, but you need to keep whatever you're doing in your messed-up home. Doing that in public in front of families to see is disgusting and immoral. My kids don't need to see such a bad display of marriage”. I'm SO confused, as was my husband who can speak English. Who knew drinking coffee outside was against humanity and marriage? Then it became all too clear.
Me: "I'm sorry? What...did we do?" Onna: "You know exactly what you're doing”. *She points to my wedding ring* Me: "No, I don't...”. Onna: "Good lord, does your husband know about this? Is he on a ship right now? That's soooo like a dependapotamus!" Her friends laugh. In case you don't know the lingo, a dependapotamus is slang for a base wife who stays at home all day, doesn't clean, uses their spouse as an ATM, and looks like Jabba the Hut. At that moment, it dawns on me.
She thinks I'm a base spouse and I'm cheating on my American husband! I started laughing because she's suggesting I'm cheating on my husband…with my husband! Me: "This IS my spouse. I'm actually not part of the Armed Forces and have a Japanese visa”. Onna looks at my significant other up and down. The two women behind her apologize, but the Onna didn't believe it.
Onna: "No one would voluntarily WANT to live in this little town. Nice lie, but you're not representing our community. You make all of us wives look bad! Who is your husband and what's his rank? Also, I need to know your dependent ID. MY husband is a high rank so he'll make sure your husband is aware of your infidelity”. She pulls out her phone to probably type my response.
I'm offended since this is actually a nice place to live and very open to foreigners. Me: "Look, my husband's name is Rei (not his real name; I don't want to reveal personal info) and he's sitting right here. I'm not going to show you my ID since I don't have one, and you're not the authorities. As proof, you can obviously see our wedding bands match, and here's a picture”.
I show her my phone screen, which is of us in traditional Japanese clothes on our wedding day. Her eyes became huge at the picture. Her two friends and their spawn have already started walking away. Then it ratcheted up. Onna: "Why are you in a relationship with HIM? You should be in a normal relationship and start having a family with American kids”.
She says some other statements which I'd consider against the Asian race. It's so ironic because we are in JAPAN, and she's fussing about me being married to a Japanese man. My husband has been quiet throughout the whole exchange and says to me we should go. I agree and stood up.
Me: "STOP. The things you are saying are extremely offensive. I was part of the base community myself some years ago and what you're doing is against spousal conduct”. She smirked. "Go ahead and tell people what I did, then. My high-ranking husband is an E-7, and everything will be swept under the rug no matter what happens. You can't touch me”. So that's what I did.
Note, this is a small community. Someone does something minor and it's talked about between wives like chickens. So later that day, I run into my friend who works on the base and she's well known in the community for being one of the main event coordinators. I don't miss this chance to comply with Onna's demand and explain to my friend about the exchange and how it made my husband extremely uncomfortable with her remarks.
She asked me if this person looked like so and so, to which I said yes. My friend rolls her eyes. Friend: "She just arrived a couple of months ago and is already causing problems with rumors and drama. I'll make sure what she said is passed on”. It's been half a year later and I didn't hear anything about Onna again since I distanced myself from making base friends here.
I've only been in my new city for a little over two years and experienced more drama from those families than I have my whole high school career. That is, until now. Last week, I ran into my friend, who's getting ready to leave back to the United States.
We had a little discussion about her moving and my family planning, and then she dropped a bombshell. Friend: "Do you remember Onna, who accused you of cheating on your non-existent base spouse and called your husband an awful name?" Me: "Of course! I haven't heard anything from her since”.
Friend: "Well, I mentioned we were already having problems with her not long after she got here. I told my boss that there's a person who was bothering and threatening civilians and asking for IDs, which isn't allowed for someone with her status”.
“My boss was extremely interested after I mentioned her name because Onna was scheduled for an interview in my department! I suggested we look at her social media accounts from her past behavior, because we don't tolerate that stuff. It was easy to find her Twitter and Facebook, particularly Facebook since we have many mutual friends. It was SHOCKING”.
“While she set her Facebook to private, her Twitter was littered with malicious tweets and retweets. She made it very clear that she 'wants to see her current city burn to the ground' and 'why would anyone want to learn Japanese since it sounds terrible'. We printed some of the more extreme things she posted and we still invited her to the interview”.
"Oh, and did I mention my boss is JAPANESE?!! So she comes into the interview, which I was part of. I asked three good things about her, to which she says 'dependent, gets things done, and friendly'. My boss just looked at her for a second before he pulled out her Tweets and asked her to explain how she can actually serve the local community if she hates it so much”.
“Onna was FLOORED and said someone hacked into her account, despite there being at least three years of slanderous tweets. We thanked her for coming and said we can't accept an employee with this conduct. As far as I know, she's still not working because some spouses found her Twitter not long after the interview and it was shared in all departments. No one will touch her application now”.
Me: "So all of this was discovered because I told you about her accusations?" Friend: "Yes! Oh, and she's kind of an outcast socially right now because she cheated on her husband a couple of months ago”. There you have it folks. Because one person couldn't mind their own business, they lost a potential job and had their social media exposed. Super ironic since she became the dependapotamus and adulterer—the same thing she was accusing ME of.
5. Use Your Noodle
A fireman I knew named Akas was making noodles on deployment. He asked where to get the hot water and someone pointed him at the coffee maker, which had one of those red spigots on the side. I couldn't believe what he did next. Instead of using the hot tap, Akas opened his noodles and dumped them into the coffee maker, where the grounds go, and replaced the coffee urn with his empty noodle bowl.
The coffee tasted like noodles for the rest of deployment. People would typically stop him from doing stuff like this, but we were like six months into deployment at this point and he was our only source of entertainment. In fact, I have about a dozen Akas stories. He is literally the dumbest person I've ever met and I spent a lot of time wondering how he was still alive.
Once, I had to physically restrain Akas from dumping an entire bottle of hand soap (the small pump bottle you find next to sinks) into a washing machine because, and I quote, "it's all soap bro it doesn't matter”! This was after I told him he couldn't use my detergent, and after I later caught him trying to pilfer some of my detergent.
Akas worked in front of the boiler and, as a result, was often dirty. After doing a random bunk inspection, our superior found Akas's white pillowcase to be jet black on the underside. When asked if he was showering, Akas’ reply was truly deranged. He replied in front of God and everyone else: "Yes, I wash my hands every night before I go to bed”.
You could hear a pin drop because there were like ten of us in the room who were all acting like we weren't listening. It turns out he hadn't showered in weeks and thought washing his hands was enough to clean himself after working in front of a boiler all day. After waking up, he would just flip his pillow over to the white side for inspection.
He wasn't lazy. He literally thought washing your hands was synonymous with showering. We also all learned a few simple magic tricks because Akas had the object permanence of a three-week-old kitten. My favorite was when my friend unwrapped a candy bar and then arranged the empty wrapper like the bar was still inside. He showed the (obviously empty) candy bar wrapper to Akas and told him it was a brand new bar.
Then my friend put the bar in his pocket and slapped it flat before taking out the empty, flattened wrapper and telling Akas he pushed the bar through his stomach wall to eat it. Let's just say it wasn't hard to amaze this kid. That wasn’t the only “magic” trick either. This next one was a bit more coordinated.
We had a camera that was pointed at a certain place in the engine room for monitoring. The camera fed to a screen in the office where we all spent a lot of time. One guy told Akas to pick a card (jack of spades) before shuffling the deck. In the process he (very obviously) handed the jack to another guy, who walked down and put it in front of the camera.
The first guy (the “magician”) did the whole “Is this your card, is this your card” thing before getting “frustrated” and throwing the deck at the monitor. Then a third guy acted bewildered and pointed to the screen where the card was sitting on the engine we were monitoring. Akas LOST IT. He literally had a meltdown and started yelling gibberish and refused to talk to “the magician” for weeks after.
6. Be A Jerk For No Reason, Great Idea
I was on guard duty. An old Jeep Cherokee with an officer’s decal comes through. I come to attention and render the proper salute. This woman returns a two-handed salute, basically mocking me, my service, my country, and my etiquette. I figure that she’s an idiot, doesn’t know any better, etc.
A couple of days later, the same car with the wife and the active-duty husband comes through. I salute—and the reply made my blood boil. He too does the two-handed salute in return. Alright, whatever, be a jerk. A few hours later, as a chow relief, I’m on the gate when the same car comes through again. I just wave it through without saluting.
The car comes to a halt and the window rolls down. The officer asks why I didn’t render proper honors to a superior officer. I told him that I did not appreciate having my salutes getting mocked by him and his wife. I volunteered that I would be more than willing to go on report and submit my statement to his commanding officer as well as the base commander.
Then I saluted the blue decal and told them to move along, they were holding up traffic. From then on, whenever either of them came through the gate, I made it a point to slightly bend at the waist to salute the decal on the bumper. Just my little way to remind them that they were being jerks to someone who was just doing their job.
7. Here Today, Gone Tomorrow
When I was in the army, my wife and I were good friends with a newlywed couple that lived a few doors down from us on base. One day, I got home from work to find the guy sitting on his front door step. I said, "Hey!" He said, "Dude, you gotta come see this." So I walked into his house, and it was completely empty. There was not even a single scrap of paper or a bag of trash.
To make things even weirder, every single cabinet door was open, as was every refrigerator door and every drawer. If it was supposed to be closed, it was open. He said that the front door was wide open when he got home, and every faucet was turned on, too. There was no note or anything whatsoever. His wife was just gone without a trace, and everything in their house was gone with her.
Strangely enough, my wife and I had just dinner with them, at their house, the very night before. We were all laughing it up, drinking wine, and having a great time, with not even the remotest sign of anything being wrong. He said that the first thing he did after making this discovery was to call her parents’ house.
As soon as the phone rang, her father answered the phone and—before the poor guy could even ask if he knew anything about what was going on—he just said: "Bill, you need to let it go," and hung up on him. Remember that line from True Lies when Tom Arnold says that his ex-wife even took the ice cube trays? Well, this girl really did take the ice cube trays.
She also took all of his uniforms and other clothes. He literally only had the clothes on his back and whatever was in his pockets at the time to his name. I never did find out what the motivator was; she was just gone forever.
8. Don’t Bare Your Sole
I’ve met officers not lacking in basic competencies, just common sense. We had a water leak at the Naval Medical Center and the department head...kicked off her shoes so they wouldn’t get wet. There was a huge problem with his. Part of the ceiling in the space had collapsed and the computer tower was sitting on the floor in the puddle along with her feet. It and the outlet were throwing sparks and you could see the blue light of arcing electricity inside the tower.
She didn't stop working until a superior got there to point it out. You could FEEL the electricity in that room.
9. Playing The Long Game
My Sergeant’s wife still needed to become a legal citizen. When we deployed, she got detained selling drinks to an underage/undercover officer. So while we're deployed, my Sergeant and most of my command are spending extra time and effort trying to fight the court system in the US and keep them from deporting her back to Mexico, due to her now being charged plus also overstaying her work visa.
So my command and the Sergeant fight and eventually win. The wife gets to stay in the country and gets to become a citizen. Fast forward two months and it turns out his wife's brother is not actually her brother but her boyfriend and my Sergeant’s daughter has been calling her own father "uncle" for a few years.
