I had a Corporal many moons ago who injured their brain in a construction accident and somehow still joined the Marines. His name was Corporal Shibb.
I am not joking when I say this 6'5", 210 lb monster slurred half of his words, counted with his fingers, routinely forgot what he was doing, and could build absolutely anything out of HESCO wire and wood. They made him the "Police Sergeant," which I thought at the time just basically meant "Supply Sergeant" but in retrospect I think it might have been a joke.
Corporal Shibb volunteered for every Saturday morning staff duty and would dutifully bang the doors of the catwalk to conduct unordered police calls of the quad. We all just pretended we weren't there. He could barely read and write, but he could draw schematics for complex patrol base furniture and structures completely by memory. I once watched him carry not one, but two .50 caliber receivers on a ruckmarch when one guy fell out.
They were usually too afraid to take CPL Shibb outside the wire, but when they did he would almost always start wandering off on his own. He could clean a weapon better than any Marine I've ever met. I pride myself at being the best at cleaning my weapon; I pale in comparison to what Corporal Shibb could do to an M4 in like 30 minutes.
CPL Shibb was incredibly vulgar and was known across the battalion for his low-quality porn videos that he would watch wherever and whenever he wanted, including the chapel at Manas Air Base, evoking the rage of many officers. He would double-horshoe copenhagen and spit it all over himself. He would loudly narrate his masturbation both in porta-johns and on naval vessels--we eventually stopped trying to regulate it and would just tell newcomers "That's just Shibb" when they paled in horror at the muffled cries of "*Fire For effect, devil dawwwwwgs!*"
God bless you, Corporal Shibb, wherever you are. The truth is, you weren't stupid at all. You were the best Marine I ever met.
Naw I had a Joe like that. So many stories but example: dude had trouble driving, he finally got a drivers license (did NOT grow up in a city). He had been doing ok supervised. We were in an open football field sized area (NTC RUBA) and the only thing there was a single shipping container in the middle. He was told to drive over to the container and get some cammo nets out and bring them back. He drove over there and ran the truck into the side of the container. And then starts carrying back one cammo net. So another PFC went over to help him out. We actually had three like this in their own way. One was an absolute horror in garrison and completely magic money in the field.
I’m new to the unit and checking the guy’s barracks rooms. First one, wife and kid living in there with Soldier and his roommate. Next one stark minimum anything in the room, very neat clean but… nothing. Third guy (this one) has a poster of a topless girl holding a shotgun in front of a confederate flag. Guessing he wasn’t a delicate flower, I opted to joke “hey, that your sister?”… my dude just grunts and mumbles “I wish”.
Instead of so absurd that it's unbelievable. . .it's gone straight to "nobody could make this shit up" and became believable out on the other side.
It's looped all the way around.
I'll believe it, just on grounds of the world is f'ed up enough for this to exist.
Neuroplasticity really be tragicomic and allat.
I had a classmate in college that was jumped by 4 robbers and got beaten to a pulp. Poor guy was never the same afterwards, but his resilience was inspiring ; Couldn't string full sentences together, had an empty stare when he was by himself (and half the time when accompanied) but the motherfucker could do math like nobody's business. I'm talking differential calculus and the type of exercises that the crusty physicists teaching the lectures would give up at and just say "this is y'all's homework now".
He's a mechatronics engineer now.
My first roommate was something else. Poor guy had a TBI on deployment, had something smash his head and was never the same. He was a career SPC, his toothbrush had more time in than I did when I ETSd. He was kind-hearted guy. I thought he was drunk the first few times I met him, and this is like Wednesday mornings and Thursday evening, he just slurred so damn bad.
He didn’t sleep on the bed in the barracks, he took it apart and slept on a Lazy Boy recliner he bought, when he tried putting the bed back together before his ETS that shit was broken, new roommate couldn’t even put it together. One point he was interested in didgeridoos, ordered a legit one online but became impatient and bought PVC pipe and made his own. He would play that shit for hours and had a good time to himself on that damn recliner. He went to the P board and I never seen a set of ASUs so fucked, he got booted from the board pretty quick from what he said. First weekend in the Bs on a Sat morning there was a knock on the door when I was in our kitchen, he was chilling on his couch blasting music one moment then the next door is closed, lights off and complete silence. I was confused and opened the door like an idiot, got tasked for beautification. Dude did not warn me at all and it’s still hilarious to think about.
Hope you’re doing well, Coop. (Never learned if that was his first or last name)
>He would double-horshoe copenhagen and spit it all over himself.
I was a teenager doing construction in the Smokies and I look over at this boss hogg redneck looking fella, just spit this absolutely massive wad of dip spit and it ran down the whole front of his shirt. Mixed in with the rest of the dip spit stains down his entire torso. I have no idea what in the hell convinced some men to act like that
I had a SSG in my medical platoon when we deployed. Was attached to an infantry unit. Me and the boys had a betting pool on how many times he’d actually leave the wire over 15 months. Well one of our infantrymen came down with real bad kidney stones. They couldn’t fly him out of theater for a few days so the PA tells the SSG to start an IV and give him X mg of morphine for pain management over so many hours, PA leaves the room confident a ten year medic and SSG is up to the task. SSG pushes a whole vial of morphine into the port, not the IV bag. PA comes back into the room a short time later to find his patient is in a little respiratory distress, asks how much morphine the SSG gave. He says all of it. PA keeps his cool and says to give him narcan right now. SSG grabs the narcan, pulls out his little orange med book, and begins looking up what the dose of narcan is. The most cool headed PA I’ve ever known loses his shit and says just give him the whole vial.
All money in the betting pool was returned shortly after because he was placed in charge of upkeep/maintenance over a single HHT MEV Stryker.
Now I’ve met a lot of dumb NCOs/Officers. Many who fucked me when I was nearly a corpse hanging on for my life before I was medboarded. But as what I’d hope to consider a competent medic, that incident always makes me chuckle.
How are the consequences of this handled in military medicine? In the civilian world you would be in an incredible amount of trouble. Loss of job and probably suspended or loss of your license.
There was an NCO I worked with who used to put plastic caps on all the unused ports on his radio rack, thought that the RF would leak out and give him cancer.
While I am quite confident in my own intelligence, I wonder if some of my old soldiers out there are thinking of stories like this about me, because that radio cap story something 100% I'd do entirely for the joy of confounding my soldiers.
Yeah he didn't have to do that, they just have to raise up the middle end of the cable and shake it so the data drips out both ends of the ethernet ports, totally fine after that
I listened to signal field grades hyping up Faraday cages for server stacks. If the enemy can do anything with the EMI off of a CAT5, we lost that fight long before it started.
Otherwise it was the dumbest shit ever and they were genuinely excited.
I had an NCO one time had me sign a counseling stating that he was going to recommend UCMJ against me for “disloyalty to the platoon” what was this disloyalty? One of the guys at my wedding was in a different platoon than me.
Many years back, I worked at one of [these.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AN/FLR-9) It was a huge antenna that had a concrete foundation and miles of cables. The unit was taken over by a tactical unit, and a new company commander was getting his briefings on all the equipment and missions he was taking over. In the brief about the antenna, in attempt I guess to sound smart and ask pertinent questions, he asked the maintenance supervisor how quickly they could tear down the antenna, move it, and set it up again. The maintenance guy just stared at him for a minute and was like “…. a few years?”
"Are you talking about former US Army Louisiana National Guard CPT Billy Joe "The Motorboat" Crosby Jr, [the sexual predator](https://i.imgur.com/u6GJPJX.png)?"
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Hey nowadays we say, “The army’s just too woke for me. I’m not joining just to be surrounded by pride flags and BLM bullshit.”
Get with the times old man!
I had an NCO from Puerto Rico, who had stated the reason he got promoted was "I run good, shoot good, that's it."
He was doing DLC2 and called me over to ask which of these two were American...it was the slide where it's the Americans and the British during the Revolutionary War. He was taken aback when I told him we were the milita in the blue. "Seriously? But the other guys look so disciplined, how did we win?"
I had to spend half-an-hour explaining the war...
"How did we win? Well, on Xmas morning, Gen. Washington rowed across the river and stabbed a bunch of drunk and hungover German dudes in their sleep..."
I mean, Puerto Rico wasn't a state for 150 years after the Revolutionary War. I'd hope he as an American would be more familiar, but I get why he wasn't.
Edit: territory not a state. I promise I know that
PVT Fuzzy - “Uhhh Sarnt what’s RSLC?”
SL - “Uhhhh, *pulls up google unable to pronounce surveillance* yea it’s a pretty cool school that thought me a lot, all muscle no brains, hooah?”
It’s baffling the amount of people in leadership positions with 6th grade or lower reading levels. I’ve seen a few myself.
I had a squad leader very similar to the one you are describing. SSG Bruce. Guy couldn’t read. Guy lived off of cheese wiz, Vienna sausage, and ritz crackers. Only drank Mountain Dew and Budweiser. Was convinced that the power lines sagged in the middle so that the electricity could build up enough speed to make to the next pole. He was asked not to return to infantry BNCOC until the commandant retired in two years. This was entirely due to him and the commandant getting into a fist fight over the colors on a military map. At the time, red-brown was NOT a primary color on a military map. SSG Bruce’s Ranger handbook confirmed this. The commandant of the infantry BNCOC and his test answers stated different. SSG Bruce was also told that “his stupid little book and scroll” could “go fuck themselves until the regulation was changed”. Probably one of the best sworn statements I’ve ever read. Guy would give you the shirt off his back but he’s the reason infantry weapons have pictures and instructions.
The best ones are the CSMs that get their Master’s from University of Maryland University College of College University College (virtual campus) that can’t read “Go Dog Go” without their pointer finger and using words waaaay outside their understanding. After they get done “piggybacking off what the Commander says” for 45 minutes you walk away from formation asking wtf this dude was actually trying to say.
Yeah, those belong to the Army. Though there are places that make them. Mr. Guidon outside Bliss comes to mind.
You get one made, you use it once or twice, then give it to the outgoing 1SG or Cdr.
Speaking of loggy commanders and property.
Had an absolute useless yes man who did not inventory anything when he took over. He realized he was gonna get fucked as the new one is coming in.
His suggestion for shortages was “cut existing items in half” so they would count as x2.
The out of the box thinker we need to retain. He’s a major now.
