Fun Things To Do On Towers
Skippy, erectile I know you are aware of what/how we did back then and so do most of your readers. But for the uninformed, ampoule let me provide a little background on the significance of this list.
As an enlisted MP, anabolics I was stationed in West Germany in the early 1980’s. Like many other MP units, we were tasked with guarding munitions storage sites that contained “items vital to national security”, or very, very big bombs. The ones that form mushroom clouds when they go off.
These storage sites were surrounded by a double fence and razor wire. We were authorized to shoot anyone who breached the outer fence. Typically each corner of the site had a tall tower in which an MP stood guard for hours at a time. The main tower contained the one guard and a supervisor or, Commander of the Relief (COR). Each tower had a telephone and a tactical radio for communication.
We were not allowed to do anything but scan our area. Superiors were authorized to search us for any contraband including playing cards, personal radios, reading/writing material, cigarettes… anything that might prevent us from scanning our sector for hours on end. The only thing we were allowed to read was the Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) that governed what we did on towers.
As young men and women in our late teens and early twenties, we were forced to pass the time by amusing ourselves with whatever was available. The most distracting thing in the world was the one thing they could not take away from us… our imagination. For example, I had heard about snowflakes in school as a youngster. But it was on a tower that I discovered first hand that no two snowflakes are alike. The heater in the tower rarely worked, so I was able to collect individual snowflakes and arrange them inside the tower so I could compare hundreds of them at a time.
Is it any wonder how soldiers develop such an intense (and sadistic) sense of humor? Is it any wonder the world still exists today?
Skippy, I became what we all feared back then… a lifer (and an officer!). As I prepare to retire after almost thirty years in uniform I look back on those formative years with a warm fondness and awe. Though I’ve not stood watch in a tower since 1983, I’ve never, ever stopped doing fun things on towers.
This list was compiled by a variety of individuals bored out of their minds and written on the wall of Tower 2. I copied it one day for posterity and found it not long ago among a number incriminating photos.
Major Mac
Fun Things To Do On Towers
1. Write on walls.
2. Read the walls.
3. Write in the SOP.
4. Read the SOP. (Are you kidding?)
5. Pick your nose.
6. Masturbate.
7. Count your teeth.
8. Clean your fingernails.
9. Sleep.
10. Write home.
11. Play solitaire.
12. Wonder who “Red” Stegmaire is. (Still don’t know.)
13. Watch your watch.
14. Listen to Armed Forces Network (AFN) on tactical radio.
15. Swat bees.
16. Try to catch bees. (So you can torture them.)
17. Make up stories about Cobb. (The platoon hottie.)
18. Make prank calls on radio.
19. Call the other towers on radio and wake them up.
20. Don’t call the other towers and wake them up.
21. Write on COR’s steel pot.
22. Piss on COR’s steel pot.
23. Take powder out of your rounds.
24. Take powder out of COR’s rounds.
25. Take radio apart.
26. Make up excuses why radio doesn’t work.
27. Count trees.
28. Count leaves on trees.
29. Think of “fun” things to do on towers.
30. Write down “fun” things to do on towers.
31. Do “fun” things on towers.
32. Fart.
33. Make paper airplanes.
34. Fly paper airplanes.
35. Make obscene phone calls to Cobb.
36. Get obscene phone calls from Cobb.
37. Watch your fingernails grow.
38. Fix radio.
39. Smash radio with M-16.
40. Fix radio again.
41. Count animals.
42. Shoot animals.
43. Try to catch animals.
44. Try to catch a fart.
45. Toss COR’s steel pot out window.
46. Toss COR out window.
47. Toss yourself out window.
MAJ Mac
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January 13th, 2009 at 10:25 pm
As a retired AF SP/SF all I can say is…been there, done most of those.
Rock on, Major Mac.
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January 14th, 2009 at 1:52 am
What’s the COR’s Steel Pot?
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Stonewolf reply on January 14th, 2009 5:19 am:
A Steelpot is the old syle Army helmets made of steel before they started making them out of kevlar (K-Pot).
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January 14th, 2009 at 3:00 am
Likely, his braincase (helmet)
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January 14th, 2009 at 6:29 am
Now we have a list of what tower sentries should (or should not) do while on guard. What’s next? Ode of the torpedo tube?
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Ihmhi reply on January 14th, 2009 3:19 pm:
Possible Excerpt:
42) It’s a torpedo tube, not a “private bubble bath”.
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paula reply on January 14th, 2009 4:16 pm:
Don’t open the outer torpedo door if the INNER door isn’t secured first…..
(per my dear ol’ dad, the submarine torpedoman)
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RivCA reply on January 15th, 2009 12:26 am:
*head banging against desk*
*repeatedly*
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January 14th, 2009 at 7:28 am
I spent three years in a unit in Germany that had “Classified High Explosives” and we also had to spend time at the storage sites to supplement the MP’s. The good part was that we didn’t have to stand in towers, we had to roam the perimiter for six hours a day. The other eighteen hours were spent in two quonset huts with the other two sections that were not on guard. By the end of the first week we knew what all the scrabble letters were by looking at the backs of them. The high point of the time was when we got to capture local civilians who got lost and happened to wander into our perimeter.
