USGI sea stories

[fatnhappy]

Back when a certain young man was first learning to drive a floor buffer in the battalion mess at Benning, a Sgt Major and CWO4 came over to offer all kinds of close order suggestions.
While The CWO4 was barking in my left ear I once again triggered the buffer, the handle escaped my grasp.

It drilled him perfectly deadcenter in the chiefest part of the CWO. All you heard was the air come out of his lungs and a dull thud on the floor. The Sgt Major helped him up, neither spoke another word and simply left.

[Winger Ed.]

My Dad had a long time friend who was a early 60's issue USMC Lt., and a Texas Aggie.
He was also the posterchild for why they have Aggie jokes.

We were talking about minor burns one time and he said he'd always put Preparation H on them.
He was offended when I laughed at the idea. "Oh yeah, out on the lake,,, what would you do when you burn your hand"?
I told him I'd put it in the ice chest until it turned blue.

Then he told of getting burned on a hot 'C' ration can out in the woods during OCS at Quantico about 40 years before.
The Navy Corpsman put Preparation H on it, and he'd been doing that ever since when he got a minor burn.

I told him, "Dude, they just did that because you're an Officer. They gave us 'ointment, topical, one each', in the green tube".

I went on, "I can see them now, when you came up to their Jeep,
they'd think, OK, here ya go,,,, this is just the thing for *** holes. It'll fix you right up".
And those Corpsmen are probably still laughing about that".

[lightman]

My Dad was drafted and served in Korea. I could never get him to tell stories. He taught me to hunt and he loved and used an M-1 Carbine because he carried an M-2 in the service. One story that he told me was about being on guard duty one night. Apparently he was alone and a ways away from his unit. The temperature was like -50º. He said he heard the snow crunching and when the crunching stopped he heard some whispers and jibber jabber. He said that he slipped the safety off on his M-2 and apparently the click was very loud in the cold night air. He said there was a lot of crunchy foot steps and jibber jabber.

I had an Uncle that went through the entire WW2 on a submarine. He was killed in a car wreck 2 reeks after the war was over and he returned home. I never knew him.

I knew an old farmer here that was a WW2 pilot that flew P-47's. He once told me that he had over 2000 flight hours over the water.

[sureYnot]

My Dad had a long time friend who was a early 60's issue USMC Lt., and a Texas Aggie.
He was also the posterchild for why they have Aggie jokes.

We were talking about minor burns one time and he said he'd always put Preparation H on them.
He was offended when I laughed at the idea. "Oh yeah, out on the lake,,, what would you do when you burn your hand"?
I told him I'd put it in the ice chest until it turned blue.

Then he told of getting burned on a hot 'C' ration can out in the woods during OCS at Quantico about 40 years before.
The Navy Corpsman put Preparation H on it, and he'd been doing that ever since when he got a minor burn.

I told him, "Dude, they just did that because you're an Officer. They gave us 'ointment, topical, one each', in the green tube".

I went on, "I can see them now, when you came up to their Jeep,
they'd think, OK, here ya go,,,, this is just the thing for *** holes. It'll fix you right up".
And those Corpsmen are probably still laughing about that".

Made my day. Wife had some chuckles, too. Hehehe

Sent from my XT1710-02 using Tapatalk

[nagantguy]

my grandfather spoke Italian and German so he was trained to flight in the Apls , with the idea that he could interrogate prisoners in Italy, Sicily and or France, helped he was an outdoorsman who could ski or snowshoe with the best. At the last minute donto army “intelligence”he was sent to the South Pacific with no proper gear or inoculations; he fought on several of the Island campaigns, got very sick several times, was trapped behind enemy lines twice, and was wounded in bayonet/hand to hand fighting twice, carried a BAR for the most part. One night on one of the islands in he Filipino chain after the fighting a few of the guys got drunk and started a big first fight; just boys blowing off stem, the MPs arrested several including dead old granddaddy; as the were marching into the brig, his company commander grabbed him by the arm and said “good job, how many did you get?” My grandpa said 7 sir and walked out of the brig with his Captain, they went through thick and thin and remained friends after the war.

