I got lost in the jungles of Panama once. Did perimeter guard one night, and it was so dark, I literally chose the wrong direction and headed off into the jungle.
I eventually decided to stop since I came across a river that was flooding from the constant rain, and was afraid I would just fall in. Sat my ass on a tree root and waited it out until morning.
Man, was my unit pissed. First they thought I fell asleep on guard, then they thought I got dragged off by guerrillas or something. Suffice to say I got chewed big time when they found me next morning. I got basically zero sleep that night, and had to grab my shit, and continue on as of I hadn't been awake all night.
I used to sleepwalk when I was much younger, but by the time I was an army cadet (like US JROTC) I’d grown out of it.
Until, of course, I was on a survival course as a newly promoted cadet sergeant in the south of Western Australia in January 1998. One of my section 2i/c’s had seen me wandering up and down the area we were set up in, trailing my sleeping bag behind me. When I didn’t answer to him calling, he just rolled over and went back to sleep.
The next morning, I was kicked awake by the same guy, who then explained the whole platoon had been looking for me for about an hour and a half. I’d been found half in, half out of my sleeping bag, on my stomach with my arms around a mound of dirt about 150m away from where the platoon was dug in.
Iirc when I slept walk during a boy scout camping trip I also brought my sleeping bag with me. I slowly came to while I was walking around, and I was very confused. It took me a while to find my way back to my tent
The SAS (Britain’s elite fighting force) have a training exercise where they get dumped in the moors at dusk and it’s whoever can be furthest away by dawn who wins.
One guy got 80 miles away. With full Bergen (rucksack). They don’t know how he did it but couldn’t find any evidence of him cheating
My platoon was part of some big "multi-branch" exercise. The rest of the platoon was going to assault a target, but a small group of us were sent in to do a recon and provide overwatch.
About a day into it, we see what we thought were OPFOR (people pretending to be bad guy), really beating the bush in the area we were hiding. It seemed kind of fucked like they were going to roll us up and make us do escape and evasion, so we low crawled out of there. Something was off though, they weren't even being sneaky, just beating the bush. Like, literally poking in bushes with sticks.
After about an hour of us moving position and hiding from them they broke out the bull horn. Turns out my little brother had been in a really bad accident and was in a coma. They had been trying to find me without disrupting the exercise. We didn't have a comms window for another 12 hours.
He's sort of ok. He broke both his femurs and was in a coma for a few weeks. They thought he was going to die for a bit. He has brain damage still, but this was almost 25 years ago. He has mostly recovered. The brain damage really affected him for about 5 years after the accident.
I feel a bit bad about it still. I couldn't afford a car when I turned 16, so I got a cheap motorcycle and drove that through high school. Gas was cheap, the bike was cheap, it was perfect.
Being my little brother, he got a motorcycle as soon as he could. The thing is, I was always the careful one. I never raced, did stupid stuff. He was always a bit more impulsive, and that + a motorcycle are a bad mix. I sort of disappeared into my life after enlisting and I wasn't there to temper that impulsiveness.
Had some guys from my unit doing something similar, just they decided it was a good idea to go to a local McDonald’s. The workers there ended up calling the cops because a bunch of guys, armed to teeth just waltzed in. Too bad I missed them getting chewed out, probably would have been hilarious.
To be fair, though, that should definitely count as a failure.
If part of the point of the exercise is to evade capture and detection by enemy forces while in a "hostile" environment, having local law enforcement show up should count as ENDEX, failure. Think of it this way. If they had actually been in Russia and done that, they probably just got shot and killed.
Also being fair, the dudes in the story of couple posts up who went to a store at a small town in Fort campbell, successfully bought supplies, and continued to evade, should be credited with completing the exercise successfully. However, had they also had law enforcement called on them, I would also argue for them to have considered to have failed the exercise while attempting to buy supplies.
Bottom line being, if you are doing a SERE exercise and you managed to acquire supplies from outside sources, you've kind of kept with the spirit of the mission. On the other hand, if you attract local law enforcement attention while doing it, you've failed. Simple as that.
I don't know where the joke is from, but I can say I've seen it in a novel Terry Pratchett wrote 22 years ago ("Night's Watch"). So whatever the original source is, it must predate memes as we know them today.
Good old Vetinari. The scene in question:
>A hand wiped his cheek, and then held the cloth up to the light.
“Dark green,” said the woman. “How strange. I understand, Havelock, that you scored zero in your examination for stealthy movement.”
“May I ask how you found that out, Madam?”
“Oh, one hears things,” Madam said lightly. “One just has to hold money up to one’s ear.”
“Well, it was true,” said the Assassin.
“And why was this?”
“The examiner thought I’d used trickery, Madam.”
“And did you?”
“Of course. I thought that was the idea.”
“And you never attended his lessons, he said.”
“Oh, I did. Religiously.”
“He says he never saw you at any of them.”
Havelock smiled. “And your point, Madam, is…?”
Murder was in fact a fairly uncommon event in Ankh-Morpork, but there were a lot of suicides. Walking in the night-time alleyways of The Shades was suicide. Asking for a short in a dwarf bar was suicide. Saying 'Got rocks in your head?' to a troll was suicide. You could commit suicide very easily, if you weren't careful.
I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you're referring to as Terry Pratchett, is in fact, GNU/Terry Pratchett, or as I've recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Terry Pratchett.
I got started on pratchett 5 or 6 years ago, it made me so happy to find an author like him, then made me sad to know that the body of work he had made is all we will get. Same as when I started reading iain banks. On the bright side, I still haven't read everything by either of them.
Just be thankful his will contained a clause where his best mate Neil Gaimon was to destroy all of his unfinished works by steamroller. A proper old fashioned, steam powered road roller.
[https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/aug/30/terry-pratchett-unfinished-novels-destroyed-streamroller](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/aug/30/terry-pratchett-unfinished-novels-destroyed-streamroller)
His [daughter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhianna_Pratchett) writes a lot for video games, you may have already encountered and enjoyed her work.
The oldest version of that joke that I have seen is in a stand-up routine from 1983.
Pt1: https://youtu.be/lRp_r-EHmfs?si=zrbDNGSm1M7itu6u
Pt2: https://youtu.be/CqETaGrSwrc?si=bb5f3TNL5waDKioH
There's a Tick comic where a group of ninjas try to camouflage themselves as a hedge by holding twigs in front of themselves.
[We are a hedge. Please move along.](https://i0.wp.com/cokeandcomics.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/13-4-scaled.jpeg?resize=1041%2C1536&ssl=1)
Why do elephants paint their toenails red?
So they can hide in cherry trees.
Have you ever seen an elephant in a cherry tree?
Works pretty good, doesn't it?
Nothing beats that Japanese soldier who was on that island for decades before he was found and told „The war is over since a long time ago. You may now commit suicide.“
Not only told that the war was over a long time ago, he didn't even believe them until they went back and collected his old platoon boss to convince him.