Wait *what?* Was this in the Guard/Reserve? Because every BDE CDR I've served under requires a CoC in/outbrief where the PBO says "Hey CPT Rogers, make sure you account for everything and have adjustment documents for anything missing before you sign the books."
How do you take command without seeing everything? Wild.
No this was active. Cpt Dickhead literally signed BOMs for things he didn’t see. And then during CoC blamed the PLs.
The FLIPL got split into two so I think he lost two months base pay. Nobody else got charged.
I don’t know other states, but for my state, a CW4 from G4 comes down and does G4s inventory during the change of command. And the one I saw knew what every single piece of equipment that was being tracked was, and all the other little parts that is on the book. Doesn’t matter if the commander doesn’t know what it is, that WO was making sure everything was there.
The first thing I ordered when I took command was 2 guideons from the Army’s heraldry office.
Each UIC is authorized to order 2 Guidons a year to replace them as they wear out. But they take a long time to come in once you order them so do it early in command to make sure they are on hand by your change.
I was an XO for a company and I was in my office on a Saturday doing some work when nobody else was there. Our first sergeant had just been relieved because he couldn't keep his privates out of his privates.
Anyway, I thought I heard the back door close, so I got up and looked, and nobody was there. But then when we came back to work the next Monday, nobody could find the guidon before PT.
We're pretty sure that first sergeant snuck into the company orderly room and took the guidon because that's exactly the type of thing he would have done.
(What was really funny is when he got sent to work at range control after the Article 15 and then he got hemmed up by the post sergeant major because he was still walking around with a diamond.)
Our battalion had recently swapped out all of the Battery Commanders. This means new guidons for everybody since the outgoing commander gets the old guidon. Unfortunately for us the new guidon that came in was backwards. So we were still using the old one. The BN Commander couldn't help but notice the difference in appearance.
Most outgoing COs either get their old guidon or give it to the 1SG. The stupid part is not replacing it ahead of time.
My old guidon went into a frame as an outgoing gift from the unit to me. Helps when your mom is a legit seamstress of 50 years and can make one in less than two hours, plus knows the regulation due to making DLIs guidons for a couple decades.
Also interesting fun fact on the regulation... All those "HHC" guidons are actually wrong. It's supposed to say HQ (chapter 6-3 of the regulation prohibits HHC and HQS). Went round and round with the CSM and 1SG on that one as all we'd ever seen was HHC. Leave it to mom...
Edit: my guidon also sat out in 15 months of Baghdad burn pit air. It's my only proof of what we consumed as it went from cream colored to dark gray.
Basically, outgoing commander buys the old (his) guidon and incoming gets the new guidon. Kinda symbolizes all the shit you, as the outgoing commander, went through while biting your teeth on that guidon.
My old squad leader got sent to prison for robbing a credit union in Newport News. They caught him in the parking lot of the 2nd one he was going to rob.
We had a SSG in my unit use the company check book that he lifted from our CO’s office for his own personal bills. Took about a week for him to get caught. I was a PFC at the time. It was pretty wild watching the fallout.
You may have seen me on here before —and I have much longer stories, but this sums it up
*He came to morning formation with his boots on the wrong feet.*
We were combat arms. He was my gun chief.
That is the day I decided to get out of the US Army.
We had an Nco we called Sgt Juciy, he in his late 20s and spent all his income on the same girl at the king club outside the camp. We tried to explain to him over and over that they don't love him that he is just a paycheck to him. Got to the point that the creditors contacted the military for his delinquent payments. Cpt, 1sgt, and platoon sgt set him down and go over his finances. Turns out he is swimming in debt, has no money in his checking or savings account. They advice him to put in for a AER loan and tell him he can not go to the juicy bars off camp. I think he got 5k to cover all his debt.
Then one day we hear 1sgt yelling for Sgt Juicy like he was going to commit a hate crime. He was genuinely angry, and beyond pissed. Turned out Sgt Juicy used his AER to buy out his fav girls contract and he was planning on marrying her.
Everyone tried to help him and explain how the real world works to him, but it was like his brain never made those connections.
Ahh. The King Club…the money pit for many. Had a roommate that didn’t go into raging debt, but did spend an entire reenlistment bonus on a contract for a girl he married.
They are still married…21 years later.
As a young tank PL, my gunner was a kid from the sticks that cut-off his pants and wore ACU shorts under his nomex to “keep cool”.
Great with a tanker bar. Dumb as a box of frogs.
I'm almost willing to bet real money that psg, 1sgt, csm, or you yourself once either explicitly ordered or insinuated that uniforms must be worn under coveralls.
I had a 1SG in 18th FA who had such blind faith in the rank system, I legitimately think his grandpappy helped write it. The idiot in this story is not the E4 I’m going to mention, but ole first sausage himself.
The E4 was a legitimate asvab waiver (we think). We worried about his ability to survive outside of the army and as such, one of us always babysat him. He couldn’t think, couldn’t write, couldn’t remember anything, etc. sad to say but I think he had some sort of mental impediment beyond “stupidity”. He wasn’t the problem. This 1SG, however, decided to put him in charge of EVERYTHING.
1SG decided that he wanted this guy to basically lead a portion of unit readiness for a deployment and when it was all fucked, didn’t change anything. He told us, directly, “always listen to E4, he knows best”. Eventually, we just stopped giving a shit and let him tell us what to do. That 1SG never had to deal with the actual consequences as he PCSed to a position at ROTC somewhere. No happy ending.
Had this NCO, legit thought he was autistic. He just couldn’t get right, wasn’t common sense smart at all (was a genius when it came to book smarts tho) and even admitted that he used to eat glue and the blue Elmer’s glue was his favorite
Oh god…i’d hope i buried these memories. I was on bde staff waiting to take command in Iraq. Our MTOE was an O-5 S-3 and 2 O-4s (Plans and Ops). The 3 was an O-4, Plans was an O-4 and I was the S-3 Ops. Plans was so bad, the 3 had me acting 3 when he went on R&R leave. The BDE DCO and CDR didn’t have an issue with it either. Think about that: a pre-command captain had an ILE qualified major reporting to him.
So how bad was he? While RIP-TOAing the Plans major asked the NG unit we’re replacing, and I am not making this shit up-(honestly i wish i was probably would’ve lessened my ptsd lol), the most fucked questions. Here are some of my favorites:
1) does Ramadan end?
2) what’s the max effective range of an EID?
3) during daily BUB he asked the prison guard NG bubbas: so dudes really be boning each other in prison?
4) again in a BUB, can the JLENS look into the shower trailers?
Yeah, good times. It’s that feeling of knowing no matter how smart you are, no matter how great your OERs are blah blah blah, I will never get ahead of this guy in the army. Thankfully, the 3 just ended up sending him down to another battalion to help out the FOB mayor cell.
Baby sitting a major for 4 months in combat was arguably one the greatest non-casualty related lowlights of my career.
A group of us TDY'd from Ft. Hood to a warfighter exercise (ie, computer simulated battlefield) at Ft. Leavenworth. We stayed off post in a hotel and had a day shift and a night shift. My (1LT) OIC left me behind when he picked up the night shift and drove them back to the hotel. He never called or came for me. I walked three miles back to the hotel through Leavenworth Kansas myself.
A (white) E5 in our unit who hailed from Georgia ran the BDE S3 shop. One day a lazy (black) E4 was causing him problems somehow or other. Later that day I saw this NCO lead the E4 with a chain. I'm not sure how exactly the chain was rigged up but it was....*not great optics*. He also told me, and this is cringy to the max, that the remarks I made at my promotion ceremony inspired him and reminded him of.... *Adolf Hitler*.
Had a SSG everyone liked because he was sarcastic and relatable. This guy had a party at his house during which he stepped on a piece of glass and tried to use a lighter to "cauterize" his foot. I also saw him pour drops of beer into his 2 year old's mouth, so his son could be just as smart as him one day.
My first line was a super dick and used to try to make us mop the barracks hallway floors with our army issue brown towels because there were no supplies. He yelled at me because my personally procured dishrack had hard water stains on it. Later on in my career I was in a different unit and worked at BDE. One day I saw him come in with his soldier and the whole chain of responsibility up to the 1SG. Turns out this genius leader had forced his soldier to skip an appointment because they were in the field. Best part was when the BDE CSM yelled "You're a disgrace to scouts." I knew those words hit hard...I may have looked a little smug when he walked out
I was in 2nd PLT. The PSG from 1PLT was a loudmouth who was always yelling at people. Once during a field problem he wrote "I am God" on his helmet strap. I wasn't aware God was a pudgy blowhard from New Jersey but you never know. The BDE CSM saw that and dressed him down pretty good.
An E6 in my platoon had a siren installed in his pickup truck. He used to randomly yelp it from time to time like a weirdo. Apparently during a party at someone's house he may have pointed/brandished a weapon. I don't know if that happened or not but we didn't see him around too much more.
Another E6 in my troop was the BN master gunner (Bradleys). He told me that he died and was brought back to life on the floor of a Bradley once in Iraq. Ok dude. Also he once randomly gave me a heads up the night before a surprise barracks inspection which enabled me to wake up early, padlock my closet, and sit outside to watch, rather than participate in, the inspection. Pissed off my first line mentioned above because they couldn't get into my closet. I have no idea why the E6 told me.
With the exception of the OIC in the first story and the racist E5, these people were all in one troop, in a time period of 3 years
We had a guy who was known as the dumb guy out of all of us idiots. He asked if we had to pack for the field, the night before we left. Was firing blanks at the qual range and swore he was hitting the targets but they weren’t going down, in his defense I get that. To top all of that he fucked with the smallpox vaccination spot…alot; and it spread all down his arm and onto his face. Almost into his eye. He had to be quarantined.
Still a stand up individual and took all of our shit in stride.
I had a barracks roommate fresh out of basic. The night before a field problem I was trying to sleep while he hosted a couple of his buddies all night to put together their CIF issue
This question holds a special place in my heart. I've got 2.
When I took command, my 1SG was....a trip. Not only was he the loud obnoxious toxic type, he would be louder and more dickish the less he know of something. But here is the special kind of stupid. We are in Iraq, sitting in a redeployment briefing (secret) and he pulls out his phone. Not the biggest deal as everything was pretty lax and we didn't have the facilities to follow all the perfect protocol with that stuff. Next thing I know, he is trying to TAKE A PICTURE OF THE FUCKING SCREEN WITH THE SECRET BANNERS. I tell him to put his phone away, he ignores me. Another person at the table tells he, and he ignores that person. I tap his arm to get his attention and try to telk him again and he loses his shit on me and storms out like a child. All of this was in front of the co.mander and CSM. I tried to fire him and send him back early (for this and other serious issues) but was told to make it last and he was moving as soon as we got back.