[nagantguy]

One of my favorite stories is one night on the USS Austin around Halloween a few of us Marines had made a batch of pruno juice; real rough cheap bootleg liquor made with yeast and sugar and orange juice; well that night I won a cousin contest; a poker game and a hotdog eating contest, have the pictures; have been told about the card game and have no memory of any of it. Guess I ate 50 dogs and the next contestant ate 43. We were on our way to a nasty place and were briefed on what to expect and were blowing off a little preemptive steam as it were.

[brewer12345]

I knew a guy who was a cold war era nuke on a submarine. My favorite story from him was that when they had been cruising for months and morale was low, the captain decided to surface and let the sailors have some R&R because they were in the tropical Pacific. This was in the days when the nuke subs would deliberately be out of radio communication for weeks or months at a time. They surfaced and the captain let the guys sunbathe on the deck, swim off the bow (with a sailor watching for sharks with a rifle), and had the mess cooks set up barbecues on the deck. Everyone is having a great time, when a US military plane happens to pass by. The plane closes in, can't make radio contact with the sub, circles several times, and then tears off at speed. Before they know it, multiple surface ships are bearing down on them as fast as they can because the pilot reported a disabled nuclear sub on the surface, apparently on fire (BBQ smoke), with wounded men laid out on the deck (sunbathers) and multiple bodies (swimmers) in the water behind the sub.

[Winger Ed.]

Back in the 80's & 90's at the auto paint store, I had buddy/customer that got drafted out of High School,
and found himself in Viet Nam carrying a rifle very shortly there after.

He didn't ever say much about his combat tour in the Army, but he did make an observation one time:

He said that the whole time he was in High School, nobody ever told him that he might
be in a place some day, that you'd be so scared- you'd pull dead bodies over yourself to hide.

I didn't ask for details, I just let it go...

[Winger Ed.]

Back in the 80's I talked to a guy who'd gotten out, and had done a tour as a Drill Instructor at Parris Island.

Back then, if you did anything detrimental to one of those recruits that was outside the prescribed training- you were in a heap of trouble!
After all the investigations-- Even if you got to keep your stripes, your career was still pretty much over.
This was enforced by each new Private being interviewed by people from Dept. of Defense
a hour or two before they got on the buss to leave Parris Island.
------But, you could still have a little fun once in awhile....

This fella told of one time when the busses were coming with brand new recruits.
When they arrived, the kids got out and stood on the yellow footprints- just like you see in the movies.

As they stood out in front of Receiving Barracks, on the prints- a armed Sentry was standing there at the base of the steps.
Pretty soon, from inside, there was some yelling, bodies banging around, more yelling, and a Private came flying out the door.

A Drill Instructor was hot on his tail...….. He grabbed up the kid, and told him to run around the building.
When he came back around, more yelling, and he told him he was too comfortable,
and ordered him to put on a long sleeve shirt, gloves, and a football helmet, then to run around the building again.

As the guy disappeared around the corner, the DI snatched the Sentry's rifle and ripped off a full magazine (Of blanks).

Gave the Sentry back his rifle, and yelled back inside the building for someone to come pick up this Private and throw it in the dumpster.
Just barely within sight of the new arrivals,,,,,,,,, two other DIs threw a identically dressed dummy in the dumpster.

Several minutes later, a truck came, emptied it, compacted it's load, and took off in a cloud of smoke.


For about 80 kids from Everywhere, USA--- that was their first impression of Marine Corps Boot Camp.
But;
Not another word of that incident was ever spoken...….. until after graduation and the new Platoon was about to board the busses.

One of his new Marines told him his good byes, and said,

"Sir, I just wanted you to know, when those FBI or Dept of Defense people interviewed us,
nobody said anything about that Private you killed back at Receiving".