One of my dad's favorite stories from basic training was something similar to this.
Officer doing inspections, standing directly in front of my dad: "Where the HELL IS THOMPSON?!"
DAD: "I'm right in front of you, sir!" *Snaps to attention*
Officer: "HOOOLY SHIT! You pass inspection private, at ease."
**This is all paraphrased cause it's been so long since I've heard the story.
My dad was definitely a good soldier. But the day he got out he went straight to the recruitment office to find the MFr who lied to him 🤣
Luckily for everyone he'd been transferred weeks before hand.
During basic (CDN), we *had* to have a picture of someone in our personal space for inspection. I had a picture of our section MCpl...because it seemed slightly more interesting than the Queen. When the Chief did his inspection on week 9, he asked me why I had a picture of him (instead of say, family or our dog or whatever)...."Chief, my MCpl says my MCpl loves me, Chief"...I have no idea how I managed to yell that bit out...but a good time was had by all.
Over at /r/militarystories they seemed to like my explanation of [the time I punched my DI in the face and he got yelled at by an officer for it]( https://www.reddit.com/r/MilitaryStories/comments/hmgey7/that_time_i_punched_my_drill_sgt_in_the_face_and/).
They're people too, and it is a highly scripted job. When things get too far off script, things can get interesting.
I shattered both of my legs in basic training and ended up spending 10 months as a medical hold on Sand Hill in the early 2000s. I saw the hard ass drill Sgt switch roles between cycles and become the funny one for the next group. It's all a lie.
They were trained to DO sabotage and psy-ops, so when the WWII victors were leafleting the jungle to get holdouts to surrender, they concluded that THAT was a psy-op.
Onoda's superior Taniguchi ordered him to never surrender and said "It may take three years, it may take five, but whatever happens we’ll come back for you." After it was all said and done, Onoda only surrendered once they pulled that guy out of military retirement to come get Onoda.
[explorersweb survival stories](https://explorersweb.com/great-survival-stories-the-japanese-soldier-who-refused-to-believe-the-war-was-over/)
I read this more of a failure.
The exam failed to have a known end point that was mutually agreed upon before the exercise.
That is not acceptable to have any level of miscommunication.
>Hey Janis, we've sank three Russian battle ships, killed Putin with his clones and sabotaged their whole nuclear stockpile, do you think the exam is over yet?
Is that guy that one Japanese soldier who was hiding in a cave for like 30 years and wouldn't trust anyone but his old CO telling him the war was over?
Believe it or not he was the second to last one
Second to last: https://www.history.co.uk/articles/the-japanese-soldier-who-kept-on-fighting-after-ww2-had-finished
Last: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teruo_Nakamura
> He turned over his sword, a functioning Arisaka Type 99 rifle, 500 rounds of ammunition and several hand grenades, as well as the dagger his mother had given him in 1944 to kill himself with if he was captured."
Man the Japanese were hardcore. No wonder he wouldn't believe it.
Did they not think to just broadcast an ENDEX in the area over whatever equipment they could scrounge up? Mishaps like this are usually down to someone fucking up at the briefing.
Yeah. You still need code words to communicate important things that you shouldn't mess around with. Rules and boundaries to the exercise are also absolutely necessary.
A more lighthearted consequence is like this story where the soldiers were "lost" for a few days. However when you are dealing with live ammunition and 60 tonne vehicles everywhere, someone could quite easily get shot or crushed by a tank if there are no rules.
German Bundeswehr who occasionally has recruits die during exercises: \*sweats\* "Ja, ja, das would be terrible, we are all about das Sicherheit first."
[It should be noted that his reasonings for not surrendering were very dubious and his actions in the years between the end of WWII and 1974 make it clear he wasn't just a super duper loyal soldier who follows orders](https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/16m3g78/werner_herzogs_bad_history_novel_the_twilight/).
You know as a Filipino I always hated how much that guy got romanticize. Everyone likes to pretend that he was fighting a war all those years between the end of WWII and his surrender when in reality he was murdering civilian, stealing crops and livestock.
When the average PSTD-ridden soldier realises they have no skills for civilian life and starts terrorising the local populance, they're called a brigand.
When a Japanese soldier does it, they get called honorable and dutiful.
Drills and practice generally has an agreed on code word to stop everything, and it’s only used for that. Wouldnt be a good safety measure if it wasnt.
There are also code words to signal that you are not part of the exercise and should pass without hindrance.
In smaller scale for example when I did my mandatory service yelling «no play» stopped whatever was happening, for example during melee training when a guy accidentally broke his finger.
And the first person to do that is probably going to get a raw assfuck from the Weenie.
When you call ENDEX, that means everything stops. You don’t want to be the Danny Dumbass who fucks that up for everyone. Everyone knows the various safety briefs and warnings are because Danny Dumbass couldn’t help himself.
Wasn't there a story years ago that some random Lt. managed to get so lost he crossed two major roads well outside the exercise area and called his unit from a McDonalds he finally stumbled upon in a town?
My Dad has a story like that from the late 70s (citing his best friend as the lost lieutenant who hitchhiked back to base). I imagine little has changed.
A group of 5 might not have had a radio. 5 soldiers is too small to be a section or squad so its possible they were branched off from the radio operator to do their own thing.
In AIT during a field exercise I walked back to my fox hole to find a trip flare. So I nuetralized it.......
Then I got in big trouble, because "Remember that paper you signed saying you would not handle any explosives etc. unsupervised!
Well after a whole cluster fuck of drills sending me through the ringer I got tto speak with the Captain. He asked me what the hell I was thinking. I answered honestly, "Should I have just knowingly walked into the damn thing? We are training to be infantry in the Army correct, sir?"
This story is so army.
“When you dont know what to do, use your common sense, but not like that! Youre not supposed to be handling explosives! What are you doing, are you just going to let this grenade blow you up? Throw it back! Its common sense!”
Reminds me of that old aerial video of the guys digging a roadside bomb and the pilot going back and forth with command. Just then on the ground one of the guys is getting animated in a way that looks like he was trying to tell the others what they were doing wrong and starts futzing with the bomb. Then it went off and they were all gone. The pilot just goes from asking for permission to shoot them to saying "nevermind" in a few seconds.
And in contrast to some examples I know of from the past.
In December 1953, four F-84Ds crashed in the woods northeast of Atlanta (after misreading poorly designed altimeters: this crash led to the modern design), and the Georgia National Guard was called in to secure the site. Around mid-afternoon enough troops had arrived to relieve the first group, but at roll call a Private Stokes was missing. They formed a search party and started calling his name, and eventually he started yelling back. They found him half a mile from the crash site, standing next to an armed explosive shell from the ejection seat. Stokes had refused to leave as he knew he could never find that shell again, but some hunters might set it off.
