funny warries!

[old faithful]

as suggested by wooki, ill kick off.
When I was about 19yo,and been in my Bn about ayear, I finaly bought my first car,an82 Gemini,my pride and joy! Drove it around all weekend.On the sunday night myself and couple mates from my section really gave the Jim Beam a nudge knowing full well that we had a 30km forced march the next day. Anyway, i woke up on the loungeroom floor with about 15 mins to get to work! As i drove through the front gate, i could see my company on the parade ground ready to go, and was in panic mode as i was now awol. Parked the Gem and made for the barracks.As i got to the top floor, i dawned on me that i had a killer hangover and made for the SAL,s for a spew: . As i came out, the coy was on their way, so thought, no worries, just go over to CHQ and tell a little lie as to why i was late and get out the walk as well! :unknown TFE! As i walked through the doors, I was greeted by a fairly intimidating CSM,who was not amused at my state.(didnt think he,d realise i was hungover!) he asked what had happened and why was i LATE?:lul Told him that id just had a minor accident at a set of traffic lights, and i rear ended a stupid chick on her way to work. He had a chuckle,and asked if we had exchanged ph#,s? Stupidly i said yes sir! He then replied that his brother had a panel shop just down the road, and would do me deal! and he would "do me favor" and ring the girl that i hit, and make it all good. Give me her Ph# he said. Well at this stage i went pale and felt a little dizzy:shudder nfloorl: ,and came back with, its in my car sir. Well he said,much damage to your car dig? Just a busted head light and blinker i stupidly replied! He told me to get my car and show him, he would give me some good advice on how to fix it.(he was very a friendly CSM!) oh, and bring the girls ph# with you! (shit shit shit! i was nearly panicing at this stage ,dry mouth,sweating,heart racing!) Wonder if he could smell my foul bourbon breath??? nah, hes being to nice and understanding!! I ranb to the carpark,via the pay phone, and rang some tart that id been seeing and filled her in to play along,begged her more like it! Then ran to my newish Gemini and kicked in the headlight and blinker,making sure to pick up all the glass and plastic! I drove it around to the CSM who had a quick look at it. gave him the ph# and he then came up with a plan. Take my car back to the car park, and come back in full marching order! He then put me in the back of a landrover and drove to the where the company was....about 7-8 kms into the march! He never rang Samantha. And nothing more was ever said about being late....He was a good bloke that CSM!
Moral is,never try to pull the wool over Sergant Major, cause they have been there and done that to.
Bet there were some laughs at the snake pit that night! nfloorl:

 

[Simon9]

Not a 'war' story as such, but the funniest thing that happened to me in my operational deployment (in retrospect... at the time I just about s--t myself!)


My section was on an all-night patrol. It was around 10pm and we were lounging around outside a police station, bored out of our brains, waiting for two Australian policemen who were coming with us. We had security men posted in the shadows, but three of us were sitting in our Land Cruiser outside the floodlit station and our section commander was chatting up a local police woman he had a big crush on.

The police (particularly Australian police) weren't too popular, and a car full of locals decided to play a prank. As they drove past the police station, they'd turned the engine off and coasted quite slowly along (no one there drives faster than about 40km/h), pumping the accelerator to get some fuel into the cylinders.

At just the right moment as they passed the station, the driver turned the key, creating an almighty big bang as the car backfired.

The intention was of course to make the police think they were being shot at in a drive-by. The prank, alas, also backfired. They hadn't been expecting a heavily-armed Australian infantry section (we used the same cars as the police) and these guys were a fraction of a second away from being cut in half in a hail of gunfire at a range of about 10 metres.

I just remember that time seemed to stand still, my gunner opposite me and myself both made a dive for the door of the troopie, weapons at the ready, and I have an image burned into my mind of seeing my section commander diving 'valiantly' across his policewoman crush's body, for which copped a lot of flak later.

It took less than half a second for us to register that it was a backfire and not a gunshot, but that half a second seemed like ages and in that time we went straight into our contact drill, just like in training.

I'll never know who was more shocked - the look on the locals' faces when they realised what they'd just done was highly amusing. But I was glad to see we all responded so automatically. Guess all that training is actually useful, huh?

 

[Gremlin29]

Once upon a time on a field problem...... our unit was bivouaced in the woods surrounding a rather generous field which had become our temporary airfield. There were a number of porta-johns "strategically" placed for our use in the "area" which in Army terms means....about a mile away or in this case, on the far side of our temporary airfield. My platoon which never lacked initiative to make life easier for itself, was blessed to have several crew chiefs that took it upon themselves to drag a porta-john across that field to be situated at the edge of the treeline for convenient use.

