Bored soldiers...

[heypete]

http://www.heypete.com/pete/movies/armyrillo.wmv -- try to identify all the various weapons in the movie, including the artillery piece at the beginning. This is, evidently, what soldiers in the British Army do when they get bored in Iraq. Pass the link around, I've got gobs of bandwidth.

Of course, then there's always the US Army dynamic entry tactics, which is rather entertaining.

Unfortunately, neither of these were from my unit over there, but we did have quite a few amusing...er...incidents involving tanks. One of my lieutenants was assigned to the one company in our battalion who got to keep their tanks (the rest went over as infantry ). They ended up deadlining, damaging, sinking, burning, or destroying over a dozen Abrams tanks over their one-year tour. Only a very few were due to combat damage, the rest being rather entertaining accidents, or the ground giving way. I have pictures, if anyone's interested...

 

[TheDutchman]

Post them everybody likes to see pics from the sandbox

 

[english kanigit]

*takes up the chant*
PICtures, PICtures, PICtures!!

 

[jlwatts3]

Pictures! Pictures!

 

[Henry Bowman]

LOL! Those are great!

 

[MarkDido]

Would have been better if the last guy came out with a tail of toilet paper stuck to his boot

 

[Chipperman]

I like the Port-a-Potty one.
Reminds me of a clown car.

 

[Matt G]

I just finished watching the "Do You Know The Way To Amarillo?" flick. That was beautiful! I found myself clapping toward the end. Too bad the camara jostles so. I wonder if anyone has software that could correct that after the fact. The best part is that it was all done in ONE shot.

Oh, weapons? M4 and some red-taped rifle I couldn't make out. . .

 

[IZinterrogator]

The dynamic entry video reminded me of an incident that happened to me in Kuwait in January 2002. My company was out doing field training and we had split up into our three platoon elements and set up camp about five kilometers from each other. We would do real training during the day and infiltrate other platoon sites (or fight off an infiltration) at night. The first night, my platoon's mission was to steal one of the antennas off of the first sergeant's Humvee. We drove to within two klicks of their camp, using the wind and terrain to block the noise of the engine, then proceeded on foot. We made it to the outer perimeter with no problem because there was only one pair of roving guards working as a team instead of separately. The inner perimeter was within a depression surrounded by mounds of dirt (it was an old quarry). We were at the bottom of one of the mounds while one guy was on top of the mound trying to scope out which truck belonged to the first sergeant, when he noticed that the roving guards were about 45 seconds out from our location. The guy on top of the hill just went spread-eagle on top of the mound and pretended to be dirt, worked pretty well. The rest of us (five altogether) noticed two porta-potties at the side of the hill. We hauled butt over there and me and another guy were in the lead. He took the left, I took the right. The other three just piled into the left one. So while they were crammed in like sardines, I was sitting there reading a copy of the Stars and Stripes by Zippo light that someone had left in there, comfortable as one can be in a porta-john.

 

[Spreadfire Arms]

good thing nobody pushed that porta potty over....septic toilet juice all over your uniform

 

[Newguy1]

Wehn I was in Iraq my worst night mare was getting killed while "on" the potta john and them not being able to get the "blue-goo" off my dead body.

 

[Bob41081]

The weapons are not M4s. The troops arre British so I would assume LSW. The red one I have no real idea AK maybe?

Bob

 

[Waffen]

That is great!

 

[heypete]

Here's a few of the more fun pictures this lieutenant took...

Plenty more are at http://www.clubi.ie/exalted/sightssounds.htm , with the fun ones in the in "Oops" section after you click on "Stills".

Enjoy.

If you look at some of pictures, particularly this one, I'm the third guy with the helmet on the left -- the first guy has his face toward the camera, the second has his head against the beam, and mine is slightly lower behind him. We slept a lot, as they had us up at absurdly early hours; this was at the M240B range two hours before the RSOs showed up. Grr.

Our noble officers were doing some battle planning with tanks and helicopters. Much fun was had.

Also, when towing tanks, be sure to use the exhaust deflector. Otherwise your toasty turbine exhaust might cook off the other tank's main gun rounds and fuel, which generally is a bad thing and costs a lot of money. That tank was totally consumed. You may notice that it has no roadwheels for the tracks to run on; they're aluminum, and burn quite nicely.

 

[Third_Rail]

Fort... Crazyhorse.... a schoolhouse we just took over one day, much to the joy of the students...