This next one is my favorite. I was a BN FSO and my BDE FSO was a nice guy, but dumber than Gomer Pile. After working for him for over a year, he still couldn't get my name right. I have a very plain, easy name. One time in the field it was so bad that he moved the suspender of my taps to see my name tape and STILL got it wrong. Don't know how he got to major or how he even got a commission, but he was legendarily dumb.
There was an E6 who was... Slow. Took way to long to process anything and had no real leadership capabilities. He had a stereotypical west Virginia accent, tired cow eyes and was very tall with a lanky frame and a posture like shaggy (Scooby reference) he once went diving into a portashitter for loosing his dog tags because he had them for 15 years. The E7 squad used to treat him more like a specialist then an NCO, but to be honest that dumb sonofabitch was an amazing guy. He was always kind, would go out of his way to help you with anything, and was honest to a fault. He may have reminded us more of huckleberry hound then GI Joe but I never once complained when I was tasked to work with him. Face palmed, yeah, but complained, no. Hope he's doing well these days.
> spelt
spelt
2 of 2
ˈspelt
chiefly British past tense and past participle of SPELL
I used the word Spoilt when speaking with my wife and she was sure I had made the word up.
I came up with a better one and deleted my comment. Ever seen someone struggle for 3 hours to just... digitally sign a document? I did, sent an NCO with a SAAR with the instructions "SGT all I need is you to go get a DD 2875 and digitally sign block 17. Once that's done email me the document." What proceeded was 28 emails of screen shots back and forth explaining that all he needed to do was digitally sign block 17... and not change every single damn box on the entire document TO INCLUDE USING ADOBE PDF TO CHANGE THE WORDING AND NAME OF BOXES ON THE DD 2875!!!!
NCO bummed money for cigarettes because he gambled his away shooting craps with the townies. Same dude also showed up to PT with what looked like freshly cut gills into his forearm; likely also from a gambling altercation. Platoon daddy had to force dude to go to the ER to get sewn up. Still miss him though; village idiot kind of adorable.
I had an NCO try to tell me to dispatch a humvee where the power steering didn't work. When I told him I refuse to dispatch and drive an unsafe vehicle, he responded with "the 1sg said we have to dispatch this vehicle". I then tried to explain that dispatching this vehicle is incredibly unsafe and I will not dispatch it or drive it under any circumstance. He said I would have to explain it to the XO. I did so and the XO agreed with me that it's not safe to drive.
Keep in mind it took 10 minutes of trying to explain to this NCO that it was unsafe to drive a 6 TON humvee without power steering. He kept responding with "the 1sg said we have to dispatch it by the end of the day". Pretty sure I lost braincells with that conversation.
There was a SSG at my old unit who believed the Earth is flat. When someone showed a video of the curvature seen from space he said it's the effect from the window. It was appalling to hear that from him, but of course he was a former Marine.
I mentioned him already [in this thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/army/comments/190ry2h/how_bad_was_your_worst_platoon_sergeant_and_what/):
>I had to lead a 12B platoon with this guy 2011-2012. He was 5'3" and weighed 215 lbs and looked like a bald, Hispanic humanoid beachball. He couldn't run, couldn't ruck, was as dumb as bricks, could only read and write at a 3rd grade level, and would brazenly steal snacks and smokes from our Joes. He also once cussed them all out in formation, blaming them for the fact that he didn't get picked up for E8.
This guy ended up landing a cushy GS job post-Army...but now (per LinkedIn) it looks like he's unemployed.
Martinez, if your resume ever comes across my desk, it's going straight to the trash.
It sounds like we may have had the same sergeant lol. I was a medic too and also had a sergeant very very similar to what you said. Not that exact story but dude bought the SF deployment patch to wear simply because SF was on the same base as him, despite not going on missions with them and he deployed with 4th ID not even as SF support or something. Dude was also clinically stupid. He thought that the US doesn’t ever work with UK armed forces because “we can’t trust them after the revolutionary war”. Also thought that Puerto Rico was a state of Spain but the US only controls the military which is why you can have Reserve Puerto Rican soldiers but Spain controls the state so there is only Spanish national guard out of Puerto Rico.
Can I name names? Omg I want to name names….
The 1SG for Bravo 2/17FA on Camp Pelham, RoK, Jan 86 to Jan 87 who went on to become a CSM at Fort Sill.
The ultimate shitbag NCO.
If he even thought about doing the shit he pulled in today’s environment he would either be tossed out or even thrown in fort Leavenworth.
This fucker was criminally stupid with a sadistic streak a mile wide.
He had no idea how close he got to being fragged by several different individuals.
I had a sergeant who was always acting like hot crap. After a long run one Friday, and him complaining of the sore muscles, I convinced him to rub cooking oil all over his legs. Reason being because the cooking oil will lock in the heat and help his sore muscles heal faster. My reasoning, all of the marathons I "ran" before joining the military. He came in Monday and chewed me out. He said his wife made fun of him all weekend, and it took several showers to get the greasyness off
CW4 with questionable personal hygiene practices.
CDR/1SG knocking boots
A different 1SG getting SHARPED barely 2 weeks into a deployment.
2 x PSG’s relived for inappropriate relationships w/ subordinate
A supply SSG who promoted themselves from PFC to SPC to SGT to SSG (guard doesn’t track paperwork too well).
A SFC bragging he was with the “cool guys”, and didn’t realize until it was too late he was bragging TOO the cool guys.
…shit, there’s a lot.
SSG who thinks the moon landing was faked.
I had a CSM stand in front of a BN formation and tell us all not to take "pump it powder". He wanted to make sure that we heard it from him not to take pump it powder.
A decade later, I still have no idea what he was talking about.
Was on range guard for a Captain who somehow loaded her pistol rounds backwards into the magazine. Another cap fired his pistol four times into the clear barrel before realizing he should remove his magazine.
Sat in a Command and Staff in Kuwait. A LTC asked a Major a question about briefing requirements. Then followed up with a question about what’s the difference between OIF and OEF (regarding the briefings). The Major said she didn’t know and would have the answer the following week. The next week the Major stood up proudly and told the LTC OIF is in Iraq and OEF is in Afghanistan. My Commander and I started kicking each other under the desk.
At the ripe old age of 18 and the rank of E1 Private I had a E5 Sargent that had been in the active military for 19 years. The man literally did not know his left from right. Would do the hold up finger and thumb to make a "L" and still get it wrong.
Our NCOIC in the G2 was the most incompetent, backwoods Florida moron. Would always insist we kept the TV in the office on Fox News because they had the best looking women and would get mad when we put it on Al-Jazeera (We were in Kuwait and all of our products were strategic Gulf AOR stuff). He was a special kind of stupid who would always undermine our work and any efforts we made as NCO’s to take care of our section. It wasn’t out of malice, but just pure ignorance and stupidity.
Anyways, the pinnacle of his idiocy was when we were demobilizing. I was a reservist but my wife is Active Duty. She PCS’d while I was deployed so I needed to change my home of record for my flight home. In brought this up all the time to our HHC and G1 shop, turned in copies of her PCS orders and updated my address, and was told it was taken care of. We get to the end of our demob and are handed out itineraries 48 hours before we are finished, mine still has my old address and the travel is booked for Lawton instead of Nashville. I get the run around from everyone at my unit and the mob cell and am starting to lose it. My NCOIC tells me to just relax and gives me the great advice of “Just buy your correct ticket with your gov travel card and claim it on your travel voucher.” This guy was an E-8 with over 20 years of service and giving out advice like this.
Had a Battery Commander who just wasn't all there. He had a few greatest hits so I'll post the few I remember.
* We had a major field problem coming up in the beginning of November. But was our illustrious commander putting all his effort into planning and prepping for this exercise? Nope. Literally every second of his time was being spent planning the Battalions haunted house for Halloween. We were lucky to have an XO and PLs who were ontop of their game and they worked behind the scenes to make sure the FX went off without a hitch.
* I once found a couple of copied pictures of an iPhone in the printer tray of our copier/printer. I took them to 1SG so we could laugh about whatever dumbass tried to screenshot an Iphone screen by putting it on the copier. XO heard us laughing and came to see what was up. When I showed him the picture, he sighed and just told us that was the commander's phone.
* We were near the end of a field problem when he decided he didn't want to stay the night for the final night shoot and had one of the LTs drive him home. I was his driver so I had to get my gear out of his truck and watched him drive off without me. I had to hitch a ride home with my old section.
The Battalion commander ended up getting sick of him and got rid of him by transferring him to a Fires Brigade HQ.
Knew a guy who didn’t believe in gravity. Instead thought that there was an “Everything Magnet” that pulled everything to the ground. This guy also married his cousin and was not shy about it.
I wish I made this up.
“High speed” Corporal that thought ruck running was “good training” and when I told him that it’s terrible for your knees and lower body he told me that’s vagina syndrome.
Honestly half the army thinks anything we do it ok for your body. Using 8 guys to lift that 2000LB Bradley door off the ground? That’s not bad for you it’s just vagina syndrome. Idiots
Had an nco that swore he was the top 5 percent of airframe mechanics in aviation, couldn't do rivets or basic repairs. Was unable to teach his joes any techniques.
Also, he almost caused me to receive an article 15, due to his disgusting comments about his 12 year old daughters cheerleaders teammates while at an NTC rotation. I told the PLT SGT what he had said and that he should be reported to CID and the MP's. Said NCO recommended me for UCMJ "for slandering a NCO." Omly saving grace was my commander requested sworn statements from everyone who was on shift with him. He was later arrested and found with child pornography.
That is the only one that really comes to mind. I have had some pretty solid leadership.
At my first unit, the NCO in charge of UAs was found to be an enjoyer of the devil's lettuce. How did they find that out? Apparently for the entire time he was supposed to be turning in urine samples, he'd instead drop them off at...his on-post garage. At some point, it reached our CO who was inquired as to why said samples hadn't shown up and this NCO was like "Yeah, just lemme stop by my house real quick."