A week later I was flying back from a mission and was on short final to the LZ when the Captain I was flying with noticed one of our more colorful crew chiefs exit the woods making a B-Line for the porta-john. He said "hey, let's have al little fun with Sgt "Smith". He told me to head for the porta-john so that we could make it shake a little from our rotorwash and give our friend a little excitement.

We slowly hovered closer and closer to that porta-john, bits of grass and leaves were being whipped up by the hurricane force of our rotors as we watched the progress of our storm advance towards fate. The porta-john began to buffet as we closed, and we were laughing our butts off! The good Captain urged me on, closer, closer, let's really make that thing rock! Suddenly, and without warning the porta-john tipped right over on it's side! The door flew open 2 nanoseconds later as Sgt Smith exited the porta-john as if it were on fire! The poor guy still had his flight suit and underwear around his ankles, covered in smelly blue water, urine and poo. He scrambled out on all fours. He exited, pulled up his flight suit and shot us one of the dirtiest looks imaginable all in about, 2 seconds!!! I think we all pissed our pants laughing. We parked, and discussed how "bad" we felt about our practical joke going over the top, and how poor Sgt Smith was probably not going to talk to us ever again. After several days he was able to laugh about it, but for a while he was really really pissed! nfloorl:

 

[Waylander]

We were on normal maintenance duty on our tanks when we saw a helicopter coming in for the landing zone of our barracks.
Not long after the landing my company commander told me that there were some high ranking officers from Belarussia in this helicopter for the normal non-declared inspection of our heavy equipment like formalized in the treaties following our reunition.

After they saw enough they wanted to ride in one of our Leos just for the fun of it.

So I had the "honour" to put them (One Colonel and one Major) into my tank and we began driving around (And this in the middle of the final maintenance stage of a traning area deployment the next week ).

But suddenly the turret blocked and out of the turret ring a big shitload of hot, stinky hydraulic oil in a very nice pink flushed all over us. :
I did not understand what they were saying but I bet it was nothing nice. :lul

I bet this was the best way we could show to them that Germany is no military threat to them anymore.

And I have to say that this pink really matched their nice uniforms. nfloorl:

 

[eckherl]

I had a similar experience like Gremlin29

At one of the times that I was stationed at Fort Carson Colorado my tank company had a 1st sargeant that everyone truly loved due to the fact that that he would eat many portions of the companies chow out of the mermites, the troops started calling him the porkchop bandit, anyways we were on a tank gunnery range getting ready to shoot our night time table 8 gunnery table, my tank was not parked far from the porta shitters, I figured that I would catch a couple of winks from inside the tank turret before I had to go down and bust some caps, my loader and driver were sitting on top of the turret and I could hear them giggling like a couple of school girls, at that point I could here them getting off of the tank and did not think much of it. About a couple of minutes later I could here them scrambling to get back on the tank giggling telling each other to shutup, I stuck my head out of the TC`s position and could here this high piercing screaming coming from a small ravine located near the porta shitters, I ran over to that location and was wondering why the rest of my tank crew wasn`t following me, when I arrived there was a porta shitter that was down in this ravine resting on the door and was rocking back and forth with someone screaming and cussing like a sailor, about that time the Company commander and his Humvee driver showed up and helped me roll the porta shitter over, out came flying was my Ist sargeant covered in piss and crap barfing his lungs out. I just knew that my tank crew were the ones who plotted his demise but could not get them to fess up to it, the 1st sargeant knew that they did it also but could not prove it because he did not actually see them do it. The Company commander and I had to go behind my tank during the investigation process because we were laughing so hard. Needless to say, after that day the 1st sargeant started having his Humvee driver stand guard at the porta shitter any time he had to utilize one.

 

[Waylander]

You GIs seem to be very familiar with this kind of toilet fun, aren't your? nfloorl:

 

[eckherl]

You GIs seem to be very familiar with this kind of toilet fun, aren't your? nfloorl:

Yep - you should see us when we have to pass gas inside a tank turret.nfloorl:

 

[rattmuff]

My group of 10 army chefs were doing the yearly "soldier test", a test were the company groups compete aginst each other - this time in night orienteering, marching, obsticle course, grenade throwing, make a fire with nothing, first aid/stretcher running, fast marching, take apart our Ak5, put together the Ak5 and "guesse the distance".... (we only knew at the start that it would be a very long and cold night with no food what so ever).

