Vets and the word, "Gun."

[Quo Vadis]

How now brown chow

Just to clarify - Chow is eaten in the Galley on the Mess Deck. The latest Scuttlebutt was gotten from the Butter Cutter on the Starboard Chow Line.

This be the Starboard chow line... Old "butter cutter" is the one holding his crouch..
http://s17.photobucket.com/albums/b66/RenvilleAPA227/?sc=1

 

[Quo Vadis]

heads up!

I did on occasion, make a tactical error, such as "eyeballing"

Had one of them "eyeballers" during one of those 'landing drills'. Lowering a 30MG over the side, rope braking, yelling heads up; and that is what the marine did. Received the 30 across his face, purple heart, not..

 

[tegemu]

I sure remember those bean and cornbread breakfasts, washed down with black coffee. Occasionally they added hard boiled eggs.

 

[Quo Vadis]

Go Navy!

 

[Dieselbuilder]

A-7-2 Ft Jackson, SC Jun-Jul '77

About half way through basic Drill Seargent Burden, about 3 hours before lights out said we were looking good and deserved a break, 1 hour at the snack bar down the hill. Most were sucking up the suds as fast as they could....I stuck with Coke. On the way back to the barracks........he stopped us just outside the quad and Close Order Drill for 2 hours! for a lot of them.

 

[Greg L]

C-18-4 Ft. Knox July 1986

It just hit me tonight that I could have had my 20 right now if I had stayed....

Ah well, the stories are good & the playtime with the big guns was fun.

(& thanks go out to SFC Lewis & SSG Carson for helping me be who I am today )

 

[C-grunt]

Echo 1-19 Sand Hill June-Sept '02

Favorite memory....In the first mile or so of a 15 mile ruck march, a deer runs out of the wood line and tries to jump over Pvt Green in front of me, and doesnt make it.

Also...During a FTX, my platoon is expecting a surprise attack by a fellow platoon. Late one night we see a small group of soldiers "sneeking" up on our position and we open fire (MILES). Turns out to be a squad of Rangers doing night landnav exercises. We scared them half to death.

 

[Fosbery]

To me, a 'gun' is something attached to a tank or a ship. I hold a rifle in my hands.

 

[tegemu]

I wish you Land Lubbers would get it right. Chow is prepared? in the Galley and consumed on the Mess Deck.

 

[willsjeep]

For me it was MCRD Parris Island. Somebody had to screw up first, I guess I wanted to be that one.
Going to barracks from general issue, halfway up to 3rd deck barracks, my fully loaded laundry bag catches on handrail and dumps all it contents back down the steps, in front of the other two sqauds.
I got my first introduction to the sand pits outside 3rd battalion barracks. I had wondered why there were no flowers in all the flower beds.
Thankfully I never made the "gun" mistake, seeing someone else was enough.
My DI's favorite "training" was to stand at "attention, arms straight out with the rifle hanging on finger by the front sight post. Heaviest damn rifle I have ever seen!
Will
USMC 1988-1992

 

[ksnecktieman]

Spring of 1967, Sfc Dixon, and Sfc Sweet, Fort Bliss, Texas. Thank you Sgt Sweet, for showing us that it is possible to do max on the PT test, (plus 30 percent)and your offer that if anyone can match you they can get out of pt for all of basic training. Thank you Sgt Dixon, for showing us that a scrawny old man with brains makes our youth and strength useless in cqb.

 

[Aguila Blanca]

And if that ain't enough for you, let me tell you about the Jark Marches in OCS at Fort Sill -- 5.4 miles with pack and M1 rifle in 50 minutes, without bending your knees.

One more reason I'm so glad I opted out of OCS. I actually enlisted for it (as a combat engineer, no less!), but after Basic and then Combat Engineer AIT, both at Fort Lost-inthe-Woods, MO, in the dead of winter, there was simply no way this child was going to spend six months of spit shining barracks floors with a damned toothbrush.

Would you believe the Army, in it's infinite wisdom, assigned a 12B20 to a Nike Hercules guided missile unit? The poor personnel NCO didn't know what to do with me.

 

[ramon]

Sucked

Ft. Knox KY, It sucked-but I grew up that summer!

 

[ramon]

The year

Ft. Knox Ky-1966!

 

[Roadkill]

Ft Benning, Harmony Church, Sep 69 -Dec70. Drill SGT Ed White 22 yrs old, eleven months with 1st ID, four purple hearts, two bronze stars w V, silver star. Was not a patient man. He didn't scream except when he really got mad, but would get 1" from your face and say "You're dead,You're dead,You're dead,You're dead. You are a dead son of a bitch. The NVA will kill you if you ever **** up." everytime you messed up.

rk

 

[U.S.SFC_RET]

C-4-3 Fort Dix, New Jersey winter '81 My Gloves froze to the point that you couldn't move any fingers. A Soldier got frostbite just walking back from the mess hall. I will never forget those days in Basic. The Army has a habit of building a little character.

 

[mike40-11]

B-6-10 FLW, MO 1987.

So, somebody (don't remember who) told me "You DON'T want the Drill Sergeants to know your name. Made sense to me and, after seeing the first couple of guys make themselves 'known' through mistakes and/or idiocy and then get called on for whatever whenever the drill's were looking for a name...

