No s*&^ there I was, final field training exercise (FTX) of Basic. My battle buddy and I get the first foxhole right by the road and for the whole time we're in the field, we are the ECP (entry control point) for our company area. Not so horrible, since we cover it all day (except when we go off on sticks lanes) we aren't in the nightly rotation. Here's a few of the shenanigans we got up to while on the FTX.

First bit of BS me and the battle get up to is the two E4 Specialists in the company, the admin clerk and the supply clerk. They didn't pay any attention when they passed out the challenge and response passwords, so for the first day, we have to call back to the command post (CP) and bug the commanding officer (CO) every time they come in thru the gate, and boy were they in and out multiple times that first day. Captain gets tired of this and says to give them some hell the next time they come through the gate. Like clockwork, here comes one the Specialists, and so I brandish my unloaded M16A2 at him and get him out of the vehicle to start shaking him down and embarrassing him a little - search him thoroughly, yell a bunch, make a whole production of it. He's going along because my battle buddy is built like the cow-chucking Michigan farm boy that he is, and just grinning evilly at the poor Specialist. As this is beginning, down the road comes 4th platoon from a sticks lane and their Drill Sergeant protests at me (a recruit who hasn't been thru Basic yet) giving a permanent party member the business. I snap to attention (well, port arms) and explain to the DS what's going on... and the DS takes over, and smokes the poor Specialist like nobody's business, and I just stand there at port arms while he does it, because you don't interrupt professionals while they're working. When the DS finishes up, he grabs his platoon and they disappear into camp, leaving me and the now shaken Specialist. "Do you want the passwords?" What can I say, he looked pathetic and had thoroughly learned his lesson, and we never had trouble the rest of the FTX from him or the other Specialist. Hell, he was almost a decade younger than I was (I joined late in life, glutton for punishment). They were good guys, no complaints about either one of them.

On one of our many sticks lanes, I found a discarded 20oz plastic soda bottle in the woods. Now, us recruits weren't allowed anything from a squee-dunk of any kind, and not allowed to buy snacks the few times we got to go into the PX, so it was some lazy DS or other permanent party member who didn't pack out their trash. Of course we had been given several MREs to pack out to the field for chow, and I had an extra MRE heater just waiting for some mischief, so I grabbed the bottle and took it back to our foxhole. At one point during the FTX, our platoon DS's came through and handed out blanks, as we were going to be "assaulted" by an "unknown force" - our own DS's or the ones in the other platoons. As soon as the DS's hand out blanks, however, they all get called into the CP by the Captain for some briefing, but don't have time to take back the blanks. Me and my battle know this has happened, because we're on the ECP and they leave from there... but the rest of our platoon is in the dark, scanning their sectors for this "attack" to show up. After about 5 minutes of waiting, because the idle hands of a Private are the epitome of the Devil's Playground, I get bored and fill the soda bottle half full of water, take the chemical heater out of the wrapper it came in (no, I didn't have a knife or scissors, but it's amazing what you can do with a suitably sharp rock and boredom) and shove it into the bottle, shake it vigorously for about 2 shakes and fling it as far into the woods in front of my platoon's position. All those years of Little League playing outfield is actually useful (and on the grenade range, too). It booms appreciably... and my platoon mates light up the woods, emptying the one magazine of blanks they had been issued, because they think this is the "attack", and panic spreads quickly. The entire company's worth of staff - CO, 1SG, support staff, and 4 platoons worth of Drill Sergeants - come charging up the road to find me and my battle laying on the ground, holding our sides as we literally ROFLMAO. We got smoked for a bit, the platoon caught some of it too, but no one was hurt, and me and my battle had been pretty good troops up until that incident, so it was quickly forgotten.

About halfway thru the FTX, the battalion commander and Sergeant Major decide to come visit us... and bring along their superiors, the brigade commander and Sergeant Major. As they obviously don't know the password of the day I am about to go call the CP to not only get permission from the CO but also give him the "heads up!" of the incoming artillery round of this wonderful carload of rank and experience, when a passing Drill Sergeant (from my own platoon, no less) takes over and waves the car into the camp - no warning to the Captain of what is headed his way. As soon as the car clears the barricade, I am diving for our field phone and cranking for all I am worth. The First Sergeant answers, "stay off the line! the CO is busy!" as I'm sputtering trying to tell her who is coming. By then, as the CP isn't that far away, it's too late - the brigade and battalion COs and Sergeants Major have already arrived. I think I got in more trouble (read: smoked more) for not letting the CO know who was coming (yes, even though I didn't let them in, but I'm just the lowly recruit) than the soda bottle and MRE heater incident. That and I think seeing his own personal COs show up unannounced put our Captain and First Sergeant into a state of shock, and the DSs tiptoed around it so we wouldn't protest too much and spill how one of their own was partially to blame for the fiasco.

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What about the rest of you? What shenanigans did you get up to in Basic training?