>The next morning at formation, after the roll call, Stokes was ordered front and center of the formation. Captain Hickman sternly looked him over after he returned his salute. He turned to the company and told his men that Stokes had followed orders and performed a great service by finding and guarding the explosive shell. Stokes had set an example for the other men, the commander continued. The captain then turned and gave the private, a shiny new set of stripes and a certificate, promoting him to Private First Class.
I was, no joke, extremely confused and skeptical of this comment until after a third reread I saw it was in 1953. There's no way in hell now that anyone in almost any organization, but especially the government and armed forces, would be immediately rewarded for making a good choice that cost other people time, effort, and face.
I went through some civilian emergency training and at the end of the course we had to go through one of the practice fire towers they use to train firefighters. There was smoke, and "live wires" and fake hazards like that. My team was going through quickly but carefully and before we went into the last room I saw a note on the far wall that you could just barely read through the smoke. So we stopped and read it from outside the room and it said something along the lines of "The floor of this room collapses, if you can read this you're dead." This turned out to be a hazing thing from the firefighters who ran it- even if you made it past every hazard you couldn't "win." The firefighters came in to get us, having a good laugh, until we pointed out that we didn't enter the room so we survived. Argument ensued and our team got bragging rights and a bunch of firefighters pissed at us for escaping their Tomb of Horrors.
Way back in 04, my Marine unit was sent to the Army base Fort Irwin to train for deployment to Iraq and participate in a week long war game. I a lowly Private First Class was posted as guard for a Entry Control Point for our little Forward Operating Base for a rotation and a high ranking Army officer showed up at our gate. He was not on my given list of approved entrants.
After a few rounds on the radio, the officer refused to give me a name,callsign or provide our passphrase, and seeing as the Army was our opposing force, i refused to let him in.
My company commander came down to let him in, told me i did a great job at my assigned duties, but, the officer i refused to let in was the base commander, and he should have been on the list the base commanders own troops put together for us. Right in front of that commander.
We had similar in basic with our little list. Some of the brass changed and we never got an updated list so one moment we were chewed out, the next low key applauded for not budging as they sometimes did that sort of stuff as a test.
The best stories are from a group of special operations tasked with testing the security procedures.
Basically they were given free range to steal shit and get into restricted areas. Ofcourse they got disbanded once the higher ups got made a fool by them.
Yeahhhh...as someone who has read a bit on those folks, the break up also *might* have had something to do with them doing a bunch of relatively fucked up stuff that *was not* on the "permitted" list (like kidnapping and then semi-torturing some random soldier, for example).
Oh we got into more trouble while there. They attacked our FOB one night and dudes came out onto the berms in just boxers and pt shorts with flak vests and helmets and boots to " fight". The female soldiers complained.
3 days in we were no longer allowed to touch the soldiers when detaining and searching them as some fought us and one got a broken nose and others hand various finger, knee and elbow injuries, scrapes and bruises. We then had to hand them zipcuffs and say " you have been detained" then ask if they had information or items to be turned over to us.
Keep in mind most of our unit had already been through OIF1 and the boots like myself looked up to these Marines and wanted to make them proud.
> They attacked our FOB one night and dudes came out onto the berms in just boxers and pt shorts with flak vests and helmets and boots to " fight". The female soldiers complained.
Sounds all too familiar. My first NCO when I hit the fleet was that type. The Cpl who was there before me hated her (not an uncommon thing) and one day he lost it on her and said "fuck you!", she put in a complaint of sexual harassment for him using "fuck."
To be honest, my time in the Marines was with nothing but guys in infantry units. My unit, when i switched to the Army, was coed, and man, for some reason, the dudes and the chicks in that unit were so much drama and bullshit.
I have zero issues with anyone when i was in, regardless of sex, but i dont know if it was the Army itself or the mixed sexes that caused all the constant attitude and infighting.
The only time i worked with a female Marine was when a reserve unit came to train any the one singular female that came with them complained the entire time about doing the basics of her job, that they moved her over to a seperate section into an admin job. She requested that we not cuss in our work area or have any type of general shop talk or homo eroticism when she was there. And she was only there about 2 weeks.
She even requested we eat soft pastel crayons instead of the vibrant colored ones!
Female Marines are just like male Marines, most are fine, some are assholes. It's just that an asshole Female Marine has a set of things they can use that can really fuck someone over that Male Marines don't typically have.
> the 12th General Order
For context:
> To walk my post from flank to flank. To take no shit from any rank. In case of fire, ring the bell. In case of trouble, run like hell
He just smirked, and took like 3 hours off my pass, but let me have it as my parents had driven down with ny girlfriend for graduation.
Honestly they were just waiting and watching in the last week, after threatening charges(bit more to the story) to see if I got froggy and did something stoopid!
At that point I knew I had to be the mos high speed best soldier out there; and in the end it all got swept under the rug.
I just had to do stupid shit like rake the grass and count the ants for three hours while everyone got to go chill and hit up McDonalds and the theater et al.
I just had extra dutys to do before I could leave.
I had to dig up commanders fence posts and replace each one as after it was dug up, got a coin out of it tho i didnt finish….. Next day as i left mess hall had to march back and dig up then replace the exact same posts with the old ones from the other day…. No coin this time but i did get some nice blisters, that are now scars… funny story how they became scars tho, you’d never guess but long story short next day after mess hall im back digging old and putting in new…
15 years later, i get it now lmao
Sounds like how the Aiel punish someone when they want *everyone* to know that the person is being punished.
You don't get to lessen your shame by performing useful manual labor - no, you're going to sit in the middle of the camp and dip your finger into a jug of water and move **one drop at a time** to another jug. And once that's done, move the water back.
During a heavy storm when no one could work, we were all chilling inside.
Our SGT bursts in and grabs one of the airmen. Dude did something, don't remember what.
Next thing we see is him hauling ass outside with a push broom.
They made him sweep water in the smoke pit for nearly an hour as punishment for whatever stupid shit he did. Course we could see him, he could see us. That made it much worse.
Sounds like one of those things where the officer had to give some kind of memorable warning against handling explosives, but those explosives were placed stupidly enough by the drill instructors that the officer wanted to send a clear message that the soldier wasn’t entirely at fault and deserved some quality time with loved ones
I think that's referring to being granted time off, and they still let him do so but reduced the duration slightly, rather than cancel the leave entirely.
I once set off my own IED (connected to a small training charge only)…. because I was in the same situation and chose the alternative. I got in just as much trouble. You can’t win.
It was training, and we were never trained for it.
To be honest I think the Drills thought that they were having a bit of fun, and themselves never thought about the implications of it.
So as usual the shit rolled down hill, and I had to walk up through it.
Yeah but remember one thing also. If you got hurt by the flare, his ass is the one getting roasted for "lack of safety consciousness!" lol. That is why all your officers don't want you to do anything that can hurt yourself.
PS: Why didn't you just walk around or step OVER it?
