re: Spinoff Vets and Active Duty Personnel What's the Funniest Thing you saw a DI do

Yeah. It was stupid. We had to do that as well

We had a few good looking ones. Lots of good looking Air Force ones though.

What was your funniest medic experience?

For me it was when I was at West Point at usma last summer. I was the ncoic of 7 medics who were each in a company of new cadets. For every injury/illness the set cadets had to radio it to their "toc".

One of the older cadets told me a new cadets was sweating profusely. Here I am thinking it was a heat casualty. Just like basic training you always had a battle buddy.

So I saw this "casualty" this new cadet was complaining bc he had a little sweat in his eyes and didn't know how to take care of himself. What was even worse was his battle buddy didn't even know what to do. I wanted to skull drag these two.

Of course this happens right before the 1 star commandant briefly makes his appearance. So of course I had to keep my cool and show both of them how to get sweat out of their eyes. Apparently they didn't know their canteens had water in them I guess.

It was even funnier hearing the crap over the radio.

A lot of funny shite happens at cadet "basic training".

I'll this story army style....

NO shite there I was..... I deployed to Iraq with engineer company, while we were building the wall in Sadr city it was a little intense. Lotta mortars, rockets, RPGs, small arms, along with EFPs and IEDs.

So after an 18hr day of getting our asses handed to us we finally make it back to base. As I'm carrying all my gear back to our hut, one of my guys stops me and this proceeds to happen....

Idiot: Hey doc take a look at this

Me: what is it I don't see anything

Idiot: look I have splinter in my finger

Me: Ok and

Idiot: well you're the doc, do your job

ME: (trying to figure out how to murder this dude)

Idiot: Well....

Me: drop all my gear and proceed to choke his arse death only to be stop before I reach him by the other standing nearby.

I dog cussed him and he never spoke to me again.

We had one guy in our flight (Flt 335 of BMTS 3601) - damn how do instill remember that 30 years later?

Anyway - this one dude could do a perfect and I mean freaking perfect immatation of another flights DI who was from Oklahoma. He was doing it one day outside the chow hall and our DI walked upnbehind him and listened for a while. The kid realizes he is being watched and turned around ready to be reamed out and our DI is laughing his arse off.

Our DI calms down and sends him into the chow hall to "perform" for all the other DIs. Dude goes in and we watch. There are 15 DIs on the elevated platform they eat on laughing their asses off and one who is totally pissed.

It was classic.

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Dumb question, but if you fail out of boot camp are you dishonorably discharged?

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Recycled. Basically they get sent back to the start when the next class comes in. When I went through at Ft. Knox in 88, they had a "platoon" in a separate barracks were those guys were sent. They were there supposedly to either be processed into the next class coming in, or in some cases (mental cases, claiming to be gay, etc.) were there to be processed out. The thing about this place though is the "processing" took weeks. I think some of the guys who left us early on were still there being "processed" when we graduated.

During their time there they had to go around wearing old WWII style steelpot helmets instead of normal headgear. This was so they could be easily identified I guess. And man did they ever frick with these guys. They were not doing any real training, they were just in a sort of limbo status. So the drill sargents that were over them found the most sadistic ways to keep them busy. Their days were spent on the most shite details you could imagine.

One example I can remember is that anytime we'd march out to the range, they'd march as well. They'd be in a formation behind ours a few hundred meters. Each one would have a mop thrown over his shoulder like it was his rifle. One guy would have a bucket of water. Anytime the formation stopped, they'd line up and have to go dip their mop in that bucket.

Once while we were at the range I remember seeing them over at the assemble area which was a big graveled square area. Some were all on their hands and knees turning over the rocks one by one while others were literally mopping the damn rocks. They did this all day long.

I think they made them do shite like this, and made sure we saw it, as a form of motivation for us to not wash out and have to join those poor bastards.

We had this one DI that was loved being a total psychopath, recruits cowered when he came near.

One day we're at the firing range and my half of the platoon is down in the pits setting up targets, I stop and look about a hundred yards away and see the guy. I just stand there and think about what an a-hole he is. Out of nowhere he whips around and locks eyes with me from 100 yards away. My butthole clenched. He starts screaming, "YOU WANNA FIGHT??!?" Then he starts sprinting towards me and he's ripping off his uniform as he's running. I stand there like a stupid recruit and scream, "No sir!" over and over again until he's standing nose to nose with me. I paid for it later.

To this day, I'm convinced that he somehow read my mind.

Anybody ever have to dig a grave and have a funeral for a sand flea or some other bug? Some Finnish guy was telling me about doing this in his basic training, so it's apparently a universal thing. I wonder how much else of it is.

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But seriously? How the F are you going to sign up to become a US Navy SEAL when you are afraid of a 10' platform?

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Everybody has some kind of hangup, and you may not know what it is until you encounter it in the real world. The kid may never have had to do that, and had no idea it would affect him that way. The first time I went hiking in some real, serious mountains, what got to me was a narrow trail with a steep dropoff on one side. I had seen pictures and videos, but the real thing freaked me right the frick out. I felt like I was being physically pulled over the edge. I had to get a grip on myself and get through it.

holy shite that is awful