At lunchtime the second day we got 5 "golden cans" to cook. We did so and after that we were waiting for a group to finnish the obsticle course. I saw how half the group started little fires to play with so I thoght "something is gonna happen soon, i'll start taping what they're doing." Started filming and the rest is to see for your self here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28-_SDqXzsI (will soon work)

 

[Aussie Digger]

Hey Simon, do they still provide "bung hole" with the 5x man ration packs? For those who don't know, it was fruitcake that came in a tin, that was reputed to "bung" you up on exercise, so you didn't have to go to the toilet so much...

I know a guy that used to HATE "bush sh*ts". He was fairly new and a shy sort of bloke and we managed to convince him by the 3rd day of a 2 week exercise that if he ate enough "bung hole" he could last the remaining 11 days without going to the toilet in the bush...

Well he hooked in and ate 4 cans of it one day. It seemed to work all right. He went 7 days in a row without going to the toilet. On the morning on the 8th day after "standing to" and going through morning routine, he started groaning in a REALLY ordinary manner, he couldn't do anything about the mounting pressure however. He then got evac'd and had to go eventually go to Gympie hospital.

We didn't see him again til the last day of the exercise and it turned out later that he'd suffered a fecal impaction, from chronic constipation... nfloorl:

Ironically enough I used to like "bung hole"...

 

[Simon9]

Oh man, I'm sure I could drag out a few stories about the old Bush Nards. We once had to use the excuse of a Bush Nard to go and chase some Force Recon marines whom we'd seen observing our position from a creek line about 300m away. Repeated appeals up the chain of command to chase them up were refused (officers, what are they good for?!) so we devised a plan to go take a dump in this creek, with a four man 'cover party' of course. When we got there we couldn't find them but we did find flattened trails in the long grass that showed we'd just missed them. The Secco took his dump and to this day I still wonder if there weren't a couple of marines hidden in the grass watching him...

You're showing your Bucket heritage there, AD, asking a grunt about five-man rat packs. Get out the jaffle iron, we only ever use one-man! The last time I had a 5x would have been in 2004 and it sure did still have a tin of bung hole. We were on a Mil Skills ex and our entire rations for the weekend were one 5x per section, which of course had to be broken down and divvied up. I ended up with a couple of mueslie bars and a five-man pack of beef satay. Of course in the midst of a 36km Mil Skills route I had to eat it all at once. I felt SO sick, and I've never been able to eat the beef satay since.

Thankfully they changed the menus last year so I shouldn't get it again.

Incidentally, I liked the bung hole too. The only other time I shared a 5x pack I ended up with the entire tin as my share of the pack. It's actually really filling. But yeah, that's why grunts shouldn't have 5x, we never get enough time or equipment to actually mix it all together so we end up with a single item of food for 24 hours - but enough of that food for five men!

 

[Aussie Digger]

Oh man, I'm sure I could drag out a few stories about the old Bush Nards. We once had to use the excuse of a Bush Nard to go and chase some Force Recon marines whom we'd seen observing our position from a creek line about 300m away. Repeated appeals up the chain of command to chase them up were refused (officers, what are they good for?!) so we devised a plan to go take a dump in this creek, with a four man 'cover party' of course. When we got there we couldn't find them but we did find flattened trails in the long grass that showed we'd just missed them. The Secco took his dump and to this day I still wonder if there weren't a couple of marines hidden in the grass watching him...

You're showing your Bucket heritage there, AD, asking a grunt about five-man rat packs. Get out the jaffle iron, we only ever use one-man! The last time I had a 5x would have been in 2004 and it sure did still have a tin of bung hole. We were on a Mil Skills ex and our entire rations for the weekend were one 5x per section, which of course had to be broken down and divvied up. I ended up with a couple of mueslie bars and a five-man pack of beef satay. Of course in the midst of a 36km Mil Skills route I had to eat it all at once. I felt SO sick, and I've never been able to eat the beef satay since.

Thankfully they changed the menus last year so I shouldn't get it again.

Incidentally, I liked the bung hole too. The only other time I shared a 5x pack I ended up with the entire tin as my share of the pack. It's actually really filling. But yeah, that's why grunts shouldn't have 5x, we never get enough time or equipment to actually mix it all together so we end up with a single item of food for 24 hours - but enough of that food for five men!

