Let me first thank you for your comments, your updoots and generally the warm welcome I have received from y'all. I strongly appreciate all of you and am genuinely enjoying all the stories posted on this board. I have the last 3 stories my dad told me. Going to be a longer one, but I figured that I would wrap it up and not spam the board anymore.

Story 1 - Explosives and flying water

The Recce dudes had a bunch of different equipment in their hands. They used the glorious vz.58 nicknamed "kosa" (the scythe), some SVDs, obviously the lovely BVPs and a wide variety of other equipment. The explosive part though was the fun part. Obviously they trained with grenades, but being trained for deep recon and sabotage, they were also given plastic explosives. More concretely, Semtex.

It might be just an urban legend, however from what I have heard, this little bugger gave a bit of a headache to the CIAs and the MI6s. Practically speaking it is quite similar to C4. The thing is however coloured red. Well, during the Soviet regime, it was in varying shades of red. Plenty of time was wasted trying to figure out why it is sometimes dark red, and sometimes almost pink. Is it for different purposes? Perhaps it is for designated units, or even for export? Later they found out that the varying shades were just due to a random uncaring dude shoving a shovel worth of dye into the mixer without any particular measuring. What a way to waste a bunch of secret services time.

Regardless. My dad and his unit were scheduled for explosives training. The Army provided a pyrotechnics expert, and this guy was the real deal. He was cool, did not particularly care about the bullshit but was very precise and knowledgeable. He explained the various physics connected to blowing something up, shown them how to set the primers and what not. On the last day of training, they still had some Semtex left over.

The pyro dude told them: "Look, let's do a bit of an experiment. We will go to this dug up hole. It is filled with water. I will set this explosive device in the pit, and you will sit on a nearby dirt mound every few meters in elevation. I will set it off, and you will tell me how high the water flies."

Dads unit was like, cool. They had to get rid of it anyway, better doing something fun than just doing a bunch of paperwork. So they set up accordingly, the pyro dude set up the explosive, tossed it in the water filled pit and walked over to his pyro device. He then connected in the wires, announced the explosion, pressed the button...and nothing happened.

Pyro dude was cool. He said: "No worries. This can happen, and its actually good that it happened. We can at least practically train work with unexploded ordinance." Dads unit remained where they were. Pyro dude waited 20 minutes. Still no explosion. So he said: "Cool. I will now go in, make the device safe and we will see what happened." He walked up to the pit and in that exact moment it fucking blew up. The water sprayed everywhere and as the stunned recon dudes got up and ran over, they saw the pyro dude on his back staring into the sky. The guy was fine, just a bit shook up. Sadly, nobody remembered to call out how high the water exactly flew.

Story 2 - Leadership 1 - Showers

Shortly after finishing his mandatory service, my dad was given an option to extend for another six months. He accepted and was given a fresh batch of grunts to lead through recon training. He didn't want to be a dick and wanted them not to be fuck ups. So he tried to train them to be smart, efficient and lazy. One of his first points to them was to listen to him, and to understand what he says.

Dad took the dudes on a field run. They ran in their khakis and combat boots. Before the run, he specifically told them to tie up their shoelaces ultra tight. From experience this meant that the leather combat boots would not allow any water through, keeping their feet dry. Wouldn't you guess, some dudes fucked up, got water in their boots and messed up their feet on the run.

Once they came back from the run, dad told them in this explicit wording:
"It's time for lunch. You have 30 minutes to get clean in the shower, to come over to the canteen and eat. Once 30 minutes is over, we are moving out again."

So the dudes got into the showers, got undressed and began cleaning up. My dad walked into the shower in his gear, showered the dirt off his clothes and walked dripping wet straight to the canteen. He got his lunch, ate to full and then watched his dudes wander in with 5 minutes left. As they started to eat, he checked his watch and announced that the time has run out.

The dudes obviously complained. He told them: "This is a lesson for you. Listen to me. Be smart. Be lazy. And at least look at what the fuck I am doing if nothing else."

Story 3 - Leadership 2 - Camping and stealth

My dad was not really into the books and pens things. He loved (and still does) being in the wild, running around with a gun and doing stuff. One day he got an idea. He arranged for a small overnight field exercise with his superiors.

He then took his dudes to a tall grassy hill. There they dropped off their bags, set up a small campfire and awaited his instructions. My dad told them:

"This is about stealth. You are all going to go down the hill. Then you will sneak and crawl back up hear. If you can reach me without me hearing you, you can do whatever the fuck you want throughout the night. Smoke, sleep, eat...whatever. But if I hear you, I will fire off a blank shot at you and you will go all the way back."

Off they want. The smarter ones quickly grasped that in order to be quiet they needed to go slow. The dumber ones kept rushing it and kept being sent back down the hill. As the night went one, more and more dudes made it to the top. Some chilled, some slept, some quietly bullshitted and smoked cigarettes. After a while my dad wanted to chill too, so he handed over the gun to one of the competent dudes and told him to keep watch.

As my dad was pulling out his MRE from his backpack, the guy heard one of his mates sneaking up. It was in the direction of my dads. And for some damn reason he put the gun next to his head and pulled the trigger.

Dad said that he blacked out for a couple seconds. Couldn't see for a bit, his ears were ringing. The dude was obviously apologetic and terrified. My dad swore at him for a while, took away his gun and told him to get away from him. He sincerely thought about beating the shit out of him, but figured he felt bad enough about it and the guilt would be more of a punishment than anything else.