The wife's family apparently knew that the daughter belonged to the boyfriend who was also in the country illegally and just never said anything so that the daughter would be claimed by my Sergeant and be considered a US citizen and it would help the wife get citizenship. Now this woman, her boyfriend, and her entire family were in on a plan to help the wife get citizenship through an active duty Marine.
I'm not saying I think they planned the conception or anything, but an opportunity arose and they took it. In my book, they are all human scum and I hope the daughter never learns about any of this. My Sergeant eventually, and still is, in deep denial about the daughter now being his and believes his wife simply cheated on him.
He forgave her and they are still married eight years later.
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10. Cogito Ergo Sum
We had a guy we called "Domestic Pepsi” thanks to his surname. He was dumber than a bag of hammers. One day, we had a big inspection. Company commander inspecting. The commander eventually made his way to Domestic Pepsi and started asking questions about general Marine Corps knowledge.
"This recruit does not know, sir”! "This recruit does not know, sir”! "Sir, this recruit doesn't know”! Finally, our commander asked him, "Son, you don't even know if you're alive, do you”? There was THE LONGEST PAUSE following the question, then a small, quiet, and incredibly confused voice replied, "Sir, this recruit does know that he's alive, sir”.
It's like he actually had to think about it. In his small and intimidated head, he was probably going through all seven of the facts he knew and seriously asked himself, "Am I alive”? The whole squad bay of hardened, nearly graduated Marine recruits AND our drill instructors, all burst into laughter. How he actually graduated, I have no idea.
11. You Get What You Give
This guy’s wife left him and moved in with her boyfriend off base while he was deployed. She got knocked up. Since they were still married, she was still going to the base for medical care. Their divorce wasn't final by her due date, so she still got to go on base and deliver. But the guy got his revenge in the end.
Her soon-to-be ex-husband had his buddies in security forces put a security flag on his soon-to-be ex-wife's boyfriend. The boyfriend couldn't be on base for the birth of his child.
12. I’ve Got A New Family Now
This guy came back from a 15-month tour in Iraq. His platoon sergeant went home to find another man living in his house, with his wife and kids. His kids (toddlers) were calling the guy daddy. When he walked in, his wife just bluntly annihilated him.
She basically said, "Yeah. I want a divorce. I'm with him now". The worst part was the platoon sergeant and new daddy kind of worked together, but he was one of the few who stayed behind for clerical stuff while the rest deployed. The husband initially threatened to take the kids and kick the wife out onto the street, which he definitely had grounds to do.
13. Whine And Dine
I worked in Postal in Italy. There are so many wives that come in screaming that their husband is a Captain/General, whatever, so you totally need to let her mail wine to her friends in the states. Sure, lady. I'll totally break federal law because you are married to one of two dozen Captains sitting in this base.
They scream louder when I explained that it was against the law. This happened at least twice a week. Couldn't get out of Italy fast enough.
14. Top Notch Security Measures
One evening, while I was on staff duty, my (then wife) decided that I was cheating on her and not, in fact, at work. I was totally at work, nor had I ever cheated on her. So she texts me and says, “I’m going to go to the barracks to sleep with the first soldier I see”. I was so checked out of the relationship at this point that I was just waiting to get out to leave her.
I didn’t bother responding. It backfired on her in the best way possible. She showed up at the barracks and got turned away because she used her dependent ID to try to check into the barracks but couldn’t tell them who she was there to visit.
15. Not A Good Enough Reason
I once pulled over the same lady on three separate occasions for speeding in a school zone. I was trying to be nice the first two times and let her off the hook, but she started bawling the third time and I lost my patience. She kept sobbing, saying her husband was deployed. I let her keep doing this for a couple of minutes while I was writing everything she said in my notes.
It felt like a Hot Fuzz moment. I finally asked how her husband being deployed was relevant to her speeding in a school zone and then she just stared at me. Like she couldn't believe I would question it. She got quiet afterward and I handed her the ticket and walked away without saying anything else.
16. Mismatched From The Start
This guy I knew, I’ll call him Niles. He was one of our junior Marines and was worthless from day one. The dude smoked a pack a day and never passed an annual fitness test as far as I know. Physically and mentally weak, lived in off-base housing with his wife. The story we got was that his lady was literally puking in the toilet he proposed to her in between volleys and she said yes.
They went through with it. This dude would have some of the platoon over to his apartment on the weekends to do some drinking and hanging out. I never went, mostly because I was very hard on him during the workday being as how I was this chucklehead’s team leader.
I heard from multiple sources that every party went pretty much the same way. They would all start drinking, Niles would drink, pass out, and then his wife would pick 1-3 other guys there and let them have their way with her. You get only the classiest of people in the Marine infantry.
17. Too Much Power In One Woman
A guy in my shop (Air Force) deployed to Iraq for four and a half months. Before he left, he signed over general power of attorney to his wife. While he was gone, she started sleeping with another guy in our shop, then signed the divorce paperwork as his power of attorney and his rights to see his kids, as well as draining his bank account.
She went to live with the other guy in my shop and his friend off base. They were both detained for check fraud when trying to pass off a check that was the roommate’s. The guy she divorced eventually got full custody of the kids and the other guy in my shop got kicked out of the Air Force.
She actively worked to ruin his life when all he did was love his kids and get deployed to Iraq.
Don't give anyone general power of attorney, ever. I don't care how much you trust them or how much you think they love you. Don't do it. You can give them specialized power of attorney that only allows them to handle your affairs that you very specifically need them to handle.
18. Lower Those Expectations
We had one guy in my basic training platoon that was a walking safety hazard. Among other things, he managed to fall out of a first-floor window, got the squad's packs stolen during an exercise because he fell asleep watching them, fired on full auto into the camp (with training rounds, luckily) because "he thought he saw a wild pig rifling through our stuff" and, to cap it all off, put a live round between the drill instructor's feet at the firing range.
He passed basic with the rest of us (the only guy that failed, failed because he deserted halfway through), although he did get a mark in his file that he was unsuited for any rank with any kind of responsibility.
19. A Case Of Mistaken Identity
When my wife and I first moved in on base we had a neighbor that was super friendly. This woman told us she had cancer so her brother was staying with her to take care of her. We think nothing of it. A few months later, they moved out to live off base. Normal thing, so no reason to be skeptical.
Fast forward a few months and I'm shoveling the driveway and a guy from next door comes over to say hi. I say hi and welcome him as a new neighbor. But no, he’s not a new neighbor, he’s had that house for a couple of years. I got confused and asked about the woman who had moved out recently. That's when I learned the dark truth.
He told me that woman was his wife, the brother was her lover, she didn’t have cancer, and she spent all his money on Farmville then moved out with everything they owned.
20. Play Stupid Games, Win Stupid Prizes
I had a kid at my first squadron in the Air Force who was quite possibly one of the dumbest, least self-aware people I've ever met. This kid either couldn't or wouldn't retain basic information, which was problematic given that he was in the Intelligence career field. At one point he was presenting a briefing about North Korea. I still can’t believe what came out of his mouth.
He claimed with a straight face that the capital city of North Korea was Bogota. For those keeping score, Bogota is the capital of Colombia. He tried very hard to project a redneck persona, and as part of this bought a massive bright red lifted truck with obnoxious "REDNECK" decal work. Anyone with half a brain could tell you he was struggling to pay for it on his measly barracks rat pay.
I thought the presentation was his dumbest moment—but the worst was yet to come. Eventually, he decided he didn't want to pay for the truck anymore, so he drove it into a lake one night and filed an insurance claim, then used the money to immediately buy a different vehicle. This was quickly uncovered by the authorities, and he was kicked out of the Air Force.
To this day I have no earthly idea who thought this kid belonged in intelligence, or how he got through intel school.
21. Remedial Geography
There was this super nasty dude in our platoon who smelled terrible, and the squad leader figured out it was because he "washed" his clothes by putting them in the freezer overnight. He also got busted malingering by purposely not hydrating in the desert heat, passing out, and having to get IVs from the medics. He did it to get out of work.
Eventually, they did a home health and wellness check (off base) and found 12 dogs living in his two-bedroom apartment and the floor thick as carpet with dog poop. Y'all, he was in INTELLIGENCE.
One day he got the courage to approach me from around a sand dune and asked where I'm from. I said, "Iowa”. He said, "Isn't that in Nebraska”?
22. That’s A No-No
I saw a newer airman with no belt on. I asked, "Why don't you have a belt?" He said he can't afford one, so I give him $5 and tell him to go get a belt. A few weeks later I see him at Ruby Tuesday cleaning tables. I ask around and apparently, his wife was growing weed in base housing and he got kicked out of the Army. He swore he didn't know what she was doing.
23. Telling Tall Tales
This one dude was a reeeaaal special case. 100% a Gomer Pyle-type of situation. Only a few peanuts rattling around the can. He got to us right around the same time as "What Does the Fox Say”? was a big deal. He considered it his favorite song, and sang it nearly constantly. But that’s not the weirdest part. He honest to God thought he was a cat, and would lick himself/randomly meow at us.
Dude was white as can be, but every other week he'd be "repping" a different gang, typically one that doesn't recruit white folk. His favorite was Latin Kings—I think he just liked yellow. We'd catch him staring at walls and stuff, completely zoned out. We got orders to deploy, and nobody wanted him with us, but sadly he came along.
As soon as we got back he was chaptered for mental instability. A few of my guys are still Facebook friends with him, and according to him he was basically John Rambo himself overseas, single-handedly clearing buildings and stuff. I assure you, he was not.
24. V For Vendetta
I had a friend in the platoon. His wife falsely accused her ex-boyfriend, also in the military, of assault. She went as far as stabbing a mattress to set him up. The dude spends weeks behind bars being cleared of all charges. When it comes to light that she was vindictive, she only goes more crazy.
One night, she handed her baby over to a friend while she watched a movie. My platoon mate, whose baby it was, went to check on the baby and saw it was missing. It prompted the first amber alert in Alaska history. When all was said and done, she tried to pin it on the ex AGAIN as another act of vengeance, even though she knew darn well what the story was.
I can only imagine what the poor dude was thinking when officers came to him with this. He was very quickly eliminated as a subject and they figured out that the baby was safe rather quickly.
25. Spinning Out
Sergeant Stubby. On aircraft, we have these things called vane axial fans. Think of a big, DC-powered fan with blades that are about two millimeters thick. These things usually have a tubular housing for air channeling reasons and spin so fast they are near invisible. For whatever reason Stubby decided to check if it was spinning—and he did it in the dumbest way possible.
He stuck his hand down the back side of one of these things and stuck a finger in. The end result was a clean severance at the first knuckle. I watched this same guy fall asleep on the wing of an Apache while trying to install a clamp on a drain line and roll forward off the wing. He hit the rack on the way down, which broke his fall—and his arm.
26. Sink Or Swim
Our branch REQUIRES you to know how to swim. Plenty of people show up not knowing how to swim, which is bizarre. So it was week two and we go for our initial swim assessment. If you passed this one, you proceeded on to the 10-minute tread water. If you passed that, you got to proceed on to the 20-minute mustang suit float test. If you passed all those, you didn’t have to enter the pool again during the eight weeks of boot camp.
One of the guys was really cool, and was going to be a food service specialist. I had a feeling he was going to have trouble swimming. And he did indeed fail the initial swim test—and it was brutally embarrassing. The dude started thrashing around after the 10-foot drop into the water from an elevated platform. He had to be rescued by the on-duty rescue swimmer.