So. I wear glasses. Naturally, they take away MY glasses and give me BCGs. But, I also had my contacts with me and managed to hang on to them. About every 3 or 4 days, I would switch off wearing glasses or contacts. Between that and the haircuts, I don't think anyone ever caught on. 2 weeks from the end of the cycle, SFC Lewis would still look at me (when I came to his attention despite trying to avoid it ) and say "Are you mine !?"

 

[rero360]

C 2/58 house of pain, sand hill
july 01 to november 01

got smoked once and only once as an individual, after our last AFPT they had posted the scores and had mine wrong, I went to the senior Drill Sgt to let him know, stating that I had maxed out my pushups on the last AFPT, he checks and orders me to the front leaning rest, tells me that while my pushups did improve, apparently my situps and run had gone down by a point each.

and MY M16 is a rifle, weapon, tool, 6 years of Infantry has instilled a level of lethality in me thats amazing, I'm not looking foreward to retiring the blue chord and cross rifles for cross muskets, one more month until I'm officially an MP.

 

[Eleven Mike]

6 years of Infantry has instilled a level of lethality in me thats amazing

Ooooooooooooooooooh.

 

[BigFatKen]

old story, eh?

I love these threads where you all recount your old military stories!

That's when I figured out putting the powder from 5 M-14 blanks into one was a bad idea. Then I got the M-16, they had crimped cases.

 

[entropy]

E-7-2 New Hollywood, Ft. Jackson, 1986.

I use gun in civilian conversation mostly, but try to use the correct term, whether it's rifle, shotgun, or pistol. (And just to open a can of worms, YES, revolvers are pistols. Not all pistols are revolvers, however. ) I sometimes slip and use weapon, like on Sunday while calling a cease fire at the 4-H shoot, I hollered (to a bunch of kids) "CEASE FIRE, CEASE FIRE. PLACE YOUR WEAPONS ON YOUR BENCH , ACTIONS OPEN, AND STEP BACK!" Flashback to many, many range trips in the Army. I was an Armorer, and often served as range NCO. Never saw a bunch of kids move so fast as on Sunday!

rero360, isn't the branch insignia for MP crossed single-shot flintlock pistols?

My DI's favorite "training" was to stand at "attention, arms straight out with the rifle hanging on finger by the front sight post. Heaviest damn rifle I have ever seen!
Will

Try it with a 60, Will! That was my 'reward' for setting a new diassembly/assembly record for the M60 at the Supply School at Ft. Jackson. I had to hold it up until everyone else finished, it seemed like forever!

I almost forgot to thank my Drills: SSG Burchfield "The Birdman", SSG Riviera, Reserve Drills SFC Velasquez "Tecond Patoon, Tecond to none!" , SFC Wyatt, and some DRILL CORPRAL (***?!) Also SSG Easton at AIT, E-14-2, Ft. Jackson.

I should thank my Dad for raising me as he did. It made Basic seem like a picnic in camo. If I tried to raise my boys that way today, they'd lock me up and throw away the key.

 

[KnightHawk67]

D-1-3 Ft. Dix winter '83

Coldest place I have ever been in my life, I have lived in central Ohio my entire life & I thought I knew cold. That icy wind NEVER let up. Brrrr! I shiver just remembering it.

We had one troop attempt to AWOL and run all the way home. One of the NCO's found him running down the road headed off base. NCO asked him where did he think he was going? Private dipstick answered in true Army fashion: "Home, Sergeant!"

The Army taught me 3 things:
1. You are responsible for ALL of your actions.
2. If you make a mistake, fix it, learn from it, move on.
3. Gravity changes at the will of a Drill Sergeant, he can make a M16 weigh a ton if he wants to. (discovered during the famous gun/weapon mistake)

 

[TxPhantom]

I had the pleasure of doing my basic training at Ft Carson in Nov., 1966. For a Texas boy it took some getting used to. Theres nothing like walking guard duty around a old, deserted building in the middle of the night at 5 to 10 degrees below zero carrying a empty rifle. I was actually drafted but reinlisted for another 4 years.

I was discharged from Ft Benning while in the 11th Air Assault (Test) Division. Remember the movie "Once We Were Young and Soldiers" (something like that) by Mel Gibson? I got out just before they went to Nam and became 7th Cav. Many of my friends didn't come back alive. The disrespect of soldiers by the air head peacenics was so bad then that we didn't usually wear our uniforms in to town. That was a very disgraceful period in America's history.

While in basic, we were on the rifle range where the rifle is always to be up & down range. A trainee got caught by a Sgt waving his rifle around and was ordered to get down & do push ups. While doing his push ups the Sgt. turned to talk to someone else and by time time he turned back to the trainee, he had completed his push ups & was up and at attention waiting to be dismissed. The Sgt asked him if he cheated while he wasn't looking and the trainee said, no Sgt. The Sgt then told him to get down and do twenty more for not cheating when he had the chance. You don't win with these good Sgts!

I learned a lot and I am glad for the experience. I am very proud of the warriors in our military that are serving our country today!

 

[Eleven Mike]

The military is silly.

All firearms are guns. Rifle, auto-pistol, revolver, they're all guns.

 

[lionking]

hats off to the vets who have posted on this thread and thanks.I personally have not served but my father put in 22years so I understand what you say.He constantly refered to as a weapon.
He coached me on the difference between a clip and a magazine,he always gets peeved when someone mixes that definition.
But what I remember that peeved him most is when watching a military movie the guy on the radio would end communication by saying "over and out" not just "out"...oh he would rant about that lol!