Jokes and pranks while serving.

I've been listening to Super Tramp this morning... 'Crazy' came to mind. Here we are... boarding an elevator. I'm with my Bud who will remaind unknown to you all. A small and petiete woman boards with us. She presses the button for the top floor. My bud is perhaps six two or three, weighs 220/230. There are others on the elevator. Door closes and elevator begins to rise. Bud RIPS a LOUD fart. He turns his head and looks at the petite lady and say 'Gawd**** LadY!' She got off on the next floor.

I always blame the dog.....:headbang:
 

Funny new guys always seem to be the victims of practical jokes. New arrivals in Germany were often invited to go the local ratskeller for their first taste of German beer and possibly hooking up with a lovely frauline. Before heading out, the new guy would be given a quick lesson in German to deliver a sure fire pickup line; "Wollen sie schlaf mit mier mine schatzie?" The literal interpretation; "Will you sleep with me my sweetheart?" Common sense tells you right away that in any language that isn't exactly the line you want to use if you want to get to first base. One of two things happened to newby after delivering the line; either he got his face slapped or a stein of beer poured on his lap.
 

Funny new guys always seem to be the victims of practical jokes. New arrivals in Germany were often invited to go the local ratskeller for their first taste of German beer and possibly hooking up with a lovely frauline. Before heading out, the new guy would be given a quick lesson in German to deliver a sure fire pickup line; "Wollen sie schlaf mit mier mine schatzie?" The literal interpretation; "Will you sleep with me my sweetheart?" Common sense tells you right away that in any language that isn't exactly the line you want to use if you want to get to first base. One of two things happened to newby after delivering the line; either he got his face slapped or a stein of beer poured on his lap.

Or lucky? lol
 

Okay... here's another one. Remember CCC where some soldiers had to go for counseling for excessive alcohol consumption? Often a group of us would go out for beer and brats, so to speak. There was ALWAYS someone in the group who couldn't consume alcohol because he was taking antiabuse which would make him violently ill if he drank. If there was a dipstick in the group, he would open an antiabuse capsule and pour the contents into the dipsticks' beer. Ever seen someone projectile hurl in a public setting? Priceless... (Yeah... we were Combat Engineers, 'quite possibly the toughest men alive' in the words of Ray Stevens from the song 'When you get a haircut').
 

While serving in the Marine Corps, I was stationed at NAS Willow Grove Pa in the late 70's. I was quite often a crew member of a CH-53 helicopter. The main transmission, directly under the rotor blades has a drip pan underneath it. (moving hydraulic connections tend to leak) In the center of that is an inspection hole covered by a rubber disk about the size of a dinner plate. (enough background info) One of our favorite things to do while moving troops around for other units was to place a few nuts, bolts, and assorted hardware inside of the covered hole. While in flight we would roam around acting like we were listening at something. Then one of us would pull off the cover and the loose 'parts' would tumble out onto the floor. You would be surprised just how big eyeballs can get! One of us would then stuff the parts back under the cover the sit down and act like nothing happened. For some reason we never had any stragglers when it was time for the troops to disembark.
 

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I was up at Hué/Phu Bai during the Tét offensive of '68. We were pulled off of bridge security back to Phu Bai when the party began on Jan 30th. We had a Sgt named Wade Williams. Thought he was a real bad-ass. One day I started a conversation with him in the rear area. "Hey, Williams.... He jumped in my face and shouted "I have a first name, Lance Corperal Cieszki!" I replied, "Geez, I didn't think we were on a first name basis, Wade." (he popped a cork!) TTC
 

Navy pranks

They invented light sticks at the navy research base at China Lake Ca where i am from.
The first batch were made at a local company my brother worked for.

I was on a mine sweep out of long beach ca at the time and had got a number of reject light sticks from my brother.
and no one in the fleet had seen them before.

First joke was one night while underway i popped one and hung it on about 200 feet of fishing line off the back of the ship.
The lookouts spotted it quickly and reported it following the ship.
The officer of the deck started making turns to see what it was but it kept following the ship know matter how it turned. After about 30 mins i went out on the fantail and cut the fishing line before someone got wise and i was found out.

A few week later and after more then a few beers i took one of the green light sticks and put a radioactive warning label on it and left it on pier 9 long beach.
A short time later some one noticed it and reported it to there ship and with in minutes there was a team from that ship in NBC warfare suits with Geiger Counter checking the light stick out.

I did so many prank in the navy its hard to remember them.
 

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We used to do quite a few. As a mechanic we had LTs jumping on tanks testing the suspension, privates checking the armor for soft spots, exhaust samples (sometimes with up to 8 re-samples because they didn't follow the proper procedure).

I would have to say the funniest prank and probably the meanest was my last tour in Iraq. Our base was hit with multiple rocket attacks daily to put it short the incoming alarm was a serous thing to listen to and run from. We were bored one day and put our PA system speakers into another companies AO (basically right next to their sleeping areas) and at 2 in the morning played the incoming alarm to it. It was funny watching everyone panic and run, but the true humor came afterwards when they couldn't figure out who did it, they spent 5 days trying to figure out who did it.
 

I was a medic in the US Army and during a field training exercise me and a couple guys got a little baggie from an MRE and filled it up with ticks from the surrounding foliage/ground. Must have been an easy 100+ ticks, we dumped them all in this guys sleeping bag (guy was a real tool). Next morning he was COVERED in them! He spent awhile pulling them all out then got real sick a few days later (oops). Kinda mean looking back at it but still makes me chuckle when I think about it :). Made the FTX worth it.
 

There I was once again teaching soldiers to dive using whatever wrecks we could safely get them on. One of the students on this trip was a Military Police Special Investigator named Mark Hamilton; a good bloke but absolutely bonkers where his sense of humour was concerned

Anyway, off we go with the story......The wreck we were diving on was the Persier, an ammunition carrier during the war, or so we used to tell the students, sounded about right though. So up comes Mark and makes a big deal about clambering over the side of the boat ( I would normally say Gunwhale, Gun Whale, Gunnel or whatever the nautical types call it but as I can never get the spelling right I use writers licence and have listed them all.)

So back to Hamilton, as he "arrives" in the boat he drops a hand grenade on the deck and the pin goes flying from it. Now Kevin (the other instructor! Kevin, and me, the other Kevin) knew he was going to do this so we shout as loud as we can "Grenade! ... 4 seconds". The speed with which every student except us, Mark and the Captain threw themselves into the "not too warm" English channel was very gratifying indeed, well if your sense of humour is a bit twisted that is.

When everyone got back aboard it was explained to them that the offending grenade had been recently seized by Mark as evidence and he took the primer out of it and thought it a good joke to pull on the dive boat. Quick as a flash one of the other students grabbed Mark, The Grenade and demanded of the Captain that he should take us to Cuba or the Policeman "gets it" I was going to tell you the less than charitable term that he actually used. However, I used to be an MP myself and because I was born in wedlock the term cannot be true.........

We were able to add another great story to the many experiences during those happy days teaching soldiers to dive when a sense of humour could get you in big trouble..... and of course maybe even get you a trip to Cuba.
 

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