So he spent the next three weeks waking up at 4 am to go to "remedial swimming" where they taught him how to swim. It wasn't pretty, and it was barely enough to get him around the perimeter of an Olympic-sized pool. But he made it. And he graduated basic training.
I went to the same A-school base as him, and he asked me if I could help him get better at swimming (I was the second-best swimmer in the company) and I said sure. Turns out, the biggest thing he was doing wrong was breathing like he would when walking around. I had him practice holding his breath while treading water.
That actually helped him out a lot. 235 pounds of extremely low body fat and you are going to be a heck of a lot heavier in water than 235 pounds of normal body fat. At the end of a month of helping him out, dude could swim pretty well under the circumstances. And he ALWAYS hooked me up with the best food.
27. Unloading On Her
Let me preface this by saying a solid 99.99% of military spouses I encountered were delightful. Yet, the awful ones are burned in my memory. The following conversation occurred not so long ago at camp. A dependent was unloading boxes of what I assume were girl scout cookies. She turned her attention to me as I walked by.
Her: "Hey there! Give us a hand”. Me: "Excuse me ma'am, but who are you?" Her: "My husband is a gunny, and I just told you to help me!" Me: "Oh...actually ma'am, you have no authority on board this installation. Your spouse's rank is irrelevant”.
Her: "Excuse me?!?" Me: "I said you don't have any authority here. I don't care what rank your husband is?" Her: "Oh Marine, you sure you want to play this game?" Me: "It's not a game ma'am. Have a good day”.
I began to walk away. Her: "I'm gonna find your command and tell them how disrespectful you were!" Me: "That's your choice ma'am. If you reach them, tell them I told you to go screw yourself too”. Her: "Excuse me?!?!" Me: "I said go screw yourself!" I caught a little heat for cursing loudly, but that was about it.
28. Ignorance Is Bliss
This guy I knew was a career specialist. If I remember correctly he was at eight years in when I met him. He was horrible at coping with stressors. He came in one day and had a grey undershirt on back when they were supposed to be brown. I asked him if he was wearing the proper shirt underneath his top to which he excitedly declared “Of course not”!
At that point I told him to look down, which he did, then in the span of about two seconds he grabbed both sides of his collar, zips his hands and collars tight across his neck, and then without a word runs full speed for the door. He clips the doorframe and eats it outside and then disappears for about an hour and shows back up with a brown shirt and no recollection of anything ever happening. But it didn’t stop there.
About three weeks later, he shows up to work and during morning uniform inspection, I get to him and notice he is wearing two left boots. He didn’t even notice he had two left boots. Fast forward a couple more weeks and I’m walking with him out to a helicopter and he is carrying a torque wrench. Evidently, his hand stops working like a normal hand and this torque wrench slips right out of his fingers, hits his boot, and gets punted about 40 feet down the flight line.
These are calibrated tools, so if they drop more than a foot they are supposed to get coded out and sent back for re-cal. He just walks his happy behind up to it, looks at me and stares at me while he picks the wrench up, and then starts sauntering back out towards the aircraft. I call him on it and he is straight-up bewildered that he would be told to go get a new torque wrench.
29. Winging It
I was a witness to one of my soldiers’ weddings. It was a typical GI Joe wedding in that it took place mid-day, at a Wings ‘n Things, during the lucky bride’s lunch break. The mother of the bride owned said Wings ‘n Things but refused to attend the ceremony despite being at work that day. It was pretty amazing.
30. Lost, Not Found
We had a guy who just kept losing stuff. He showed up to morning formation in a downpour without his rain jacket, and when asked just spouted "I LOST IT MASTER CORPORAL". He all had to go the day without a rain jacket. Another time he had gotten called to speak with a board of officers to see if he should stay or not, and as per the standard he had lost his beret and needed to borrow one.
I, being sympathetic, lent him mine, and by the end of the day had reported back to me that...he had lost my beret. He was also a cheapskate. A few of us on our infantry course would carpool when we got weekend leave and he never pitched in for gas. He got his comeuppance, though. One day, we just left him. He wasn't super thrilled the next time we saw him.
31. Blink And You’ll Miss It
I got restationed back in the states from Germany. No problem, I flew my German girlfriend over and we ended up getting married in the days that followed. This turned out to be a huge mistake. She went back to Germany four days later and I never saw her again. Good times.
32. Camp Stool Of Shame
There was this 23- or 24-year-old guy trying to be an Officer. When you get injured at OCS (boot camp for officers), you have to walk around in tennis shoes, a glow belt, and have a camp stool slung over your shoulder. This guy was outside our drill formation watching us march and, I kid you not, sat down criss-cross applesauce on the deck with his campstool slung over his shoulder. He somehow did not realize that you could sit down on the camp stool.
The next night he woke up suddenly, smacked his face against the ceiling, and got sent home with a concussion.
33. Not My Problem
A military wife was partying over on the wrong side of the base. I don't remember if her husband was enlisted or an officer, but she belonged on the opposite side. While driving (after partying) back home, she ran over a member of the base who was passed out on the road. (It happens. It's like college sometimes on a base.)
She only called 9-1-1 SEVERAL HOURS LATER to say she "thinks she ran over a bag of trash in the road" at 1 am, on a part of the base that had nothing but living quarters. When they brought him in, he was making the most god-awful noises I've ever heard a human make. He lived and kept his limbs. She went behind bars for a hit-and-run.
Her husband found out. He was, you guessed it, overseas.
34. The Wisdom Of Andrew
We have this guy, let’s call him Andrew. Andrew is a guy trying to become Military Police, yaaay! See, everyone hates MPs, even MPs. Now, everyone knows that most MPs aren't the brightest. It's that job that a lot of people go into because they don't want to be infantry or anyone that has to do a lot of rucking, or thinking. This guy, though, was a special case.
First couple weeks into basic training, he had to have multiple people do his chores for him, making his bed, cleaning his gear, packing his bag for the day...tying his boots. Guy somehow gets through basic training, even though his Drill Sergeants tried getting him kicked out for being dumb and so did everyone else. Guy barely passes his tests, and doesn't even listen to what the Drill Sergeants' say, and backtalks them all the time. So a bad soldier right there already.
I was in Korea when I first met this guy and instantly knew he was not the brightest bulb, as in the second I met him. I met him while I was on the road doing MP things before we went to the field. I was tasked with training him on road stuff, how to do traffic stops, calls, paperwork, etc. Well, during that time I asked him if he had his license so he could drive for a little.
He said yes, so I let him drive. He gets into the driver’s seat and says "This is cool. I feel like a cop". The first red flag was right there, but I didn't see it. He starts to drive and the second red flag goes up when he hits the accelerator then the brake in quick succession, causing us to jolt a little in the car. I asked if he knew how to drive and he said yeah.
He drives for about 30 minutes before he lets me drive again. By this point, it’s almost the end of the day and I got called to do transport. I had paperwork to do so I asked Andrew if he was up to do transport, he said yup and went on his way after I told him where to go. As I finished up paperwork, everyone gets back and one of my favorite Sergeants calls me outside to talk for a bit.
She asked me if I was tracking that Andrew didn't have his license. I stared at her with wide eyes and told her what he said to me. It got so much worse. She tells me she believes me, but that he almost caused an accident by cutting in front of her. Tells me not to let him drive again and we go on our way. But that wasn't the end of it.
Later it turns out he was on his phone recording himself driving and even posted it on Snapchat. We pushed that up and went on our way. At this point, everyone knew that we had to pretty much constantly babysit this guy while we were prepping for our field rotation, which if you don't know is usually very busy and a lot of work.
He would constantly go to the restroom saying he had bowel issues, but would sit on the toilet to play on his phone. When he wasn't sitting on his phone and he was told to go by himself to do something, he would disappear for an hour and then come back without the thing we needed, even if we gave him step-by-step instructions. After we realized this guy was a moron we had one of our other guys go with him to do the easy task to make sure he didn't mess up. He was just getting started.
While he was in our platoon, he decided he wanted to go on leave! Which is fine and dandy, we don't have cars so you just have to either take a taxi up to the airport, or get on a bus. The guy couldn't figure out the bus schedule even though it was written in English. Instead of getting a taxi or just figuring out the bus schedule, he walks up to a Sergeant and asks him if he could get a ride to the airport.
The Sergeant is a bit angry because he skipped the whole chain of command to ask him that, but takes him there anyhow. When he got back from leave we had complained enough to our platoon leader that Andrew is a moron and that he can't be trusted to even shoot. Oh yeah. I forgot to mention that he had a negligent discharge with an M9 after he shoved his finger into the trigger well before he wanted to shoot. TWICE.
Well after we complained to our platoon leader, he brings it up to the Sergeant that drove Andrew to the airport that Andrew shouldn't be in the field with us and that he needs to be transferred somewhere else. Well, the Sergeant also remembered the past event with the would-be car accident and decides to send him to a department where you do nothing but take calls and send patrols places.
We thought he’d stay out of trouble—we were so wrong. Wow, look at that! He can't do that job either. Constantly messing up his paperwork and getting yelled at. Whenever I worked I would go to the desk to ask a question and he would be doing push-ups while a Staff Sergeant yelled at him.
35. Special Maneuvers
One base I lived on with my parents, there was a military policeman on guard duty at the main entrance. Usually getting on base is pretty straightforward. Exchanging of salutes, sirs/ma'ams, scanning ids, fingerprints. All that jazz.
We get up to the gate, the guard throws the salute and the usual spiel begins. The chaos breaks loose. All in one go, the guard goes to lean down, missteps off the curb of the hut, and like a bird against a window in a cartoon, slides down the side of the car. At the time, I was maybe eight or nine and I tried my hardest to keep quiet but I lost it and started laughing because I saw the other guy in the hut losing his mind.
The guy gets up like nothing happens and my dad just goes "If you wanted to check under the car we could've pulled into inspection". We were the only ones at the gate but holy moly, that is one of my best memories from that base.
36. Remember This?
My boyfriend is in the Air Force, and he did basic training last year. A couple of months ago during his course, some idiot he was stationed with disappeared during everyone's night off. Most people had gone to drink and were back on time, but not him. My boyfriend was supposed to make sure everyone had gotten back but he figured he just missed him and went to bed.
He hears an angry knock on his door at 4 am. It's his superior yelling at him to get up. What they found was brutal. The guy was beyond inebriated. He even peed on some equipment that was lined up outside. When my boyfriend had to drag him to the Chief Warrant Officer, he could barely stand up.
While the dude was getting yelled at...he threw up. In his superior's office. All over himself. Everyone got yelled at to just wash him and put him to bed. My boyfriend and his friends had to strip him shirtless, forcibly shower him (he was yelling and trying to fight everyone), forcibly dry him, forcibly put him in PJs, and forcibly put him to bed.
He woke up with a huge hangover without a single clue what had happened. He allegedly went very, very pale when he was told. Legend has it he's still catching up on extra duty.
37. When You Gotta Go, You Gotta Go
On my first day of Navy boot camp, we got off the bus and ran into the building, all lining up on in ranks. They gave us this speech about contraband etc. They gave us an opportunity to throw away any contraband we had at that moment. One of the kids in the back walked up and threw away something.
