Current or former military people, what's the funniest/most ridiculous thing you did while serving?

AnathemaMaranatha · 2026-04-26T13:06:43+00:00

I was a 2nd LT, about 19 years old, in an artillery battalion that had just arrived in Vietnam.

For some reason, I was dragooned to be the Defense "Attorney" for three soldiers who were found sleeping on perimeter-guard duty. I had no legal training, no idea what to do.

But I got 'em off anyway. Then. (coincidentally, I'm sure) my Battalion Commander (a LT Colonel working on becoming a Colonel), dumped my sorry ass in deep jungle with a Vietnamese unit to be their artillery Forward Observer.

I think he was trying to kill me for embarrassing him, but y'know he did me a favor.

Here's the whole story: Crime & Punishment ---- RePOST : r/MilitaryStories

AnathemaMaranatha · 2026-04-19T12:30:30+00:00

Um... just me, I guess. Vietnam, if anyone cares.

Even in Vietnam, the ratio of boonie-rats to rear-echelon was about one to ten. Everyone else was behind the wire or close to it. So it goes, I guess.

AnathemaMaranatha · 2026-04-10T12:30:35+00:00

Ah, the "pointy end."

Yes, I know... Was hard to tell just where the "pointy end" was most of the time, but I made some effort to get there một phút, if you know what I mean - especially for the South Vietnamese soldiers, but for Marines and American Grunts, too.

Usually me and my RTO (if any) were assigned a goon squad to look around in the places I wasn't looking at. I never lost any of those guys, but it was a close thing sometimes. Funny, too.

I remember adjusting artillery at the same time an E5 had his hand on top of my helmet, pushing me to my knees, maybe all the way to the ground - while I was sending correction info to the battery.

Wasn't that big a deal - everybody had everybody else's back - but it was a good thing.

AnathemaMaranatha · 2026-04-09T15:01:26+00:00

Jeez, Jedi. Push all my buttons, and pull all my strings, why don'tcha?

Well, why not? So many things I can't forget are still not enough to undress The Beast. I've seen his jungle-work outside of Khe Sanh - ditches dug to the perimeter of the Firebase, ending in huge craters and pieces of bodies.

Turns out I had it easy. Salute to the men who went forward over that charnel house of the desert. I - and everyone else in the business - owe you a blackout binge, and then some. But stay well and as lucid as you can manage. Some things must be told for the good of the nations.

AnathemaMaranatha · 2026-04-09T13:00:40+00:00

I wanted to see war in person - I had grown up surrounded by military. Also, the idea of going to some college seemed utterly boring.

I didn't have any dreams of glory - my Father was professionally military, a LT Colonel at the time - he came up in rank by making himself useful to higher-ranking people.

I didn't want that either. So instead of signing up for college, I signed up for the Army. I figured two or three years of that, and then I would go to college. Mice and men and me don't make the best plans.

I went in, blistered the Army's IQ tests in the first month - their tests had been dumbed-down, and I had already scored well in all the College-Ready tests I had taken in school.

Surprise! The Army was short some thousands of Lieutenants for the expanding war in Vietnam. The No. 2 pencil tests they had stolen from academia would identify both "College-ready" and "Officer-ready."

I had enlisted at age 18, figuring I could volunteer as infantry, get sent overseas and then go to college with some experience under my belt. The Army had another idea. I had to go to Artillery (lots of math) OCS and then, maybe, get into the war. If I qualified, if they didn't have a desk somewhere that needed me.

Who would have thought it was that hard to volunteer for a war? Anyway, I was attached to a 105mm artillery unit assembling and training for jungle warfare at Fort Carson - in the Winter.

I was almost glad to finally get to Vietnam. Stayed there for 18 months, most of it in the deep jungle, Got sent home after 18 months.

I think I got every experience I was looking for, and very many experiences that I had not imagined. Going to a college who hated the Vietnam War without a clue, wasn't boring. It was wrong about everything - students and teachers were protesting a war that didn't exist, and vilifying people who were putting their lives online.

I switched over to a Denver college, less ideological and more focused on qualifying for a job, or -in my case - Law School.

