Funny Deployment Stories And More...

[CAFTT0607]

SO this may be the only funny story I have from Iraq...

We were taking incoming fire...AGAIN...in the middle of the night in Basrah. Rockets impacting here and there. Crazy shit. So our bunker was located in the Iraqi compound we were in right outside the group of trailers we sleep in. So, the basic way to stay alive is that during the initial wave of incoming, you hit the floor/ground where you are and hope for the best. If and when there is a break in the falling explosive devices, you run like hell, with body armor and helmet on (of course, we pretty much lived in 24/7)...anyway, you run like hell and get to the bunker...because you can be sure there will be another round of incoming.

So we dive into the bunker and some of the guys (we were a small team of 6) don't have their body armor all the way on....happened a lot in the middle of the night attacks. So one guy is standing next to another and wings is vest around to get his other arm in. Well, for those who don't know, the level IV body armor the U.S. uses weighs a lot...those ceramic plates aren't light. Well he swings it around and smacks the guy right next to him in the face with the vest...full ceramic plate to the face. His nose erupts in blood and we are like WTF happened. After we stop the bleeding, with rockets landing everywhere, we start laughing about the whole thing and joking about a Purple Heart for taking a vest in the face. Dang near broke his nose...

Ok, so I guess you had to be there...but with all the stress we were under, it freakin funny at the time...and I am done.

 

[Sarg]

My story is more of a tribute to Marines than it was about me. When I was hopping from FOB to FOB, we picked up some Marines on what they called a combat essential mission. Well, we landed at a FOB and picked up some of the sorriest Marines I ever saw. Caked in dried mud with dirt on top of that, they looked exhausted. I would call it wore out.

Well, as we were loading up, I made the mistake of barking at one of the guys. Didn't think about, was wrong in doing it but that cargo area is mine. I'm responsible for ever soul in that cargo bay.

As a side bar...I thought my Dad was the king of ass chewers. But you have never had your ass chewed out until you do so by a Marine Gunny Sargent who's pissed off. An ant couldn't have squeezed between my ass and the cargo floor. After having instilled in my mind what will remain acid etched on to my actions from that day forward, I regained my composure as much as I could.

I got all these poor souls loaded, strapped in and secured their equipment, we were off.

The thought hit that, "excellent, we will be taking these guys back to a rear area, so they can get a hot meal and a shower and a well deserved rest".

NOPE! We landed at an even more FOB and these poor guys got up left the aircraft and melted into the jungle. I think it hit me harder than them. Dammit, just how far can they test the limits of what a man can endure.

It only further proved that I could have never been a Marine. I didn't have the guts, the strength, or the ability to endure what they did. I know I sound like a recruitment poster, but dammit, I give credit where it's due.

Thank you, Marines!

Sarg

 

[Robert Ledbetter]

Probably the funniest story I have from OIF is when I sank a HUMMV in the middle of the desert.

We were doing the last night of left seat/right seat rides and my first night driving on night patrol. Our AO was the farmland west of Baghdad. Keep in mind Im driving the last vehicle in the 4 truck patrol. We were traveling down this dirt road barely big enough to fit a HUMMV down. Said road came to a intersection at the top of a small hill. I did as the trucks in front of me did and made a hard right turn. Wasn't hard enough. I put the uparmored HUMMV right into an irragation cannal. water up to the windsheld. wouldnt have been too bad if it had not been for the cement walls that lined the cannal. I tried to drive it out ( under the order of my squad leader) with no success other than to completely flood the engine. Had to get the mechanics to come out with a Hemit wrecker to pull me out of the cannal and give me a toe back to the motorpool. Wasnt funny at the time but looking back on it now it is.

 

[Wagon]

Ajaccio, Corsica. 1989. Sitting at anchor on duty, waiting for the daily fire drill. Bell rings, ok here we go.

Big surprise....fire on the pier (drill) Oh boy. This is going to be fun. May even get a chance to see some woman on a fire drill. That never happens. Dreams of fake heroism filled our heads.

So about 20 of us pile into the 40ft utility boat and manage to get the P250 fire pump loaded without too much personal injury. (P250 fire pump. A three foot square box that should...when working, pump water at 110psi. Generally constructed with lead and antimatter and will not work unless it is talked nice to, fondled, cuddled, given flowers and bought dinner. Also tends to strike out at anyone who attempts to move it around, even though it is made to be portable)

So we arrive all full of piss and vinegar. Most motivated fire drill I had seen in a while. Unload the boat, get all the hoses set up...fake fire blazing away, small crowd gathering...this is our moment.

Fast forward to 15 minutes later. 4 men are huddled around the pump, some cursing, others pleading with the pump. Brave suggestions are made....take it apart and check the seals... NO! Somebody go get another pump from the ship. No! We will not be defeated.

By this time the Officer in Charge has wandered away and is looking forlornly at the ship, probably going over future career choices in his head. "Ice Cream Man...hmmm... Maybe Toll Booth operator" More than half of us have spotted the opportunity to take a nap. The crowd that had gathered has largely dispersed with a few hangers on who saw great entertainment value in our.....efforts and non-efforts.