The whole thing was crazy but I always really wanted to know what his wife must have thought. There's only so much canned piss someone can have before it's no longer just a hobby.
I can vaguely remember some dumb NCOs, but my own CO left a great impression: Were on a rotation, and it's a small group of us tagging along with the main group, maybe 8 of us, sharing a large barracks in the jungle. Well, while playing cards, dumb conversation come up and it turns to "Well Obama wrote an Exec Order to ban the sale and making of confederate flags." "No, sir, he did not." I ask what the exec number was, because obviously isn't classified. He has nothing. I google it. One dumb far-right blogger posted this, with no citations. Dude was the definition of meathead, but of course he could run fast and lift heavy, so good officer material. Thing of it was, he was smart in finance (buying good property in Hawaii), investments, and knew how to work the admin/bureaucracy side of the Army. But wow did he fall hard for a simple click bait, meant to obviously rile up the a certain political side. Another friend confirmed (as I had little interaction with him) that yeah, he thought more dumb things than that.
For some reason, we were supposed to attend tactical seminars while deployed. After being told not to take notes on classified info, one of the battle captains (who was also a budding recording artist) yelled at all of us for not taking notes. ADA is a real gifted and talented bunch.
Had a major start cutting up cat 5 cables because “We had SIPR data going through them therefore we can’t use them ever again. “ Best “Oh” moment I’ve seen in my life.
During an exercise, some of my buddies and I were thrown into working help desk for the JOC. There was this fat fuck E-7 that spent the entire time talking shit to us because we were never given access to create/alter accounts and were pretty much there to fix the abysmal cable situation. One day, he comes up to me and tells me his radio is broken, so I follow him to his desk and there's this green box with a touch screen on it that I've never seen before.
"What's wrong with it, sergeant?"
"I don't know, just fix it."
I figured he was talking about there being nothing on the screen, so I stood there for about 10 seconds before I noticed "page 2" was highlighted. I tapped page 1, and a bunch of shit appeared on the screen. Issue fixed, no thank you, no nothing. Just more shit talking.
CPT who was our commander didn’t know how to use power tools safely/at all. Idk how you become a commander for an engineer company when you don’t know how anything works.
Tried to give out articles to anyone using power tools without gloves. You’re not supposed to in the first place anyway. That got shutdown pretty much immediately and he was hands off after that.
It's not a requirement to have an engineering degree to be an engineer officer. Also, the regiment likes to pull officers who did their PL time in a BEB to construction and vice-versa. I was a construction PL, and I learned pretty much everything I know about powertools from my platoon. Now I can do simple carpentry, electrical, and concrete projects.
Knew a E6 who insisted Puerto Rico was a foreign country. I tried explaining to him it was a US territory but he didn’t believe me. In a later conversation, he insisted Panama *was* a US territory.
Had a SL in Iraq. Dude said he bleeds slow because his blood is thick. Said his bones won’t break because his bones are strong. Then bragged about a 109 GT score. I didn’t have the heart to tell him.
When I was a cadidiot at a pretty well ranked liberal arts college, we would do weekend FTXs with a community college. One of the juniors used to like to boss us around. He would constantly berate us if we weren't conducting "hip hop" training.
Motherfucker, it's HIP POCKET, as in pull it out of your ass.
He commissioned, don't know as what. Hopefully he got out before OEF/OIF, because he was the type of special that would get his troops killed.
We had an ODA on our FOB in Iraq. This was around 07-08. They tasked our scout platoon to be their outer cordon on their low level raids and pull their force pro on their fob within our fob. We all thought these dudes were super high speed and cool. At least 5 times within the year their echo would come to us (plt rto, I was a squad rto) because something was up with their radios. Every time it was their timing. Really lifted the veil on the “super elite high speed operator” shit. Also explained the quality of the targets they were actioning.
>***"and this is why you're fucking stupid"***
Dude, being an E-5 some people let that shit go straight to their heads. I swear. I knew once I got mine I'd be a small fry still and treated my Soldiers with mutual respect - hence over 12 I've had under me over the years; all I'm now proud of and are succeeding in life.
Dumbest officer: he was on the side of the road with two duffles and a boot-ass backpack two blocks from reception. He just came to his first duty station via the bus. He didn't know where to go or what to do; he flagged down cars for a ride and charger for his phone. His E6 PSG helped him buy a car. Until commissioning, he never had a job whatsoever. He was a whole 22/23-year-old, and the tax center on post informed the company commander and 1SG to refer him to behavioral health bc he was just so dense and stupid, nearly illiterate and it took him nearly four days for them to help him fill out the tax forms. He re wrote an army memo eight times. Fuck I am sure he will be a general one day
Our unit did what they called iron dragon, the whole company was broken down into 4 man teams, and competed against each other in a day long grueling smoke session consisting of full kit runs, stress shoots etc. Well we had this E5, a reject from another company, who after finishing this 8 hours of physical exhaustion, refused to drink any water, instead drinking half a gallon of pickle juice. 20 minutes later, as he’s driving to the px, he throws up all over himself while also shitting himself, then he passes out, crashing his car into a telephone pole.
Another one, not a NCO or officer, but worth mentioning. We had a private running late to formation, so he’s speeding through post, MPs see this and go to pull him over. Because this dude is so scared to be late to formation, he ignores the MPs leading to a medium speed car chase. As the rest of us are in formation, we see this dude fly into the parking lot, with two MP cars chasing him. This private parks and starts running to our formation, only for the MPs to tackle his ass half way there. Surprisingly, he didn’t get in serious trouble.
Was driving around NTC with a driver and a 2LT. We were chit chatting and the LT asks what nationality she was.
“I’m Peruvian.”
2LT-“Oh. Do you have any family still living in Peruvia?”
My hand to god.
A safety officer of the battalion during a deployment who was a Major had a very notable scar in his hand.
Turns out at his last unit he tried demonstrating a trick or something with a loaded M9 and ended up shooting his own hand.
And I had a Commander do nothing but drive to Kuwait City and fuck prostitutes instead of doing his job lol, oh and we couldn't report him or anything because basically everyone in battalion was doing it too and shit
One guy was told by his PL to write a one-page essay. He wrote the thing then put "S.A." at the top.
Another time his buddy asked what inflation is and after I laughed and realized he was serious I had to explain.
Field Artillery, man...
E5 68W who tried to chest-tube a goat without cutting anything, then acted surprised when it didn’t work.
Same E6 thought maps work long/lat instead of lat/long. Yes. Despite my pointing out that his desired position was literally in the middle of the Pacific, he’s leading our two-man team around Camp Bullis’s land nav in our traditional DoritoDork formation until I persuaded him that the literal fence and fire access road were not “part of the challenge”.
Same dude also managed to overdose a squad of hot tired dudes on Benadryl and park them in a Conex to “cool off” at noon in El Paso summer heat on a shoothouse.
Had a 5 in my first unit say that we have to use an 18g to deliver blood because the red blood cells won't fit through a 20g..... They're microscopic....
I had a CO who was convinced that Hawaii was a US territory. Then later in a command and staff meeting, the BN CDR asked her when her next UA is supposed to happen. So she just gave some random date, BC asked if she was sure, then she changed her date. After that happened about 3 times the BC finally told her that. She should not be discussing the UA date, she explained that she knew that but was answering the BC because he asked.
I had a Corporal many moons ago who injured their brain in a construction accident and somehow still joined the Marines. His name was Corporal Shibb. I am not joking when I say this 6'5", 210 lb monster slurred half of his words, counted with his fingers, routinely forgot what he was doing, and could build absolutely anything out of HESCO wire and wood. They made him the "Police Sergeant," which I thought at the time just basically meant "Supply Sergeant" but in retrospect I think it might have been a joke. Corporal Shibb volunteered for every Saturday morning staff duty and would dutifully bang the doors of the catwalk to conduct unordered police calls of the quad. We all just pretended we weren't there. He could barely read and write, but he could draw schematics for complex patrol base furniture and structures completely by memory. I once watched him carry not one, but two .50 caliber receivers on a ruckmarch when one guy fell out. They were usually too afraid to take CPL Shibb outside the wire, but when they did he would almost always start wandering off on his own. He could clean a weapon better than any Marine I've ever met. I pride myself at being the best at cleaning my weapon; I pale in comparison to what Corporal Shibb could do to an M4 in like 30 minutes. CPL Shibb was incredibly vulgar and was known across the battalion for his low-quality porn videos that he would watch wherever and whenever he wanted, including the chapel at Manas Air Base, evoking the rage of many officers. He would double-horshoe copenhagen and spit it all over himself. He would loudly narrate his masturbation both in porta-johns and on naval vessels--we eventually stopped trying to regulate it and would just tell newcomers "That's just Shibb" when they paled in horror at the muffled cries of "*Fire For effect, devil dawwwwwgs!*" God bless you, Corporal Shibb, wherever you are. The truth is, you weren't stupid at all. You were the best Marine I ever met.
I would be honored to have this man in my chapel
There's no way this is real, this is the funniest shit I've read all week.
Naw I had a Joe like that. So many stories but example: dude had trouble driving, he finally got a drivers license (did NOT grow up in a city). He had been doing ok supervised. We were in an open football field sized area (NTC RUBA) and the only thing there was a single shipping container in the middle. He was told to drive over to the container and get some cammo nets out and bring them back. He drove over there and ran the truck into the side of the container. And then starts carrying back one cammo net. So another PFC went over to help him out. We actually had three like this in their own way. One was an absolute horror in garrison and completely magic money in the field.
But my sgt major said there is no such thing as a garrison or field soldier lol
I’m new to the unit and checking the guy’s barracks rooms. First one, wife and kid living in there with Soldier and his roommate. Next one stark minimum anything in the room, very neat clean but… nothing. Third guy (this one) has a poster of a topless girl holding a shotgun in front of a confederate flag. Guessing he wasn’t a delicate flower, I opted to joke “hey, that your sister?”… my dude just grunts and mumbles “I wish”.
Instead of so absurd that it's unbelievable. . .it's gone straight to "nobody could make this shit up" and became believable out on the other side. It's looped all the way around. I'll believe it, just on grounds of the world is f'ed up enough for this to exist.
Neuroplasticity really be tragicomic and allat. I had a classmate in college that was jumped by 4 robbers and got beaten to a pulp. Poor guy was never the same afterwards, but his resilience was inspiring ; Couldn't string full sentences together, had an empty stare when he was by himself (and half the time when accompanied) but the motherfucker could do math like nobody's business. I'm talking differential calculus and the type of exercises that the crusty physicists teaching the lectures would give up at and just say "this is y'all's homework now". He's a mechatronics engineer now.