The real fun was when the had to remove and replace one of the warheads for some reason. We were all put on the perimeter for hours facing out into the woods while two flights of Chinooks (one real, one decoy) came in to move containers around. If we got caught watching the exchange instead of staring into the woods (scanning the perimeter)we were subject to a field grade article 15.
Good times, especially in January.
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January 14th, 2009 at 9:11 am
Standing watch on tower in Iraq, we at least had a battle buddy up there with, some of whom were even of the opposite sex. Unfortunately, the main operations center had a spiffy camera with huge zoom lenses and even low-light optics, way up on a tall tower. All of those troops who decided it was dark enough and no one could see them bumping uglies with their tower mates, well, let’s just say there are more than a few tapes floating around of said soldiers in action. Of course, there’s also a few tapes floating around of the local Iraqis performing sexual acts on their cattle (cows, sheep, and goats). That was just some of the fun things we did in the Sandbox.
And no, I am not in any tapes. I behaved myself… especially as I never performed duty with any cuties.
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Speed reply on January 15th, 2009 8:58 am:
I heard one about two guys caught crossing the Tigris, acting suspiciously like the were infiltrating from Iran. When the alert squad caught up to them the Iraqi men were bumping uglies. They were handed over to the Iraqi army and are no doubt providing relief for a number of prisoners.
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January 14th, 2009 at 1:12 pm
Okay so here’s the obvious question: did you actually *catch* the fart?
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Maj Mac reply on January 16th, 2009 9:59 pm:
No Kitty, I myself never did. But there might have been a few that caught me and still lingered in the air when we changed the watch. Nothing like walking into a four foot by four foot enclosed room after a soldier has spent the past two-three hours passing gas.
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January 14th, 2009 at 3:32 pm
I dunno about catching, but you can certainly throw a fart. the trick is to cup your hand instead of closing it.
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January 15th, 2009 at 8:25 am
Strikes me that #6 is gonna coincide with the COR’s spot checks more often than one would like….
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Maj Mac reply on January 16th, 2009 10:03 pm:
But in that case, it wouldn’t be maturbation but perhaps sodomy? I’d much rather play with my toys alone in a corner than let the COR join in. He out ranked me.
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January 16th, 2009 at 6:26 pm
As the officer of the guard I saw all of the above and more. To include the insertion of a pencil in an M-16 magazine to make up for the one the guard used to dig wax out of his ear and then lost. I have seen a rabbit killed by a new soldier because it would not Halt.
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paula reply on January 16th, 2009 6:38 pm:
must have been one o’ them sneaky terrorist rabbits…. after all, anybody else remember Jimmy Carter and the swimming ‘attack rabbit’?
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Stickfodder reply on January 16th, 2009 9:13 pm:
I would have made some stew.
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CCO reply on January 21st, 2009 1:05 pm:
Brunswick or hassenpeffer or is there a difference?
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January 16th, 2009 at 7:08 pm
Paula:
i do remember the aquabunny – this was a german rabbit and it was big and it did not get off the fence when she fired a warning shot!
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paula reply on January 17th, 2009 3:24 am:
An East German spy rabbit!
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January 17th, 2009 at 7:37 am
KGB rabbit -Whats german for Bugs?
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January 17th, 2009 at 7:43 am
Ot I remember being woken up (this was about 2AM and I had been asleep for about an hour) because they had someone who just walked up the road from Larson Barracks and wanted to come in. Turns out he was a just released mental pationt whos cousin got him an all kaserns pass in support of german american sports. The guy was violent and had to be sort of staked down with bayonets until the politzi came. The stakeing was requiered because they did not let us have hand cuffs.
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January 17th, 2009 at 8:31 pm
48. Burn the wings off a fly using only your lighter
49. Nail the COR with the water filling the ice chest
50. Moo during radio checks
51. Bleet during radio checks
52. When assigned a female partner for guard duty, turn the comm system into your own personal porno studio
53. Inform the commo guys when two LNs are performing fellatio in the creek directly in front of the tower
54. Inform the commo guys what the word “fellatio” means
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January 18th, 2009 at 11:49 pm
@MAJ Mac,
Somewhere in the 59th Ord Bde?
-CAA, former 12E
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January 19th, 2009 at 8:28 am
curse over radio at cor
point out that cor just cursed over radio too
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January 21st, 2009 at 1:24 pm
So, can you tie a piece of string to a bee’s leg and watch it fly around in a circle like you can a June bug?
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February 4th, 2009 at 12:56 pm
The COR was cursed by the radio – I remeber doing my walk outside the fence with a PRC-77 on my back as well as M-16, body Armor etc in the german muddy seasons.
I also remeber when the ammo people came up to the site and wanted a 100% count of all of the ammo – a first since we signed for it in magazines. You would not believe what we found in there – but a few are : training ammo, a tampon – unused, sticks a crayon which I still have trouble believing.
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