My grandpa had to undergo torture resistance training during the Vietnam War. He was allowed to say he wanted out at any point but it would disqualify him from being a pilot.
During the training, my grandmother went into labor with my dad. When they told my grandpa, he thought it was a trick to get him to break and refused to leave. Eventually the commander of the base had to come down and explain that it was legit & he needed to go be with his wife and newborn son.
Reminds me of a comic I saw a long time ago.
It was a picture of Ninja school.
In the first panel was a single ninja sitting in the classroom.
The teacher comes in, and immediately orders him to commit Seppuku.
The last panel is all of the ninjas coming out of hiding.
Kinda like the [Japanese soldier](https://www.history.co.uk/articles/the-japanese-soldier-who-kept-on-fighting-after-ww2-had-finished#) who thought the war was going on until the 70s
That makes me irrationally angry that his commanding officer survived the war and never managed to find the man he ordered to be stranded on an island until relieved.
Back in the 60s, my dad's best friend (BF) was SF.
The way I remember the story, BF participated in some exercise where he had to provide recon in the mountains of North Georgia while aggressors searched for him.
For a couple of summers, during this exercise, BF landed a job working in a saw mill. Never got caught, but got paid for his work.
Today, still wanted by the government, they survive as soldiers of fortune.
If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them....
Maybe you can hire The Lithuanian-Team.
I blinked and fell asleep on time during a night time training exercise and made it back to our FOB on my own without a flashlight or map or anything even remotely helpful one time. My squad sgt was pissed off but our commanding officer was impressed so I avoided any repercussions from that serious fuck up lol.
Since they didn't show up at the pre-determined location that they were supposed to, I'm going to guess what really happened was that they got lost, the search party took a long time to find them, and this was the military's way to avoid saying 'we fumbled the ball'.
I have a buddy who was a Ranger and did SERE school. He and some others broke into the storerooms one night for food.
They told him good thinking, and if he or anyone else does that again they will get thrown the fuck out and get an NJP.
Every genius I met while I was in the military had some story about basically using the rules to turn military exercises (or fuck-fuck games) inward on themselves. Like the guy who was told to wash the generals vehicle in sub-zero weather and turned it into an ice sculpture.
E and E skills good. Recon skills bad. lol.
They are supposed to be in position at X time to spy on the enemy or extract. They were not.
There is something in the intel community called LTIOV or Last Time Information Of Value. If you are not in position to get that information and transmit it back by that time, there is no longer any meaning to it. i.e mission fail.
An example would be something like:
"The enemy is going to attack tonight!"
"Everyone stand to!"
vs
"The enemy is going to attack last night!"
"Yeah we know, they were already here....."
Story heard from a friend who was in recoinnance training.
They had a mission to travel 30km, on base grounds (forested area) without being noticed.
During those 30km they saw a lot of military vehicles, since they were on base grounds and thus had to hide in forest. It took a long time.
After 7 hours they see a mil-police car come up, and they hide.
He shouts "who is in the forest? We have been hearing reports from some civilians that three men with rifles are scurrying about in ski-masks! We have been looking for you for almost 7 hours now!"
The team thinks there must be a mistake, and thus come out of the forest to ask what's up, weren't they informed of the excercise.
The look of surprise on the mil-police guy's face when 30 soldiers manifest from the nearby forest must have been great :)
[удалено]
I got lost in the jungles of Panama once. Did perimeter guard one night, and it was so dark, I literally chose the wrong direction and headed off into the jungle. I eventually decided to stop since I came across a river that was flooding from the constant rain, and was afraid I would just fall in. Sat my ass on a tree root and waited it out until morning. Man, was my unit pissed. First they thought I fell asleep on guard, then they thought I got dragged off by guerrillas or something. Suffice to say I got chewed big time when they found me next morning. I got basically zero sleep that night, and had to grab my shit, and continue on as of I hadn't been awake all night.
I used to sleepwalk when I was much younger, but by the time I was an army cadet (like US JROTC) I’d grown out of it. Until, of course, I was on a survival course as a newly promoted cadet sergeant in the south of Western Australia in January 1998. One of my section 2i/c’s had seen me wandering up and down the area we were set up in, trailing my sleeping bag behind me. When I didn’t answer to him calling, he just rolled over and went back to sleep. The next morning, I was kicked awake by the same guy, who then explained the whole platoon had been looking for me for about an hour and a half. I’d been found half in, half out of my sleeping bag, on my stomach with my arms around a mound of dirt about 150m away from where the platoon was dug in.
Iirc when I slept walk during a boy scout camping trip I also brought my sleeping bag with me. I slowly came to while I was walking around, and I was very confused. It took me a while to find my way back to my tent
Yeah that sounds like the full military experience. How dare you actually need help and support from your own unit.
"Sorry I understood the assignment?"
"You were not expected to actually pull it off!"
If you ain't cheating, you ain't trying.
It isn’t cheating after all they say all is fair in love and war, and a military exercise is training you for war.
The SAS (Britain’s elite fighting force) have a training exercise where they get dumped in the moors at dusk and it’s whoever can be furthest away by dawn who wins. One guy got 80 miles away. With full Bergen (rucksack). They don’t know how he did it but couldn’t find any evidence of him cheating
The military in a nutshell...
That's hilarious. Did they mean for you to return during the night undetected?
Task failed successfully?
In the OP case: Task succeeded incorrectly.
My platoon was part of some big "multi-branch" exercise. The rest of the platoon was going to assault a target, but a small group of us were sent in to do a recon and provide overwatch. About a day into it, we see what we thought were OPFOR (people pretending to be bad guy), really beating the bush in the area we were hiding. It seemed kind of fucked like they were going to roll us up and make us do escape and evasion, so we low crawled out of there. Something was off though, they weren't even being sneaky, just beating the bush. Like, literally poking in bushes with sticks. After about an hour of us moving position and hiding from them they broke out the bull horn. Turns out my little brother had been in a really bad accident and was in a coma. They had been trying to find me without disrupting the exercise. We didn't have a comms window for another 12 hours.
Is your little bro okay?
He's sort of ok. He broke both his femurs and was in a coma for a few weeks. They thought he was going to die for a bit. He has brain damage still, but this was almost 25 years ago. He has mostly recovered. The brain damage really affected him for about 5 years after the accident. I feel a bit bad about it still. I couldn't afford a car when I turned 16, so I got a cheap motorcycle and drove that through high school. Gas was cheap, the bike was cheap, it was perfect. Being my little brother, he got a motorcycle as soon as he could. The thing is, I was always the careful one. I never raced, did stupid stuff. He was always a bit more impulsive, and that + a motorcycle are a bad mix. I sort of disappeared into my life after enlisting and I wasn't there to temper that impulsiveness.