The Recruit Division Commander (RDC) yelled "Recruit, recruit, get back up here, NOW". The kid walks back up and the RDC said "What did you just put in here”? The kid mumbles something, and the RDC says, "Pick up what you just put in there and tell me what it is”. The kid picks up something, and says "It is a…personal pleasure device, officer”.
The RDCs lost it on that one. It gets better. During the in-processing phase, we all had to pee in a cup. If you got into the room and couldn't go for any reason, then you were sent back out into a large room with your sweatshirt backward to signify you didn’t go. I didn't have to go yet so I was walking around the room stopping at every fountain to get a drink. We weren't allowed to talk. Just walk and drink.
This same kid was walking just behind me with his sweatshirt backward and caught up to me. He said, "Dude where is the RDC, I have to pee”. I told him not to talk to me and sped up. On the other side of the room I decided I could go now so I walk to the line, and out of the corner of my eye I see it. This kid is peeing in a trash can!
He ended up three spots behind me in line and when he got into the room, the RDC asked him why his pants were wet. He said, "I couldn't find an RDC and I had to pee so bad I wet myself a little so I peed into the trash can”. The look on that RDCs face was horrifying. They took him to another room and I didn't see him the rest of the day until we got to our in-processing barracks.
That kid was amazingly stupid, he got sent back three times in boot camp, but I heard he eventually graduated.
38. It Takes All Kinds
I had a soldier who couldn't spell his own last name correctly, and didn't know what "lbs" or "ht" stood for on his personal record sheet. He also hated to shower, because in his words "He's just gonna get dirty again”. Hard worker, but not the brightest.
I had a kid in Basic whose father was the Israeli Ambassador to the United States. Service is a requirement in Israel, and he had the option to join the US Army instead. Every weekend his father had a car come pick him up and bring him off post for whatever, even though the rest of us hadn't seen our families since we shipped out.
Halfway through our 16 weeks, he broke his arm. He stayed in Medical Hold for the rest of the cycle, and they still graduated him. I had another kid in Basic who went crazy halfway through and tried convincing everyone that he was gay to get out on Don't Ask, Don't Tell. No one believed him, so one night he snuck into the washroom and started slamming his hand in the dryer door. Screaming. He was put on Med-Hold and eventually passed Basic the next cycle.
39. Ruin My Life, Why Don’t You
So I was assigned to Pensacola for some training. I wasn't going to be there long and shouldn't have dated. 21-year-old me was stupid. I met a girl off base and we started to date. She loved that I was in service while constantly saying she didn't like military guys. It should have been a red flag.
She literally pretended to be the perfect girlfriend. Whatever hobby I mentioned, she said, "Oh my God, I'm into that too!" She did everything possible to act like we were a perfect match. She even said she worked as a FEMA office manager when I told her I joined because I like to help people. Four months go by and I get orders to New Mexico.
I mention that I have to go soon (she knew I was just there temporarily), and she starts hinting at wanting to go with me. Thinking I'm in a really good relationship, I agree. I have never made a worse mistake. We get to New Mexico and I rent us a place. I was actually supposed to live on base in dorms for about a year until I ranked up to Senior Airman.
Things between us go downhill immediately after moving into our place. She suddenly didn't enjoy doing anything I did and had a really bad attitude. She said it was just nerves from moving so far. Fast forward two months and I'm getting reamed out by my Captain for living off base without authorization. I explain my situation and he said to send her back or get married.
Yup, you guessed it. Got married. We were married for nine years. She was a miserable witch the whole time. Refused to get a job, so I had to 100% support her. This is where it all started to unravel. Turns out she really couldn't get a job because she just had a GED and her only work experience was as a receptionist for maintenance at a trailer park.
She lied about the FEMA job. But that wasn’t all. Right before our nine-year mark, she begs me to get out of service so we can move back to Florida. Her grandmother passed and she said we had to take care of her grandfather. Stupidly, I did it. We get to Florida and her grandfather is fine. We only saw him a handful of times over the course of two years.
Eventually, I catch on that she’s been cheating on me and I throw her stuff out of my house and she moves in with her boyfriend. Apparently, she wanted to go back to Florida because there were some guys there she wanted to hook up with. I initiated a divorce and she wouldn't cooperate. She kept breaking into my house with her boyfriend and looting my place.
I'd bring home groceries and they'd be gone the next time I left the house. The authorities wouldn't do anything because we were married, and the same with the landlord. I decided to move and she caught wind. I'm at school and she clears my house out. I go to her place to confront her and she calls the authorities.
Now I get accused of burglary and battery and the officers believe her because the sociopath can cry on command. I end up getting a plea deal. My lawyer convinced me to take it. But then the bombshell dropped. During the process, I find out she was never legally married to me. She was (and still is) married to someone up in Michigan.
She had me take care of her for nearly a decade, while miserable the whole time, and she heavily utilized her medical benefits from being a military dependent…and she was never actually my wife. My Probation Officer felt bad and I was able to get off my probation at a year and five months.
The charges were lessened so they could be sealed and eventually expunged. She literally has suffered ZERO consequences for what is basically bigamy and more. Florida won't help because they said New Mexico has jurisdiction. New Mexico won't do anything because she is out of state.
40. Two Isn’t Better Than One
I knew a military couple who shaved all of their kids’ heads, even the girls, and named them stuff like Manson, Lewellyn, Satan, etc. They were devil worshippers and came in all of the time saying they were being tormented for their religious beliefs. They planned on sacrificing the 7th child to Satan or something.
We called CPS and their kids were taken away. Then the husband was put in the brig short term to await some court proceedings. He did an “invisibility spell” and got caught lifting lots of expensive electronic equipment from the comm schools. The wife came in threatening to take her own life, telling me I "had to" get her husband out.
It was sad, because SHE was really sick. Her husband was just a jerk and a loser. But man, they made a pair. And those poor kids.
41. Major Mess
Me: Former Air Force officer and commander of a Security Forces squadron. We basically did law enforcement, flight-line security, and force protection. We got in a new troop out of basic training/tech school. I'll call this one guy Snuffy. Snuffy was literally the only troop I ever encountered in my 20+ year career who came to his first duty station with an Article 15 (a huge punishment code) already on his record.
That was unheard of in the Air Force; if you get in that kind of trouble in Basic or tech school, they usually just boot you. Like all first-term newbies, Snuffy has to spend a month at the base First Term Airman's Center, where they basically teach the young folks about the base, dorm life, financial responsibility, etc. Here’s where the trouble began. Snuffy gets kicked out of the base after one week due to not showing up and tardiness.
At this point, we don't know what to do with Snuffy. He's a major mess. In our career field, you have to carry a firearm every day, and this kid is so stupid we can't arm him. We are forced to relieve him of duty, meaning he goes into limbo where he can only do stuff like pick up trash, light administrative work, etc while we try to take steps to see if he can still be administratively discharged since he's been on Active Duty only briefly.
While he's relieved of duty, he starts being "late" to work. This is a really big deal at this point because he basically works directly for my senior staff. This gets him in trouble and I'm forced to consider having him punished for dereliction of duty. Snuffy continues to spiral out of control. He married a rather, uh, well he married a local woman he just met.
They move into base housing. He keeps getting in trouble (while his other issues are still working their way through the Staff Judge Advocate). For example, he spray paints his car with a rattle-can, blowing spray paint all over his neighbor's car. He keeps dogs locked in his garage and never cleans up their poop, breaking all kinds of housing requirements, etc.
This gets him kicked out of base housing. His "wife" leaves him shortly after he gets a rental in town. His issues with me are finally coming to a head. Then I get a tip that reveals the truth about Snuffy. He’s been working as an OSI (Office of Special Investigation) informant in a law-enforcement case they're running off-base.
Now, I was the Chief of Police for the entire base. This was my troop. I had daily meetings with the head of the OSI where we discussed all open investigations. I was never told a thing. It turns out OSI was using Snuffy as an informant with some low-level users in town. They had recruited him as soon as he arrived on base and entered the First Term Airman's Center because he had that Article 15 from Basic/Tech-school.
They pulled him into their investigation, kept him out late at night (hence him oversleeping), and just used him incessantly. When it all came to light, the OSI Detachment Commander finally admitted it (I was furious) and told me to just punish him fully because, according to him, what they had him doing didn't excuse him from his other issues.
Ultimately, I got Snuffy administratively discharged and didn't take any judicial action against him. He wasn't fit for the life. I never really hammered the kid—he was obviously below-average intelligence and OSI exploited that with no remorse. After Snuffy's discharge, my Chief, 1st Sergeant, and I went out and bought the kid a bunch of stuff he needed (clothes, food, etc) to try to get him on his feet.
All of us were just disgusted, not by Snuffy, but by the way we completely failed him. He was a mess, for sure, but what was done to that kid was unforgivable.
42. Be Careful What You Wish For
My friend Robert was a bummy, slobby-looking guy who was always on the receiving end of jokes and pretty much only survived training because he was a nice guy. So as lazy as he was, most airmen would cover for him. Being a genuinely nice guy goes a long way.
Robert had an unusually hot wife, which completely surprised everyone that ever saw them together and we all assumed that he was packing some real heat or that she wasn't a shallow jerk like the rest of us.
I'm not sure how this was arranged, but Robert had a best friend who I'll call Greg, and one day after a few beers, Robert decides it would be real cool if Greg slept with his wife and let him watch. Greg is objectively a better-looking guy, by the way, and it happens.
This happens a few more times…until one of the times, the wife finishes up with Greg and tells her husband, Robert that she no longer wants anything to do with him, she wants to be with Greg. This made him very upset. And why do I know all of this?
Because Robert came into our squadron and had a mental breakdown and told all of us. I was there trying to get some leave paperwork signed, he straight up told this entire story to all of our leadership and finished it off with a demand that Greg be punished.
Greg obviously wasn't punished but was asked to stop, which I'm sure he didn't.
43. Long Con
In Fort Gordon in 2009, I had a guy in our platoon who went to the hospital one day and complained of a heart murmur. He got put on a 90-day Dead Man Profile (no Physical Training of any kind whatsoever) and automatically granted off-base and civilian clothes privileges.
He was automatically pushed most of the way through training because he didn't have to take a physical training test like everyone else. That's fine, except by God he was so arrogant about it, so smug that he had pulled one over on our chain of command. That made it even more hilarious when I found out the truth about him. Over the next few months he was there, he regularly got inebriated at barracks and off-post hotel parties.
Again, he's supposed to have some sort of heart problem, but yet he's drinking, and underage at that, because he was 19 or 20. How he made it all the way through Basic Training, I will never know. How he made it through more advanced training, I will never know. How he made into, then out of, the active duty Army with a deployment under his belt, I will also never know.
44. A Few Teabags Short Of A Pot
There was this kid named Daun. He was a special boy. He was trying to figure out how to make hot water for his tea. I suggested using his MRE heater (with the beverage bag, because common sense). So he just filled up the heater bag with water, drops the heater in, and sets it aside to do its job. Then he starts making tea...with the water that was in direct contact with the heater.
I opted to not stop him, because at that point, I figured the only way he was going to learn anything was through experience. His squad leader stopped him. Another time, he had to re-shoot his firearm qualification. He needed a higher score to be able to participate in an upcoming event, so he got back later than most of us.
By the time he got back, we had already returned our firearms, so we told him to clean his and turn it in. He spends 90 minutes cleaning it. Finishes and starts to head up to supply. I offer to give it a quick once over, just so he doesn't waste his time walking all the way up there to be turned away. He agrees, and hands it over.