After an hour, new seals, a whole new pump delivered and a quite fitful 20 minute snooze. The drill was secured. The pier and most of Ajaccio has burnt down by now and for a very very long time, nobody attempts to have a fire drill on the pier again. We sure showed those Frenchies how its done though.

 

[armyvetwolf]

SO this may be the only funny story I have from Iraq...

We were taking incoming fire...AGAIN...in the middle of the night in Basrah. Rockets impacting here and there. Crazy shit. So our bunker was located in the Iraqi compound we were in right outside the group of trailers we sleep in. So, the basic way to stay alive is that during the initial wave of incoming, you hit the floor/ground where you are and hope for the best. If and when there is a break in the falling explosive devices, you run like hell, with body armor and helmet on (of course, we pretty much lived in 24/7)...anyway, you run like hell and get to the bunker...because you can be sure there will be another round of incoming.

So we dive into the bunker and some of the guys (we were a small team of 6) don't have their body armor all the way on....happened a lot in the middle of the night attacks. So one guy is standing next to another and wings is vest around to get his other arm in. Well, for those who don't know, the level IV body armor the U.S. uses weighs a lot...those ceramic plates aren't light. Well he swings it around and smacks the guy right next to him in the face with the vest...full ceramic plate to the face. His nose erupts in blood and we are like WTF happened. After we stop the bleeding, with rockets landing everywhere, we start laughing about the whole thing and joking about a Purple Heart for taking a vest in the face. Dang near broke his nose...

Ok, so I guess you had to be there...but with all the stress we were under, it freakin funny at the time...and I am done.

Man i hate those effin sapi plated vests, did you know when i was in my MP unit, once we left the wire we were ripping off the damn wings and crotch protectors....anything to get comfy in those heavy ass POS's. Of course, when we rolled up to the FOB with half our gear missing, we got our asses chewed, then they made the whole unit wear EVERYTHING outside the wire. There was still a select few of us that didn't give a shit...hehe.

 

[armyvetwolf]

Probably the funniest story I have from OIF is when I sank a HUMMV in the middle of the desert.

We were doing the last night of left seat/right seat rides and my first night driving on night patrol. Our AO was the farmland west of Baghdad. Keep in mind Im driving the last vehicle in the 4 truck patrol. We were traveling down this dirt road barely big enough to fit a HUMMV down. Said road came to a intersection at the top of a small hill. I did as the trucks in front of me did and made a hard right turn. Wasn't hard enough. I put the uparmored HUMMV right into an irragation cannal. water up to the windsheld. wouldnt have been too bad if it had not been for the cement walls that lined the cannal. I tried to drive it out ( under the order of my squad leader) with no success other than to completely flood the engine. Had to get the mechanics to come out with a Hemit wrecker to pull me out of the cannal and give me a toe back to the motorpool. Wasnt funny at the time but looking back on it now it is.

So YOU were the one we had to pull out! LOL kidding, we had a ton of HEMMET wreckers missions my first deployment, pulling out flipped over HUMMV's, trailers, flooded vehicles and even in the back of our motorpool someone managed to get a frickin' tracked vehicle stuck....managed to pull it out with a DEUCE and 1/2 surprisingly. The best time i had was taking a blown up up armored vehicle, restoring it and doing donuts with it in the muddy motorpool after a good flood....HAHAHA.

 

[Squaddiedave]

doing donuts has just brought back memories, had a yamaha 450 quad at the hls, with IR lighting, used to wait till about 3 am, head over to the "landgrab" next to the HLS (new ground that was basicly there for iso containers and a vehicle park) and thrash it round on LUCIES (NVD's).
Had a time trail circuit set up lol. Best thing was the Sanger closest to us would ring through and give us marks out of 10..."Well number 2 looked scared on the corners, but number 3 was balls out all the way! oh and no 4 didnt say oh shit as quiet as he thought he did!"

 

[Wagon]

The Great Coffee Cup Disappearances. Aka....The Cyprus Triangle.

After one miserly month off the coast of Lebanon, moral was at an all time low. I started to hate our Chief as much as I hated the Navigator.That went for most of us except our loser LPO.

But first a bit of an explanation. Ships run on coffee and cigarettes. Take those two away (or it used to be that way) and the ship wouldn't make it past the sea buoy. A prized possession was coffee cups. As a young seaman and watch stander, my Sea Daddy taught me to never wash my coffee cup and always keep the same one. Also never use milk or sugar....black only. That way, when the coffee runs out, you can always scrape the sides of your coffee cup, pour hot water in and get a cuppa in hard times. Yes I know. Pretty pathetic. So many people had their own personal coffee cup. Some lifers had cups 20 years old....never been washed. The rings inside were like age marks.

So one night, I see the Chiefs cup and honestly did not know how near and dear it was to his heart. So I chucked it over the side. Even had a little ceremony on the bridge wing, committing it to the depths, Then marked a tiny x on the chart for it's location. I felt very good. best in months.

Next day rolls around and we got an inquisition going on in full swing. Where's my coffee cup!!! Major crisis!

Another day rolls by and I have nothing to do with anything anymore. I'm keeping quiet. Trust nobody. But check the chart, and there are more little x's. Check the chart house. My coffee cup is gone. Shit! But not too upset. But in addition the LPO's cup is gone...and his hat. Also the Navigators cup is gone.