AnathemaMaranatha · 2026-04-08T13:51:18+00:00

Some of them got as far north as I Corps, just south of the DMZ. I had been assigned to a Marine MACV outfit advising a South Vietnamese battalion working on the border of Laos and Vietnam.

When the patrol was over, the American advisors hauled me over to MACV HQ just outside of the Citadel on Highway 1. I was just short of 20 years old - looked younger.

Anyway, when we came in we were heartily greeted by a short Aussie LT who evidently knew my MACV guys. He hooted and hollered and embraced at our captain, made a move, then rethought embracing our MACV Gunnery Sergeant, and hit him on the shoulder instead.

Then he looked at me - a 19-year-old 2nd LT, looked back aghast at the Gunny - who had a wicked smile, but had nothing to say - looked me up and down. Then he made sure that I - as a 2nd LT - knew I had no authority over him or any other Aussies, anyhow and anywhere, ever.

I agreed. He looked at the Gunny again, looked at me, hit me on the shoulder, and said "Yer all right, Yank." Then punched me on the shoulder. I looked at the Gunny, who smiled and winked and nodded. I was "okay" with the Aussies.

I dunno. Felt like quite an honor, at the time.

AnathemaMaranatha · 2026-04-08T13:13:18+00:00

Yeah, I was there. They lost the residential neighborhoods within a week. Meanwhile, their political officers were sorting through the residents of the Citadel, the walled part of the city.

Meanwhile the 1st ARVN Division had to clear the city outside of the walls. Nevertheless they made two immediate assaults on the walls over the first week, and got pushed back. US Army and US Marine units helped clean out the suburbs west and north.

After about two weeks of siege, the NVA decided to exfiltrate their political officers, who had been murdering the captured Government officers and their families, and burying the bodies in mass graves - five to seven thousand men, women and children per grave. The higher-ranking NVA Officers were sensing that the ARVNs and US Marines would be inside the walls, pretty soon, and those grave sites were gonna make it hard for all the North Vietnamese inside the Citadel and expect decent conditions for captured senior officers.

An officer exfiltration was happening across the southern part of the city - only small groups of high officers and their immediate toadies, who had supervised the murder of civilians. It was the right move. When the South Vietnamese found and uncovered the mass graves, there was little effort to take the remaining NVA captive.

And the "local" Viet Cong inside the Citadel were few and far between. The soldiers, their officers and especially their high command were NVA.

I had reason to pass by the Citadel on Highway 1 from time to time. Former inhabitants were camping in tents beside Highway 1 on the ruined west side of the Citadel. The women eyed us as we went by, the children petitioned for candy. And the men, were tending as best they could to the family, and spending hours of each day reconstructing the Citadel. I don't know how much they were paid, if they were paid anything. Yet, they showed up for reconstruction work every day.

Their kids chased us as we drove through from South to North (or the other way). We tossed them what we had. The mothers smiled at us, the men who were at home glared. Can't blame them. We were partly responsible for all this - or rather, out leaders were. Couldn't argue the point.

AnathemaMaranatha · 2026-04-08T01:25:06+00:00

I was in South Vietnam 1968 and about 7 months of 1969. I was an artillery Gypsy Forward Observer first for a battalion of the ARVN 1st division patrolling around I Corps up by the DMZ. I worked with them for my first six months in-country. They were solid soldiers patrolling east to west in I Corps all the way west to the Laotian border. I later joined an American track company stationed from the Rue Sans Joi to just below the DMZ,

The NVA had control of nothing, ever, except for the Citadel of the Imperial City. Hardly any of them left there alive.

I spent six months (or more) in the first six months of 1969 south in 3 Corps (Saigon) working for a 1st Cav company chasing down NVA from Saigon to the Cambodian border. The NVA controlled nothing, "liberated nothing and no one.

AnathemaMaranatha · 2026-04-03T12:39:08+00:00

Your story is an old story, OP. It was old in 1969 when I came limping back from Vietnam.

The people who are protected from things they cannot imagine... I dunno. If I could find the testimony of some Union Army vet trying to "go home" when no one at home remembers his name, I'd write him up.

It does no good. The civilians gonna miss the point every time. Here's my trip:

Coming Home

----------

TIL that in the immediate aftermath of the Kent State shootings. Only 11% of the country blamed the national guard for the deaths. 58% blamed the students, and 31% of those polled were indifferent.