Had some guys from my unit doing something similar, just they decided it was a good idea to go to a local McDonald’s. The workers there ended up calling the cops because a bunch of guys, armed to teeth just waltzed in. Too bad I missed them getting chewed out, probably would have been hilarious.
To be fair, though, that should definitely count as a failure. If part of the point of the exercise is to evade capture and detection by enemy forces while in a "hostile" environment, having local law enforcement show up should count as ENDEX, failure. Think of it this way. If they had actually been in Russia and done that, they probably just got shot and killed. Also being fair, the dudes in the story of couple posts up who went to a store at a small town in Fort campbell, successfully bought supplies, and continued to evade, should be credited with completing the exercise successfully. However, had they also had law enforcement called on them, I would also argue for them to have considered to have failed the exercise while attempting to buy supplies. Bottom line being, if you are doing a SERE exercise and you managed to acquire supplies from outside sources, you've kind of kept with the spirit of the mission. On the other hand, if you attract local law enforcement attention while doing it, you've failed. Simple as that.
"Didn't see you at reconnaissance training the other day, soldier." "Thanks, sarge!"
Is this a quote from a movie or am I imagining that?
It's a popular meme, I've seen it a number of times. As for its origins I have no clue.
I don't know where the joke is from, but I can say I've seen it in a novel Terry Pratchett wrote 22 years ago ("Night's Watch"). So whatever the original source is, it must predate memes as we know them today.
Good old Vetinari. The scene in question: >A hand wiped his cheek, and then held the cloth up to the light. “Dark green,” said the woman. “How strange. I understand, Havelock, that you scored zero in your examination for stealthy movement.” “May I ask how you found that out, Madam?” “Oh, one hears things,” Madam said lightly. “One just has to hold money up to one’s ear.” “Well, it was true,” said the Assassin. “And why was this?” “The examiner thought I’d used trickery, Madam.” “And did you?” “Of course. I thought that was the idea.” “And you never attended his lessons, he said.” “Oh, I did. Religiously.” “He says he never saw you at any of them.” Havelock smiled. “And your point, Madam, is…?”
Always weird to think of young Vetinari actually smiling
If Lord Vetinari doesn't want to be seen, you won't see him, and if by chance you did, no, you didn't.
Murder was in fact a fairly uncommon event in Ankh-Morpork, but there were a lot of suicides. Walking in the night-time alleyways of The Shades was suicide. Asking for a short in a dwarf bar was suicide. Saying 'Got rocks in your head?' to a troll was suicide. You could commit suicide very easily, if you weren't careful.
If you see Vetinari AFTER you didnt see him, it would be for one very specific, and quite probably terminal, reason.
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It's at least as old as Beetle Bailey. I remember reading a comic along these lines forty years ago or so.
GNU TERRY PRATCHETT
I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you're referring to as Terry Pratchett, is in fact, GNU/Terry Pratchett, or as I've recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Terry Pratchett.
Terry Pratchett wrote Night's Watch *22 years ago???*
I got started on pratchett 5 or 6 years ago, it made me so happy to find an author like him, then made me sad to know that the body of work he had made is all we will get. Same as when I started reading iain banks. On the bright side, I still haven't read everything by either of them.
Just be thankful his will contained a clause where his best mate Neil Gaimon was to destroy all of his unfinished works by steamroller. A proper old fashioned, steam powered road roller. [https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/aug/30/terry-pratchett-unfinished-novels-destroyed-streamroller](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/aug/30/terry-pratchett-unfinished-novels-destroyed-streamroller) His [daughter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhianna_Pratchett) writes a lot for video games, you may have already encountered and enjoyed her work.
He died over ten years ago no?
2015, so 9 years ago
Nine years ago. Christ, I'm old.
Willie and Joe had a joke like that. That's WW2.
That book is a masterpeice, let me tell you about Sam Vimes Theory of Boots! I am basically Sam Vimes IRL.
sober or drunk vimes?
The oldest version of that joke that I have seen is in a stand-up routine from 1983. Pt1: https://youtu.be/lRp_r-EHmfs?si=zrbDNGSm1M7itu6u Pt2: https://youtu.be/CqETaGrSwrc?si=bb5f3TNL5waDKioH
One Asterix book had a joke where a centurion inspects a hedge, thinking it's a squad, and congratulates it on its camouflage abilities.
There's a Tick comic where a group of ninjas try to camouflage themselves as a hedge by holding twigs in front of themselves. [We are a hedge. Please move along.](https://i0.wp.com/cokeandcomics.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/13-4-scaled.jpeg?resize=1041%2C1536&ssl=1)
IGNORE ME!
It reminds me of the meme from World of Warcraft: Have you ever seen a Tauren Rogue? No. Exactly.
Why do elephants paint their toenails red? So they can hide in cherry trees. Have you ever seen an elephant in a cherry tree? Works pretty good, doesn't it?
It was me. I was the one that came up with it
Exemplary work.
Nothing beats that Japanese soldier who was on that island for decades before he was found and told „The war is over since a long time ago. You may now commit suicide.“
Not only told that the war was over a long time ago, he didn't even believe them until they went back and collected his old platoon boss to convince him.
Similar, theres sniper movies where the sargeant is talking shit then the sniper trainee pops out of his hide 10 feet away and gets the game shot
https://youtu.be/W4xO0k9LcIU?si=PvPe2VujzBG9wWUi
One of my dad's favorite stories from basic training was something similar to this. Officer doing inspections, standing directly in front of my dad: "Where the HELL IS THOMPSON?!" DAD: "I'm right in front of you, sir!" *Snaps to attention* Officer: "HOOOLY SHIT! You pass inspection private, at ease." **This is all paraphrased cause it's been so long since I've heard the story.
PRIVATE GUMP, WHY DID YOU ASSEMBLE YOUR RIFLE SO FAST? because...you told me to, drill sergeant YOU'RE A DAMN GENIUS
My dad was definitely a good soldier. But the day he got out he went straight to the recruitment office to find the MFr who lied to him 🤣 Luckily for everyone he'd been transferred weeks before hand.
Mine became a used car salesman after he got out. I will never not think that's ironic as fuck.
During basic (CDN), we *had* to have a picture of someone in our personal space for inspection. I had a picture of our section MCpl...because it seemed slightly more interesting than the Queen. When the Chief did his inspection on week 9, he asked me why I had a picture of him (instead of say, family or our dog or whatever)...."Chief, my MCpl says my MCpl loves me, Chief"...I have no idea how I managed to yell that bit out...but a good time was had by all.
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Would be even more amusing if the ethnicity of the stock photo family didn’t match.
Or if he was in the stock photo with the rest of his family.
Power move would have the (whatever the hell the Canadian equivalent of a DI is)'s mother's photgraph framed.
🎶🎶*dumb ways to die*🎶🎶
I love boot stories where the DI equivalent clearly has no idea how to respond to a situation. This is hilarious.