[Jeff R]

My Dad was 21 years old when the draft started, before WW2. He was the first man drafted in Chisago County. He ended up in the Army, in the 164th Infantry Regiment, which was part of the Red Bull Division. To bolster forces in the Phillipines, his regiment was detached from the Red Bull Division, and had orders to head to San Diego to board a convoy. They left Camp Claiborne, Louisiana on 5 trains. On the way, somebody threw the wrong switch on the train tracks, and the train that had all their heavy weapons ended up in Oregon.

The convoy couldn't be delayed, so another Army unit that was nearby was substituted for the 164th. In that unit was one of my Dad's boyhood pals from Lindstrom, a town 10 miles away. They got to the Phillipines just in time for Pearl Harbor. His buddy ended up captued, and died on the Bataan Death March.

Dad's regiment landed on Guadalcanal 3 months after the initial invasion by the Marines. The fighting went on for 6 more months. He got malaria and got down to 119 pounds. They were sent to New Caladonia to refit and get healthy. Their next landing was on Bouganville. They were up in the mountains there. They were wet for weeks at a time. A wouned marine was brought into his location who had been shot in the jaw. My Dad ran the motor pool, and was ordered to take the marine down to the coast, so he could be taken down a hospital that had been set up on Guadalcanal. It turned out that the wounded marine was Orville Freeman, and the PT boat skipper that took him to Guadalcanal was JFK. Orville Freeman went on to become the governor of Minnesota, and then the Secretary of Agriculture in the Kennedy administration.
He didn't talk about it much. He would not miss watching the "Victory at Sea" tv series on Sunday mornings.
Pa ended up making 5 amphibious landings, and was overseas for 3 1/2 years.

[Outpost75]

Master Chief friend of mine did a rotation as a recruiter in California the year before he retired. Then as now, the youngers were both colorful and irreverant. A disreputable punk with ear and nose rings, with spiked hair in assorted colors came into a bar reaking of sweat and pot smoke. He had a bad case of the munchies and ordered a burger, fries and a pitcher of beer. Chief Decker stared at him intently for some time, saying nothing, which made the kid uneasy. The punk turned around confronted the chief and asked him:

"What are you staring at old man?"

Chief Decker smiled and in his slow Texas drawl said matter of factly, "When I was a young blue jacket on my first Pacific cruise, we stopped at Subic for our first Liberty after four months at sea. My shipmates took me to a mga bar ng mga mandaragat and got me almighty drunk and I returned to the ship with this tattoo. They repeatly tried to convince me for the rest of the cruise that I'd had carnal knowledge of a parrot and I'd refused to believe it until now when I saw you, and I believe that you might be my son."

[Winger Ed.]

While overseas, I knew a guy who had rotated off the Drill Field a few months before.

After 'the event' he'd done a little research and found out the back story of it.
He told of getting a recruit from some place back up in the hills where the Marine and Army recruiters had to share a govt. car.
The Marine was coming up a little short of recruits, and his Army buddy had done well, and even had a few 'extras'.

One day, the Marine told the Soldier, "Hey, I'll buy Lunch if you give me one of them hogs".
So, on one of the enlistment forms, they erased the check mark in the "USA" box, and put a X in the "USMC" box.

2-3 weeks into training with his new platoon, this kid comes busting into the DI's office--- just hopping mad!
(He'd gotten a letter from his friend asking where he was and what happened to him.)

"What do you mean this ain't the Army!!! Me and my buddy joined the ARMY!!!
He's a Corporal now. And I'm in here talking to you...………. BALD HEADED"!!!

[Winger Ed.]

I'd told that recruiter/Boot Camp story to a friend years ago and he started laughing--
it reminded him of a story his uncle had told him when he was drafted in WWII.

The uncle was standing in line at the enlistment station, and they're getting processed.
A Navy Petty Officer is asking people what job they had. If you were a cook, you had a REAL good chance of being a cook in the military.
If you'd worked in construction-- you were going to be 'recommended' to be a CB or Combat Engineer, and so on...