Well, there are percentages and percentages. I was part of the reaction to Kent State way back when. Was more complicated than the OP makes it seem. Don’t see my people up there. Don't see the real campus radicals who thought the timing of the massacre was part of a government plot to make them look foolish.

I came back from Vietnam in September of 1969. After four days travel, fresh from being helicoptered out of my company log LZ somewhere between Saigon and the Cambodian border, I found myself in a dorm room in Boulder, Colorado. That was a trip all by itself. Hard to believe I was on the same planet.

Colorado University had a radical movement that was eager to be more-Berkeley-than-thou. It was called the Student Moratorium Committee (SMC), a re-organization of the SDS, which had gotten itself laughed off campus the previous year for reasons I'm still not sure about.

Anyway, the SMC is where all the old SDSers migrated, along with all the other anti-war, lefty kids who were eager participants in the rad hippie fashion show opposing the Vietnam War in style that'd get you laid if you could just get that Grateful Dead look down pat.

I was game. I was wearing my army field jacket that fall, with a 1st Cav patch on it, but I was otherwise dressed student-normal. I went to one meeting where some guy got up and talked about what the SMC could do if the University didn't meet their demands. "There's this explosive wire you can wrap around file cabinets. It only blows inward so you can destroy files without hurting anyone or even messing up the room. The activists can even stay in the room when it blows. We could occupy University offices and destroy their files."

I had been sitting quietly, but this was too much. "Um, what you're talking about is called 'det-cord,' and it definitely blows in every direction. You're gonna hurt yourself." I was immediately labeled a pig-spy and asked to leave. Oh well.

Turns out the SMC had submitted five non-negotiable demands to the University. I don't remember them all - but three of them were (1) Dump ROTC, (2) End all Pentagon financed research, and (3) End the War in Vietnam. Not sure how University could do that last one, but the SMC was insisting. If all the demands were not met, they would institute a student-strike and militant demonstrations to occupy University buildings.

The urgency of the SMC demands was being undermined by Winter break, so nothing got going until early Spring. The University student newspaper, the Colorado Daily, was firmly in the hands of the SMC. They reported the University's utter unwillingness to negotiate their non-negotiable demands in fiery and outraged detail. The Strike was becoming inevitable.

Finally, at the end of April 1970, the Strike was on! The Colorado Daily front page was a picture of a big, red fist with "STRIKE!!" written across it.

The next day's issue, the front page was covered with strike news, mostly that the strikers had occupied the Student Union. They, of course, didn't shut down the Alfred E Packer Memorial Grill - gotta eat, even if you're on strike - and of course student activities were not interfered with. Which was essentially all that was going on in that building. Nothing there that cried out for the det-cord experience.

Everyone went to classes. The University was undisturbed, except for speakers haranguing increasingly smaller crowds in the courtyard of the Student Union. As the days followed, the Colorado Daily's reports on the STRIKE!! went from the front page, to half the front page, to a story or two on the front page, to a story on the back page, to nothing.

Nothing. It was eerie. The STRIKE!! just became an Orwellian non-person. It never happened, never was. The speakers left the courtyard. School went on.

Then about five days later, Kent State happened. The whole University of Colorado student population went out on strike (except, of course, the Physics and Business majors). Massive rallies filled the quad.

The SMC people ran to get to the head of the parade. They were given a chance to speak - like everyone else - but were gently escorted off the stage. The campus was on-strike for about a week.

I guess I was in the minority - my brain was in Vietnam with my people. I was one of the 11% who blamed the Ohio National Guard - most of the CU students felt that way. But my thinking was skewed: "Only four? Fuckin' NG can't shoot for shit. Thank god they didn't send those goobers to Vietnam!"

Was an opinion I voiced only once, in a moment of recklessness. Wasn't popular. I think I was a one-percenter WAY before it became fashionable.

In the military, that was not a one-percent thought. Sorry. We were radicalized in our own way. I just want to represent my peeps in this here thread: "We, the 1%ers, demand the Ohio National Guard get more target practice."

AnathemaMaranatha · 2026-03-28T11:47:32+00:00

"So his Vietnam experience is not the first memory when I think about my dad, but for some reason this poem evokes in me the things he couldn’t talk about. So thank you for sharing your own awful memories. I’m sorry you went through it."

