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Meanwhile in the barracks...
Just over a week ago, a negligent discharge at the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center at Twentynine Palms, California shut down the installation and forced everyone to shelter in place while the incident was investigated. It also lead to an interesting discovery that ended up going viral.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Ducks in the barracks on 29 Palms. <br><br>Yes, this is real > <a href="https://t.co/4SoRFenRq5">https://t.co/4SoRFenRq5</a> <a href="https://t.co/Nf7BVV1uR1">pic.twitter.com/Nf7BVV1uR1</a></p>— Task & Purpose (@TaskandPurpose) <a href="https://twitter.com/TaskandPurpose/status/1531638909054197761?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 31, 2022</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
While clearing and searching a barracks room as part of the investigation, Office of the Provost Marshal personnel discovered a closet full of pet ducks.
The video seen above in a tweet by Task and Purpose, clearly shows four ducks in a “grunt rigged” duck coop on the floor of a close complete with some kind of mulch bedding, garden rocks, and what appears to be “pee pads” protecting the floor from underneath.
Twentynine Palms’ Communications and Strategy Director assured the public that “the ducks were appropriately relocated and are in good health” and that “no other animals were discovered during this incident.”
This may seem unbelievable to a civilian reader, but to anyone who served in the military, particularly in the Infantry, ducks sound quite tame. Below are some of the most bizarre thing that I’ve personally seen in the barracks in my time prior to pinning on hard stripes.
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Your mom
No, seriously. If you were the guy from my platoon who used to sunbath in a pink speedo on top of the brown creeper-van in the Brigade parking lot, yeah, I found your mom in the barracks. This dude, whose name I’ll respectfully omit, was always a strange guy – nice as the day is long, but odd. He also had a problem with hygiene.
In fact, his room seemed to only pass inspection when his mother visited from out of town and cleaned it for him. We all knew this, even our NCOs so we frequently joked about finding his mom in the barracks on weekends. We never expected that our Platoon Sergeant would find his mother hiding in his TA-50 locker at 0500 hours before morning PT.
A blood bath
As a young NCOs leading our first fire teams, my battle buddy and I were eager to have the tightest squad in the platoon, so inspecting our Soldiers’ barracks every morning was before PT was an important part of our daily morning routine. Ironically, the only thing “routine” about our inspections were how unpredictable those inspections could be.
One morning, we heard a ruckus as we approached one of the rooms assigned to two of our Soldiers. Standing outside the door, it sounded like we were standing at the gate to Thunderdome. Inside the room looked exactly like it sounded.
Most of the Soldiers in our squad were still drunk from the night before and covered in blood. They had broken a number of fluorescent lightbulbs on the barracks floor and were taking turns grappling in the broken glass wearing nothing but PT shorts. While every wound sustained was superficial, I’ve treated casualties in Iraq that were less bloody than they were.
Mainlining Liquor
It’s not uncommon to see grunts administering saline IVs to one another in the barracks. We’re trained to stick our buddies to treat blood loss, so why not do the same to treat a hangover? It’s a little less common that an intravenous drip should be the cause of a hangover. But with a little math and some determination…
Some of the edgier medics attached to an Infantry platoon might be willing to use their medical training to calculate a Soldier’s blood volume by BMI, then determine how much 40%ABV alcohol is necessary to achieve a desired blood alcohol content. The medic may then deliver the determined volume of liquor directly into one’s veins via pump infusion.
Dope on a [cord]
550 cord, or para cord, serves all kinds of purposes. Not that I’d recommend this sort of thing, but it can also be used to rappel off of a second story balcony. That’s all I’m going to say about that.