And we used to whinge about rarely ever getting "24" hour rat packs. The only time they used to give them to us, was when we got shafted doing recce scout crap... The 5 man packs didn't have the M&M's, chocolate and stuff in them... (Not that we needed them. I never met a Crewie or driver than wasn't loaded to the HILT with "jackies" once we stopped carting grunts around the place. Usually we took 2 ech bags EACH out bush, so that we could virtually live off the food we took with us for weeks... An advantage of operating an M113 sized vehicle with NO-ONE in the back most of the time...)

Funnily enough, it was the change to recon that allowed me the "opportunity" to do an Infantry IET course, with 9RQR...

Due to our change of "status" the bosses wanted a lot more dismounted recon stuff conducted by the Regiment, and after having seen our pathetic attempts at "IMT's" (infantry minor tactics for those unaware) they decided that a few of us should go and become infantry trained (a bit) so we had to do IET.

I was on the first 9RQR run IET course that was conducted half at Enoggera and half at Wide Bay training area. It opened my eyes to what a wonderful job grunts do, and what a wonderful thing it was that I was in the RAAC... :

My role was definitely NOT to seize and hold ground, by day or by night...

 

[Simon9]

I bet it did! A grunt's lot is not a happy one, particularly on IETs. I did IETs variously at Greenbank, Wide Bay, Shoalwater and Canungra, and THAT was the real 'regardless of season, weather or terrain!' More than once since then I've spent a miserable, sleepless night digging in rocky ground to Stage 3 ("MUST be finished before you go to bed!") and then kept digging most of the next day.

I worked with 2/14 on EX CROC '03 and it was a happy time having your boys there. Even if our naive little four-bucket platoon convoy did get wiped out by Cobras on more than one occasion (while when we were dug in, we drove them off with small arms).

One of my best mates is a troop commander in 2/14 now actually, he just got back from Iraq. Apparently he didn't get on with HIS infantry nearly as well as we all got on during CROC '03.

 

[Aussie Digger]

I bet it did! A grunt's lot is not a happy one, particularly on IETs. I did IETs variously at Greenbank, Wide Bay, Shoalwater and Canungra, and THAT was the real 'regardless of season, weather or terrain!' More than once since then I've spent a miserable, sleepless night digging in rocky ground to Stage 3 ("MUST be finished before you go to bed!") and then kept digging most of the next day.

I worked with 2/14 on EX CROC '03 and it was a happy time having your boys there. Even if our naive little four-bucket platoon convoy did get wiped out by Cobras on more than one occasion (while when we were dug in, we drove them off with small arms).

One of my best mates is a troop commander in 2/14 now actually, he just got back from Iraq. Apparently he didn't get on with HIS infantry nearly as well as we all got on during CROC '03.

I left in 2000, but I still think about a lot of the ridiculous things we did on exercises occasionally. We had one deployment to High Range training area (near Townsville) where we did all the usual crap, convoy escorts, battle runs, company level lifts etc and we managed to get in 1 day of "counter air" training and someone had actually managed to arrange to have us and some F/A-18's on the range at the same time...

We had been told this prior to the exercise, but a lot of us suspected it was a load of bollocks, designed to get people to turn up, like the last CFA (combat fitness assesment - a 15k march with a 25kg pack, webbing and your personal weapon) I did where we were told it was to be from the University of Queensland at Saint Lucia, along the river into the City and back and people (not the ever cynical yours truly mind you) actually believed them!!!

However sure enough they were there and we had 4 cars deployed in a harbour and were "standing to" after receiving word of an "air threat" over the net.

Sure enough, about 10-15 minutes later (long enough to start thinking seriously about when the next brew might be) 2x F/A-18's flew what seemed like about 20m's straight over us. We never even heard them coming, let alone had time to fire our "30 cal's" with their BFA's (blank firing attachments) attached at them. (We didn't have any BFA's for the "50 cals").

We were informed a matter of seconds later that our whole troop was dead... :shudder

That was the sum total of my air defence training in my time in Army...

 

[Simon9]

We had been told this prior to the exercise, but a lot of us suspected it was a load of bollocks, designed to get people to turn up, like the last CFA (combat fitness assesment - a 15k march with a 25kg pack, webbing and your personal weapon) I did where we were told it was to be from the University of Queensland at Saint Lucia, along the river into the City and back and people (not the ever cynical yours truly mind you) actually believed them!!!