The guy in front of the uncle looked like a gorilla. Big, no neck, hair coming out everywhere,,,,,
when the PO asked what he did, replied, he been a 'Mandrill King' in the circus.

"What's that"?
He explained that he was in charge of all the monkeys and apes for the circus, and whenever they didn't perform,
and would 'entertain themselves', he'd have to go into the cage and beat them with a night stick..

The Navy PO looked at him, probably realizing that a monkey can kill you in a couple of seconds.
And that he might some day end up on a ship with this fella......

Then without a word, he erased the mark in the 'USN' box and made one in the "USMC" box & send him on down the line.

[wch]

My father was an MP assigned with others to patrol the Ledo and Burma roads. He and his platoon road motorcycles (his favorite was an Indian) and in order to clear human traffic off the roads to let a convoy go through, they would cause the bikes to backfire. Fearing strafing by Japanese airplanes the people would dive into the ditches, thus clearing the roads.
It sounds cruel but the convoy drivers were Chinese and Burmese soldiers who had no concern for the lives of the pedestrians and would run over them without hesitating, and besides, the supplies got through much faster!
That's war.

[nelsonted1]

Dad was always pretty slick so when his pay for fouled up he went without pay for a few months. He didn't miss the money since he played poker and worked the black market. He said he even managed to own all the pencil lead in puson Korea at one time. Then, his c.o. Called him in and said he'd discovered dad hadn't been paid in months and wondered what he did for.money. Dad thought quick and all he could come up with was grandpa sent him a flying twenty now and then. His lame story worked.since up the questions stopped.

[nelsonted1]

Dad also swore he couldn't drive. Not a lick. Not once not ever. He said the officers got drunk in the morning and stayed drunk all day. Then, they'd find a driver and they go sightseeing looking at the dead bodies floating by on the river heading out to sea. Once they made him a body guard and they went pheasant hunting. He said if you never saw drunk officers pheasant hunting you missed something special. Then a bird colonel looked down his m1 barrel and found it was rusted solid. That was trouble. The houseboy spent a couple days clearing it. Dad was a draftee.

[nelsonted1]

Then, for some reason he was chosen for an experiment. Wacs in an office in Japan were out of control bickering and fighting hating on each other. The brass figured they needed an expendable target to distract them so they sent dad. He loved that job like no other. The only man mixed in with 25 wacs. He was a draftee.

[nelsonted1]

He knew an soon to be officer in basic. Became pretty close. The guy said he was a lawyer and got drafted. The army decided he was better off an officer. He'll no! Said the lawyer. The army made life impossible. Then he told dad he was out in a kitchen and made.to scrub pans. Finally, he Said he was faced with the largest pile of potatoes in the whole and army and broke down. Dad saw him a few.months later a newly spiffed.leutenant.

[nelsonted1]

In his office in a boxcar in korea he, along with eight or nine others, tallied columns of shipping numbers all day long for.The railroad. The railroad was.crying for.engineers. They had trains but no g.i. Engineers. They read about the troubles on the teletype in the office. The cool part was there were two engineers in the office with dad. The army has sent them to KoreA and forgot them! Dad and everyone else kept it secret.

[nelsonted1]

Then he got a new job. When a big operation would be on the hospital trains would.come in At night. They'd line up for a mile heading for the end of rail. He said the sight of a mile.long train with every light lit in every car with bunks.stacked three high all covered in white sheets, with nurses, doctors and corpmen in white walking back and forth and the white steam off the trains mixed in was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen. Then, one night they took him into the hotel lobby where triage was being performed. The less hurt would go upstairs, the worse hurt would go out to the hospital ships in the harbor. The dieing was dad's job. Try to get the family contact info from them because the information was on the line with company clerks. He said he'd never forget a 2nd lt. Who looked younger than dad stare at him as his last breath was leaving his body.