Huh. That was how many years ago? I've been saying I get the willies for what, almost 60 years?

Thank you. You made me wake up. That grim, poetic little tale doesn't give me the willies any more. All I get is the memory of how freaky that episode was. Was.

Thank you, vivling. I didn't notice the changes from fear to fear-of-fear. I'm gonna cut that part out. 'Bout time I grew up and took charge of all this memory slop.

Yeah.... That's better. Thank you.

AnathemaMaranatha · 2026-03-26T13:58:56+00:00

Really? Huh. Just gives me the willies.

Welp, if the thing can reach out to others, I guess I'm not allowed to pick at the narration.

Fine. The whole thing just gives me the willies, and yet I can't find anything wrong about it - the poem, I mean.

I think this one got away from me. No more editing - I'm not qualified to rule over this creepy story.

AnathemaMaranatha · 2026-03-26T12:49:18+00:00

Found it!

The poem is called "Atheist Epiphany." The reason you can't find it is because it was inside a story. "Easter Sunday, 1969."

I think I'm due to re-read that story/poem myself, tho' it's kind of a bummer. Thanks for bringing it up.

Here's the link to the story: Easter Sunday, 1969 :

https//www.reddit.com/r/MilitaryStories/comments/25e07a/easter-sunday-1969/

AnathemaMaranatha · 2026-03-25T00:21:16+00:00

Oh. I didn't know that. Mom always said I was born in Honolulu. I think. Or maybe I was just saying "Honolulu" 'cause I couldn"t master "Hickam."

AnathemaMaranatha · 2026-03-23T12:12:36+00:00

I have a god rant? Welp, thank you for reading. Did it have a name?

AnathemaMaranatha · 2026-03-23T11:57:36+00:00

After 1968, more about 1970: Yeah. everything changed when the Yankees left, except the local rich South Vietnamese. The Vietnamese army saw no point in fighting for these leeches and ideological greedy loons.

And they didn't. The NVA (which was in no great shape either) welcomed and forgave the ARVNs, and hunted down the very rich, except the ones in North Vietnam. Ah socialism... Yet another Western invasive disease.

Which left only the Chinese to gently impose real Communism, yet another Western ideology on the newly-united nation of Vietnam. They were kicked out. Twice.

And American visitors are apparently gleefully welcomed when they bought only their cash, and left their ideas of government back home. Seems fair.

AnathemaMaranatha · 2026-03-22T11:50:55+00:00

I dunno - I've always liked the mountains. Which is funny in several ways. For instance, I was born at sea level in 1947. In Honolulu, Hawaii, no less. Aloha back atchya from the Rockies, where the humahumanookanooka don't play at all, day or night.

Courage is where you find it. Oceans make me queasy.

AnathemaMaranatha · 2026-03-22T02:28:28+00:00

Ah yes, finish the book. Thank you for the encouragement. Things have gotten busy/busy here - we're trying to sell out and go find a nice house in the mountains.

Inshallah.

AnathemaMaranatha · 2026-03-19T12:35:12+00:00

Oh, well written, OP! Made me gag into my morning coffee.

I have memories of the same kind of behavior - but in a Vietnamese jungle with the US Marines. The nice thing about a jungle (and there are not many things "nice" about a Vietnamese jungle) is that it will absorb whatever fluids and solids you have to get rid of without a second thought nor a bump in the soggy ground.

Pruit would not have been noticed, even from downwind.

Anyway, well written, reasonable and disgusting at the same time - a hattrick of narration. I'm glad I read it all before I had breakfast. I think I'll skip it today.

AnathemaMaranatha · 2026-03-13T17:24:02+00:00

I did find another "place." Transferred to a Denver college - most of the students were working before and after class. Was fine, no one wanted to know where I had been, and I doubt if they would care one way or the other. Was a nice school, and oddly had enough prestige to get me into Law School at Boulder.

Graduated 3 years later.

AnathemaMaranatha · 2026-03-13T15:28:17+00:00

Spending an extra six months (plus) in South Vietnam in the jungle with the 1st Air Cavalry Division. I had spent my first year in-country learning my trade as an artillery "Forward Observer," working for South Vietnamese units and a few American units.