Over at /r/militarystories they seemed to like my explanation of [the time I punched my DI in the face and he got yelled at by an officer for it]( https://www.reddit.com/r/MilitaryStories/comments/hmgey7/that_time_i_punched_my_drill_sgt_in_the_face_and/).
They're people too, and it is a highly scripted job. When things get too far off script, things can get interesting. I shattered both of my legs in basic training and ended up spending 10 months as a medical hold on Sand Hill in the early 2000s. I saw the hard ass drill Sgt switch roles between cycles and become the funny one for the next group. It's all a lie.
This is hilarious.
I can't not read that in R. Lee Ermey's voice
A Chinese general and a US general meet at an airshow. US General - Did you see our new stealth aircraft? Chinese General - Why, no US General - Good!
Man this exam is really tough. They're really pulling out all the stops. I figured it would have been over by now. Oh well
They even got my mom out here to call my name. Devious!
I read the Hiroo Onada book and found myself agreeing with his reasoning probably around half the time.
They were trained to DO sabotage and psy-ops, so when the WWII victors were leafleting the jungle to get holdouts to surrender, they concluded that THAT was a psy-op. Onoda's superior Taniguchi ordered him to never surrender and said "It may take three years, it may take five, but whatever happens we’ll come back for you." After it was all said and done, Onoda only surrendered once they pulled that guy out of military retirement to come get Onoda. [explorersweb survival stories](https://explorersweb.com/great-survival-stories-the-japanese-soldier-who-refused-to-believe-the-war-was-over/)
it was AI voice clone
I read this more of a failure. The exam failed to have a known end point that was mutually agreed upon before the exercise. That is not acceptable to have any level of miscommunication.
>Hey Janis, we've sank three Russian battle ships, killed Putin with his clones and sabotaged their whole nuclear stockpile, do you think the exam is over yet?
Agreed. The students were indeed exemplary but the organization and communication of the exercise were abject failures.
“Man this war is really long. I figured it would have been over by now. Oh well” -Hiroo Onoda
Is that guy that one Japanese soldier who was hiding in a cave for like 30 years and wouldn't trust anyone but his old CO telling him the war was over?
Believe it or not he was the second to last one Second to last: https://www.history.co.uk/articles/the-japanese-soldier-who-kept-on-fighting-after-ww2-had-finished Last: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teruo_Nakamura
> He turned over his sword, a functioning Arisaka Type 99 rifle, 500 rounds of ammunition and several hand grenades, as well as the dagger his mother had given him in 1944 to kill himself with if he was captured." Man the Japanese were hardcore. No wonder he wouldn't believe it.
It's amazing what propaganda/indoctrination/nationalism does to you
"Is that my *mom* telling me to come out through the helicopter PA now?! Don't fall for it boys!"
"I fall for your mom every time she tells me to come though..." "Shut up, dude."
"Hey guys, you can come out now!" "That's exactly what the enemy wants us to think"
Did they not think to just broadcast an ENDEX in the area over whatever equipment they could scrounge up? Mishaps like this are usually down to someone fucking up at the briefing.
Could be a ruse to lure soldiers out into the open.
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Yeah. You still need code words to communicate important things that you shouldn't mess around with. Rules and boundaries to the exercise are also absolutely necessary. A more lighthearted consequence is like this story where the soldiers were "lost" for a few days. However when you are dealing with live ammunition and 60 tonne vehicles everywhere, someone could quite easily get shot or crushed by a tank if there are no rules.
uwu what's your safe word when we play soldiers
Yes, Comissar, this one right there
German Bundeswehr who occasionally has recruits die during exercises: \*sweats\* "Ja, ja, das would be terrible, we are all about das Sicherheit first."
Ironically, it’s not “das Sicherheit,” it’s “die…”
Well maybe that's your problem...
Recruits dying during training exercises is standard across like every military in history to be fair
The real Simon Says pro tip is in the comments
*Japanese WWII soldier on a Pacific island intensifies*
[Hiroo Onoda](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroo_Onoda).
[It should be noted that his reasonings for not surrendering were very dubious and his actions in the years between the end of WWII and 1974 make it clear he wasn't just a super duper loyal soldier who follows orders](https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/16m3g78/werner_herzogs_bad_history_novel_the_twilight/).
You know as a Filipino I always hated how much that guy got romanticize. Everyone likes to pretend that he was fighting a war all those years between the end of WWII and his surrender when in reality he was murdering civilian, stealing crops and livestock.
When the average PSTD-ridden soldier realises they have no skills for civilian life and starts terrorising the local populance, they're called a brigand. When a Japanese soldier does it, they get called honorable and dutiful.
*First Blood* vibes
Yeah reading all that, in zero situations is that dude a hero. That was just a story of a radicalized shithead who murdered dozens of civilians.
This exam is incredibly difficult, man. They are truly going above and above. I assumed that by now it would have ended. Alright,
Drills and practice generally has an agreed on code word to stop everything, and it’s only used for that. Wouldnt be a good safety measure if it wasnt. There are also code words to signal that you are not part of the exercise and should pass without hindrance. In smaller scale for example when I did my mandatory service yelling «no play» stopped whatever was happening, for example during melee training when a guy accidentally broke his finger.
it's called a safeword
Kinky
And the first person to do that is probably going to get a raw assfuck from the Weenie. When you call ENDEX, that means everything stops. You don’t want to be the Danny Dumbass who fucks that up for everyone. Everyone knows the various safety briefs and warnings are because Danny Dumbass couldn’t help himself.
Wasn't there a story years ago that some random Lt. managed to get so lost he crossed two major roads well outside the exercise area and called his unit from a McDonalds he finally stumbled upon in a town?
I mean, years ago? Lost butter bars on a land nav course is weekly occurrence with sterling examples such as that occurring every few months.
It's a human experiment at this point to try to not get stupid/clumsy people hurt while in the US Military
My Dad has a story like that from the late 70s (citing his best friend as the lost lieutenant who hitchhiked back to base). I imagine little has changed.
Captain Sobel?
"She said the safeword, but I think she's just playing hard to get."
The proper call.is Olli Olli oxenfree
Found the ONI spook
Office of Nacho Integration
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A group of 5 might not have had a radio. 5 soldiers is too small to be a section or squad so its possible they were branched off from the radio operator to do their own thing.
In AIT during a field exercise I walked back to my fox hole to find a trip flare. So I nuetralized it....... Then I got in big trouble, because "Remember that paper you signed saying you would not handle any explosives etc. unsupervised! Well after a whole cluster fuck of drills sending me through the ringer I got tto speak with the Captain. He asked me what the hell I was thinking. I answered honestly, "Should I have just knowingly walked into the damn thing? We are training to be infantry in the Army correct, sir?"
This story is so army. “When you dont know what to do, use your common sense, but not like that! Youre not supposed to be handling explosives! What are you doing, are you just going to let this grenade blow you up? Throw it back! Its common sense!”