I pop it open, pull the bolt carrier, and the firing pin plops out in my hand...Black. Completely black with carbon. The whole thing is carbon everywhere. He never opened it up to clean it. Just spent 90 minutes wiping down the outside. Daun was like a radio without a hub battery. The moment you turned it off, he forgot everything.
45. Cut And Run
My brother is in the Air Force. He went to work one day, had a normal day, then came home. When he arrives home, his wife's car is gone. He thinks nothing of it. He goes into the house, and it’s a disaster—clothes strewn everywhere, appliances in weird piles all around the house, and a bunch of stuff is missing (washer, dryer, fridge, light bulbs, their bed, couch, etc etc). But it got scarier.
Most terrifying of all is that their son is also missing, along with a bunch of his stuff. He starts to freak out, because there's no note about it ANYWHERE. He tries to call his wife, but her phone is off. He tries to get a hold of his wife's family, but nobody answers. He calls mutual friends, but nobody has any idea.
He then calls the authorities and reports that they've been kidnapped and states that her car is missing, and thus it must have been stolen during the kidnapping (remember this part, it comes up again in the future). Officers come out and take a statement…and then she finally calls him while they are still there.
She tells him that she's staying with her family and that they are getting a divorce. She also has a restraining order on him, as she has told a judge that he is violent. He is not, and she later admitted she felt bad about lying, but she wanted custody and her lawyer advised her to say that.
This woman knew when he would come home, and waited 45 minutes until after the fact to call him and let him know his life has been screwed. Their son is fine. He relaxes as much as he can, but she has really screwed him here. The restraining order gets him in trouble with his boss, and he's messed up for a while by how bad he was blindsided.
Keep in mind, this brother of mine served three tours in the Middle East. This shook him up more than that ever did. Anyway, everything is "okay" at least. A few days go by, and they start working with lawyers to solve everything. Well, guess what? Remember when he reported that her vehicle was missing/stolen? The worst happens.
She used that in their custody battle as evidence that he was malicious and vindictive because he did it "to cause her trouble with the law, and to scare her”. The judge ends up siding with her and punishing my brother for filing a bogus report when he thought they had been kidnapped. No joke.
My brother's lawyer was a buffoon and the wife came from a family with money who got her good lawyers. She took him to the cleaners and got everything she wanted...even the very house she abandoned when she left him. She didn't move into the house though, she just evicted my brother and then sold it months later for much less than it was worth.
It took him years to recover mentally and financially. He's out of service now (20 years in, retired) and getting his civilian life on track. He has a great relationship with his son, and his ex-wife continues to be a constant source of pain and misery. My brother handles it like a champ though, because (as he puts it) "No matter how horrible and demanding she is, he has faced far worse”.
My brother is an absolute legend. His life has been full of ups and downs (more downs than ups), but he still keeps going. I respect him more than anyone else out there, and without a doubt, he is my hero. Love that dude.
46. He’s Not Losing Any Sleep Over It
One of my classmates in had narcolepsy. He could fall asleep standing up, and he did. He also had a really bad stuttering problem. One night on our Field exercise, we were practicing using a radio. He couldn’t say Romeo and kept stuttering through it. We were trying to not be jerks, so we were trying our hardest not to laugh.
He had his mom send him several boxes of clothes to him, and on Saturdays he would stand there ironing his cloths in his tan briefs with the door opened. I don’t even know where he got an ironing board from. When we all graduated, he had four large boxes of clothes and shoes along with his issued bags of clothes he had to take on the airplane.
I wasn’t with him at his first duty station, but I ended up at the same unit six months after he left the Army. During that time there, he totaled his car after falling asleep at the wheel and got a citation for leaving his weapon in Iraq.
47. All Downhill From Here
A buddy of mine at school had met a younger Mexican girl, fell in love, and wanted to provide a better life for her than he was able to at the time. He had been in the Coast Guard and re-joined. He had the first pick of where he was going to be stationed next because he’d already had prior service and had been on a ship for years.
The school was about five months long. While he was there, his wife decided to join too without telling him. They were from South Texas, and he had the choice to be stationed in Galveston, not far from both of their families. But, she ends up getting stationed in Oregon, on land. The closest place they could get him to where she was stationed was Seattle, also on land, but he obviously wanted to be close to her so that’s where he opted to choose.
However, within a couple of weeks of graduation, she also gets transferred to Seattle, so it looks like things might be okay after all…until the day of graduation when they tell him they have changed his orders and he will be stationed on a polar ice breaker, which would be leaving the week he gets to his new unit.
The ship was set to literally make a trip around the world and he’d be gone for seven months or so. He finds out while off the southern coast of South America that she had been kicked out of the Coast Guard for using substances and for cheating with a guy she was stationed with. She was now working as a dancer in a club as well.
Were there red flags before they got married? I’m not sure, but it didn’t seem that way before she joined. He was a nice and really good dude. Weird turn of events in such a short time.
48. Triple Whammy
I had a guy whose house was such a disgusting pigsty that the whole unit had to go clean it up for him due to him being in base housing. He let his dogs go to the bathroom all over his house and never picked it up, there were bottles full of pee in his closet—but that wasn’t the worst part. The cherry on top was that the genius sprinkled used rubbers around the house when he knew the unit was coming to clean.
He is easily the biggest pieces of garbage I have ever met and is now living extremely comfortably on disability welfare without lifting a finger for what are almost certainly completely fraudulent reasons.
49. No Fear
There was a guy who just lost the ability to care. One night he went into the sergeant’s room and put on the sergeant’s hoodie and lay down on his bunk. He didn't get caught with that one, but he was caught eating rations on multiple occasions when he wasn't supposed to, and would sometimes just sit down when we were in formation.
Generally he just did crazy, bold stuff all the time without caring whether he got caught. Then when he did get caught he just stood there and took it like a true stoic. He said he'd been forced to join by family. I'm actually not sure if he made it but that was the memory that stands out.
50. A Raw Deal
My best mate in the Army married a girl he just met, and then deployed. BIG MISTAKE. While he was gone, she kept begging him for money to buy everything that she needed to set up house when he got back. When his tour ended the girl was genuinely angry and wanted to know how soon he was deploying again.
After some days of heated discussion, the absolutely bizarre truth came out. It turned out that she expected he would die in combat. She told him that her, her family, and her boyfriend were "counting on the money". He was an Aircraft Tech and never left the airport. He threw her out and told her they were getting divorced, and she offered up her sister as a replacement.
51. Last Resort
During my Navy time, part of my portfolio was doing psychological suitability assessments for security-sensitive posts and upper-level clearances. About 80% of that was evaluations for people who made a superior mad. Where I was, there were a ton of high-security areas that required elevated clearance, so even Mop Duty required an area-specific clearance. But there was one guy I’ll never forget.
I had a recruit across the table from me stop, mid-interview (it wasn't going terribly well at that point) and tell me that I'm a complete waste of skin and he'd rather dunk his junk in a vat of acid than spend another minute with me. It's bad enough to say that to a higher-ranking enlisted...but I was an officer.
The Navy is big on the whole "Tradition" thing, so that really didn't fly. I found out later he'd been bounced vessels multiple times for insubordination and was given a shore post because there was nowhere else to send him.
52. A Bad Apple
So, I was Air National Guard for nine years. There was a girl who enlisted at about the same time I did. In those nine years before I got out, she had been married and divorced three times. She wasn't even 30. I believe her marriages went Marine, Navy, Army.
Her rationale each time was that it was the guy's fault. Apparently, if someone keeps picking a rotten apple and taking a bite, you don't blame the apple.
53. Paging Buffalo Bill
At 18, I joined the Army but unfortunately was medically discharged as I injured my knee. During the discharge process you get put in a platoon full of everyone leaving, or the people being kicked out. Essentially, a bunch of idiots. I walked into my new room that I was living in until my paperwork was ready for me to leave to find one of my new roommates.
He was a Scottish guy. He starts trying to show off about how he’s a farmer and how he’s hot stuff. He tried talking back to me…and decided best way to do that was eat one of the biggest moths I've ever seen about 30 cm in front of me. Ok my man.
54. A Little Too Forgiving
We had a particularly worthless piece of garbage in my unit, let's call him Warren for sake of the story. Warren was the single stupidest man I have ever met in my entire life, bar none. Absolutely awful Marine who could legitimately barely tie his shoes. The fact that this dude had passed through the recruiters, boot camp, and everything else was a pox on the name of the Marine Corps in my opinion.
This dude got married before we left for our first tour. It took her about three days to send him pictures of her cheating on him. She proceeded to get knocked up during one of these trysts that she was holding at their base housing regularly. She found out which one of the dudes was the father and had him move into their house.
When Warren returned from deployment, he proceeded to forgive her and continue to let her baby daddy live in the house with them. That went on for a couple of months until the dude beat him up and they called up to get him out of there.
55. Men Can Be Karens Too
I was in the Navy and my husband was a civilian. We married young, like most service members do, at 19. We grew up in the same city and dated for several years. I thought I knew the guy inside and out. He had some anger issues but nothing out of the ordinary for a 19-year-old dude. I deployed soon after marrying. Almost immediately that's when things changed.
Some other base wife told him that I cheating on him, which I was not. He got heavily into substances and absolutely trashed my house. He sold everything and drained my account (thousands of dollars in deployment money gone). Then he left base, never to return. My two dogs were left in the house, did more and more damage, and were taken to the humane society where I paid hundreds to get them back.
He hung out with a Japanese girl off base until my return. They got pregnant, then he started to follow me and threaten me. Anyways, we got divorced and his psycho mother continued to threaten me for several years. Overall very fun experience, would rate 4/10.
56. The Saga Of Squid
So there I was in Basic Training at Fort Sill in the winter. Cold as heck, but you don't need to feel your face to learn how to walk in formation and do push-ups. We had a lovely Specialist I'm going to call Squid. I never saw this man in the reception battalion but saw him when we were transferring to our actual unit.
I was about six bodies behind this lumbering boil of a human being as we did the circus of our first "shark attack". Personally, I had been through something similar before Basic when I went through LEO Training, so I got to enjoy the shock and awe of our Drill Sergeants ripping into the bright, young faces of my future battery-mates.
SPC Squid was a deer in the headlights. He was swirling around, lost in the sauce, and looked about two screams away from crying for his mother before we were told to pick up our gear and start walking. We marched in two columns for about a mile up the road with our duffle bags to the starship that would be our new home for the next nine weeks.
SPC Squid had fallen out so far that he needed other people to carry his gear for him, and he still needed some other coaxing to move along. Due to my name and his, we were organized into the same platoon, so I got to see SPC Squid firsthand the entire time. During the first week, we learned plenty of marching, drill and ceremony, and basic courtesies.
During our first few hours of facing movements, SPC Squid was having trouble with his turning. Something wasn't right. Confused and annoyed by his failure to perform simple tasks, my superior shouted at him and told him to raise his left hand. It was then that we realized we were in for a ride. SPC Squid raised his right hand.
My superior grabbed the brim of his brown hat, visibly shook, and then told him to fix himself before he was turned into fertilizer. Throughout training, SPC Squid never did get his left and right figured out, "monster mashed" whenever he walked, and couldn't stay in step to save his soul.