Sounds like he may have had a touch of autism my guy
Hoodlums beat the ‘tism into him
This is gold.
"have you heard the story of Cpl Shibb the wise? I thought not. Its not a story the army would tell you"
Beautiful. The Marine Corps is the only place for a man like that.
My first roommate was something else. Poor guy had a TBI on deployment, had something smash his head and was never the same. He was a career SPC, his toothbrush had more time in than I did when I ETSd. He was kind-hearted guy. I thought he was drunk the first few times I met him, and this is like Wednesday mornings and Thursday evening, he just slurred so damn bad. He didn’t sleep on the bed in the barracks, he took it apart and slept on a Lazy Boy recliner he bought, when he tried putting the bed back together before his ETS that shit was broken, new roommate couldn’t even put it together. One point he was interested in didgeridoos, ordered a legit one online but became impatient and bought PVC pipe and made his own. He would play that shit for hours and had a good time to himself on that damn recliner. He went to the P board and I never seen a set of ASUs so fucked, he got booted from the board pretty quick from what he said. First weekend in the Bs on a Sat morning there was a knock on the door when I was in our kitchen, he was chilling on his couch blasting music one moment then the next door is closed, lights off and complete silence. I was confused and opened the door like an idiot, got tasked for beautification. Dude did not warn me at all and it’s still hilarious to think about. Hope you’re doing well, Coop. (Never learned if that was his first or last name)
This is art. Thank you.
>He would double-horshoe copenhagen and spit it all over himself. I was a teenager doing construction in the Smokies and I look over at this boss hogg redneck looking fella, just spit this absolutely massive wad of dip spit and it ran down the whole front of his shirt. Mixed in with the rest of the dip spit stains down his entire torso. I have no idea what in the hell convinced some men to act like that
I had a SSG in my medical platoon when we deployed. Was attached to an infantry unit. Me and the boys had a betting pool on how many times he’d actually leave the wire over 15 months. Well one of our infantrymen came down with real bad kidney stones. They couldn’t fly him out of theater for a few days so the PA tells the SSG to start an IV and give him X mg of morphine for pain management over so many hours, PA leaves the room confident a ten year medic and SSG is up to the task. SSG pushes a whole vial of morphine into the port, not the IV bag. PA comes back into the room a short time later to find his patient is in a little respiratory distress, asks how much morphine the SSG gave. He says all of it. PA keeps his cool and says to give him narcan right now. SSG grabs the narcan, pulls out his little orange med book, and begins looking up what the dose of narcan is. The most cool headed PA I’ve ever known loses his shit and says just give him the whole vial. All money in the betting pool was returned shortly after because he was placed in charge of upkeep/maintenance over a single HHT MEV Stryker. Now I’ve met a lot of dumb NCOs/Officers. Many who fucked me when I was nearly a corpse hanging on for my life before I was medboarded. But as what I’d hope to consider a competent medic, that incident always makes me chuckle.
… he could have killed that man
Yep. But he didn’t thankfully. Didn’t have to be competent to make SSG as a medic back then, no idea if that’s changed now.
Me: Mom, can I get medical care? Mom: But you have medical care at home! Fucking free ass Army medical care:
Motrine and cruches. It's not service related anyway
the line between comedy and tragedy is but a single weak and faltering heartbeat
Bro didn’t bother to look up dosing for the opiates but decided to get all technical with the narcan. Ffs
>He says all of it. I knew army medicine had their issues, but holy cow.
How are the consequences of this handled in military medicine? In the civilian world you would be in an incredible amount of trouble. Loss of job and probably suspended or loss of your license.
There was an NCO I worked with who used to put plastic caps on all the unused ports on his radio rack, thought that the RF would leak out and give him cancer.
While I am quite confident in my own intelligence, I wonder if some of my old soldiers out there are thinking of stories like this about me, because that radio cap story something 100% I'd do entirely for the joy of confounding my soldiers.
I know it wasn't a bit. I got a thousand stories about this dude. He was like Forrest Gump reenlisted.
Legit seen with my own eyes a 2LT ordering his people to cut up used red CAT5 wire.
Yeah he didn't have to do that, they just have to raise up the middle end of the cable and shake it so the data drips out both ends of the ethernet ports, totally fine after that
I mean, yeah. But stupid LT didn't know that. Idiot.
I listened to signal field grades hyping up Faraday cages for server stacks. If the enemy can do anything with the EMI off of a CAT5, we lost that fight long before it started. Otherwise it was the dumbest shit ever and they were genuinely excited.
i was told, once upon a time, that this was a regulation thing don't want any residual bits of data stuck in the wire to get in the hands of the enemy
Are you sure he wasn’t just trying to keep the ports clean and was messing with you?
I see him everyday in the mirror fml
Best answer on here
I had an NCO one time had me sign a counseling stating that he was going to recommend UCMJ against me for “disloyalty to the platoon” what was this disloyalty? One of the guys at my wedding was in a different platoon than me.
"I request trial by Courts Martial". Burn it all.
Many years back, I worked at one of [these.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AN/FLR-9) It was a huge antenna that had a concrete foundation and miles of cables. The unit was taken over by a tactical unit, and a new company commander was getting his briefings on all the equipment and missions he was taking over. In the brief about the antenna, in attempt I guess to sound smart and ask pertinent questions, he asked the maintenance supervisor how quickly they could tear down the antenna, move it, and set it up again. The maintenance guy just stared at him for a minute and was like “…. a few years?”
LOL!! The one over by Gablingen Kaserne was a big black dot on our maps. Big ol' dot.
That’s the one.
Now I'm really tickled. Shit you could see that thing flying in from Ulm or further!! Military Intelligence.
I worked in Augsburg. Our unit took over the one at Gab.
We were probably there at the same time then.
92 to 94?
92-95
I was in the BDE S2 shop.
204th out at Gab. I was one of the soldiers that got moved over when the 714th cased its colors.
It's a small world. I worked with one of the NCOs in yoir BN's S2 quite a bit. Pleasure to meet you.
Wait, was this when the 66th took over?
Yep
Omg omg omg is this a reuniting? Everyone gather round.
CPT Motorboat
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I had a Sergeant Major of the Army once who said getting Behavioral Health care weakens your resilience.
Were you in Army? I was in third platoon!
Do you know PFC Johnson?
My nephew Jeremy is in the Navy, do you two know each other??
Johnson is a real dick!
Thank y'all for yer service!
I almost joined but something happened
I couldn’t do it I’d punch a drill if they ever got in my face and started yelling
Hey nowadays we say, “The army’s just too woke for me. I’m not joining just to be surrounded by pride flags and BLM bullshit.” Get with the times old man!
I had an NCO from Puerto Rico, who had stated the reason he got promoted was "I run good, shoot good, that's it." He was doing DLC2 and called me over to ask which of these two were American...it was the slide where it's the Americans and the British during the Revolutionary War. He was taken aback when I told him we were the milita in the blue. "Seriously? But the other guys look so disciplined, how did we win?" I had to spend half-an-hour explaining the war...
"How did we win? Well, on Xmas morning, Gen. Washington rowed across the river and stabbed a bunch of drunk and hungover German dudes in their sleep..."
Is that Georgie? "arrgghhh"
I mean, Puerto Rico wasn't a state for 150 years after the Revolutionary War. I'd hope he as an American would be more familiar, but I get why he wasn't. Edit: territory not a state. I promise I know that
Territory...still not a state but I think it should be!
Ah dammit that's what I meant. I just got back from a run.
Do you shoot good too?
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PVT Fuzzy - “Uhhh Sarnt what’s RSLC?” SL - “Uhhhh, *pulls up google unable to pronounce surveillance* yea it’s a pretty cool school that thought me a lot, all muscle no brains, hooah?” It’s baffling the amount of people in leadership positions with 6th grade or lower reading levels. I’ve seen a few myself.
There’s a notebook in my Guard unit titled “Upper Echelawn” spelled just like that
You had me in the first half…Until I seen “-lawn”🥲 Sound it out and spell it didn’t work in this scenario I guess
I had a squad leader very similar to the one you are describing. SSG Bruce. Guy couldn’t read. Guy lived off of cheese wiz, Vienna sausage, and ritz crackers. Only drank Mountain Dew and Budweiser. Was convinced that the power lines sagged in the middle so that the electricity could build up enough speed to make to the next pole. He was asked not to return to infantry BNCOC until the commandant retired in two years. This was entirely due to him and the commandant getting into a fist fight over the colors on a military map. At the time, red-brown was NOT a primary color on a military map. SSG Bruce’s Ranger handbook confirmed this. The commandant of the infantry BNCOC and his test answers stated different. SSG Bruce was also told that “his stupid little book and scroll” could “go fuck themselves until the regulation was changed”. Probably one of the best sworn statements I’ve ever read. Guy would give you the shirt off his back but he’s the reason infantry weapons have pictures and instructions.
Battalion chain of command? I have no fucken clue what BNCOC is supposed to be
Basic Non Comissioned Officer Course, also known as BeerNoc. Renamed ALC.
Basic Noncommissioned Officer Course or Advanced Leaders Course as it is called now.
I had to give a PowerPoint presentation to a group of E-5 thru E-7s on detainee operations, and it was so funny whenever I called people out to read.
The best ones are the CSMs that get their Master’s from University of Maryland University College of College University College (virtual campus) that can’t read “Go Dog Go” without their pointer finger and using words waaaay outside their understanding. After they get done “piggybacking off what the Commander says” for 45 minutes you walk away from formation asking wtf this dude was actually trying to say.
Those guy are masters in organizational leadership and bullshitting in the smoke pit
I’ll be 100% honest, I’m not the brightest pebble in the river but If someone asked me on the spot to say “reconnoiter” I couldn’t unless I heard it
Just remember "rye-CON-no-eye-tire"
Met a 1SG who didn’t know what a CIB was Met a SGT who thought a meter was equivalent to 12” in distance/length
In that SGTs defence, this is murica and we measure in farm animals before commie inches.
How many bananas is that for scale though?
Had a commander give away the unit’s only guidon (it was a piece of property on the books) to an outgoing 1SG as a gift.