Another day passes and there is not a coffee cup left on the bridge much less the entire deck. X's have ceased to appear on the chart and moral is strangely lifted. I had never seen the Navigator in such great spirits. Mostly because he was immensely enjoying the misery of his subordinates. Any mention of the word "Coffee Cup" made him giggle.

And nobody ever knew who threw what over the side. Most likely it was all of us.

 

[Sludge]

The Great Coffee Cup Disappearances. Aka....The Cyprus Triangle.

After one miserly month off the coast of Lebanon, moral was at an all time low. I started to hate our Chief as much as I hated the Navigator.That went for most of us except our loser LPO.

But first a bit of an explanation. Ships run on coffee and cigarettes. Take those two away (or it used to be that way) and the ship wouldn't make it past the sea buoy. A prized possession was coffee cups. As a young seaman and watch stander, my Sea Daddy taught me to never wash my coffee cup and always keep the same one. Also never use milk or sugar....black only. That way, when the coffee runs out, you can always scrape the sides of your coffee cup, pour hot water in and get a cuppa in hard times. Yes I know. Pretty pathetic. So many people had their own personal coffee cup. Some lifers had cups 20 years old....never been washed. The rings inside were like age marks.

So one night, I see the Chiefs cup and honestly did not know how near and dear it was to his heart. So I chucked it over the side. Even had a little ceremony on the bridge wing, committing it to the depths, Then marked a tiny x on the chart for it's location. I felt very good. best in months.

Next day rolls around and we got an inquisition going on in full swing. Where's my coffee cup!!! Major crisis!

Another day rolls by and I have nothing to do with anything anymore. I'm keeping quiet. Trust nobody. But check the chart, and there are more little x's. Check the chart house. My coffee cup is gone. Shit! But not too upset. But in addition the LPO's cup is gone...and his hat. Also the Navigators cup is gone.

Another day passes and there is not a coffee cup left on the bridge much less the entire deck. X's have ceased to appear on the chart and moral is strangely lifted. I had never seen the Navigator in such great spirits. Mostly because he was immensely enjoying the misery of his subordinates. Any mention of the word "Coffee Cup" made him giggle.

And nobody ever knew who threw what over the side. Most likely it was all of us.

We had similar problems on my second ship, the Mount Vernon LSD-39. The running joke was that up in CIC we were always "tripping" (because we were on [a] LSD)...and similar to stoners losing their lighters, our coffee cups went U.A.

I solved mine going missing by having a custom mug made that read "Stolen from FC2 Sludge" in inch high block letters. Nicely enough, the little shop in San Diego was kind enough to transfer what looked like dirty lip marks onto the rim when they added the letters...

Come to think of it though, all these years later...I do not know what happened to that mug. I suppose there is a man-made reef wreck somewhere that has fish nesting in my mug.

 

[Army Doc]

I was sitting in my 120 degree tent asking God why he hated me when one of our Squad leaders brought in two PVTs with eye injuries. Both PVTs eyes were blood red with tears streaming down their cheeks. I'm thinkin they had laser burns from their optics so I ask "what's going on, what happened"? They start shuffling their feet and saying "you tell him". I'm like "What the f*ck, what's going on". Finally the Brave PVT looks up and says "we were seeing who could stare at the sun the longest". I looked up to the heavens and said "God I thought we talked about this"?

 

[spc_ralph]

I know this is an old thread, but I got a story. My unit ran convoys out of Adder, and whenever somebody needed to get to another FOB, they'd hitch a ride in my truck. I had a policy for those 4th seaters; after I had my 240B mounted and shit ready to go, I'd make them climb into my hatch to give them a PMI and make sure they knew where everything was, so if I go down, they can take my place. I would order officers around (i was an E4) and they listened. One time, we had this major who was gonna ride with us. I did my usual thing, and made him get up there. He "claimed" to know how to operate the 240. I told him to show and tell me, and told him not to actually load it, just mime it. About that time, someone yelled to me asking about doing a radio check, I turned and told them in a minute, turn back in time to see the major close the feedtray cover WITH THE BELT IN. He then tried to chamber a round by riding the bolt forward. I grabbed the charging handle while yelling at him to stop. Made him lock the bolt back and unload the weapon. At this point he knew he f*cked up, even if he didn't know how. So he unloads it and I see a round stuck in the chamber. Another 1/4 inch and it would have fired. That f*cker almost got us in deep shit. Its funny looking back on it, but at the time I wanted to rip his head off.

 

[woodsie]

In 2008 at BIAP my friend and squad leader had to do a flight line detail for a VIP. Having just worked 13hrs overnight thru a nasty ass dust storm. We were just plain exhausted. So the VIP was the soon to be president Obama. So we're standing there waiting for him to exit the helo, Obama steps onto the Tarmac and my buddy looks at me as he is drawing his M9 and says "this is our only chance." I f*ckin bursted out laughing and he's laughing too. Obama was just kind of looking at us a little sideways and smirking as well. Then we lead him into the glass house. So they could have their pow wow or something.