SPC was timid and hardly ever rose his voice to an audible level, which annoyed the Drill Sergeants. Even though he was intelligent in his studies, he had zero common sense. He couldn't think to save his life in standard situations and ended up getting us roasted for responding dumbly to the Sergeants.
For his first physical training test, this guy did six push-ups, 10 sit-ups, and ran his two mile somewhere around 20 minutes. It might've been longer, but I do remember our Drill Sergeant chasing him and telling him to hurry up while walking beside him. Yes. The guy was walking while SPC Squid was wheezing up his lungs. This dynamic persisted for the next two tests we did, and the numbers hardly changed.
In the bay, we learned that SPC Squid was very unhygienic. He showered probably a total of five times throughout training, rarely did laundry, and at one point he lost his laundry bag, but rather than ask to get a replacement he decided to just stuff his old clothes and uniforms into his locker.
We hardly got locker inspections due to our Drill Sergeants being more focused on training, but after a few weeks of SPC Squid pushing clothes into his locker, it turned Chernobyl. The smell spread like a plague around his locker and walking past his bunk would lead to your nostrils getting blasted.
One evening while I was on fireguard for the hour, I was sweeping the bay floor and decided not to be deterred from cleaning by his locker bile. So I came up with a plan. My solution was to put in my gas mask while I was sweeping. Well, joke’s on me; my Drill Sergeant picked that time to come check on us. So, there I was with a broom, standing at attention while my DS tried to figure out why I was wearing my mask.
I introduced him to the stench, and my DS paused for a moment, excused himself calmly from the bay, then returned a few minutes later with his own gas mask. He woke up SPC Squid, ordered him to open his locker, and was introduced to the beast within. Needless to say, SPC Squid and his bunkmate were goners for the next hour and he was then told to clean up his clothes and wasn't allowed to sleep until the locker was emptied, cleaned, his laundry completed, and his walking carcass cleaned thoroughly.
My Drill Sergeant joked about a shower roster the next morning and my platoon decided to implement it. The DS found it on the wall the following morning, shouted "IT WAS JOKE, YOU BARBARIANS", proceeded to laugh and told us to take it down. SPC Squid, being an intelligent college boy, was also never around a weapon.
Many of my fellows hadn't been so he wasn't alone, but this man couldn't shoot the broadside of a planet if his target was Jupiter and he was standing in front of it. It took almost a whole day for him to zero his weapon, took two days for him to qualify, and he never qualified on his higher tests but they marked him down anyways just to get him through.
During our ruck marches, Squid could hardly walk with the ruck and always had to pass his weapon off to someone else because otherwise he'd scuff the metal along with his knuckles. Every march, he ended up having to get thrown into the back of the rear truck after about three or four miles.
Out of everything, SPC Squid never passed a physical training test, failed evaluations, technically never qualified on his weapon, didn't pass any of the ruck marches, failed the confidence course due to being unable to navigate most of the obstacles, and was a biological hazard for the span of his time in the bay. But they still passed him and he never recycled.
57. Mother Knows Best
This kid shot the backpack of another guy, which we used as a place to set the firearm on, at the range while laying on the ground. During the physical tests, he would be out of breath five minutes into slow-paced jogging, laying on the ground begging to be allowed to go back to the barracks.
When we were having bivouac for an entire week, this dude brought his phone along, because he was scared to lose his Snapchat streak. His mom called in one day, asking the instructors to make sure he takes his vitamin tablets and not to be too harsh on him.
58. If At First You Don’t Succeed…
I had a guy who I sent out to count how many rocket launchers we had. He came back with a different number five times in a row. I finally just had to do it myself. I mean, I get Marine Infantry are supposed to be dumb, but how the heck do you consistently fail to count to 12?
59. It’s A Long Way Down
Navy, F-18 squadron deployed around 2010. A few months in, our powerplants night shift supervisor (a woman) starts sleeping with a male maintenance control Chief. They were on the same shift. Despite both being married, neither of them remotely try to fly under the radar. Night shift maintenance goes to absolute heck.
Powerplants and maintenance control on nights clash every single night. All maintenance slows to a snail’s pace, and mistakes happen left and right due to a breakdown in communication and command. It all directly affects the day shift, our flight schedule, scheduled exercises, and the mission.
Folks report it via every available channel, but nothing comes of it. Finally, dozens of folks write the Inspector General. Investigators arrive and start interviewing folks on day one. No one holds any punches because screw those two. That same day, they decide to stop by the woman’s room to interview her while she's off-shift.
Surprise, they catch her in bed with ANOTHER night shift maintenance control Chief, who is also married. All three were knowingly participating in this messed-up little love triangle.
The powerplant's supervisor, who was only recently advanced promoted, gets busted down and placed on restriction. One Chief has just enough time for early retirement. The other Chief gets screwed by his own ambition and drive.
He made Chief early in his career, nowhere near eligible for early retirement. He gets busted down too, welcome back to the fleet, dude. But the story doesn't stop here. The woman, who is now also restricted, manages to gain access to Facebook. She starts posting pity stuff and sending messages to folks in the squadron who never liked her to begin with.
They report her. A second investigation ensues. Turns out, she started sleeping with the guy supervising the restriction barracks. She gets busted down again to Airman. Gets even more time of half-month’s pay, restriction, and extra punitive days. Gets kicked out right after. She leaves with the nickname "Rings and Rank". Always had a real hard time understanding any of it considering she was not remotely attractive and excessively overweight.
60. Not Worth A Hill Of Beans
"Beans" got his nickname because once while at Walmart, he bought two FLATS' worth of baked beans in two flavors, because they came out to $.20/meal. At the time, he was living in the dorms, so it should've been a red flag that he had baked beans stacked up to 1/3 of the total available space allotted to him...should've.
Beans spent years being extraordinarily creepy around women and strangely aggressive towards certain men. Years went by, and he was one day hospitalized for a minor issue. He asked his supervisor to swing by his home and grab his bag of clothes, etc. The supervisor found an indoor weed farm.
Understandably, the super called the Security Forces. On further inspection, they found quite a lot of harder substances. But it gets even better. On further inspection, they found a manifesto titled, "Why Al Qaeda Will Win," along with a fairly detailed series of schematics detailing the air ventilation system of our building, its intakes and its vulnerabilities.
Notably, we were an intelligence unit, so our building had highly particular and specific HVAC systems. This was only a handful of years ago, but Beans has been immortalized in that building. From an Intel perspective, it's not so much, "How did he pass Basic”? It's, "How did the background check not catch that he's psychotic"?
To this day, people wonder why the heck he invited his super into his house.
61. Plot Twist
This happened in 2004 when we got back from the Iraq invasion and such. We had just hit Bangor Maine and some Vets had cell phones that were donated for us to call and tell our loved ones that we were just hours from a reunion. This Sergeant called his wife. Whole deployment no issues, all is good...or so he thought.
We hear a string of cursing like only an infantryman could, and this cell goes flying like a scud across the terminal. So apparently, she decided to wait until he was just a few hours from home after a year of combat to say she was divorcing him, she had left him negative a few hundred in the bank account, and what she didn’t throw out was now in a couple of trash bags in his truck, unlocked, in the barracks parking lot.
He was remarried within two months. There were no classy winners or losers in this story.
62. From Bean To Sprout
There was a gentleman who worked in my unit who was genius brilliant. A mathematical savant. We worked in nuclear power in the Navy so most of us were relatively intelligent, but this guy was exponentially more intelligent.
One big problem was he would not eat Navy food. He grew sprouts in his bunk. And that’s all he ate. Thinking back on it, he must’ve eaten something else but it wasn’t in the chow hall. He lasted about six months and then one day he just disappeared. Got discharged. I don’t know what he’s doing now but I’m sure he’s either a Nobel prize winner, or malnutrition took him out.
63. Don’t Be Like Andy
It's not too often I get to tell this tale, but hear ye hear ye children. Today is the day I tell the parable of Andy and why you should really take advice. Andy and I both joined up to be nuclear propulsion plant technicians in the Navy in late 2012. Now, surprising fact about navy nukes—we're usually pretty awkward.
We come in all different flavors of awkward, not just the "this guy can't talk to people" type. Andy was one of those special types of awkward where he wouldn't stop talking to you. Andy had zero problems being social! However, he was a pretty short guy with a flair for the dramatic and had about as much impulse control as he did inches.
Andy's general routine was, as far as I could tell, hang around dating sites and try to hang out with anyone that had a woman in their friend group. This was back in 2013, so Tinder didn't exist in full force quite yet. Andy went out every weekend and tried his best. He failed, and failed, and failed again.
One weekend, about…oh, maybe eight months since basic training, Andy met this girl. We'll call her Becky. I didn't think anything of it at first. I was happy for him! We agreed to go on a double date with my at-the-time girlfriend (now wife). We all go out to some hookah bar in downtown Charleston. That's when I met Becky.
Becky was a fiery girl. She had about six inches in height on Andy and was...well, loud. Very loud. She talked a lot, cursed a lot, and had a long history of dating servicemen. In fact, the night before we all went out together, she broke up with her Marine boyfriend. My girlfriend and I thought it was a slip of the tongue when she said it.
Nope. She had just broken up with that guy to go on a date with Andy. That really is where it should've ended, but it didn't. Fast forward four weeks. Andy and Becky have been nigh inseparable and Andy decided that he wanted to get married. I tried to talk him out of it. So did his other friends. So did his Chief. So did the Master Chief in charge of that Chief.
It turns out though, guys, they can't stop you from marrying someone if you really want to. So Andy got married. He and Becky moved into on-base housing and...well, surprise surprise, things weren't great. There were a lot of arguments that continued to escalate in both volume and length.
Neighbors would call the base authorities to get them to settle down. Eventually, six weeks pass and I see Andy in the galley on base. "Andy, what are you doing here? You can go eat dinner at your house, man”. "Uh... I'm living back in the barracks”. "Huh? Why?" "Becky and I are getting divorced”. I wish this was the end of the story, but it turns out things were worse than I originally knew.
Remember how Andy was kind of short and scrawny and Becky...well, wasn't? Turns out, that's a great recipe for physical attacks when your spouse is already crazy. Becky would regularly hit him during arguments. She also cheated on him, with her cousin, during a trip to New York. Perhaps the worst part of it all was that because they were getting divorced in South Carolina, they needed to wait a year before they could actually file for divorce.
During that entire time, Andy had to provide for her as his spouse. He paid for that nice house on base that she just brought dudes over to constantly. She also destroyed that house before she left, which Andy was ultimately held responsible for. Andy spent 14 months in South Carolina getting divorced for about 10 weeks of getting laid. Don't be like Andy.
64. Where’s The Instruction Manual?
Navy. We had "armed" watches. The guns were real if I recall correctly, but the ammo was fake or something. However it worked, you couldn't fire these guns and shoot somebody. Ole Billy Bob gets bored at 2 in the morning on watch and decides to take the weapon apart. He managed that, but couldn't get it back together.
Oncoming watch wouldn't turn over with him, because his firearm was disassembled. He spent the remainder of the night trying in vain to get it back together, then going around trying to wake people up to help him. Sleep is a premium at boot camp, you don't get much of it, so that went over terribly.
