So during my time as an army apprentice, they kept drumming into us ‘soldier first, tradesman second’ so made us do several blocks of IMT (infantry minor tactics) training. These periods of training were a bit of a break from the workshop, but not necessarily a welcome break. We would spend a week on base camping in hootchies, doing fire and movement drills, ambush drills, bayonet assault course, field craft lessons etc. followed by a couple of weeks out in the bush digging gun pits, living in said gun pits and doing general soldier shit. The guy that was in charge of this shit was an infantry sergeant, who no doubt hated being posted away from his beloved battalion to have to teach soldiering to a bunch of smart arse grease monkey apprentices. Real angry bastard. Anyhow, we’re out in the bush in the high country, digging the stage 3 gun pits, and of course, if it’s not raining, it’s not training. So around midnight, freezing cold and flogging down rain, my mate Freddy and I were still hooking in trying to finish digging this massive hole in the ground with the tiny little fold up shovels we had. Old crackers, the infantry sergeant, decides we haven’t been beasted enough today, so he comes over to start barking at us, I guess it was his nurturing attempt to keep us motivated. So Freddy and I just kept digging and ignoring the big loud mouthed bastard… until the wet ground on the edge at the top of our pit gave way out from under crackers’ boots, and half the pit collapsed in. Freddy and I were able to remove ourselves before we got crumpled by a landslide of mud and sergeant. The big bastard was stuck. Arse down, boots up in a metre deep hole. He couldn’t get out. Me and Freddy were laughing so had we couldn’t help him out even if we wanted to.