Let's share military stories
RustySpoon
Join Date: 2003-07-10 Member: 18069Members
Join Date: 2003-07-10 Member: 18069Members
Some of you might remember me, whether you do or don't makes little difference. I've been inactive around here because I've been drafted (the right word?) into the military. My profile supposedly fit perfectly that required for a Military Policeman, so here I am. It's a 9 month job, not too rough physically, but they really test our willpower.
Training consists mostly of guarding, peacekeeping and urban warfare, of which the latter is most fun. It's like I'd imagine air soft or paint ball to be like, except more discipline and stress.
So onto the stories; last week was mostly spent stress-testing. We were made to pack all our gear in our lockers, and go to sleep, all the while being carefully monitored by the corporals (I think that's the English equivalent rank) that we put all the stuff in, in order, and lay in bed in our bed clothes, with nothing readily available. After 30s of laying in the bed we were given 10 minutes to pack our combat gear, which includes 3 clips, water bottle, field shovel, protection mask(gas mask?), fragmentation vest etc. We did this for 18 hours straight, until every last one of us was ready by the time limit. If someone snapped, they were released from the training, but punished by not getting any free time for a month.
After the exercise was over, we were left standing in combat gear outside the unit, and were told that the next thing we'll do is perform a 20km march into the mountains in the north, where we'll establish a foreground (base of operations?). Some started yelling, some just collapsed, I really just felt numb. It's s sort of numbness you get after spending some time in the army. A sort of soldiers determination I suppose. So me and the rest of my squad (into which we've been divided earlier) started marching. We had walked for a few minutes and the lieutenant in charge of training us told us to walk back and go to sleep.
Turns out it was all a mental exercise, meant to test our leadership qualities and willpower. I did well apparently, because they put me on the command list for sergeants training. Eff that I thought, it's hell. Lucky I managed to convince them to take me off the list. I'd rather just be a regular grunt <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" />
Share any personal stories you may have, or stories about your grandfather, friend, whoever who's been in whatever military.
*edit*
Some of you may remember my last post some time ago. Hope you can forget it, I was a little pissed at being drafted, and I thought I'd open up a little.
Training consists mostly of guarding, peacekeeping and urban warfare, of which the latter is most fun. It's like I'd imagine air soft or paint ball to be like, except more discipline and stress.
So onto the stories; last week was mostly spent stress-testing. We were made to pack all our gear in our lockers, and go to sleep, all the while being carefully monitored by the corporals (I think that's the English equivalent rank) that we put all the stuff in, in order, and lay in bed in our bed clothes, with nothing readily available. After 30s of laying in the bed we were given 10 minutes to pack our combat gear, which includes 3 clips, water bottle, field shovel, protection mask(gas mask?), fragmentation vest etc. We did this for 18 hours straight, until every last one of us was ready by the time limit. If someone snapped, they were released from the training, but punished by not getting any free time for a month.
After the exercise was over, we were left standing in combat gear outside the unit, and were told that the next thing we'll do is perform a 20km march into the mountains in the north, where we'll establish a foreground (base of operations?). Some started yelling, some just collapsed, I really just felt numb. It's s sort of numbness you get after spending some time in the army. A sort of soldiers determination I suppose. So me and the rest of my squad (into which we've been divided earlier) started marching. We had walked for a few minutes and the lieutenant in charge of training us told us to walk back and go to sleep.
Turns out it was all a mental exercise, meant to test our leadership qualities and willpower. I did well apparently, because they put me on the command list for sergeants training. Eff that I thought, it's hell. Lucky I managed to convince them to take me off the list. I'd rather just be a regular grunt <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" />
Share any personal stories you may have, or stories about your grandfather, friend, whoever who's been in whatever military.
*edit*
Some of you may remember my last post some time ago. Hope you can forget it, I was a little pissed at being drafted, and I thought I'd open up a little.
Comments
Will be joining the 104th Royal Artillery while im studying and if I like it enough i might go in for the regs.
Thanks for sharing
(and airsoft is really not fun just a load of people in half dressed gear pretending to be soldiers but with out tactics etc. they are usless really but its a laugh. (yeah I go some times <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" />)
Seriously, and America's the only country with armed forces so it's not like you're in some other country.
I was assigned to the enemy force and was lying with another mate in a low earth bunker, in a simulated minefield.
A patrol was supposed to pass us, then we would detonate a DM22 (trainings handnade) to simulate a mine explosion.
<a href="http://www.feuerwerk-forum.de/album/data/512/2126Simulator_IV.JPG" target="_blank">http://www.feuerwerk-forum.de/album/data/5...imulator_IV.JPG</a>
This is how those suckers look like. Styrofoam with 3g of TNT.
What we did was dig near a tree to uncover its roots partially. Then we would stick the nade between the roots, so it would get stuck.
We then armed it and tied a long rope to the fusing mechanism. There were about 20 meters between us, in our little bunker, and the tree.