65. Welp, That Didn’t Last Long
I attended a friend's wedding while I was in the Marines; he was another Marine in my unit. I drove out two hours from base for the wedding. The wedding goes well. He finds the bride lighting up during the reception. Any other time it wouldn't be a big deal, but in the military, substances are a big no-no. Also, she had hidden it from him the entire relationship.
Best not to find out there are secrets being kept from you on your wedding day. This was all two months before a one-year deployment to Iraq. Needless to say, they were getting divorced before we made it back stateside.
66. What’s Plan B?
One of my good friends was an Army Ranger, and he had a guy in Ranger school who was bragging that his whole goal was to get to the highest pay level he can and then get disabled by a "misfire" or accidental friendly fire. I guess no one had told this guy’s superiors before Ranger school, but the guys in his class sure as heck told on him. I think he ended up with a dishonorable discharge because of it.
67. She Needs To Be Straightened Out
I got woken up by the fire alarm once during my training. We all file out of the barracks and discover that one of the female service members was attempting to iron her hair in the dark and set off the fire alarm. She was not removed from the course.
68. Don’t Mess With Me Or Mine
This was back in the early 90s when my husband was stationed at Bragg. He goes over to a good friend’s house for drinking and cards. I stayed home with the kids because I couldn’t stand the friend’s wife. Turned out I was right, this woman proved herself to be a monster. So, my husband, his friend, his friend’s wife, and two of her friends are all sitting around drinking and playing cards.
The friend gets called in because they need a jumpmaster. He kind of knew it was coming so he wasn’t drinking at all that evening. My husband at this point has had a few too many and can’t drive home because we live a bit from Bragg. No problem, the friend tells him to hang out and sober up to drive, and off he goes.
My husband, the guy’s wife, and her friends continue to play cards, but now my husband is drinking coffee. A few hours later, one of the friends leaves, the other needs a ride home. My husband offers to drive since he’s pretty much sober now. Friend’s wife offers to drive with them, so that my husband isn’t alone with her friend, who is unmarried, and, according to wife, a little “loose”.
Right. Next morning, after I’m done yelling because he walked in the house at 5 am after leaving for a few beers at 7 pm the night before, he informs me of what happened and then tells me that one of the women told him “I know you’re married, but I’d love to lock you in a room for two hours”.
He refused to tell me which one said it, so I go to his friend’s wife, not thinking it’s her, and proceed to tell her what I’m going to do to her friend if I find out which one it is. It was six years later, after my husband got out, that I found out it was his friend’s wife. I also found out that she was sleeping with anyone in uniform the minute her husband was out the door.
No, my husband didn’t take her up on her offer, he just thanked her for the “compliment”. About five years ago he met up with that friend again, who had divorced the woman, and he told him what had happened. When my husband apologized for not letting the guy know, his friend told him not to worry about it.
Apparently, my husband was the only one of this guy’s friends to turn her down. I saw a lot of that stuff going on when we lived on Bragg and off, but this was the one time another dependent messed with my own family.
69. Jingle Bells, Batman Smells
At basic training, we had a guy who did a version of the Christian Bale deep Batman voice for the entire time. Somehow, it got worse. He also never took off his eye protection—it was terrifying to be woken up by him for guard duty in the middle of the night. He would just loom over you and say your name while jabbing you violently with his hands.
Apparently, his underwear eventually fused to his body because he didn't shower for weeks. The stench was miserable.
70. Always Hard To Get The Timing Right
While delivering our fourth baby at a military hospital, we were talking to one of the nurses about infidelity and crazy things she had witnessed. She told us about a woman coming in with her husband for a C-Section that was not scheduled. The woman insisted that she was scheduled for a C-section that day.
They did an ultrasound and found that she was three months pregnant, not nine months pregnant. Her reasoning was chilling. She was willing to deliver a baby six months early so it would appear the conception lined up with her husband’s mid-tour leave.
71. Greatest Hits
Army guy here. I went to basic with this one guy. Let's start from the top. He almost shot a Drill Sergeant, got a staph infection and refused to get medicine, and slept in his wall locker during toe the line. Toe the line is when you stand right by your bunks quiet at the position of attention and wait for your Drill Sergeant.
He would listen to the Drill Sergeant explain what you would have to do and the DS would ask if there were any questions. He would not ask at that time, but then five minutes later ask him a seriously dumb question.
72. Spinning Away
This guy was a student in aviation school while I was an instructor. He was a new soldier attending his technical school after basic. Apparently, he was on the autism spectrum but functioned well enough for the Army. He was great at physical tasks. That's how he passed basic. He was also very intelligent in the classroom study. If he was directly instructed he was fine.
One day I found him in the hall between classrooms during a class session. He had taken a restroom break but got sidetracked and was staring deeply into the ceiling fan. It took several attempts to get his attention. I had to touch his arm when he didn't respond to my approach or calling his name a few times. It happened a few times with other instructors until our supervisor addressed it with the division chief.
It was decided after several medical consultations and meetings with the Colonel that it wasn't safe to allow this student to proceed as a helicopter mechanic. It was ultimately a safety matter because he could get mesmerized by a spinning rotor on an airfield. Strangely, I saw him later on a deployment to Afghanistan. He was reclassified as an artillery soldier.
73. Not Sticking Around
I was a standing gate guard in Washington DC. An officer's wife drives through the gate and presents her ID. I wave her through. She doesn't move, asking me if I forgot something. I said no, I didn't believe I did. She said I forgot to salute her, pointing to the blue sticker on her windshield (which means I should salute to the officer).
I leaned close to her windshield and saluted the sticker, wishing it a good afternoon. I got removed from that duty.
74. Not Up To Dress Code
I had a Sergeant in Korea marry a VERY trashy lady. It was so messed up seeing her at formal functions. All of us in Class As and her dressing like Peggy Bundy. Her "name" was Tiger.
75. Peeping Tom
I had a girl who would hit herself in the face when she got upset. Like, full, hard slaps. It was unnerving to watch. She’d also hide candy and food from the mess deck and eat it alone in the bathroom. Our beds were next to each other, separated by a thin piece of metal with small holes punched in it for air circulation. One night I was reading a book and she asked me how I liked it.
I asked her how she knew what I was reading. Her answer made my blood run cold. She said she was watching me through the holes in the partition. This girl made it through the recruiter, MEPS (where they do a psych evaluation) AND boot camp! Clearly someone dropped the ball.
76. Here For A Naughty Time
I was in the Officer Club in Okinawa around 2012 or so. In walk at least six women in racy, cut-off shorts versions of flight suits that were bright orange. I was pretty confused until my Marine friend told me that meant their husbands were deployed and they were looking for a good time. Apparently, it was an open secret.
77. Passing The Buck
I went through basic with this kid. This dude had literally, never a day in his life prior, done anything physical. Ever. He had a permanent hunchback from sitting on the couch all his life, he was literally purple because he circulation sucked. His arms had the batwings of an 80-year-old woman, and he honest to god had a wattle. This led to his unfortunate nickname of "Turkey”.
He legitimately couldn't do five push-ups, a single sit-up, this dude couldn't even jump high enough to grab on to a pull-up bar, let alone do a pull-up. Failed every single physical test we took. The Drills actually called his mother, and the ARMY paid for her to fly out, so she could give "encouragement" so maybe he would finally pass one.
Home-slice still graduated with us, because the Drills couldn't be bothered to chapter him and wanted his gaining unit to take the flak instead.
78. Shoot Me Once, Shame On You
My cousin was a medic in the army for 25 years. He once had to patch a platoon sergeant AND a platoon commander who both were shot by a private playing with his firearm in the motor pool at Fort Campbell. He never saw the private again.
79. A Nasty Surprise
I knew a guy who got home from sea a day early back when there was no email or phones to call home and let wives know they were in early. He found a different car in his driveway and someone else in his wife. He kicked his wife, undressed, out on the front lawn and then proceeded to beat seven levels of heck out of the guy.
He spent two months in Club Ed for assault but he said it was worth it.
80. Ba-dum-ching
While we were getting our immunization shots, I overheard the nurse asking another recruit about medical family history. His answer was so hilarious, it’s unforgettable. With a straight face, he told her: “My family has a history of hypothermia”.
81. Where There’s Smoke…
I was pretty naive and got maneuvered into a couple of bad situations. The weirdest was when I was out drinking with a colleague. He got very intoxicated, and, out of the blue started berating me for trying to sleep with his wife. I did not want to sleep with his wife, and was not trying to. Noped out of there.
But later that night, the wife showed up at my apartment, ostensibly to "apologize”.
82. Daddy’s Little Recruit
I am in the Marine corps and I remember this woman who had been extremely sheltered her whole life. I didn’t pay much attention to her during actual boot camp, but we had the same job so we went to the same school. We ended up being roommates and I was like “How in the world are you a Marine”?
Here are some highlights: She wouldn’t allow myself or my other roommates to listen to music with cussing, she proudly talked about her father’s dress code for her despite being 22, bragged about never having a first kiss/boyfriend, and literally never cleaned and me and my other roommates had to pick up her slack. The straw that broke the camel’s back?
That was when I went to pick up rubbers at the PX store and she tagged along to get some things. When I reached to grab a box, this 22-year-old woman audibly gasped and covered her mouth. I was quite frankly tired of it and I whipped around and was like “WHAT”?!
She just turned her head awkwardly and was like “I didn’t know you were like that”. For context, she was homeschooled and grew up in a super Christian home. I kinda feel bad for her, but at the same time I was just so sick of dealing with an adult with the mentality of a 13-year-old.
83. There’s Bad Parenting, And Then There’s This
Air Force and Navy Veteran here, and I'm a Marine Wife. The worst thing I ever experienced was the passing of a beautiful five-month-old baby girl. The Sergeant and his wife were serious gamers. The wife also suffered from mental health issues. Both were weird and ignorant. Nothing prepared me for what they did.
The wife was tired of the baby crying and not sleeping. So, she propped a bottle on a pillow, used more pillows to cushion her, and left her in the master bedroom while she and the hubby gamed. The little girl suffocated. Neither parent checked on her for 12+ hours. They said they thought she was sleeping.
They found her, left her for several more hours, and made a failed attempt to resuscitate her while they were on the phone with 9-1-1. They're so stupid, the authorities shared with me that rigor mortis had already set in and it looked as if the baby had been gone more than 24 hours.
The parents went back to gaming because they wanted to finish their match or whatever. The mother showed zero remorse. However, she was completely fascinated with how popular she was becoming on social media. So much so that she was super giddy with her local fame and said her kid dying was worth the fame and GoFundMe.
The Marine was indifferent to the whole thing.
84. Both Sides Now
My brother-in-law married a woman he chatted to online for a few weeks when he was 19, then he had to go to Iraq. A month after he left, she told him that he got her pregnant. He comes home after six months, then she has the baby...the baby definitely is not his.
Fast forward 10 years. He's married to an awesome chick we all like. She works a job and takes care of everything around the house. He cheats on her with an 18-year-old girl who worked at Sonic. She catches him and leaves for a weekend to go stay with her sister to figure out what to do.
He puts all her stuff in cardboard boxes out under the carport and moves in the new girl.
85. Knights Of The Round Mirror
I had a guy who was really quiet, talked to himself mainly, and would not shower because he feared being in the buff. He was just not all there at all—but none of that prepared me for what happened when I found him in the bathroom. I had to go drop a deuce one night and I see this guy staring in the mirror, chanting something with a makeshift crown on his head and a hanger that he bent into the shape of a sword.
