Quote:
Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch
Some stories from my past just for amusement
During basic training I was given a platoon to run on a patrol. We managed to make our way pretty well until we came to a large clearing. In one of my better judgement moments I selected one of my platoon mates to run across the clearing, I mean if its an ambush site only one of us gets zapped.
So he takes off running as fast as he can, then he vanishes and we hear loud swearing. Then he pops up running again and suddenly vanishes and we hear louder swearing with my name being used heavily. He finally gets across the clearing, and I start sending others across and we finally reach him and the overwhelming smell.
suppossedly the clearing had been used as a base site and there were several latrine holes that hadn't been filled in.
Or on the same excercise we came across an encampment, anyone who's been in Wainwright knows that it can get incredibly foggy. We decided to over run the camp, I sent the same private and two others to the other side of the enacampment at a set time they were to run into the camp firing screaming and making as much noise as possible to distract them while the main group myself included attacked from the other side. So we waited and suddenly we heard a god awful racket made up of war cries and firing from the hip, followed by a extremely loud crashing sound and sobbing. As they ran into attack in this thick fog they failed to see the cammo'd truck in front of them and ran into it at a full sprint knocking them senseless and breaking one nose. the attack fell apart because we laughed so hard.
There was the time we did a winter ex where we did an assault by helicopter. The chopper wouldn't land but it hovered over the snow. Being gung ho I was the first one to leap out wearing my 40 pounds of gear, I hit the snow and promptly sank into a 7 foot snow bank.
then there was the embarressment of doing a parade past a week before graduation followed by a long winded speech by an officer. Halfway through his speech there was a loud thunk as the good Captain overcome by the heat passed out and fell on my face.
When I finally got to instruct ambush tactics to a basic training group and got the coolest job ever which is acting as enemy force. Myself and three other instructors had managed to find imitation Russian great coats and tanker hats which was cool. the senior instructor then pulled out a map and told us where to set up an ambush so that he could march his trainees through there.
We of course ignored those instructions and set up the ambush about 2 km's up the road and killed them all much to the ire of a very pissed off Warrant Officer.
Best time of my life.
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Hey CC, during your time in the armed forces, were you ever given an order you refused to carry out?
I always wonder about that in the army. Obviously it wouldn't function well if soldiers could pick and choose the orders they accepted; however, it is possible to receive an order that would be wrong to carry out. An extreme example is obviously all of the Nazi soldiers that were just carrying out there orders that led to the death of millions of jews in WWII.
Hopefully as a Canadian you never had to deal with something quite so horrible, but did you ever have to say "no" to a superior officer? If you were to say no, what sort of punishment could you expect? Are there failsafes in place so that if you are being ordered to do something wrong (like say burn a village full of civilians a la Vietnam) you could refuse on some sort of grounds that would force your superior to rethink his decision?
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And in an effort to keep this on topic, anybody ever been to Germany on November 11? I wonder how they approach Remembrance day.