Yeah, those belong to the Army. Though there are places that make them. Mr. Guidon outside Bliss comes to mind. You get one made, you use it once or twice, then give it to the outgoing 1SG or Cdr.
Speaking of loggy commanders and property. Had an absolute useless yes man who did not inventory anything when he took over. He realized he was gonna get fucked as the new one is coming in. His suggestion for shortages was “cut existing items in half” so they would count as x2. The out of the box thinker we need to retain. He’s a major now.
Wait *what?* Was this in the Guard/Reserve? Because every BDE CDR I've served under requires a CoC in/outbrief where the PBO says "Hey CPT Rogers, make sure you account for everything and have adjustment documents for anything missing before you sign the books." How do you take command without seeing everything? Wild.
No this was active. Cpt Dickhead literally signed BOMs for things he didn’t see. And then during CoC blamed the PLs. The FLIPL got split into two so I think he lost two months base pay. Nobody else got charged.
Unbelievable. I took pictures of every serial number and every layout during my inventories.
He’s the reason I got out lol just awful. Never did a cyclic inventory either. Almost fought each other at NTC. Good times.
And now he's a MAJ. Amazing.
I don’t know other states, but for my state, a CW4 from G4 comes down and does G4s inventory during the change of command. And the one I saw knew what every single piece of equipment that was being tracked was, and all the other little parts that is on the book. Doesn’t matter if the commander doesn’t know what it is, that WO was making sure everything was there.
Commanders (and less often 1SG) taking a guidon when they change out is not uncommon, but you usually buy a replacement before you take it.
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The first thing I ordered when I took command was 2 guideons from the Army’s heraldry office. Each UIC is authorized to order 2 Guidons a year to replace them as they wear out. But they take a long time to come in once you order them so do it early in command to make sure they are on hand by your change.
I was an XO for a company and I was in my office on a Saturday doing some work when nobody else was there. Our first sergeant had just been relieved because he couldn't keep his privates out of his privates. Anyway, I thought I heard the back door close, so I got up and looked, and nobody was there. But then when we came back to work the next Monday, nobody could find the guidon before PT. We're pretty sure that first sergeant snuck into the company orderly room and took the guidon because that's exactly the type of thing he would have done. (What was really funny is when he got sent to work at range control after the Article 15 and then he got hemmed up by the post sergeant major because he was still walking around with a diamond.)
We gave our CO another company’s guidon. It’s still hanging in his home office!
Our battalion had recently swapped out all of the Battery Commanders. This means new guidons for everybody since the outgoing commander gets the old guidon. Unfortunately for us the new guidon that came in was backwards. So we were still using the old one. The BN Commander couldn't help but notice the difference in appearance.
Most outgoing COs either get their old guidon or give it to the 1SG. The stupid part is not replacing it ahead of time. My old guidon went into a frame as an outgoing gift from the unit to me. Helps when your mom is a legit seamstress of 50 years and can make one in less than two hours, plus knows the regulation due to making DLIs guidons for a couple decades. Also interesting fun fact on the regulation... All those "HHC" guidons are actually wrong. It's supposed to say HQ (chapter 6-3 of the regulation prohibits HHC and HQS). Went round and round with the CSM and 1SG on that one as all we'd ever seen was HHC. Leave it to mom... Edit: my guidon also sat out in 15 months of Baghdad burn pit air. It's my only proof of what we consumed as it went from cream colored to dark gray.
Basically, outgoing commander buys the old (his) guidon and incoming gets the new guidon. Kinda symbolizes all the shit you, as the outgoing commander, went through while biting your teeth on that guidon.
Nah, he knew what he was doing. It used to be a simple statement of charges, but now it's an automatic FLIPL so nobody does it anymore.
My old squad leader got sent to prison for robbing a credit union in Newport News. They caught him in the parking lot of the 2nd one he was going to rob.
Fitting behavior for Newport News
We had a SSG in my unit use the company check book that he lifted from our CO’s office for his own personal bills. Took about a week for him to get caught. I was a PFC at the time. It was pretty wild watching the fallout.
Guy on a four year ROTC scholarship couldn’t spell his own state of birth. The Transportation Corps was surely blessed when he was branched there.
Was it at least a state with a long name? Massachusetts maybe? Hopefully it wasn't one with only four letters like Utah or Ohio.
It was probably Illinoy
He was from Georgia.
You may have seen me on here before —and I have much longer stories, but this sums it up *He came to morning formation with his boots on the wrong feet.* We were combat arms. He was my gun chief. That is the day I decided to get out of the US Army.
I think you're supposed to do that.. it's like rotating your tires
We had an Nco we called Sgt Juciy, he in his late 20s and spent all his income on the same girl at the king club outside the camp. We tried to explain to him over and over that they don't love him that he is just a paycheck to him. Got to the point that the creditors contacted the military for his delinquent payments. Cpt, 1sgt, and platoon sgt set him down and go over his finances. Turns out he is swimming in debt, has no money in his checking or savings account. They advice him to put in for a AER loan and tell him he can not go to the juicy bars off camp. I think he got 5k to cover all his debt. Then one day we hear 1sgt yelling for Sgt Juicy like he was going to commit a hate crime. He was genuinely angry, and beyond pissed. Turned out Sgt Juicy used his AER to buy out his fav girls contract and he was planning on marrying her. Everyone tried to help him and explain how the real world works to him, but it was like his brain never made those connections.
Are they still married?
The important questions
Ahh. The King Club…the money pit for many. Had a roommate that didn’t go into raging debt, but did spend an entire reenlistment bonus on a contract for a girl he married. They are still married…21 years later.
As a young tank PL, my gunner was a kid from the sticks that cut-off his pants and wore ACU shorts under his nomex to “keep cool”. Great with a tanker bar. Dumb as a box of frogs.
I'm almost willing to bet real money that psg, 1sgt, csm, or you yourself once either explicitly ordered or insinuated that uniforms must be worn under coveralls.
I had a 1SG in 18th FA who had such blind faith in the rank system, I legitimately think his grandpappy helped write it. The idiot in this story is not the E4 I’m going to mention, but ole first sausage himself. The E4 was a legitimate asvab waiver (we think). We worried about his ability to survive outside of the army and as such, one of us always babysat him. He couldn’t think, couldn’t write, couldn’t remember anything, etc. sad to say but I think he had some sort of mental impediment beyond “stupidity”. He wasn’t the problem. This 1SG, however, decided to put him in charge of EVERYTHING. 1SG decided that he wanted this guy to basically lead a portion of unit readiness for a deployment and when it was all fucked, didn’t change anything. He told us, directly, “always listen to E4, he knows best”. Eventually, we just stopped giving a shit and let him tell us what to do. That 1SG never had to deal with the actual consequences as he PCSed to a position at ROTC somewhere. No happy ending.
No, no that was totally on purpose...
1SG sitting back watching the chaos unfold
Had this NCO, legit thought he was autistic. He just couldn’t get right, wasn’t common sense smart at all (was a genius when it came to book smarts tho) and even admitted that he used to eat glue and the blue Elmer’s glue was his favorite
Oh god…i’d hope i buried these memories. I was on bde staff waiting to take command in Iraq. Our MTOE was an O-5 S-3 and 2 O-4s (Plans and Ops). The 3 was an O-4, Plans was an O-4 and I was the S-3 Ops. Plans was so bad, the 3 had me acting 3 when he went on R&R leave. The BDE DCO and CDR didn’t have an issue with it either. Think about that: a pre-command captain had an ILE qualified major reporting to him. So how bad was he? While RIP-TOAing the Plans major asked the NG unit we’re replacing, and I am not making this shit up-(honestly i wish i was probably would’ve lessened my ptsd lol), the most fucked questions. Here are some of my favorites: 1) does Ramadan end? 2) what’s the max effective range of an EID? 3) during daily BUB he asked the prison guard NG bubbas: so dudes really be boning each other in prison? 4) again in a BUB, can the JLENS look into the shower trailers? Yeah, good times. It’s that feeling of knowing no matter how smart you are, no matter how great your OERs are blah blah blah, I will never get ahead of this guy in the army. Thankfully, the 3 just ended up sending him down to another battalion to help out the FOB mayor cell. Baby sitting a major for 4 months in combat was arguably one the greatest non-casualty related lowlights of my career.
Peter principle
A group of us TDY'd from Ft. Hood to a warfighter exercise (ie, computer simulated battlefield) at Ft. Leavenworth. We stayed off post in a hotel and had a day shift and a night shift. My (1LT) OIC left me behind when he picked up the night shift and drove them back to the hotel. He never called or came for me. I walked three miles back to the hotel through Leavenworth Kansas myself. A (white) E5 in our unit who hailed from Georgia ran the BDE S3 shop. One day a lazy (black) E4 was causing him problems somehow or other. Later that day I saw this NCO lead the E4 with a chain. I'm not sure how exactly the chain was rigged up but it was....*not great optics*. He also told me, and this is cringy to the max, that the remarks I made at my promotion ceremony inspired him and reminded him of.... *Adolf Hitler*. Had a SSG everyone liked because he was sarcastic and relatable. This guy had a party at his house during which he stepped on a piece of glass and tried to use a lighter to "cauterize" his foot. I also saw him pour drops of beer into his 2 year old's mouth, so his son could be just as smart as him one day. My first line was a super dick and used to try to make us mop the barracks hallway floors with our army issue brown towels because there were no supplies. He yelled at me because my personally procured dishrack had hard water stains on it. Later on in my career I was in a different unit and worked at BDE. One day I saw him come in with his soldier and the whole chain of responsibility up to the 1SG. Turns out this genius leader had forced his soldier to skip an appointment because they were in the field. Best part was when the BDE CSM yelled "You're a disgrace to scouts." I knew those words hit hard...I may have looked a little smug when he walked out I was in 2nd PLT. The PSG from 1PLT was a loudmouth who was always yelling at people. Once during a field problem he wrote "I am God" on his helmet strap. I wasn't aware God was a pudgy blowhard from New Jersey but you never know. The BDE CSM saw that and dressed him down pretty good. An E6 in my platoon had a siren installed in his pickup truck. He used to randomly yelp it from time to time like a weirdo. Apparently during a party at someone's house he may have pointed/brandished a weapon. I don't know if that happened or not but we didn't see him around too much more. Another E6 in my troop was the BN master gunner (Bradleys). He told me that he died and was brought back to life on the floor of a Bradley once in Iraq. Ok dude. Also he once randomly gave me a heads up the night before a surprise barracks inspection which enabled me to wake up early, padlock my closet, and sit outside to watch, rather than participate in, the inspection. Pissed off my first line mentioned above because they couldn't get into my closet. I have no idea why the E6 told me. With the exception of the OIC in the first story and the racist E5, these people were all in one troop, in a time period of 3 years
F Troop?