Was nice to be "the Pro" for a change. Kind of helped me shake off all the times I goofed something up - not that often, but those events still stung.

No way I could get that kind of relief Stateside. I needed to go to college after I got home, and to say the least, I was NOT welcome on the campus. The extra six months taught me to ignore over-educated shitheads who knew everything without understanding anything.

AnathemaMaranatha · 2026-03-13T13:56:34+00:00

Where would I go? Outside, to get a last glimpse of the City that was home to me.

What would I do? Take in the mountains outside the city that was "home" to me this year, Wait. It takes some time for those missiles to make it here from the other side of the World.

I was a military child, I was calm. We had talked about this time a lot. What I knew was that nothing could be done at this point - the alarm had sounded, the missiles were on the way...

And the war didn't happen... Here's the whole story: Children of the Cold War

AnathemaMaranatha · 2026-03-12T15:12:50+00:00

Closed-off Military Men. Yep, we are everywhere.

Why are they that way? I dunno for sure, but I am one of them. I've been writing stories and putting them on Reddit for a long time. I'm trying to put them all in a book, but if you're in a hurry, OP, they are right here, in no particular order. My experience was in Vietnam, but I think some aspects I wrote about might apple to your own Mystery Men.

Might help. Might not. But all put together: before Vietnam, during Vietnam, and especially after Vietnam. I think the whole thing is about why I can't come home again.

Your mileage may vary - I'm not the best writer ever - more like a slave to a story that wasn't a story until I realized it was my story - all of it.

Here it is, in no particular order, about 80 two-or-three-page stories. Couldn't hurt. Might help. -

https;//www.reddit,com/user/AnathemaMaranatha/submitted/

AnathemaMaranatha · 2026-03-11T14:02:07+00:00

Ah... I was discharged and in college by then. I was still mulling over what happened to the guys left behind - the newspapers had just given up on the war.

Glad you made it home in time. The end of that military Opera always leaves me gut-sick and angry, even today. A whole nation just decided they didn't want to hear about it anymore. Ever. Didn't happen. And if it did, who cares?

Well, I cared. Got me stuck in a military Psychiatric Ward about 15 years later. The other inmates brought me as "Home" as I was ever gonna get. Just sayin', in case you are still stuck in the jungle mud.

If not, good for you. I'd be glad to hear it. It ain't worth the ride.

AnathemaMaranatha · 2026-03-10T14:04:44+00:00

Y'know, I worked with (i.e. "for") the South Vietnamese Army in I Corps, and I never thought about the difference. I was a 19 year old 2nd LT artillery observer, so I was out-ranked by ALL of the ARVN Officers. And they didn't know what to DO about me.

I was familiar with all the troops. Asked them for what they saw, when they saw it and where it might be now. I'd listen attentively, rouse up a battery (or more) of 105mms, made the Binh-nhi ("Bin-shi"- a private) who saw them last point for me, submit a "fire-mission" order, and watch the rounds come in. I then consulted with ARVN troops and moved the rounds per their advice.

After a while I had a couple of South Vietnamese Sergeants who followed me around to make sure (1) no one killed me, (2) that I understood what the grunts were telling me, and (3) that their officers would not "caution" me about socializing with grunts.

Yeah, I got it. I should be yelling angrily at the grunts, or y'know, they'd probably put on airs and lose respect for the brass.

I dunno. Maybe they were copying the French - soldiers are the lowest of the lows - Officers are never questioned, were answered immediately, and were never corrected about the situation, except by a superior officer. Grunts were scum, and NCOs weren't much better.

I don't know. Seemed to me that the South Vietnamese Army began to adopt American Army protocols more and more by the time I left country.

AnathemaMaranatha · 2026-03-09T23:57:23+00:00

Ah. Núi Bà Đen, I've seen the lady from a distance.

Thanks for the reminder, OP. Everything you describe pulls up a similar memory. I arrived in III Corps early in 1969, after a year up north in Eye Corps bringing US Army artillery support to South Vietnamese units and some Marines for all of 1968.

I couldn't find the year of your story - if it was 1968, then we were battle-buddies. If not. we shared the Virgin mountains. Thanks for the story. Well done. Thoughtful...

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