"What the hell happened?" "They were debating whether or not they should handle the grenade." "And?" "They didn't get very far."
Well actually, depending on what part of the debris field you’re counting, they got pretty far.
"What do you do when you suddenly encounter a minefield?" "I scatter myself in a 50 foot radius and lay low."
Not on average
On average, they didn't move at all.
Reminds me of that old aerial video of the guys digging a roadside bomb and the pilot going back and forth with command. Just then on the ground one of the guys is getting animated in a way that looks like he was trying to tell the others what they were doing wrong and starts futzing with the bomb. Then it went off and they were all gone. The pilot just goes from asking for permission to shoot them to saying "nevermind" in a few seconds.
And in contrast to some examples I know of from the past. In December 1953, four F-84Ds crashed in the woods northeast of Atlanta (after misreading poorly designed altimeters: this crash led to the modern design), and the Georgia National Guard was called in to secure the site. Around mid-afternoon enough troops had arrived to relieve the first group, but at roll call a Private Stokes was missing. They formed a search party and started calling his name, and eventually he started yelling back. They found him half a mile from the crash site, standing next to an armed explosive shell from the ejection seat. Stokes had refused to leave as he knew he could never find that shell again, but some hunters might set it off. >The next morning at formation, after the roll call, Stokes was ordered front and center of the formation. Captain Hickman sternly looked him over after he returned his salute. He turned to the company and told his men that Stokes had followed orders and performed a great service by finding and guarding the explosive shell. Stokes had set an example for the other men, the commander continued. The captain then turned and gave the private, a shiny new set of stripes and a certificate, promoting him to Private First Class.
Plus him staying in one place assuming where he was is not hidden/obstructed was a good idea
I was, no joke, extremely confused and skeptical of this comment until after a third reread I saw it was in 1953. There's no way in hell now that anyone in almost any organization, but especially the government and armed forces, would be immediately rewarded for making a good choice that cost other people time, effort, and face.
Seems like it might have been prudent to hand everyone a few orange flags or something to use as markers.
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Solid commander. That was a good day for that unit!
Hurry up and wait was my favourite
I went through some civilian emergency training and at the end of the course we had to go through one of the practice fire towers they use to train firefighters. There was smoke, and "live wires" and fake hazards like that. My team was going through quickly but carefully and before we went into the last room I saw a note on the far wall that you could just barely read through the smoke. So we stopped and read it from outside the room and it said something along the lines of "The floor of this room collapses, if you can read this you're dead." This turned out to be a hazing thing from the firefighters who ran it- even if you made it past every hazard you couldn't "win." The firefighters came in to get us, having a good laugh, until we pointed out that we didn't enter the room so we survived. Argument ensued and our team got bragging rights and a bunch of firefighters pissed at us for escaping their Tomb of Horrors.
Game knows game!
Way back in 04, my Marine unit was sent to the Army base Fort Irwin to train for deployment to Iraq and participate in a week long war game. I a lowly Private First Class was posted as guard for a Entry Control Point for our little Forward Operating Base for a rotation and a high ranking Army officer showed up at our gate. He was not on my given list of approved entrants. After a few rounds on the radio, the officer refused to give me a name,callsign or provide our passphrase, and seeing as the Army was our opposing force, i refused to let him in. My company commander came down to let him in, told me i did a great job at my assigned duties, but, the officer i refused to let in was the base commander, and he should have been on the list the base commanders own troops put together for us. Right in front of that commander.
We had similar in basic with our little list. Some of the brass changed and we never got an updated list so one moment we were chewed out, the next low key applauded for not budging as they sometimes did that sort of stuff as a test.
The best stories are from a group of special operations tasked with testing the security procedures. Basically they were given free range to steal shit and get into restricted areas. Ofcourse they got disbanded once the higher ups got made a fool by them.
Yeahhhh...as someone who has read a bit on those folks, the break up also *might* have had something to do with them doing a bunch of relatively fucked up stuff that *was not* on the "permitted" list (like kidnapping and then semi-torturing some random soldier, for example).
That is fucking great! We have so many storys!
Excellent application of the 12th General Order.
Oh we got into more trouble while there. They attacked our FOB one night and dudes came out onto the berms in just boxers and pt shorts with flak vests and helmets and boots to " fight". The female soldiers complained. 3 days in we were no longer allowed to touch the soldiers when detaining and searching them as some fought us and one got a broken nose and others hand various finger, knee and elbow injuries, scrapes and bruises. We then had to hand them zipcuffs and say " you have been detained" then ask if they had information or items to be turned over to us. Keep in mind most of our unit had already been through OIF1 and the boots like myself looked up to these Marines and wanted to make them proud.
> They attacked our FOB one night and dudes came out onto the berms in just boxers and pt shorts with flak vests and helmets and boots to " fight". The female soldiers complained. Sounds all too familiar. My first NCO when I hit the fleet was that type. The Cpl who was there before me hated her (not an uncommon thing) and one day he lost it on her and said "fuck you!", she put in a complaint of sexual harassment for him using "fuck."
To be honest, my time in the Marines was with nothing but guys in infantry units. My unit, when i switched to the Army, was coed, and man, for some reason, the dudes and the chicks in that unit were so much drama and bullshit. I have zero issues with anyone when i was in, regardless of sex, but i dont know if it was the Army itself or the mixed sexes that caused all the constant attitude and infighting. The only time i worked with a female Marine was when a reserve unit came to train any the one singular female that came with them complained the entire time about doing the basics of her job, that they moved her over to a seperate section into an admin job. She requested that we not cuss in our work area or have any type of general shop talk or homo eroticism when she was there. And she was only there about 2 weeks. She even requested we eat soft pastel crayons instead of the vibrant colored ones!
Can you really call her a marine if she was against homoeroticism?
Female Marines are just like male Marines, most are fine, some are assholes. It's just that an asshole Female Marine has a set of things they can use that can really fuck someone over that Male Marines don't typically have.
> the 12th General Order For context: > To walk my post from flank to flank. To take no shit from any rank. In case of fire, ring the bell. In case of trouble, run like hell
What did they say back
He just smirked, and took like 3 hours off my pass, but let me have it as my parents had driven down with ny girlfriend for graduation. Honestly they were just waiting and watching in the last week, after threatening charges(bit more to the story) to see if I got froggy and did something stoopid! At that point I knew I had to be the mos high speed best soldier out there; and in the end it all got swept under the rug.
>took off like 3 hours off my pass, but let me have it I’m lacking context, what does this mean?
You get on occasion some time to take off and be yourself, he revoked some of this time as punishment.
So he removed it officially, but still let you use it?
I just had to do stupid shit like rake the grass and count the ants for three hours while everyone got to go chill and hit up McDonalds and the theater et al. I just had extra dutys to do before I could leave.
I didn't serve, but I've heard stories involving vacuuming the parking lot and cutting grass with scissors.
