Haven't seen this topic explored yet and figured that the Bear Pit is the only one that made sense for the question so here it goes- does anyone else have any outrageous stories (don't need to dox anyone in particular) they were fortunate enough to witness? I reckon I have at least a handful but I remember one of the 'shocks' of boot camp was before I showed up for BCT, I not only had never been on a plane before that point, but I also never knew that certain types of Americans existed.
I'll try my best to start this off with a story of my own.
My unit was mobilized to the National Training Center (NTC) in CA prior to a deployment in the Middle East (pretty standard). We went through the usual mobilization crap but when we arrived at NTC- it was January timeframe and holy smokes was it cold. We had to spend the week offloading equipment, getting the MILES equipment set up, etc etc while we froze our butts off because we later found out that the vast majority of our vehicles' heaters were inoperable.
Anywho onto the now 'funny' part of the story. Once we got everything set up, we started going through the training scenarios and for the vast majority of that exercise, I was a dismount on the back of a Bradley listening on the headset for the crew conversation to direct the rest of our dismount team on what actions were needed.
To set up this story- the Bradley Commander (BC) had already done 2 tours in OIF I & III and was an Army Sniper (hence why I led the conversation with this story) and at that point was a SSG. He was one of the most experienced NCO's we had and as such- in typical military fashion was assigned the more 'challenging' junior/recently enlisted Privates while still holding the 'Senior Scout' position for the platoon. So to put another way, a super experienced and professional NCO is assigned a BFV, is BC, has an excellent gunner to this day I still remember their name, but the driver is... a soldier in need of extra attention. Ok- now that the stage is set..
So we're doing our maneuvers in the BFV and I'm in the back as a dismount monitoring all communication and it's the typical- "Private X", go to the right.... and the vehicle banks violently to the left... of course this is followed by a rather impressive string of obscenities by the BC along the lines of "Right, Right goddammit!", which of course is countered by the driver with another violent shift to the other direction. This was usually followed with yet another string of expletives from the BC that essentially translated to "Jesus Christ Private X, you're going to kill me some day". And this went on day after day for over a week.
So one thing to understand with NTC- you have to understand we didn't simulate things and if the MILES gear said your vehicle/crew was destroyed you actually got MEDEVACed out of the site and from what I remember there was something like a 'playing card system' in place on whether you returned back to your unit. Well at some point during this 'experience' I remember the squared away gunner walking off the BFV and stepping on the open hatch of the driver that PVT X was operating and if memory serves me correctly , the armored hatch slammed shut and broke PVT X's Arm. Well they patched him up and he went back to operating the BFV with one arm while we were there.
So here we get to the crux of the story- the BC ended up having a cardiovascular medical emergency a couple of days afterwards and I can still to this day vividly remember him being strapped down to a litter (think ratchet strapped) to be loaded onto the chopper and the whole time him yelling something along the lines of "I told you so PVT X! I told you that you'd be the death of me!" etc. etc. all while he was being loaded onto the Blackhawk for a very real Medevac.
Anyway, as the title suggests, maybe you'd have to be there to appreciate the story but perhaps some folks here can relate and appreciate it. The BC did recover well enough for the Army to deem fit to participate into deploying a 3rd time with us but without getting into too specific of details- that was his last free trip to the Middle East (at least per the compliments of our favorite uncle).
Anyone else have similar stories?
-LD
I'll try my best to start this off with a story of my own.
My unit was mobilized to the National Training Center (NTC) in CA prior to a deployment in the Middle East (pretty standard). We went through the usual mobilization crap but when we arrived at NTC- it was January timeframe and holy smokes was it cold. We had to spend the week offloading equipment, getting the MILES equipment set up, etc etc while we froze our butts off because we later found out that the vast majority of our vehicles' heaters were inoperable.
Anywho onto the now 'funny' part of the story. Once we got everything set up, we started going through the training scenarios and for the vast majority of that exercise, I was a dismount on the back of a Bradley listening on the headset for the crew conversation to direct the rest of our dismount team on what actions were needed.
To set up this story- the Bradley Commander (BC) had already done 2 tours in OIF I & III and was an Army Sniper (hence why I led the conversation with this story) and at that point was a SSG. He was one of the most experienced NCO's we had and as such- in typical military fashion was assigned the more 'challenging' junior/recently enlisted Privates while still holding the 'Senior Scout' position for the platoon. So to put another way, a super experienced and professional NCO is assigned a BFV, is BC, has an excellent gunner to this day I still remember their name, but the driver is... a soldier in need of extra attention. Ok- now that the stage is set..
So we're doing our maneuvers in the BFV and I'm in the back as a dismount monitoring all communication and it's the typical- "Private X", go to the right.... and the vehicle banks violently to the left... of course this is followed by a rather impressive string of obscenities by the BC along the lines of "Right, Right goddammit!", which of course is countered by the driver with another violent shift to the other direction. This was usually followed with yet another string of expletives from the BC that essentially translated to "Jesus Christ Private X, you're going to kill me some day". And this went on day after day for over a week.
So one thing to understand with NTC- you have to understand we didn't simulate things and if the MILES gear said your vehicle/crew was destroyed you actually got MEDEVACed out of the site and from what I remember there was something like a 'playing card system' in place on whether you returned back to your unit. Well at some point during this 'experience' I remember the squared away gunner walking off the BFV and stepping on the open hatch of the driver that PVT X was operating and if memory serves me correctly , the armored hatch slammed shut and broke PVT X's Arm. Well they patched him up and he went back to operating the BFV with one arm while we were there.
So here we get to the crux of the story- the BC ended up having a cardiovascular medical emergency a couple of days afterwards and I can still to this day vividly remember him being strapped down to a litter (think ratchet strapped) to be loaded onto the chopper and the whole time him yelling something along the lines of "I told you so PVT X! I told you that you'd be the death of me!" etc. etc. all while he was being loaded onto the Blackhawk for a very real Medevac.
Anyway, as the title suggests, maybe you'd have to be there to appreciate the story but perhaps some folks here can relate and appreciate it. The BC did recover well enough for the Army to deem fit to participate into deploying a 3rd time with us but without getting into too specific of details- that was his last free trip to the Middle East (at least per the compliments of our favorite uncle).
Anyone else have similar stories?
-LD
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