Originally posted August 2020. This one wasn't one of my favorites pieces when I wrote it, but it sure was popular with you folks. As always, lightly edited. Enjoy.

The E4 Mafia is a real thing. The best example is Radar O'Reily from the show 4077 MASH. Nothing would have ever gotten done without him.

The E4's in the military (all branches) are really the ones that get shit done. They have been...

Ok this is a life lesson and some advice. Please forgive my shitty NJ education.

Now, this is a story all about how My life got flipped-turned upside down And I'd like to take a minute Just sit right there I'll tell you how I became the one nutt wonder.

So I was station in the the shithole state know as California. Anyways I go to work to get the daily pass-ons before I conduct guardmount. We...

If you are struggling, please see the suicide prevention numbers at the bottom of this post.

If you are looking for Story of the Year and other type posts, links are at the bottom of this post.

Good morning here from Florida, land of a trillion mosquitoes. August is here, fall is around the corner (in our hemisphere anyway) and I unfortunately go back to work soon.

After some discussion with...

This is a tank gunnery story. Now, my first gunnery was rough. So rough my NCOs all told me "This is the worst gunnery you'll ever see. This is absolute garbage." I think they jinxed me, because every gunnery I've shot has been worse than the one before. My experience with gunneries has been a constant downward spiral of "okay I know it can get worse, but fucking how? What's next?!" This is a...

This is the third and last part of three separate stories that involve snakes, posted on reddit 8 years ago. Links to parts 1 & 2 at the bottom of the page:

Part 3: Cobra

After a year in country, I joined up as an actual member of the 1st Cav. They had moved down to III Corps northwest of Saigon into the flat jungle country and Michelin rubber plantations between Saigon and the Cambodian border. I...

Sorry this is so disjointed, typing through a migraine.

Back in the 80's we had a real life deployment to Chad with our ATH (Air Transportable Hospital). Three weeks and over 500 babies (the head of hospital services said the pregnant ladies started lining up as soon as they started unloading the GP medium tents and he might have exaggerated the total a bit) later, they get all packed up and come...

A cousin of mine was fighting in Ukraine. This story happened in the recent past but I asked for permission to share and had the post reviewed for OPSEC prior to posting.

In early March my Cousin who we shall name Alex arrived in Ukraine. He spent 8 years in the Army and wanted the opportunity to fight Russia. In his view its important we beat Russia in Ukraine or Russia will be knocking on NATOs...

I’ll try to make this short and sweet. No shit there I was arriving to PLDC to become a NCO.

I was one of the last to arrive and got stuck with a bunk across from the latrine and next to the front door of a open bay barrack. Yay me right.

Shortly after everyone arrived and got out bunks made, we heard barking from the door on the end, the fire escape. The door swings open and flying in comes two...

No shit, there I was, about the 4th day of Basic Training, on a cold March morning. We got marched out to Victory Tower for repelling. Prior to that, we had to navigate 3 rope bridges and climb down a 40 foot cargo net. There was a yellow safety line, about five rungs from the mat. The objective was to climb below that line, get to just above the mat, and fall backwards, shouting your platoon...

Acceptance of the locals.

Between 2002 and 2006 I served at the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, CO as a medic on the inpatient floor/ICU, then Emergency.

I immediately did not take to the place...it was top heavy on Enlisted and Officers, suffered terrible winters (I had no car, and there was no base transit, so yeah, walking to work up a mountain sucked for the first year),...