There is an old saying that if you do the crime, you will do the time. Most of us tend to weigh these things whenever we are doing anything that we know we shouldn’t. For example, we may go a little faster than the speed limit, all the time realizing that if we get caught, we are going to have to pay a fine. There are going to be times, however, when the punishment is so interesting and severe, that we would avoid the crime at all cost. That has been the case throughout history with the different types of punishment that the military has enforced, including the following interesting methods.
1. A private was caught walking to the showers without wearing his clothes. (Just holding his towel and walking nude). The showers were in the same bay, and it was just males in the bay, but a female Drill from another platoon came in and saw him, and made him drop and give 50 pushups while nude.
2. USMC here. In our unit we had one guy that would constantly hum songs. Well one day our CO had enough of his behavior so he Tells him to Report to his Locker. so he goes to his locker and stands in front of it, CO tells him to get inside the locker. when he does he shuts and locks the door with him inside. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a quarter and pushes it through the vent holes and tells the guy to start singing, and tells him that whenever someone puts a quarter in the slot he was to sing another song. this went on for 6 hours, the guy made around 15 bucks in quarters and we were all in pain from laughing at him.
Needless to say he acquired the name ‘jukebox’ and never hummed again.
3. “What are they going to do? Bend my dog tags? Take my birthday away? chuckle chuckle” Umm.. Yep, apparently a Navy Captain did just that once on purpose by deliberately sailing parallel to the International Dateline then slipping across it right on midnight. Tomorrow suddenly became yesterday and no birthday for you this year ya chuckle head.
4. During Beast at USAFA, one of my fellow cadets started laughing at one of our Flight NCOs whistling that “To the left, to the left” song. Cadre went off on him…
“Basic Cadet Snoo, are you laughing!?”
“Yes, sir!”
“Why are you laughing, do you know what happened today!?”
“No, si-”
“BRUCE WILLIS DIED TODAY! Do you hate Bruce Willis!?”
“No, sir!”
“THEN WHY ARE YOU LAUGHING AT HIS DEATH!?”
“No excuse, si-”
“Today is a day of national tragedy! We need to memorialize his death. Pick up one of those rocks!”
[Does so]
“This is now the Bruce Willis Memorial Rock. What should we name it!?”
“Sir, I do not kno-”
“WE’RE GONNA NAME IT BRUCE! From now until the end of Basic, you will carry Bruce with you at all times! If I ask you how Bruce is doing, you will show me Bruce and sound off ‘Yippekaiyay, sir.” Do you understand!?”
“Yes, sir!”
“How’s Bruce!?”
“YIPPEKAIYAY, SIR!”
5. One of the other flights in my squadron had their command for “forward march” changed to “Autobots, roll out.” They had to make the transformation sound from the old cartoon before they were allowed to start marching.
6. In US Army Basic training, one soldier lost his canteen and asked the Drill Sergeant if he had seen it. The Drill was angry at this for some reason and made the private wander around for a few hours asking all kinds of inanimate objects if they had seen his canteen. So things like: “Truck, have you seen my canteen?”
7. Saw a drill instructor (USMC) have a recruit find a rock, name it Dignity and then throw it. Poor sap spent the next three hours asking people if they’ve seen his friend Dignity and walked around calling out for it.
8. Got caught on basic with my iPod and I ran around the camp for near 2 hours with my iPod over my head shouting “I’m a stupid f**k for bringing my iPod in the field” as the “enemy” was attacking our camp. I then proceeded to put my iPod in a plastic bag then taped it onto my helmet and from there on I responded to Private iPod. When my instructor shouted play I had to sing, skip I had to switch song etc… It lasted 2 weeks, even during the night when I had 1-2 hours to sleep.
9. A service member was a total f**k-up, to put it gently. Couldn’t be on time, couldn’t show up dressed to standards, constantly forgot professional courtesies, so on. When he was on his last straw, his squad leader pulled him aside and more or less started yelling, then stopped himself.
“No. You know what? I’m done yelling at you. It doesn’t work. Stay right here; don’t go anywhere.” He stormed off into the company building. The phrase, “Stay right here, don’t go anywhere” is typically the precursor to something horrible happening when said in anger. The squad leader eventually emerged carrying a small-ish potted tree which he hands to the service member.
