Reply to: Tales to make your blood run cold

[Moscow Mule]

someone once said to me there's nothing funnier than watching two grown men trying to start a fire

Not if one of them is Ray Mears.

[milanbenes]

blimey,

scarey stories !!!

makes anything we done at polytechnic look like playskool


but you know,

reading these stories, makes me thinks, we needs a CUK camping trip where we all go camping, sit round a fire (let the ex-squaddies make the fire - someone once said to me there's nothing funnier than watching two grown men trying to start a fire), so we sit round the fire, drink some beers and let the old boyz tell their stories


Milan.

[shaunbhoy]

Not suicide no. But that brings me onto part II, the truly spine-chilling story.

If you are of a nervous disposition, or are easily upset , then look away now.

The second Walt, I never actually met. So my involvement was not hands on, but I knew the main players, one of whom was my best friend. We talked about the situation and I gave him my forthright views,

so I might not have actually laid a finger on the guy, but Columbo would have found a fingerprint.


This happened in a barracks half a mile from where I was based, again, it was in a spider, so zero privacy, hot-house environment, where everyone is breathing down everyone elses neck.
The guy in question had been bigging himself up, (which is acceptable, provided it doesnt dominate), he was bull tulipting, (same rule applies) and he started to Walt. i.e. trying to gain some advantage through pretending to be something he was not.

so the decision was- lets take him for a bath.

And this is where it all went horribly wrong. Because the alcohol kicked in one friday night, and they deided that instead of a bath, they would use the static tank (cant remember what they are actually called now), which is a 30 foot square, forty foot deep tank full of water, dotted around camps and bases for emergencies. fires , drought and such.

The lip of these things is only a few feet off the ground.


So they pulled his locker down, emptied it out, shoved him in, put the padlock on, and carried him out to the static water tank, singing a witty dirge as they went. They put him in the water, and started to push him back and forth like a toy boat.

He realised where he was and started kicking up a heck of a racket, apparently. And I wouldnt blame him. Because these lockers have small ventillation holes in the back. He would have felt the water come in. cold.


By the time they realised the danger, there was too much water in the locker for them to lift it out, water is actually quite heavy, and by the time they had gone for help and returned, all that was left was a few bubbles.


Apparently he wore his finger tips down past the nail, trying to scratch his way out, but thats probably just young -man-ghoulishness and black humour.
I will never know.

They didnt set out to kill him, but he never transgressed again

That is right up there with the old tale about the tankies that decided (on a cold night) to drag their sleeping bags underneath their Chieftain to benefit from the warmth being generated by the engine as it cooled. Unbeknown to them (until too late) was the fact that the ground was soft enough for said Tank to sink by a few inches, thereby trapping said crew members and gradually helping them to also sink by a few inches also before....well...you can guess the rest.

[EternalOptimist]

A friend had a similar dilemma , also an SLR. He was patrolling a compound that contained the armoury, and went round the back of the buildings, there was a little foreign looking guy with a ladder. When challenged, he dropped the ladder and ran and was shot between the shoulder blades.
He'd only come to do the windows

[Moscow Mule]

I shudder to think what I would have done if he had,t been white.

Shot him. Felt guilty. Needed counselling.

[Gibbon]

Luckily for him he was white !

This tale, still makes me shudder 'with what if' he was ethnic looking.


Back in the late eighties gibbon was on armed guard duty on a quiet summers night at an air base in East Anglia. Armed with an SLR 7.62mm, quite a powerful rifle.

I was posted in a sangar with the rifle covering a guard with a pick axe handle who checked peoples passes etc. Suddenly from out of an hedgerow came a man running towards the entrance dressed in combat type gear. He pushed past the guard at the gate and onto the station. I cocked the rifle, aimed it at the intruder and challenged hime 'AIR FORCE STOP OR I FIRE' twice as in our ops. All that was between him and having his chest blown out was a few lbs of pressure and the command from my brain.

We were briefed before hand that there was two threats at that time.

1. The IRA who were very active, but their standard op was only to attack when yhey could get away easily.

2. Arab suicide bombers looking for revenge after the yank bombing of Libya.

The fact that he was white meant for me at that time he didn't fit into either category. And remember this was split second. So I didn't fire and called out the guard. They rounded him up and delivered him to the MPs. Turns out the poor guy had learning difficulties and had been promised a trip in a kite by some officers on a liasion visit.

Now what is telling is that the other guard said he would have shot him and the MP officer also said I would been alright if I had shot him !!!

I shudder to think what I would have done if he had,t been white.

[Sysman]

EO

We did that in basic to some **** who wouldn't wash. Did you see the wardrobe trick? or the landrover one with a spare wheel?

A navy mate reported doing the cold bath trick to someone who didn't wash. You can imagine what that was like in the close confines of a ship.

[Sysman]

Oskar Schindler was a fraudster, swindler and a liar, but could anyone hold it against him?

One client has a set of lifts made by Schindler.

I call them Schindler's Lifts.

I see that their branch in Oz actually call themselves Schindler's Lifts.

[fullyautomatix]

You want the truth? Can you handle the truth?

EO's story comes straight out of a hollywood movie. Never thought it could happen in modern day army. Punishing a fellow solider because he is weak sounds like taking the law in one's own hands. Ss funny as EO's story sounds, if you look at it seriously it is a bit harsh on the soldier.

[Moscow Mule]

OTOH, a bunch of soldiers aren't dead having been let down by someone who wasn't part of the team. I would have thought, however, that it would be the job of the trainers to can those types before they get scarred for life etc...

I blame the Sergeants. If they hadn't been out on the piss all the time, they would have actually had a clue about what was going on in their platoon.

FWIW, I understand it to be a bit better WRT to killing of recruits these days.

[NotAllThere]

OTOH, a bunch of soldiers aren't dead having been let down by someone who wasn't part of the team. I would have thought, however, that it would be the job of the trainers to can those types before they get scarred for life etc...

[Moscow Mule]

So, as the result of some lads not pulling their weight, one guy is scarred for life and one guy is dead?

Small price to pay I suppose.

[norrahe]

Did he get cocoa afterwards?

[RichardCranium]

What is the moral of your story then?

Moral? That was real life, not some Merkin TV show.

[EternalOptimist]

What is the moral of your story then, if you try and be a Walt you meet your creator in a grisly watery death ?

The moral of the story is this.

These guys will whine and say, 'what harm did I do'
'I didnt hurt anyone'
'Where is the damage'
'I didnt actually damage his arm, she wasnt really pregnant'
'the judge was wrong'
'if i wasnt sure, i referred them to their gp'


etc.

and it may be true. it probbly was true, they may have been 'damage-neutral'

but a military unit can not carry passengers. we are talking about life and death here, these units go together into war. You rely on your mates 100% to keep you alive.

so taking up the slot, where there should have been a proper trained doctor, is not harmless.


and that, fullyautomatix, is the moral of the story