What was your "worst" support detail ?

[ArticPara]

During BCT (Benning in July) I had to sit in a conex full of bagged ice and count the bags when people came by to draw ice. The worst part was it made my C-ration peaches really cold and my little chocolate wafer really brittle.

[Buddah]

Burned a lot of shit during Desert Storm and did some horseshit details over the years, but........

When I was a senior E4 ATL in the LRSD, we had a Captain come in who was RIFed off of AD and sent to us. He thought his shit didn't stink because he thought we were a bunch of typical NG fucks and he made no bones about it.

He also insisted that he needed a driver/RTO to cart his lazy ass around. Out Det Sgt was a 173rd LRRP in Vietnam (Crusty, mean old fuck) and he immediately volunteered me for the job and ordered me to "Make the Captain commit suicide."

Most painful experience of my life. He wanted his coffee in the am, boots polished, CUCCV washed and cleaned and like the butler in Arthur said "Would you like me to wash you dick for you, sir"...........

It was like "Driving Miss Daisy II"...........

There is a happy ending....... I drove him crazy.

Have this little problem with my ass stinking and he had a weak stomach. Before drill weekends I would spend the week prior eating stuff that would make him literally gag when I farted. He would be all curled up in his woobie in the passeneger seat and I would turn the heat on and let fly. I think he threw up in his mouth once....

Another time he was sleeping in the passenger seat and I left the road and took the ditch, screaming "SIR, WE'RE GONNA DIE"..........

Put big (Read: Fucking heavy) chunks of lead in his rucksack right before roadmarchs and jumps and removed them when he was done and could figure it out.

Put a turd in his buttpack when he left his locker unsecured and he was gone for several months.

This went on for 9 months and I left the unit for a year for ING when I went full time with the Police Department. He eventually figured out who was behind tormenting him after I left.

And the SPC 4 Mafia lived happily ever after.......

[ArticPara]

Buddah - you're a mean little bastard aren't you. Have you mellowed with age or gotten crankier?

[Buddah]

Arctic,

Even though I retired, I'm still cranky. We have a retired LTC (A leg, no less) at the PD who is command staff who gets the same treatment who alternately laughs/want to beat the living shit out of me..........

Long live the SPC 4 Mafia.

[Hendo]

I've been in several "stand here til you die from it" details but the worst was post clean up at Fort Lewis. We found two meth labs (before it was popular ), half a dozen old tires that a tree had grown up through, a dead skunk and an old car that no one wanted to go near. It was supposed to be two days and we went out all week.

[AbnJack]

2 come to mind:

1) Policing an entire training area by myself at Fort Carson (long story)
2) Casualty Assistance Officer at Bragg. (Depressing Story)

I bet it was. Thanks for doing it though.

[zuluzerosix]

I think I have the winner....


Division Guard Duty.

Here's the catch, it was 2 on 4 off.........for six straight weeks! CSM Randolph XXXXX was my partner. He is still on active duty.

[Zimmy]

I think I have the winner....


Division Guard Duty.

Here's the catch, it was 2 on 4 off.........for six straight weeks! CSM Randolph XXXXX was my partner. He is still on active duty.

Hopefully he's not still doing the 2 on 4 off thing.

[zanshin]

Burial Detail out of Bragg, summer of '73. Two teams, and we had a burial almost every day for two months. Some were old WWI and some WWII vets and beloved family members with a crowd of VFW and Legion guys around. Others were fresh from the war in RVN and had no one but immediate family. The worst one was a 20-year-old kid who survived a year in Vietnam as a grunt and got hit by a train while running a crossing two weeks after he got home. We buried guys at the National Cemetery in Wilmington, NC, and in tiny 20' x 20' family plots in the middle of a tobacco field with a 2 foot high chickenwire fence around it. We went up in the hills to a small town where we were the only white people, and the Cadillac hearse and family coaches were (so-help-me-God) bright pink. The people there treated us like we were heroes, and insisted they feed us fried chicken and big plates of casseroles before we left.

One time, we changed into dress greens in a room at the funeral parlor where corpses were being embalmed, and I bitch-slapped a PFC for trying to steal a hemostat off a body to keep as a roachclip. Once a young kid about 19 freaked out at his dad's funeral, and threw himself in the grave on top of the coffin, screaming and kicking, embarrassing the shit out of his family. His dad had committed suicide, and it wasn't the first time he tried. Another time, an old black grave digger in a tiny town told us how he would ease up to the good-looking widows or daughters at a funeral and tell them how much he loved their lost one, even though he didn't know them from Adam... just to try and get a pity fuck. One time the grave diggers were still digging the hole while the pall-bearers had to wait holding the coffin. And the grounds manager of the National Cemetery at Wilmington would always try to boss us around, and ground guide our green Army window van into a parking space. We called him "atta-boy" because as he backed you into a space, it was always " 'mon back... 'mon back... attaboy."

[fstroupe]

Of course everyone has done details that sucked or were just annoying. I think that the most annoying detail I was on was during my time in the XVIII Corps MI Brigade.

A rotating detail at Corps was picking up trash off of the sides of Bragg Blvd. I guess that it was multiple details, we had what was probably a mile, starting at the Spring Lake end of post, on the right side of the road as travelling towards Fayetteville. My platoon consisted of only people in my MOS, 97G, of which I was in the third from the last class. The MOS would be changed and opened back up a few years later, but at this time there had not been a new 97G trained in two years. So our platoon was mostly E5s and E6s, a few E7s, and four E4s three of who likely would never be promoted again for lack of motivation, etc. (I'm just being nice, all were substandard soldiers, even for Legville) I was an E5 at the time with less than a year time in grade and was still damn proud of it....I think that one of the E4s was in my class and the rest were all in classes before me.

So here we are...a dozen or more NCOs...(the E4s were somewhere else, probably on some kind of profile) walking down Bragg Blvd, picking up cigarette butts and raking up pine needles. Now, I know that in Group it was somewhat common for a team to get a cleaning detail and NCOs and officers were cleaning. But this was on Bragg fucking Boulevard! I was especially pissed because I had recently quit smoking, and picked up probably a couple of gallons of cig butts.

I had worse details, but this really sucked.

[IEDmagnet]

I had division guard duty... that shit sucked.

[AFTAC85]

Gate Guard at Ft. Wainwright, AK in February. 4 guys in a 5'x8' shack, 8 hour shifts at -25....no no bueno!

[63mx1]

Heavy drop rig site in the 80's, that was a living nightmare if a unit was pushing out another for an EDRE, and you were in the hapless 11B E-4 or below detail dropped off w/MRE in cargo pocket, you just knew you were fucked, honeycomb cereal just never seemed the same after that...............l

[Gun-Toting Diplomat]

Worst "Support" detail was having my transition team put on a cordon for a rather extensive fight where instead of chasing the bad guys into us, they went the opposite way and started a hellacious fight that went on for a few hours on the opposite side of town. All we could do was listen to the radio while the BC who we were supporting kept us out of the fight. Heard many young American men get hurt on the radio, and it demoralized our Iraqis to the point where it took weeks to get them back into the fight. It was the most helpless I've ever felt and most frustrating thing I have ever done in the military.

[SGT G]

I remember being assigned to that damn chute shake out detail and it was the most miserable god damn 10 hours ! Do they still do that crap ?

X2. What sucked was having it during the summer.