Sakebomb

My orders said Ft Jackson.
After week of inprocessing and "relaxin", the First Sergeant calls everyone out into a formation the day before we were supposed to start Basic.

"Ive got some bad news, all of our training battalions are full. So instead of having all of you sit around and wait for a month, this half of the formation is getting shipped to Ft Knox, this half is going to Ft Benning"


I was standing on the Benning side.......

Exarecr

Started basic training with the FNC1, the big old boy back in 73 at CFB Cornwallis. While standing in line before the weapons issue I was glancing at a wall poster of the Fnc1 which was displayed with all the moving parts visible. When i saw the phrase "gas-operated",I spent the better part of 10 minutes looking everywhere on that damn poster for the spot where the gas was hooked up to the weapon.Man was I clueless. I just thank the great unknown above I didn't ask one of the other guys in line to show me where it obviously wasn't.

VarSity

Not my story, but I have a cousin who swears blind that when he went through Royal Marine training he was repeatedly beasted by a quarter master for asking for a glass hammer his corporal has sent him to pick up for his barracks.

Story goes that my cousin had no idea what a glass hammer was, but he had been given a beasting when he told the corporal to "go **** himself", as he assumed it was a practical joke.

The quarter master then got him beasted for being a funny man, and the corporal and his sergeant gave him another beasting when he turned up back at barracks without said glass hammer.

Turns out they were talking about one of those little hammers that your supposed to use on those fire alarm break glasses (little red boxes)
They had just has a new fire alarm installed and the engineer who had fitted it wouldn’t sign off on it being working unless the hammers were provided.

Has to be the most confusing story in the world and my cousin still says it was the worst day of his life.

ddog

OK, here goes. DI Sgt. Gills. The guy had, shall we say, a peculiar look to him. Near my rack is a recruit named Stokes. Gills has Stokes' number and starts calling him 'Strokes' to get his goat. One night, just before hitting the rack for the night, we had to 'ad hoc' Field Day the Squad Bay.

Gills is just hammering Stokes to no end and you can see he's gone too far and Stokes is about to go to 'critical'! I guess it was inbred to Gills to be as big of a pain in the butt as he could be (he was new and dropped to our platoon in the middle of second phase so he had to: "announce his presence with authority!") and he got worse with Stokes.

Anyhow, Stokes was done for, it was all that he could do to keep from fighting Gills he was so mad (not to mention that Stokes knew if he fought Gills, Gills was going to eat his lunch!).

Gills ripped into him and said something to the effect: If you don't get that rack tight (keep in mind we were just about to get into it in about 10 minutes!) I am going to send you back to first phase! I am going to quarterdeck you till you puke! I will pit you until sand is coming out of your behind (or words to that effect)... Stokes had, up until that time, kept responding with 'Yes Sir!' and 'Aye Aye Sir!'. Stokes stops what he is doing (raking his rack) and has this very 'perturbed' look, stares DIRECTLY into Sgt. Gills' eyes (any former Marine will know that this is akin to murder in the Marine Corps!) and says: "Oh, big "f****n'" deal... I am really scared, 'specially since it is coming from a guy who looks like "ERNIE" on Sesame Street!"

I told you that Gills looked rather peculiar.

Now as an adjunct... Gills, for all his foibles, snapped to, did a parade ground quality right face, went behind the racks and went to the Duty Hut. The door slammed followed by something that we all swore was laughter. Stokes was never badgered again.