When a patrol was near us we pulled the rope, those making the nade go off. This went on for about 6 patrols. When patrol seven was near us, we pulled the rope: BOOOM followed by SQEEEZ and THUUUD.
After 7 nades the tree did decided that he would rather rest on the ground and so he fell, nearly hitting a captain who was part of the patrol.
Was a pretty good laugh <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":D" border="0" alt="biggrin-fix.gif" />
I didn't know there were developed countries that currently had a draft going on...
Uhhh, could you explain yourself in a different way... I'm having trouble understanding what you mean.
general conscription != draft
and don't go jumping to conclusions he may of also just got his words muddled and America is not the only country with armed forces so don't be silly.
*sigh*
He was being sarcastic. He does that.
I think its fair to assume you're in the U.S. However, based on the fact that Rusty mentioned being drafted, it was rather foolish of you to assume that <i>he</i> is also in the U.S. Some countries (i.e, ones which are not America) still have drafts.
Is that sufficiently clear?
You literally draw a number from a tombola to see if you get drafted or not.
Did you also use empty coke cans for grenades?
and don't go jumping to conclusions he may of also just got his words muddled and America is not the only country with armed forces so don't be silly.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I didn't <i>actually</i> mean that America is the only country with an army. I'm glad you attempted to correct me, though. That was noble of you.
EDIT:
They teach classes in the 'Art of disguising friendly fire' and a 'Fast track to committing war crimes' too.
...As for personal war stories...I got nothin'.
There were other ones I've been told, but they don't come to mind very quickly.
The place: Camp Humphreys, Pyongtaek South Korea main gate
The situation: I watched an old lady walk out the gate and through an MP check with a case of beer between her legs (log dress on hid it) and probably 10 to 12 cartons of cigarettes vertically taped around her middle body (hidden by a baggy blouse).
The reason: uhm, black market?
no what do you take me for?
we used tizer
You literally draw a number from a tombola to see if you get drafted or not.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
That's similar to the way it works in a certain nation which drafts you for 9 months of service. Only that it's someone else who draws the number for you.
Wasn't that bad though <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile-fix.gif" />
The first two or three days the temperature was above 0°C and it was raining. All my clothes and equipment got as wet as they could. Even then I felt unbelieveably cold. And there wasn't any time to rest and dry my clothes. Then soon happened what everyone was fearing the most; temperature started dropping. Very soon the temperature was like -20°C and EVERYTHING froze. It was funny (in a twisted way) to have to actually bend the tent when packing it up. And ironically it was the first and only training where we got these 'double' tents (they were slightly bigger than usual and had two layers of cloth instead of just one). Of course they absorbed double the amount of water, and thus weighed a TON.
And I should propably mention that I belong to a squad that directs artillery fire. So we were of course practicing our act the whole two weeks and had to keep moving to different firing positions and move out of danger zones. At most we got about 4 hours of rest in one night, usually less. And with the ice and snow and cold, there was a lot of trouble with the equipment that taxed the time we could rest (sleeping is secondary!).
When we after a week got into a supply area for one day it was like a five star hotel. We didn't have to set up defenses, camouflage or anything like that. We just set up our tents and we could sleep, rest, dry our clothes, thaw our guns and awesome stuff like that. AND we got these wooden platform thingies to put under our tent, to give us a flat surface to sleep on. The second best thing during the whole training.
And rest we needed, since the second week we practiced attacking, which meant even longer marches, faster movement and less time to rest. At the end of the training I was exhausted. I don't know how long the train ride back took (propably about 24 hours or so) since I slept the whole time. The train car we were in was originally used to transport cattle or something like that. So there were no seats, but there wasn't need for them either <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" /> . I had the first watch to keep the stove(?) on (burn firewood to heat the traincar up). After my watch was over, I fell asleep and occasionally woke up when someone poked me "Hey, there's some food here" "k, thanks ... zzz -_-".
I had never been as happy to see the good ol' barracks as the day we arrived from the cursed training.
<img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" />
Was rather fun which is odd though.
I thought we were going to sleep one night and I was having sleeping problems.. so I ate a bunch of Dramamine to knock myself out.
Little did I know they were going to pull a surprise night shoot, so I ended up having to do a live fire op while doped on dramamine... good thing nobody died lol ;/
during the first training where we were given EPAs (combat rations) I decided to try some of those delicious Panzerkekse (tank-cookies). I ended up eating 2 packets of them during that day. Two weeks later I went to the toilet. I ###### a brick. It hurt!
After that I scavenged a few packs of tank cookies from future EPAs and everytime someone I know gets pregnant I offer their husband/BF a pack of tank-cookies so that they can both feel the sensation of birth <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/wink-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=";)" border="0" alt="wink-fix.gif" /> I am currently at 2 offerings and 2 declines.
It was so friggin cold in Korea we didn't have any trouble staying awake.