Posted on 03/30/2022 11:11:54 AM PDT by gattaca
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LIBERALS ARE EVIL, ESPECIALLY GAY ONES!
Hahahaha...military with their needles and injections!
When I was in Boot Camp at Great Lakes, there we were, all in our underwear, freshly shorn heads, standing in several long parallel lines, one behind the other, each line marching to a separate desk at the front of the room where our blood was to be drawn.
There was a guy on a platform at the front of the room behind the row of blood draw desks, and he was yelling out instructions to the recruits:
THERE WILL BE NO TALKING. ANYONE TALKING WILL BE SENT TO HAPPY HOUR. THERE IS A CORPSMAN COMING DOWN EACH LINE, YOU WILL BE HANDED A GLASS TUBE FOR YOUR BLOOD SAMPLE. YOU WILL HOLD THIS TUBE IN YOUR LEFT HAND. YOU ARE NOT TO EXAMINE IT OR DO ANYTHING WITH IT UNTIL YOU ARE ASKED FOR IT WHEN YOU GET TO THE DESK....
My best friend who had gone into the Navy with me on the Buddy System was standing right in front of me, and I remember looking at the back of his shorn head and thinking how funny it looked, and saw that his head was inclined slightly looking down.
Right at the point the shouting Petty Officer said “...YOU ARE NOT TO EXAMINE IT OR DO ANYTHING TO IT...” I heard a soft “bloop” come from the front of me. I saw my buddy’s head freeze, then saw it moving slightly as if he was doing something. Suddenly, I heard him whisper in a panic “The top came off! I can’t get it back in!”
He had been examining it and fiddling with it, and the top popped off the vacuum tube! I think I heard him whisper something like “should I ask for another one” but then he said with unmistakeable relief “I got it!” so he got the rubber stopper back in.
But the vacuum was gone. When he got to the front, I recall the Corpsman drawing couldn’t get any blood to come out, and he looked up and eyed my buddy suspiciously, and I think he grabbed another tube!
That same day (I think) as we were sitting side by side on the deck while they were distributing clothing articles to us, he was fingering his shorn head and making some comment about bumps and scars, and I whispered hoarsely “Shut up! Don’t talk, or...” and this guy yelled out YOU! SPOT DOG! STAND UP!
I was wearing wire rimmed glasses, the first pair my parents had ever bought for me, and as an added feature, they allowed me to get those lenses that darkened in sunlight, a fairly new feature in glasses then. Up until then, I had worn those black plastic BCD glasses (Birth Control Device glasses!) and these were an extravagance for my parents. But a month or two before I went in, I broke one of the lens, and they replaced it for me, but...they didn’t get the same amount of the chemical in the lens, so when there was ANY light, one lens got far darker than the other, which gave me a bizarre Dr. Strangelovian look! (When I went into the AFEES building in Boston on the day we went in (Armed Forces Entrance Examination Station?) they almost didn’t let me join because of my bizarre glasses!
Anyway, when the Petty Officer yelled out YOU! SPOT DOG! STAND UP! my heart sank, because I knew it was ME! They didn’t send me to Happy Hour that day, but I had to stand there for the next hour at attention in my underwear while everyone else got processed, my dark blue navy issue utility hat held in front of my face by the bill of the cap clenched in my teeth, and the people processing us walked by and threw gum wrappers and other pieces of refuse in it which I probably went cross-eyed watching them drop in!
That was a long day...:)
Omg! Great story! I doubt things are like that today, but man, back then they could really make our lives a living hell! Lol
LOL, I am sure my Marine brethren are out there rolling their eyes at me...”Great Lakes...Pah!”
Well, it was the only Boot Camp I ever knew, and I did work hard to get through it. (That is part of why I have so much admiration for Marines-anyone who goes through Marine Boot Camp gets default respect from me!)
In retrospect, I always found that reference to “Happy Hour” really funny, even though I did end up going there one evening for a transgression that wasn’t my fault.
Happy Hour was extra PT, usually an hour or two of PT run by sadistic and ill-tempered Petty Officers who likely hated being there at night, and miscreants like me from ours and other training companies at Great Lakes congregated there with our rifles to do the requisite running, leg lifts, pushups, you name it. All of us had made some mistake, being out of step in formation too often, not making your bunk right, failing some course, things like that.
Me? I was the Recruit Laundry Petty Officer for my training company, and when we had an inspection, one of the things the inspector would do is go to the stacks of laundry bags to ensure they were filled with clean laundry coming in (OK) not dirty laundry that had missed some deadline for pickup.
Well, the Petty Officer walked over, opened a random bag, and pulled out a sweat stained utility blouse. Points off on inspection.
My Company Commander, TM1 Mackelprang, a short guy who bore a superficial resemblance to Charles Bronson complete with the pencil thin moustache, walked over to me and said to me in a low, even voice as I gaped (knowing I had no dirty laundry in that pile) “Boy, you’re going to Happy Hour.”
It turned out some sh*tbird had a dirty blouse in his locker, and not knowing what to do with it, simply stuffed it into a bag in the clean laundry pile to make it disappear, and that was the one bag the guy opened to examine, and that guy’s blouse was the one on top.
Boy, was I pissed at the unfairness of it, and later, when I realized what had happened I went after the guy whose name was on the front of that blouse. Fortunately, I was held back by sympathetic guys with cooler heads who knew a fight wasn’t going to improve anything for me.
But hey...I did get to experience “Happy Hour”, and had a lesson in command: When you have responsibility and something goes wrong, it is always your fault. End of story.
Not a bad lesson to take away.
I was at Goodfellow Airbase for part of my training. I think it was for six or so months. We had a GI party to get ready for an inspection and one of my roomates was out partying. When he came back I punched him in the mouth. He ran out crying and told one of the platoon leaders. The next day Captain called me in to his office and asked me what happened so I told him. He laughed and told me that the next time do it in the shower with no witnesses. It cost me six more months in San Angelo, Texas though, because I broke my righting hand. I had to wait until it healed, start over where I was. All my friends I went through basic and Russian language school left me behind. I was kind of a jackass I guess. To this day that guy probably hates my guts.
Ouch! That had to suck, all the other people going on in front of you. Did you see any of them there, or had they all moved on by the time you made it?
Heh, I found it funny to run into my Boot Camp or A-School mates when I made it out to the Fleet! They were very different then...
It was funny the way it worked. Like one batch would get posted stateside, the next mostly at field stations overseas. I ended up at Ft, Bragg. I got to do my MOS, but my Russian didn’t get used while in the army. My tasks at Bragg was mostly South of the border lol. I was a 98C - sigint traffick analyst.
Most interesting...:)
I have always found sigint interesting as a concept. When I was on the carriers, I used to see those Soviet trawlers all the time...and you KNEW they had things recording ALL the time, EVERYTHING. I know they used to pick up our trash...
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