And instead it was three times round the Enoggera ring road? nfloorl:

We actually DO do our CFAs along the public bike path at Kedron Brook. Lots of pretty girls our riding or walking dogs early Sunday morning to impress.

But yeah, they definitely hit us with the bollocks claims every end of year ex. Combined shoot with the SERT cops, static line parachute jump from a Herc, live-fire engineer support including flamethrowers... apparently they were all 'true' - they were just last-minute cancellations.

We had a similar low-level F/A-18 strike from the USMC - but it was after some Leopards, not us. Gods they are LOUD at that level! Do the Hornets have a radar capable of detecting AFVs on the ground or are they just visual?

The Cobras were more sinister, anyway. Our four Buckets were screaming happily along the tracks of Shoalwater, excited to be playing war, when the radios suddenly all stopped working. A few seconds later our driver threw the Bucket into the tightest turn imaginable and started crashing heavily through the bush before coming to a halt under thick scrub. A while later the radios started working again and we found out a pair of Cobras had been tracking us, jammed us (I didn't even know they could do that!) and then popped up above the treeline and wiped us out in short order. As I said, though, we got them back when we were dug in and they attacked us!

This is a pic of us given hell to the Cobras (two of them, company plus DFSW of us), taken with a wide-angle lens so the Cobra was in fact a lot closer than it looks there.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v484/thebadpaladin/cobragroundfire.jpg

Ahh, that Ex provided a lifetime supply of Warries.

 

[Aussie Digger]

And instead it was three times round the Enoggera ring road? nfloorl:

We actually DO do our CFAs along the public bike path at Kedron Brook. Lots of pretty girls our riding or walking dogs early Sunday morning to impress.

But yeah, they definitely hit us with the bollocks claims every end of year ex. Combined shoot with the SERT cops, static line parachute jump from a Herc, live-fire engineer support including flamethrowers... apparently they were all 'true' - they were just last-minute cancellations.

We had a similar low-level F/A-18 strike from the USMC - but it was after some Leopards, not us. Gods they are LOUD at that level! Do the Hornets have a radar capable of detecting AFVs on the ground or are they just visual?

The Cobras were more sinister, anyway. Our four Buckets were screaming happily along the tracks of Shoalwater, excited to be playing war, when the radios suddenly all stopped working. A few seconds later our driver threw the Bucket into the tightest turn imaginable and started crashing heavily through the bush before coming to a halt under thick scrub. A while later the radios started working again and we found out a pair of Cobras had been tracking us, jammed us (I didn't even know they could do that!) and then popped up above the treeline and wiped us out in short order. As I said, though, we got them back when we were dug in and they attacked us!

This is a pic of us given hell to the Cobras (two of them, company plus DFSW of us), taken with a wide-angle lens so the Cobra was in fact a lot closer than it looks there.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v484/thebadpaladin/cobragroundfire.jpg

Ahh, that Ex provided a lifetime supply of Warries.

We used to do ours at Greenbank, walking along a road through there for about 2 hours something or other. The "funny" thing was half the regiment usually never turned up and they weren't ever made to do it again.

Ah chocs. Sounds like the more things change...

I've got quite a few good warrie shots, an especially nice one of a UH-1H Huey coming in to pick up my recon section and taken through the smoke of a red coloured smoke grenade. Could've been on the cover of Time Magazine during Vietnam I reckon...

Unfortunately they're all "pre digital" and I'm not cluey enough to scan them (and I don't have a scanner) otherwise I'd put a few "appropriate" ones into the gallery...

 

[Simon9]

I might have to see if I can find some good ones from the Solomons - we were all digital by then. My section ended up with literally about 15 gig worth of photos and movies.

I've just been going over my Croc 03 records - I wrote it all up afterwards. This is what I wrote about the Cobra attack:


We set off in high spirits, enjoying the speed as the APCs screamed along the roads with the top open, and finally anticipating some action. There were four APCs in our convoy, one for each Section and one for PHQ.

Suddenly, our driver threw our track into a high-speed turn and plunged off the road and into the bush. Several more rapid changes of direction followed, throwing us violently around the cabin. The commander, standing up in his cupola, was yelling into his headset. Baz, as Secco, had access to a headset and stood up to put it on. The track skidded to a stop under a tree, and the driver switched off, but even with the sudden silence, the commander was still yelling. The other guys were looking thoroughly confused, but it was immediately obvious to me what had happened - gunship attack. Now we could actually hear each other, I said to Dan, "I knew we'd get it from those bloody Cobras," and he nodded back.