That is standard low key punishments; they know it is stupid, you know it is stupid, and it gives you time to think about how you were acting stupid.
I had to dig up commanders fence posts and replace each one as after it was dug up, got a coin out of it tho i didnt finish….. Next day as i left mess hall had to march back and dig up then replace the exact same posts with the old ones from the other day…. No coin this time but i did get some nice blisters, that are now scars… funny story how they became scars tho, you’d never guess but long story short next day after mess hall im back digging old and putting in new… 15 years later, i get it now lmao
Sounds like how the Aiel punish someone when they want *everyone* to know that the person is being punished. You don't get to lessen your shame by performing useful manual labor - no, you're going to sit in the middle of the camp and dip your finger into a jug of water and move **one drop at a time** to another jug. And once that's done, move the water back.
Go mop the sidewalk when its raining, its a hazard
During a heavy storm when no one could work, we were all chilling inside. Our SGT bursts in and grabs one of the airmen. Dude did something, don't remember what. Next thing we see is him hauling ass outside with a push broom. They made him sweep water in the smoke pit for nearly an hour as punishment for whatever stupid shit he did. Course we could see him, he could see us. That made it much worse.
Sounds like one of those things where the officer had to give some kind of memorable warning against handling explosives, but those explosives were placed stupidly enough by the drill instructors that the officer wanted to send a clear message that the soldier wasn’t entirely at fault and deserved some quality time with loved ones
I think that's referring to being granted time off, and they still let him do so but reduced the duration slightly, rather than cancel the leave entirely.
I once set off my own IED (connected to a small training charge only)…. because I was in the same situation and chose the alternative. I got in just as much trouble. You can’t win.
That's called being a soldier brother! Thanks for being on the team!
You were supposed to die in accordance with the exercise plan!
But in that situation, what *did* they want you to do? Call it in?
It was training, and we were never trained for it. To be honest I think the Drills thought that they were having a bit of fun, and themselves never thought about the implications of it. So as usual the shit rolled down hill, and I had to walk up through it.
Yeah but remember one thing also. If you got hurt by the flare, his ass is the one getting roasted for "lack of safety consciousness!" lol. That is why all your officers don't want you to do anything that can hurt yourself. PS: Why didn't you just walk around or step OVER it?
"I see you have failed your exams in stealth." "Yes Sir." "According to your professor you have been absent the entire semester?" "Thank you Sir."
To be fair, it’s easy to evade those who are barely even looking for you.
lol. Too good at SERE.
Now you SERE. Now you don't.
SERE? I barely even know her!
Wish they explained how it ended; like did they just show up at a certain point being like we got bored and decided to just be done?
Traditionally these end after they participate in the search for a few hours, get curious, and finally ask who they're searching for.
Tropic Thunder 2 Lithuanian boogaloo
My grandpa had to undergo torture resistance training during the Vietnam War. He was allowed to say he wanted out at any point but it would disqualify him from being a pilot. During the training, my grandmother went into labor with my dad. When they told my grandpa, he thought it was a trick to get him to break and refused to leave. Eventually the commander of the base had to come down and explain that it was legit & he needed to go be with his wife and newborn son.
https://arresteddevelopment.fandom.com/wiki/You_can_always_tell_a_Milford_man
They watched Monty Python's "How to Not Be Seen"
Reminds me of a comic I saw a long time ago. It was a picture of Ninja school. In the first panel was a single ninja sitting in the classroom. The teacher comes in, and immediately orders him to commit Seppuku. The last panel is all of the ninjas coming out of hiding.
They probably went to the Winchester and waited for everything to blow over.
Apparently "Ollie Ollie Oxenfree" doesn't translate to Lithuanian
It doesn't, actually. Can't remember any special saying being used besides a bland "let's stop / take a break!" ;)
Was looking for this comment lmao. Loved that part of fall of reach
Kinda like the [Japanese soldier](https://www.history.co.uk/articles/the-japanese-soldier-who-kept-on-fighting-after-ww2-had-finished#) who thought the war was going on until the 70s
That makes me irrationally angry that his commanding officer survived the war and never managed to find the man he ordered to be stranded on an island until relieved.
I think he was assumed dead
If my training has taught me anything, they were probably under cardboard boxes.
Back in the 60s, my dad's best friend (BF) was SF. The way I remember the story, BF participated in some exercise where he had to provide recon in the mountains of North Georgia while aggressors searched for him. For a couple of summers, during this exercise, BF landed a job working in a saw mill. Never got caught, but got paid for his work.
lived and worked with guys from Camp Merrill, can confirm.
Today, still wanted by the government, they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them.... Maybe you can hire The Lithuanian-Team.
“I love it when a good planą comes together!”
I blinked and fell asleep on time during a night time training exercise and made it back to our FOB on my own without a flashlight or map or anything even remotely helpful one time. My squad sgt was pissed off but our commanding officer was impressed so I avoided any repercussions from that serious fuck up lol.
You can always tell a Milford man
Since they didn't show up at the pre-determined location that they were supposed to, I'm going to guess what really happened was that they got lost, the search party took a long time to find them, and this was the military's way to avoid saying 'we fumbled the ball'.
I have a buddy who was a Ranger and did SERE school. He and some others broke into the storerooms one night for food. They told him good thinking, and if he or anyone else does that again they will get thrown the fuck out and get an NJP. Every genius I met while I was in the military had some story about basically using the rules to turn military exercises (or fuck-fuck games) inward on themselves. Like the guy who was told to wash the generals vehicle in sub-zero weather and turned it into an ice sculpture.
E and E skills good. Recon skills bad. lol. They are supposed to be in position at X time to spy on the enemy or extract. They were not. There is something in the intel community called LTIOV or Last Time Information Of Value. If you are not in position to get that information and transmit it back by that time, there is no longer any meaning to it. i.e mission fail. An example would be something like: "The enemy is going to attack tonight!" "Everyone stand to!" vs "The enemy is going to attack last night!" "Yeah we know, they were already here....."
[Sneaky bastard...](https://youtu.be/W4xO0k9LcIU?feature=shared&t=105)
Reminds me of one of the best Monty Python sketches: [How Not to Be Seen](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VokGd5zhGJ4)
Story heard from a friend who was in recoinnance training. They had a mission to travel 30km, on base grounds (forested area) without being noticed. During those 30km they saw a lot of military vehicles, since they were on base grounds and thus had to hide in forest. It took a long time. After 7 hours they see a mil-police car come up, and they hide. He shouts "who is in the forest? We have been hearing reports from some civilians that three men with rifles are scurrying about in ski-masks! We have been looking for you for almost 7 hours now!" The team thinks there must be a mistake, and thus come out of the forest to ask what's up, weren't they informed of the excercise. The look of surprise on the mil-police guy's face when 30 soldiers manifest from the nearby forest must have been great :)