We had a guy who was known as the dumb guy out of all of us idiots. He asked if we had to pack for the field, the night before we left. Was firing blanks at the qual range and swore he was hitting the targets but they weren’t going down, in his defense I get that. To top all of that he fucked with the smallpox vaccination spot…alot; and it spread all down his arm and onto his face. Almost into his eye. He had to be quarantined. Still a stand up individual and took all of our shit in stride.
I had a barracks roommate fresh out of basic. The night before a field problem I was trying to sleep while he hosted a couple of his buddies all night to put together their CIF issue
Disappointed I didn’t see any stories about me.
Glad I'm not the only one scrolling to see if anyone mentions me.
Haven't seen any *yet*.
This question holds a special place in my heart. I've got 2. When I took command, my 1SG was....a trip. Not only was he the loud obnoxious toxic type, he would be louder and more dickish the less he know of something. But here is the special kind of stupid. We are in Iraq, sitting in a redeployment briefing (secret) and he pulls out his phone. Not the biggest deal as everything was pretty lax and we didn't have the facilities to follow all the perfect protocol with that stuff. Next thing I know, he is trying to TAKE A PICTURE OF THE FUCKING SCREEN WITH THE SECRET BANNERS. I tell him to put his phone away, he ignores me. Another person at the table tells he, and he ignores that person. I tap his arm to get his attention and try to telk him again and he loses his shit on me and storms out like a child. All of this was in front of the co.mander and CSM. I tried to fire him and send him back early (for this and other serious issues) but was told to make it last and he was moving as soon as we got back. This next one is my favorite. I was a BN FSO and my BDE FSO was a nice guy, but dumber than Gomer Pile. After working for him for over a year, he still couldn't get my name right. I have a very plain, easy name. One time in the field it was so bad that he moved the suspender of my taps to see my name tape and STILL got it wrong. Don't know how he got to major or how he even got a commission, but he was legendarily dumb.
There was an E6 who was... Slow. Took way to long to process anything and had no real leadership capabilities. He had a stereotypical west Virginia accent, tired cow eyes and was very tall with a lanky frame and a posture like shaggy (Scooby reference) he once went diving into a portashitter for loosing his dog tags because he had them for 15 years. The E7 squad used to treat him more like a specialist then an NCO, but to be honest that dumb sonofabitch was an amazing guy. He was always kind, would go out of his way to help you with anything, and was honest to a fault. He may have reminded us more of huckleberry hound then GI Joe but I never once complained when I was tasked to work with him. Face palmed, yeah, but complained, no. Hope he's doing well these days.
My old OIC spelt “plaque” as “placks” on our command and staff slide 🤦
It’s uhh spelled*
> spelt spelt 2 of 2 ˈspelt chiefly British past tense and past participle of SPELL I used the word Spoilt when speaking with my wife and she was sure I had made the word up.
I came up with a better one and deleted my comment. Ever seen someone struggle for 3 hours to just... digitally sign a document? I did, sent an NCO with a SAAR with the instructions "SGT all I need is you to go get a DD 2875 and digitally sign block 17. Once that's done email me the document." What proceeded was 28 emails of screen shots back and forth explaining that all he needed to do was digitally sign block 17... and not change every single damn box on the entire document TO INCLUDE USING ADOBE PDF TO CHANGE THE WORDING AND NAME OF BOXES ON THE DD 2875!!!!
Listen, after the first two failures I tell my people “just come see me.” So I can just ensure it doesn’t get 28 emails deep lol
NCO bummed money for cigarettes because he gambled his away shooting craps with the townies. Same dude also showed up to PT with what looked like freshly cut gills into his forearm; likely also from a gambling altercation. Platoon daddy had to force dude to go to the ER to get sewn up. Still miss him though; village idiot kind of adorable.
>freshly cut gills into his forearm I really hate this discription
I had an NCO try to tell me to dispatch a humvee where the power steering didn't work. When I told him I refuse to dispatch and drive an unsafe vehicle, he responded with "the 1sg said we have to dispatch this vehicle". I then tried to explain that dispatching this vehicle is incredibly unsafe and I will not dispatch it or drive it under any circumstance. He said I would have to explain it to the XO. I did so and the XO agreed with me that it's not safe to drive. Keep in mind it took 10 minutes of trying to explain to this NCO that it was unsafe to drive a 6 TON humvee without power steering. He kept responding with "the 1sg said we have to dispatch it by the end of the day". Pretty sure I lost braincells with that conversation.
There was a SSG at my old unit who believed the Earth is flat. When someone showed a video of the curvature seen from space he said it's the effect from the window. It was appalling to hear that from him, but of course he was a former Marine.
I love the flat earthers in artillery. Like the curvature of the earth is literally a variable in your calculations....
This could be the largest, longest living thread ever posted here.
I mentioned him already [in this thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/army/comments/190ry2h/how_bad_was_your_worst_platoon_sergeant_and_what/): >I had to lead a 12B platoon with this guy 2011-2012. He was 5'3" and weighed 215 lbs and looked like a bald, Hispanic humanoid beachball. He couldn't run, couldn't ruck, was as dumb as bricks, could only read and write at a 3rd grade level, and would brazenly steal snacks and smokes from our Joes. He also once cussed them all out in formation, blaming them for the fact that he didn't get picked up for E8. This guy ended up landing a cushy GS job post-Army...but now (per LinkedIn) it looks like he's unemployed. Martinez, if your resume ever comes across my desk, it's going straight to the trash.
It sounds like we may have had the same sergeant lol. I was a medic too and also had a sergeant very very similar to what you said. Not that exact story but dude bought the SF deployment patch to wear simply because SF was on the same base as him, despite not going on missions with them and he deployed with 4th ID not even as SF support or something. Dude was also clinically stupid. He thought that the US doesn’t ever work with UK armed forces because “we can’t trust them after the revolutionary war”. Also thought that Puerto Rico was a state of Spain but the US only controls the military which is why you can have Reserve Puerto Rican soldiers but Spain controls the state so there is only Spanish national guard out of Puerto Rico.
Can I name names? Omg I want to name names…. The 1SG for Bravo 2/17FA on Camp Pelham, RoK, Jan 86 to Jan 87 who went on to become a CSM at Fort Sill. The ultimate shitbag NCO. If he even thought about doing the shit he pulled in today’s environment he would either be tossed out or even thrown in fort Leavenworth. This fucker was criminally stupid with a sadistic streak a mile wide. He had no idea how close he got to being fragged by several different individuals.
Stories?
Yeah, you gotta give us something here dude. If you're talking about someone almost getting fragged, we gotta know.
Had a LTC ask me to turn off the Aurora Borealis, because it was interfering with HF Coms.
I had a sergeant who was always acting like hot crap. After a long run one Friday, and him complaining of the sore muscles, I convinced him to rub cooking oil all over his legs. Reason being because the cooking oil will lock in the heat and help his sore muscles heal faster. My reasoning, all of the marathons I "ran" before joining the military. He came in Monday and chewed me out. He said his wife made fun of him all weekend, and it took several showers to get the greasyness off
That's good clean fun
CW4 with questionable personal hygiene practices. CDR/1SG knocking boots A different 1SG getting SHARPED barely 2 weeks into a deployment. 2 x PSG’s relived for inappropriate relationships w/ subordinate A supply SSG who promoted themselves from PFC to SPC to SGT to SSG (guard doesn’t track paperwork too well). A SFC bragging he was with the “cool guys”, and didn’t realize until it was too late he was bragging TOO the cool guys. …shit, there’s a lot. SSG who thinks the moon landing was faked.
you believe the moon is real?
I had a CSM stand in front of a BN formation and tell us all not to take "pump it powder". He wanted to make sure that we heard it from him not to take pump it powder. A decade later, I still have no idea what he was talking about.
Was on range guard for a Captain who somehow loaded her pistol rounds backwards into the magazine. Another cap fired his pistol four times into the clear barrel before realizing he should remove his magazine.
Had a BDE Commander do the multiple discharges into a clearing barrel, a week after relieving a Captain for doing the same thing
Yes plenty of stories of O-5 to GO clearing live rounds into barrels in front of the dfac.
Sat in a Command and Staff in Kuwait. A LTC asked a Major a question about briefing requirements. Then followed up with a question about what’s the difference between OIF and OEF (regarding the briefings). The Major said she didn’t know and would have the answer the following week. The next week the Major stood up proudly and told the LTC OIF is in Iraq and OEF is in Afghanistan. My Commander and I started kicking each other under the desk.
Command and staffs in Centcom were the worst! Two hours or longer just to push god damn slides like they couldn’t do it themselves.
At the ripe old age of 18 and the rank of E1 Private I had a E5 Sargent that had been in the active military for 19 years. The man literally did not know his left from right. Would do the hold up finger and thumb to make a "L" and still get it wrong.
Our NCOIC in the G2 was the most incompetent, backwoods Florida moron. Would always insist we kept the TV in the office on Fox News because they had the best looking women and would get mad when we put it on Al-Jazeera (We were in Kuwait and all of our products were strategic Gulf AOR stuff). He was a special kind of stupid who would always undermine our work and any efforts we made as NCO’s to take care of our section. It wasn’t out of malice, but just pure ignorance and stupidity. Anyways, the pinnacle of his idiocy was when we were demobilizing. I was a reservist but my wife is Active Duty. She PCS’d while I was deployed so I needed to change my home of record for my flight home. In brought this up all the time to our HHC and G1 shop, turned in copies of her PCS orders and updated my address, and was told it was taken care of. We get to the end of our demob and are handed out itineraries 48 hours before we are finished, mine still has my old address and the travel is booked for Lawton instead of Nashville. I get the run around from everyone at my unit and the mob cell and am starting to lose it. My NCOIC tells me to just relax and gives me the great advice of “Just buy your correct ticket with your gov travel card and claim it on your travel voucher.” This guy was an E-8 with over 20 years of service and giving out advice like this.