Baz, head pressed hard into one of his earphones, suddenly cursed "F--k!" loudly, and looked very pissed. "Cobras?" I asked him, and he frowned and nodded. "Two of them popped up over the trees and got the whole platoon. We're dead, fellas." The other guys looked decidedly glum.

Suddenly the radio came back on - the Cobras had, apparently, been jamming our frequencies, which was why the commander was unable to get through to anyone on his radio. With the engine switched off, we could all hear it. "All callsigns, all callsigns," it crackled. "Air Red! Air Red!"

"Awww, clap clap for the handicapped!" spat the commander sarcastically from his cupola. The tension suddenly broke, and we all cracked up, including the tankies.

 

[Waylander]

They can jam your radio?
Dammit, thats bad.

There was this guy during one exercise having his AGDUS (MILES like system) Milan ATGM running on training mode.
This made him able to do some rapid fire without smoke and without reloading and so wiping out a whole mixed armored company in less than a minute.
Great picture having a whole company of Leopards and Marders standing blinking and smoking there in nearly perfect attack formation.

We were really depressed by this excellent ATGM ambush till we got to know that this bloody mech inf guy cheatet.

During another maneuver we were training night time tanking. One of our crews rolled right over one of the toilets (The ones with which you seem to be very familiar with) shrinking it to paper height.
The look of the guy coming out of the second toilet next to the crushed one was great even through night vision.

 

[old faithful]

Did an ex at innesfail in FNQ once. Typical Para mission. Jumped in at the local airport. While i was moving to the rally point, the second pass was over head,so i paused to watch the exits. 3 x C130,s were dumping around 160 digs so i like to watch. Out they came sim doors. I noticed that some one had lost their pack on exit and was watching it plumet to earth when i realised to my horror that it was a bloke! At no more than about 200ft from the ground he got his reserve out! then a 2nd chute appeared! what had happened, was that his static line had broken at the door,so his main rig was deployed as far as his suspension lines would go,but hies main canopy was still in its deployment bag.When his reserve snaped open,his D-bag fell below him and his main just fell out and deployed,almost like a cartoon!Well if that wasnt bad enough,his suspension lines came up through his legs,putting him in a horizontal position for landing(with his back pack and rifle still attached to his legs). He landed fair in the middle of the runway on his back! I was about the 2nd bloke that got to him.His eyes were like dinner plates and all he could do was yell"im ok!im alright!"his addrenalin was really pumping!(wonder why?) Anyway he was a captain, and continued on the EX,with an experience for life! After that, the Heavy drop followed. And we spent about an hour looking for a uni mog that landed in a suger cane field! That was funny! And no future tank,it wasnt dropped by LAPES, just a coventional heavy drop,one of three i think.

 

[Mick73]

One arvo I was just on my way back from an old PNGDF position about 100m away from our own position, after one of the lads found a soft struck 81mm WP round in a bunker. They asked one of us to go look at it and see if it needed to be blown in place or if it could be moved. I said "what the hell" and had a look. So a had a quick look and thought "bugger this", I decided that I wasn't really quailified to make that decison and I was going to get one of the sig's to radio the engineers to fly down and have a look, for a more safer option. As I crossed our make shift LZ, two Seakings were imbound with our supply drop. They had under slung loads of water and rations and I guess maxed out inside with other crap. As they came closer, one of our Fijian digs raced out to marshall the inbound choppers and as usual the pilots ignored him. However, with the recent ground fire problems these guys were atracting they flow in from a higher angle then normal and I guess this proved to be one of the reasons they almost came together near our position. One went down in a hurry and one went up in a hurry and banked rather sharply, to the point where the slung loads got cut away as it started the spin. Sending jerry cans and 10 man rats off into the surrounding jungle.
So, we spent the next few hours looking for our food and water (which wasn't really that exciting as the only type we got for two weeks was E type). We found most of the jerry can were busted and the 10man held together (worst luck) and proceded to radio up for more water.
Rather fun afternoon really except for one thing...did I remember to sort out that mortar round problem?? Opps
A few days later and a few nervous minutes, the bomb was moved and life went back to "Ground hog day"! To this day I never wanted E-type rations ever again. Chicken and veg, Canned egg and some fish like crap...for 3 bloody weeks straight! We even tried giving it to the locals but every night they threw it back over at us (the canned egg was not a winner).

 

[Waylander]

3 weeks of rations?
This is kind of torture not training. :shudder