“You will keep this tree alive. You will carry this with you where ever you go in uniform. You will take it to PT, you will take it to chow, you will take it to work. If anyone asks you why you’re carrying this f**king tree around, you will tell them, ‘It’s to replace the oxygen I stole from everyone else.’
10. Guy in basic dropped the biggest turd you’ve ever seen in the commode. So he shows the drill sergeants who then make him suit up in full combat gear weapon and all, and guard it all night. The whole “halt! Who goes there?” Pretty amusing.
11. I saw a guy be forced to slow dance with a mop for one hour straight.
12. Soldier pooped while we were in the field doing exercises, Drill Sergeant of the platoon behind us accidentally stepped in said turd. Whole company had to stand in formation and watch the poor soul dig a hole 6x6x1 as we held a funeral for the turd. We did not have a bugle to play for the piece of turd as it was lowered so one soldier had to stand there making an “ok” sign over his lips and makes bugle noises. The soldier that made the crap had to bury the whole thing while the Drill Sergeant read a prayer.
13. A fellow lance corporal at the time let out a sneeze. Huge snot rocket pops out and lands on his cheek, I mean just one beast of a thing. My sergeant standing in front of him talking to him while this happened let out a, “What the hell you nasty bitch, put it back.” And right back up it went. Funniest shit I have seen.
14. I was in a gender-mixed company in basic. the third floor of the barracks was split with females on one half and males on the other. males were not allowed in the female half and vice versa. my platoon was out back practicing throwing grenade bodies and a window on the female side of the third floor opened and a male sneaked out of the window onto the ledge. it was immediately obvious to everyone, including our drill sgt, that he had been in there messing around with a female and a drill Sgt must have come down the hall, forcing him to get out onto the ledge so he wouldn’t get caught. Our drill Sgt looked at the guy for a minute and then yelled really sarcastically, “Don’t do it private, you have lots to live for.” then they put him on suicide watch and made him hand over his belts and tie and shoelaces and everything that he could hang himself with and made him drag his newly bare mattress out into the hallway next to the fire guard desk and sleep out there every night until we graduated 4 weeks later. and they made his battle buddy sleep on the floor next to him for the first week.
15. In the Marine Corps when we really messed up we would go “fishing” It is where you squat down like your sitting in a chair and hold a shovel out in front of you in the air like a fishing pole. Then you just sit there for a long time and if the shovel would start to droop down my sergeant would grab the tip of the shovel and start to shake it and make me pretend I was reeling in the big one. One time me and a buddy got in trouble together so they made him fish and me flop around on the deck like a fish he had already caught for almost an hour.
16. When someone got caught going the wrong way or cutting in the chow line in osut ( basic for infantry) the drill Sgts would make them wander about the dfac at random repeating, “Beep beep! Wrong way!”. It was totally quiet otherwise, and they seemed like broken robots.
17. My brother told me that when he was in basic, a Drill Sergeant yelled at this guy to, “Beat his face”, meaning to do push-ups. Said guy had no clue it meant that, and promptly punched himself in the face, really, really hard, and fell to the ground. The Drill Sergeant had to walk that one off and my brother said you could hear him laughing hysterically as he walked behind a building.
18. My grandfather was part of the Russian Navy. Some guy in his crew broke valuable equipment, so they gave him a sleeping pill secretly and dropped a him in a rowboat while he was sleeping, sending him out into the Black Sea. After scaring the shit out of him, they went back and grabbed him. He never broke anything again.
19. We had a guy that somehow got his watch through the indoc (They take all your crap when you first get there). Well the DLS found out he had it when they saw him wearing it one day, so they put him in the squad bay trashcan and put the lid on it. Every time they walked by and kicked it he’d pop out with his watch and yell, “SIR THE TIME ON DECK IS ZERO-NINE-FORTY-FIVE!” and then go back into his can like the freakin’ grouch from Sesame Street.
20. I wrote a bad check while stationed in Korea. $2.06 over the limit. My punishment? To cut the parade field grass with scissors by morning.
