The Confederate Yankee has a post up titled the “Guardian Fetches A Bucket of Prop Wash,” implying the Guardian had been bamboozled. This reminded me of something we used to do to all the new soldiers who were fresh out of basic.
Many of you are probably unaware how much of a soldier’s time is spent in the motor pool if he/she is in a mechanized or armor units. When you are on an M1-A1, you almost live in the motor pool when you are not in the field. t any rate, there are a number of games we play, such as sending newbies to supply to get a box of reticles, or chem-lite batteries, tell them to get a ‘dust sample’ from the air filters, etc. At any rate, my favorite trick:
Get a newbie who works on a different tank, preferrably when his tank commander is not around. Give him a ball peen hammer and a piece of chalk, and then tell him he has to check his tank’s armor for soft spots. Demonstrate by hitting the armor with the hammer, circling the area every time the armor sounds ‘different.’ The send the newbie on his way.
One time, we came back to the motor pool after lunch and this newb had 3 inch circles all over an entire tank. Too damned funny.
Grotesqueticle
Us grunts had “pyschological situps”. Very gay, now that I think back on it.
Stormy70
I love Army stories like that one. I listen to my Dad’s all the time. Like you, his fave stories were those they subjected the newbies to. He also went to a military school and the first years were called rats. When he was a rat, he was the tennis ball to the upperclassmen on the first and third floors. He would get smacked then have to run up three flights to get the other smack. I asked why he didn’t shoot them since he had a gun, but he said it didn’t even occur to him. LOL
Tad Brennan
yeah, I remember I was working under the hood of my van once–an old Ford E-150–when a new co-worker came up I hadn’t taken a shine to. He asked what I was doing and I told him I was trying to check if the fan-belt was tight enough. The engine was off, so I told him to hold onto the fan-blades tight with both hands, and I would crank the engine and see if there was any slippage.
I had the key in the ignition when it finally dawned on me that he honestly didn’t know he was about to lose his fingers. I couldn’t bring myself to do it.
But it got a rise out of the other, savvier co-workers looking on. Which roughly tells you what I’m cruel enough to do and what I’m not cruel enough to do.
Kirk Spencer
It gets done to officers as well. My favorite come from an air cav unit. Seems the captain sent the new butterbar out to get a couple hundred yards of flight line. Said captain was in the office with the First Sergeant when the newbie comes back in with a wheelbarrow full of broken concrete, says “here’s the first half-yard, where do you want me to put it?”. Top suggests to the captain that perhaps it would be wise to mark the hole and start a damage assessment. Captain takes off, visions of holes in the tarmac bouncing through his head. While the captain was on the run, the former platoon sergeant asks his former squad leader where he got the concrete with a yellow stripe – thought that was a good touch. Yes, sometimes the tables get turned.
Davebo
While working on A-7E Corsairs while at sea we’d often have newbies “test the emergency flap blow” by having them blow into the pilots “relief tube” until the flaps extended.
Takes a long long long time…
Pooh
John, why do you want to give the enemy targets where the armor is ‘different’? Why did you hate your troops?
(I keeeeed of course…)
Mike
In the Navy, the common one is sending newbies out on deck to watch for the “mail buoy.”
And you know, if you miss it, the whole crew is going to be pissed!
OCSteve
Frequency grease for the radio.
We usually had the supply folks in on it. They would say they were out and send them to another unit to see if they had any, that unit would send them somewhere else…
Yeah… You can only pull maintenance on the same vehicle so many times before even the most juvenile of games becomes high entertainment.
Dodd
Other common Navy jokes are to send them all over the carrier to get some “flight line” or the old classic: An ID-10-T form.
srv
The image of a U-2R or TR-1 painted in UN livery (assuming the UN agreed to officially sanction that) on the evening news, after allegedly being shot at by Saddam, would certainly play to the warhawks advantage.
Some people just don’t understand that perception is more important than reality. Maybe they never took a marketing course.
The Other Steve
I get the impression that Confederate Yankee just doesn’t “get it”.
srv
After thinking about it, the problem wouldn’t be the UN. Many of the operations were already sanctioned (doubt all of them were, though). I’m sure the Air Force would be annoyed about having to put UN on one of their a/c.
Question: What oversight did the UN have on no-fly zone operations? When we decided to start tickling Saddam’s radar sites in late 2002 (I’m sure completely unrelated to any pre-disposed war plans), was anyone from the UN actually in the ops rooms?
Bob In Pacifica
I remember in basic training where we were forced to maintain a pushup and being called cockroaches and being hit by the drill instructors. I thought it was fucked up myself, but then I wasn’t used to physical abuse where I grew up. I remember the guys giving a blanket party to a semi-retarded farmboy from Pennsylvania. A blanket party is when you throw a blanket over someone’s head and beat the shit out of him. You can punch, but the standard weapon is a bar of soap in a sock. I felt sorry for the son of a bitch, even though he almost shot me on the firing range by accident. Call me a wuss, but I never enjoyed hitting people or being hit, Stormy.
Russ
In our MI unit in Korea, it was not unusual for the newbie to be sent to the motor pool for a pack of “lino bearings.”
Failing that, we always needed a box of grid squares.
Stormy70
My Dad definitly did not enjoy it. Why would you think he did? My post did not indicate it. I asked him why he didn’t shoot them. Sometimes I think you guys in here are as sensitive as the muslim street. Sheesh.
RonB
We got a new sergeant to try and find the NSN for some ground guides. Poor girl.
Linkmeister
Navy telecoms: Send out the new kid for a box of line feeds, then remind him he’d forgotten the carriage returns.
Yeff
We’d send jeeps (that’s what we called new, uncertified people) down to Direction Finding for a box of bearings.
A crueler one that was only done to females was for them to collect the EMHO report. When they’d ask what EMHO stood for they’d be told it would take too long to explain this early in their career and to just collect the numbers for now. Off the fresh-faced airman would go, asking people for their EMHO numbers and writing down the percentages she was given. Eventually someone would explain that EMHO stood for “Early Morning Hard On” and the numbers she was getting directly reflected the respondents opinion of her looks. Like I said, it was cruel, and it stopped happening after the Tail Hook mess had all of the services reviewing their sexual harrassment policies.
When I was new to my first unit I was sent to our map to check the line-of-bearing on a target. I wrote the LOB on a piece of paper – 363.5 – and was walking to the map when I remembered there are only 360 degrees in a circle…
Jim Allen
Winding up the ratchet wrenches until they were good and tight….
John
My Platoon Sgt told me a story that once, in the “good old days,” he and another Sgt had convinced a boot tanker that if grease didn’t taste salty, it had gone bad. Later on, the CO walked by the kid, who had a mouthful of grease, and asked, “Marine, what the heck are you doing?” The kid replied, talking with his mouth full, “Sir, this grease is no damn good!”