Some funny stories from the Marine Corps

All of this stuff happened over 25 years ago. Yes, I am an old fart.

Boot Camp:
Some nice lady sent her son some treats...she was a very nice lady because she made sure that that was enough for everybody in our platoon, the boxes that came stacked almost as high as he was ( I bet she spent 50 bucks on shipping). The DI's were SOOO impressed that they made this guy eat candy and cookies until he puked....and then they made him do it again...and then they threw the rest of it away. And everybody made sure that their mommies didn't send them any treats after that.

Mount Fuji:

Fujisan from the ramp

We would go down to Tokyo and tell the new guys, " Hey, go tell that chick "baca gaijin des", which means "I'm a stupid foreigner", or "okama des", which means "I'm gay". Got punched in the mouth a couple of times from the guys we pulled the stunt on, but it was funny seeing the Japanese girls laugh.

We climbed Mt. Fuji (we were stationed there, so this was a battalion morale thing). On the way down, we sat on our backpacks and slid down the ice floes. I was the third guy down, and the two guys in front of me disappeared off the earth! I managed to slam on my brakes, and just fell off the 7 foot drop those two had rocketed off of; one guy got his jaw busted, the other busted a rib. We moved to the next floe and did it again...a LITTLE more carefully.

Waving off the rest of the unit

BRAKES!!!! Look at the snow fly

We were the aggressors against a visiting air wing unit. We put bottle rockets in the barrels of our 16s and shot them at the wingers. We jumped in their foxholes and beat them up; some of us groped the WM's. We camped out about half a mile from them with no tents or sleeping bags but we had a fire and some whiskey. By the end of the exercise, the wingers learned to actually defend their position and not fuck off while on defense. This was before PC nonsense, so there was no complaint about the groping of the chicks, although one of us got buttstroked by a WM as the wingers finally took the exercise seriously. One of the funnest things I ever did, but it was hell cleaning off the fireworks residue from my rifle.

Subic Bay:
We were on patrol around the base and up by the hospital we ran over a huge black snake that covered the road. My section leader ran over him (14 ton LAV-25), then my vehicle ran over him (14 ton LAV-25), then the snake crawled off into the grass. A Filipino K-9 truck that was following us chased him into the grass, and the snake reared up and struck at the truck. The K-9 revved and hit him. We left at that point, although me and my crew advocated for machine-gunning the snake. It was obviously a demon-zombie snake of some sort.

See this? Too little. I have seen a pic that looked exactly like the one we ran over, but can't find it

For the first week we were there, we marched to the chow hall (g*d knows why). One day, as we were forming up after lunch, there were some monkeys scavenging the dumpster. A couple of guys chucked rocks at the monkeys. The monkeys chunked back. The monkeys threw pretty accurately, and they hit hard. Eventually, it was about 20 Marines engaged in an all-out rock war with the monkeys. Our LT saw us, came over and made us stop. I was praying that a monkey would chunk him, b/c he was the guy of guy that would have tried to grab a monkey and wring his neck. That would have been funny to see him try. I could have yelled "Dignity of the Corps" right back at him

Can't vouch for the truth of this one, but one of my friends went jogging between bases (Subic Bay is several bases separated by jungle) and claims that a monkey ran out of the jungle, punched him in the leg, and ran back in the jungle. He DID have a big ass bruise on his leg

Damn aggressive monkeys

Okinawa:
The same guy that got punched by a monkey would occasionally steal humvees when he got drunk and joyride over the base ( not that I ever went with him coff coff). One night he comes to from a blackout, lying in a bar ditch with two MPs pointing their pistols at him. He had tried to cut the gate chain to the motor pool and steal a 5-ton...being too drunk to note that the other entrance was unlocked and wide open. He passed out with the MPs chasing him. At his court martial, the officers would not believe him when he told them his motive was that he was drunk, so he wise-assed them and said he was was going to sell the truck to the yakuza.

The rumor was that Steve McQueen got kicked out of the Corps for stealing an amtrack, painting it pink, and driving it around Okinawa; another variation is that McQueen drove thestolen amtrack around San Diego. I never found out for sure.

Hope you enjoyed!