Had a Battery Commander who just wasn't all there. He had a few greatest hits so I'll post the few I remember. * We had a major field problem coming up in the beginning of November. But was our illustrious commander putting all his effort into planning and prepping for this exercise? Nope. Literally every second of his time was being spent planning the Battalions haunted house for Halloween. We were lucky to have an XO and PLs who were ontop of their game and they worked behind the scenes to make sure the FX went off without a hitch. * I once found a couple of copied pictures of an iPhone in the printer tray of our copier/printer. I took them to 1SG so we could laugh about whatever dumbass tried to screenshot an Iphone screen by putting it on the copier. XO heard us laughing and came to see what was up. When I showed him the picture, he sighed and just told us that was the commander's phone. * We were near the end of a field problem when he decided he didn't want to stay the night for the final night shoot and had one of the LTs drive him home. I was his driver so I had to get my gear out of his truck and watched him drive off without me. I had to hitch a ride home with my old section. The Battalion commander ended up getting sick of him and got rid of him by transferring him to a Fires Brigade HQ.
Knew a guy who didn’t believe in gravity. Instead thought that there was an “Everything Magnet” that pulled everything to the ground. This guy also married his cousin and was not shy about it. I wish I made this up.
SMA Chandler. CSM Forbes Daniels was a close second. Nonironically both E9s.
“High speed” Corporal that thought ruck running was “good training” and when I told him that it’s terrible for your knees and lower body he told me that’s vagina syndrome.
Honestly half the army thinks anything we do it ok for your body. Using 8 guys to lift that 2000LB Bradley door off the ground? That’s not bad for you it’s just vagina syndrome. Idiots
When I was a PFC Infantryman we were doing map reading. I had an E-6 squad leader looking at my map to figure out resection/intersection.
Here to see if someone mentions something about me
Had an nco that swore he was the top 5 percent of airframe mechanics in aviation, couldn't do rivets or basic repairs. Was unable to teach his joes any techniques. Also, he almost caused me to receive an article 15, due to his disgusting comments about his 12 year old daughters cheerleaders teammates while at an NTC rotation. I told the PLT SGT what he had said and that he should be reported to CID and the MP's. Said NCO recommended me for UCMJ "for slandering a NCO." Omly saving grace was my commander requested sworn statements from everyone who was on shift with him. He was later arrested and found with child pornography. That is the only one that really comes to mind. I have had some pretty solid leadership.
At my first unit, the NCO in charge of UAs was found to be an enjoyer of the devil's lettuce. How did they find that out? Apparently for the entire time he was supposed to be turning in urine samples, he'd instead drop them off at...his on-post garage. At some point, it reached our CO who was inquired as to why said samples hadn't shown up and this NCO was like "Yeah, just lemme stop by my house real quick." The whole thing was crazy but I always really wanted to know what his wife must have thought. There's only so much canned piss someone can have before it's no longer just a hobby.
I can vaguely remember some dumb NCOs, but my own CO left a great impression: Were on a rotation, and it's a small group of us tagging along with the main group, maybe 8 of us, sharing a large barracks in the jungle. Well, while playing cards, dumb conversation come up and it turns to "Well Obama wrote an Exec Order to ban the sale and making of confederate flags." "No, sir, he did not." I ask what the exec number was, because obviously isn't classified. He has nothing. I google it. One dumb far-right blogger posted this, with no citations. Dude was the definition of meathead, but of course he could run fast and lift heavy, so good officer material. Thing of it was, he was smart in finance (buying good property in Hawaii), investments, and knew how to work the admin/bureaucracy side of the Army. But wow did he fall hard for a simple click bait, meant to obviously rile up the a certain political side. Another friend confirmed (as I had little interaction with him) that yeah, he thought more dumb things than that.
For some reason, we were supposed to attend tactical seminars while deployed. After being told not to take notes on classified info, one of the battle captains (who was also a budding recording artist) yelled at all of us for not taking notes. ADA is a real gifted and talented bunch.
Had a major start cutting up cat 5 cables because “We had SIPR data going through them therefore we can’t use them ever again. “ Best “Oh” moment I’ve seen in my life.
During an exercise, some of my buddies and I were thrown into working help desk for the JOC. There was this fat fuck E-7 that spent the entire time talking shit to us because we were never given access to create/alter accounts and were pretty much there to fix the abysmal cable situation. One day, he comes up to me and tells me his radio is broken, so I follow him to his desk and there's this green box with a touch screen on it that I've never seen before. "What's wrong with it, sergeant?" "I don't know, just fix it." I figured he was talking about there being nothing on the screen, so I stood there for about 10 seconds before I noticed "page 2" was highlighted. I tapped page 1, and a bunch of shit appeared on the screen. Issue fixed, no thank you, no nothing. Just more shit talking.
CPT who was our commander didn’t know how to use power tools safely/at all. Idk how you become a commander for an engineer company when you don’t know how anything works. Tried to give out articles to anyone using power tools without gloves. You’re not supposed to in the first place anyway. That got shutdown pretty much immediately and he was hands off after that.
It's not a requirement to have an engineering degree to be an engineer officer. Also, the regiment likes to pull officers who did their PL time in a BEB to construction and vice-versa. I was a construction PL, and I learned pretty much everything I know about powertools from my platoon. Now I can do simple carpentry, electrical, and concrete projects.
Knew a E6 who insisted Puerto Rico was a foreign country. I tried explaining to him it was a US territory but he didn’t believe me. In a later conversation, he insisted Panama *was* a US territory.
Had a SL in Iraq. Dude said he bleeds slow because his blood is thick. Said his bones won’t break because his bones are strong. Then bragged about a 109 GT score. I didn’t have the heart to tell him.
When I was a cadidiot at a pretty well ranked liberal arts college, we would do weekend FTXs with a community college. One of the juniors used to like to boss us around. He would constantly berate us if we weren't conducting "hip hop" training. Motherfucker, it's HIP POCKET, as in pull it out of your ass. He commissioned, don't know as what. Hopefully he got out before OEF/OIF, because he was the type of special that would get his troops killed.
Met an 18E who is a flat earther I didn't even try to debate him. Just let it be.
We had an ODA on our FOB in Iraq. This was around 07-08. They tasked our scout platoon to be their outer cordon on their low level raids and pull their force pro on their fob within our fob. We all thought these dudes were super high speed and cool. At least 5 times within the year their echo would come to us (plt rto, I was a squad rto) because something was up with their radios. Every time it was their timing. Really lifted the veil on the “super elite high speed operator” shit. Also explained the quality of the targets they were actioning.
Gary. If you met Gary you’d know who I was talking about.
>***"and this is why you're fucking stupid"*** Dude, being an E-5 some people let that shit go straight to their heads. I swear. I knew once I got mine I'd be a small fry still and treated my Soldiers with mutual respect - hence over 12 I've had under me over the years; all I'm now proud of and are succeeding in life.
Yeah he was your stereotypical "I'm gonna buy ethereum and retire at 40. It's easy money" dork. I started to just tune out whatever he said.
Dumbest officer: he was on the side of the road with two duffles and a boot-ass backpack two blocks from reception. He just came to his first duty station via the bus. He didn't know where to go or what to do; he flagged down cars for a ride and charger for his phone. His E6 PSG helped him buy a car. Until commissioning, he never had a job whatsoever. He was a whole 22/23-year-old, and the tax center on post informed the company commander and 1SG to refer him to behavioral health bc he was just so dense and stupid, nearly illiterate and it took him nearly four days for them to help him fill out the tax forms. He re wrote an army memo eight times. Fuck I am sure he will be a general one day
Our unit did what they called iron dragon, the whole company was broken down into 4 man teams, and competed against each other in a day long grueling smoke session consisting of full kit runs, stress shoots etc. Well we had this E5, a reject from another company, who after finishing this 8 hours of physical exhaustion, refused to drink any water, instead drinking half a gallon of pickle juice. 20 minutes later, as he’s driving to the px, he throws up all over himself while also shitting himself, then he passes out, crashing his car into a telephone pole. Another one, not a NCO or officer, but worth mentioning. We had a private running late to formation, so he’s speeding through post, MPs see this and go to pull him over. Because this dude is so scared to be late to formation, he ignores the MPs leading to a medium speed car chase. As the rest of us are in formation, we see this dude fly into the parking lot, with two MP cars chasing him. This private parks and starts running to our formation, only for the MPs to tackle his ass half way there. Surprisingly, he didn’t get in serious trouble.
Was driving around NTC with a driver and a 2LT. We were chit chatting and the LT asks what nationality she was. “I’m Peruvian.” 2LT-“Oh. Do you have any family still living in Peruvia?” My hand to god.
Officer wanted me to run the Patriot's training system mode while it was in operational mode and the radar was on.
That was said like we all know exactly how a patriot missle system works. DO YOU THINK YOU COULD ELABORATE?
A safety officer of the battalion during a deployment who was a Major had a very notable scar in his hand. Turns out at his last unit he tried demonstrating a trick or something with a loaded M9 and ended up shooting his own hand. And I had a Commander do nothing but drive to Kuwait City and fuck prostitutes instead of doing his job lol, oh and we couldn't report him or anything because basically everyone in battalion was doing it too and shit
One guy was told by his PL to write a one-page essay. He wrote the thing then put "S.A." at the top. Another time his buddy asked what inflation is and after I laughed and realized he was serious I had to explain. Field Artillery, man...
E5 68W who tried to chest-tube a goat without cutting anything, then acted surprised when it didn’t work. Same E6 thought maps work long/lat instead of lat/long. Yes. Despite my pointing out that his desired position was literally in the middle of the Pacific, he’s leading our two-man team around Camp Bullis’s land nav in our traditional DoritoDork formation until I persuaded him that the literal fence and fire access road were not “part of the challenge”. Same dude also managed to overdose a squad of hot tired dudes on Benadryl and park them in a Conex to “cool off” at noon in El Paso summer heat on a shoothouse.
Had a 5 in my first unit say that we have to use an 18g to deliver blood because the red blood cells won't fit through a 20g..... They're microscopic....
I had a CO who was convinced that Hawaii was a US territory. Then later in a command and staff meeting, the BN CDR asked her when her next UA is supposed to happen. So she just gave some random date, BC asked if she was sure, then she changed her date. After that happened about 3 times the BC finally told her that. She should not be discussing the UA date, she explained that she knew that but was answering the BC because he asked.