When he sees me, in runs into the stall and locks it. It blew my mind. I sat there thinking, “This guy can’t possibly make it in basic”, but sure enough he did.
86. Too Much Attention All At Once
I was at Officer Candidate School with an Army-hot blonde. She was a deployment 9/10 and everybody hit on her. She was drowning in attention, but it was all for naught because she was married to a green beret or something. Well, all that attention finally got to her and she started sleeping with the cadets.
About 3/4 of the way through the course she started to put on a little weight and it sure seemed like her belly was growing faster than the rest of her. About four weeks before graduation it came out that she was, in fact, pregnant with who knows baby. Not long after graduation, I heard that her marriage did not survive the encounter.
87. Don’t Sweat It
The first night of actual basic training, we’re all showering and getting ready for bed. I noticed a guy in the bunk across from me had already changed in to his sleeping clothes. I asked him if he was going to shower and he said, “No, I put on 48-hour deodorant”. The entire bay erupted into laughter and for the rest of basic, my guy's name was Private 48.
88. He Had A Major Itch
I worked with a US Air Force Major long ago who'd been in grade for eons because he couldn't give a briefing without scratching his, ahem, nether regions. Only the time he’d spent in Vietnam was keeping him in the service.
Eventually, he went on an orientation tour of a Minuteman site and fell into a hole. When he got out of the hospital, they retired him.
89. Putting The Basics In Basic Training
We had a guy who wasn't showering, so we just four-man carried him into the shower and squirted soap from the bottle and used long-handled brushes on him like a dog every night until he realized it was easier to do it himself. We weren't cruel, rough or brutal about it, he just needed to be jarred out of whatever state of acquiescence he'd been raised with.
90. Here, My Deer
There was an entire week where we had to keep everyone from sneaking out of the barracks with excessive number of physical training belts. Later, we found out the bizarre reason why. Somehow, a rumor started that if you could put your belt on a deer you'd be exempt from physical training? By some sick twist of fate, a deer actually ran through our morning formation, like, through it, and it was just a hailstorm of belts at the poor thing.
91. If You Can’t Do, Cook
At one of my duty stations, there was a girl who wasn’t all there. One day, out of the blue, she decides to take the three-wheel bike (the one with the large basket in between the two rear tires) and go for a spin. She hit a fence post, a parked car, and a dumpster, all within 30 feet of her starting position. She eventually went to cook school.
92. Learning A Lot Of New Things Today
A friend of mine came home one day early from a year-long deployment. He walked in to see his wife was busy getting it on with another guy on the couch. In the bedroom, he discovered a baby she had never mentioned, fathered by yet a third guy.
93. Don’t Shoot The Messenger
Just to warn everybody, this one is kind of messed up. It happened to a friend of mine. We were both deployed to Okinawa. My friend married his girl prior to the deployment. Then, he found out mid-deployment that she had cheated on him. Now, finding out about something like that is bad enough as it is—but the way my friend found out about this was the part that was the most messed up.
He had checked his Facebook messages one day and suddenly saw a message from some dude that he didn't know. The guy straight up told him that he had slept with his wife. Apparently, she had never told him that she was married and, when he eventually added her on Facebook, he realized that she was married to my friend.
After making this discovery, he felt so guilty about the whole thing that he decided he had to message my friend and let him know. My friend wasted no time and divorced her while still in Oki. I'm not even sure how that was legally possible, but I definitely remember him doing some kind of legal paperwork the very next day after getting the messages—so I guess he found a way.
94. The Math Doesn’t Add Up
I got back from an eight-month deployment. Welp, my buddy’s wife was six months pregnant......
95. Two For One
One of my guys never passed a physical training test, not once. Not in basic, not in the "real" army. Never. Still, we needed the personnel and we knew he wouldn't pass, so we stopped testing him. Same guy wouldn't shower. Like, he spent two weeks in 100-degree desert, and he didn't shower when we got back.
96. I Think I’m Staying
My grandfather was stationed in Germany where he met my grandmother. They got married in Germany and she moved back to the States with him, where his family was absolutely not very happy about it. His mother actually offered to buy him a brand new car if he married "a nice American woman instead".
Obviously, my grandma wasn't too happy about that and decided the best course of action was to have a second wedding in the US to prove she wasn't going anywhere. They were married 55 years and she's still living in the original family home, she really didn't go anywhere.
97. The Delphinophile
Let's call this guy George. He was in 2009 Basic Training at Fort Jackson. Of course, everyone called him Gomer Pyle. He was just not someone who should be a soldier. He sucked at push-ups and everything else. Was always messing up in our drills. And then…he said he loved dolphins and wanted to marry one.
98. All For You
One of my friends in the Corps was a first-term sergeant who HATED every minute he was in uniform. However, he re-enlisted so his wife could go to school. Left for deployment after reenlistment, came back to a divorce and a drained bank account.
99. Sweeping It Under The Rug
I was stationed at Fort Knox, Kentucky in the late 80s. An officer’s child turned up missing. Darn near every solider on Ft. Knox was looking for this kid. We looked for days. The kid never turns up. I leave, and move on. Several years later I'm sent back to Fort Knox.
Out of the blue, a bunch of activity is happening at a park several miles away. It got heartbreaking in an instant. The little girl turned up, and it turns out that the man’s wife, the girl’s stepmom, offed the girl. But that’s not all. The soldier came home, found out, and hid the body in the park.
The whole case was solved because the older sister of the girl was starting to get worried she was next. Told a teacher who got the authorities involved. That is the worst I've heard of, over 20+ years in the Army.
100. The Man Of The House
When my mother-in-law (who was a military spouse) gave birth to my now-wife, she was advised to make a sandwich or two...in case her husband got hungry while she was delivering her child. Her husband did not attend the delivery, so all she had in the delivery room was a drill Sergeant yelling at her to push.
When she got home, the father had his car engine disassembled on the table. He asked whether she’d had a boy or girl, got told “girl”, said “oh” and went back to his engine. He really wanted a boy to carry on the family name, but when, in an attempt to save the relationship, they had a boy together, he moved out shortly afterward and never (or rarely) spoke to the son again.
The son changed his last name to his mother’s name as soon as he legally could.
101. The Punishment Doesn’t Match The Crime
A friend in my unit walked in on his wife cheating on him with someone else from our unit. They separate, she moves in with the other guy and leaves the unit. Eight months later, we return from a deployment, and my friend goes on one date with a girl. The consequences were brutal.
His soon-to-be ex-wife finds out and calls the Sergeant to charge him with adultery. He gets taken down a rank—the other guy only got switched to a different unit.
102. Too Little, Too Late
I once watched a grown man get screamed at over the phone because he missed calling his unemployed, useless waste-of-skin of a military wife for her daily noon wake-up call by 15 minutes.
103. Looking For A Fight
I got accosted by a military Karen at a Home Depot parking lot because I parked in “her” space. I parked in a Veterans spot at Home Depot. I am a veteran, I had my two toddlers with me, and the spot was next to a cart stall. As I am pulling my kids out of the car, this lady walks up to me and starts asking me questions.
Simple stuff, nothing out of the ordinary, but I had a bad feeling and leave my kids in the car to be safe. She then starts asking about my veteran status, which was weird, but again not bad. I told her “I’m a Sergeant” etc and tell her about my brigade. Her response floored me. “Well, my husband’s a Lieutenant Colonel, which means he’s a higher rank. So you should give me your spot”.
I was dumbfounded. I told her to pound sand, to which she wanted my information, rank, name etc. So I said, “Yeah sure, and I’ll make sure to give you the spot next time”. But that wasn’t the end of the story.
No joke, three days later, I get a call from my commanding officer. He puts me through to this woman’s husband. “I wanted to apologize for my spouse’s behavior the other day. I jokingly told her she could parade up and down the street ordering other men to do things, and I had no idea she would take it literally. I’m sorry this happened and I hope we can put this behind us”.
I accepted his apology, because up to this point, no Commanding Officer has ever apologized for their actions. Chillest Lieutenant Colonel ever.
104. Sometimes, One Guy Can Ruin It For Everyone Else
I went to my wife's reunion of her military buddies a few months ago. It was supposed to be quite casual, but the day of the reunion she got a call saying that it was canceled. Apparently, five years earlier one trainee got creepy and stalkery with another trainee. The people organizing the reunion invited him, expecting him not to show up. Then the guy posted some vague threats on his social media accounts.
They did actually change the venue and have the reunion, but there were many people that couldn't be contacted with the updated info.
105. Sold Out Of Love
I'm in the military, and marriage means something to me. Well, turns out my wife was pilfering money from the marriage, to the tune of about $1,000 per month. It had gone on for a few years before I figured it out. Not satisfied to simply stash away her own salary, she began to buy stuff on the joint charge card, then sell it on eBay. I paid the card.
I started the divorce without telling her. During this time, I took my name off the joint card without telling her and began using my own credit card. When the bills came in for that month, I informed her that I would not pay the credit card bills anymore, that she had her own job and her own money and she could pay her own bills. There was the expected ruckus about that, but I stuck to my guns.
A week or so later, she had a screaming foot stomping tantrum about how it wasn't worth her time to work her eBay business. (Because she now had to actually buy her own inventory instead of just selling stuff I bought).
Yeah, I cracked a smile. The story ends thusly: I later traded the money for shared custody, zero payments to her, and zero claims on my pension, etc. She walked away with less than she'd have gotten if she was honest. I even got the house. Our divorce was final four months ago.
106. Lose My Address
I was dating this girl. Thought she was the one, so I gave her the keys to my apartment on base. I worked late, and I was just happy there was someone in my bed when I got home. Came home one night, and she was awake. She then suddenly confessed to using my apartment to cheat on me with seven different people. So I packed her stuff up, since she was still living with her mom anyways.
Then I lied to her and said I was deployed to Seattle. I transferred to Hawaii instead. Three months after being in Hawaii, I get a phone call from her. I answer, and to my surprise, she's called me from the Seattle airport. She flew out there to try and fix things between us. The dialog goes as follows Me: So you're in Seattle? Her: Yeah! Weren't you listening? I came here to fix us.
Me: Oh...well, that's bad. Her: What's bad? Me: I'm in Hawaii! I then hung up the phone. She calls back immediately, and I answer. Her: YOU LIED TO ME!! Me: Huh, how does it feel? I hang up again. To me, that was a good revenge.
107. A Matter Of Trust
Originally, my sister was married to a really crazy jerk, who was in the military. She stayed with him for too long, mostly for his military benefits, and the divorce has been bitter. Her ex-husband was convinced that she had some kind of a secret trust fund that she was living off of while she was actually pretty dependent on him, and he was demanding half of it. There is no such trust fund.
I mean, in what will hopefully be many, many years from now when our dad dies, there may be some money from his trust fund—but he’s very much still alive, so this guy was in no way entitled to any of that. Anyway, a little bit of time passes and my sister hooks up with another guy, who is apparently friends with her ex and was also in the military with him, though he was out of it now.
The ex decided to tell his friend about her mysterious “trust fund” and, intrigued by it, this new guy somehow convinced my gullible sister to marry him. New guy was clearly hoping that he would be more successful than his friend was in getting access to the trust fund—you know, the one that doesn’t actually exist. Their marriage only lasted two weeks.
