Military officers usually put on a straight face, in line with the seriousness of their calling... but we've always suspected there's more to basic training than just push-ups and getting yelled at. Get a bunch of greenhorns together in a stressful situation and there's bound to be shenanigans. We asked people in the military to share their funniest stories from their early days in the forces.
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40. Why can't we be friends?
Had two guys get in a fight in our bay during basic. Drill sergeant made them hold hands and pretend to be on a date all week. The only time they could let go of each other’s hands was rack time. They ended up becoming pretty good friends, holding hands again during graduation and making everyone crack up.
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39. No streaming, though.
In my basic training class I was a squad leader which is essentially just a person who does extra chores. Anyways, for reasons unknown, myself and the other squad leaders were doing pushups in the drill sergeant's office. Now, when you do these pushups you eventually reach muscle failure so you just sorta hang out there in the front leaning rest and try to bust out another pushup every few seconds or so. We're all in there dying and the drill sergeant says to one of my buddies:
"Private Hudson! Tell me what's the difference between basic training and being in prison?"
Without missing a beat Private Hudson says "Drill Sergeant! In prison they get to watch TV!"
The drill sergeant cracked a little bit of a smile and then told us to get up and get out of there.
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38. ...until he lost his voice.
In boot camp in San Diego I had a kid with glasses, very young, who did NOT look like Marine material. He kept glancing up at airplanes overhead during drill. Drill Instructor noticed and asked him what he was looking at. Kid replies, “Airplanes, drill instructor.” DI says, “Those planes are trying to invade, and only you can stop them. I want to hear you war cry at every plane until it leaves this depot.”
Remainder of boot camp consisted of this kid screaming at every plane overhead. Hilarity ensued.
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37. He'll grow out of it.
We had this kid who kept peeing himself. One day, after the range, he informs our DI that he had peed his pants right after showers. The squad bay starts to hold back laughter. DI goes, “IT’S NOT FUNNY!”
After an awkward silence when everyone's trying not to laugh, DI goes, "Ok, it’s a little funny, but we aren’t laughing”.
Poor kid never cracked a smile during the whole thing.
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36. He didn't expect to inspect that.
Early in boot in we were post-shower and at attention for the hygiene inspection, wearing nothing but skivvies and T-shirts. The DI is walking the line checking fingernails and whatnot when one private’s privates flop out of his skivvies right as the DI passes him.
The DI stops, looks the private in the eye and says “Private, I don’t even like you, much less like you that way. NOW PUT THAT THING AWAY BEFORE IT GOES OFF!!”
The private in question turned purple with embarrassment, and tries to stuff his junk back in his skivvies but is getting flustered as the DI starts yelling at him for being an incompetent private and that if he didn’t get it stowed in three seconds the private would be taking a ten minute cold shower. Things like, “Do I have to hose you down like an excited chihuahua? Should I call the vet? Good god, private, is that how you greet your mother at night? Stow your gear!”
Every other private in line was trying not to laugh and the sergeant had retreated to his office where we could hear him howling with laughter. The private finally gets his junk stowed and the DI resumes inspection, and you could see he was trying his hardest not to bust out laughing. No one got much sleep that night; there were to many gigglers in their bunks.
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35. And they've been together ever since.
One recruit left his training guide just lying on his rack. My lead Recruit Division Commander decided this was punishable by making the recruit stand in the middle of our berthing, hold the training guide in the left hand, salute it with the right hand, and then bring it in and gently whisper, “I love you training guide. I’m sorry I left you out. I’ll never leave you lying around again.” That was hilarious, especially because we were all put at attention while he did it - for 45 minutes.
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34. It was tough, but he made it.
Had a soldier one time stop doing mountain climbers while we were being smoked as a Platoon. DS came up and squatted down, yelling in his face why he stopped. Recruit yelled back, “This soldier has made it to the top of the mountain Drill Sergeant!”
Drill Sergeant just walked away trying not to break with laughter.
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33. Who knew the army did landscaping?
During boot camp, the Drill Sergeant told me to get a trash bag, then go around and collect as many pine cones as I could. For like 3 hours. Had a bunch of trash bags.
He then took a little walk around, contemplated for a bit, then said that he was mistaken and it looks better with pinecones. He ordered me to redistribute all the pinecones.
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32. Glad it turned into a bonding experience.
In Navy Bootcamp they call forced PT "beatings". Everyone knows what a beating is. One day standing in ranks the Recruit Division Commander is going around asking random trivia questions about a test we had to take to make sure we had been studying. He gets to a guy who was eccentric, to say the least. RDC asks him the question, the guy gets it wrong, so RDC yells, "Wrong, BEAT YOURSELF!"
Literally everyone knew this meant start doing pushups so the expectation is he will start doing pushups as the RDC moves to the next guy to ask a question. I was standing across from the guy and he had a confused look on his face. He looked at his own hand for 5 seconds then hauled off and slapped himself in the face. It made a loud crack sound he got himself good. I cracked up and chuckled trying to keep composure at attention. The RDC looked to me then realized why I laughed had to do with the slapping sound. He turned back to the guy who'd slapped himself and asked him if he slapped himself.
Guy says, "You told me to beat myself." Queue the entire barracks cracking up. It was a single moment during Bootcamp where the curtain was raised and a moment of unadulterated levity came over everyone. The RDC couldn't stop laughing so the tough guy persona melted away for a good 60 seconds until he regained composure and made us all do pushups. The pushups were an easy price to pay for that moment.
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31. It was hard to tell, you see.
I had a great Team Sergeant (SGT) who had a floater (wonky eye) that he was blind in from an injury in Iraq. So one eye was dead on and worked fine but he had this one eye that just did its own thing. He was a very physically imposing man with that classic Drill SGT bass filled voice and his crazy eye just added to it and he knew it. He told a story about his time as a Drill SGT when two privates had sat down on Firewatch and were kinda just being real lackadaisical about their duties when he found them. So he starts just giving them the business classic Full Metal Jacket style, and finally he was just about ending his rant right before he's about to smoke them for who knows how long when one of the offending Privates just says, "Drill SGT are you yelling at us or at the Water Fountain?" It stopped him dead in his rage and he just walked away laughing.
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30. Resourcefulness is key.
When I was going through US Army Infantry School in 2004, we were taking showers when one of the Drill Sergeants came in and called us to toe-the-line. When I got out of the shower I found someone had stolen my PT uniform and towel. So I grabbed my shaving cream and covered my privates in cream, then walked out to my bunk. The drill came up to me asking what I thought I was doing. I told him my clothes and towel were gone, so I did the next best thing. He said "You know what? You're going to do alright in the Infantry."
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29. A toga party shouldn't end this way.
On our last day before graduation our sergeant came in and told us we were our instructor's first actual platoon as a DI and he was going to wake us up on the morning of graduation, so he hatched the plan and that morning when the instructor came out and screamed, "Get on line!" we all ran to the end of our tracks but half of the squad bay were wearing togas and the other half were naked. He basically did a double take and busted out laughing, and then we all did push ups for about 10 minutes.
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28. 5 minutes doesn't seem like that long...
In the academy, one of the DIs had a recruit doing pushups. He told the kid he was going to do pushups for 5 minutes straight, or something like that. As soon as the kid started, another DI approached the first DI and started arguing that the kid hadn't really messed up that bad, and he didn't really deserve to be punished. After some back and forth, he agreed that the kid did indeed deserve to be punished. The first DI then said loudly that he had not checked his watch so he would have to start the 5 minutes now. At that time another DI approached and started asking for mercy on the recruit, who was by now basically just humping the ground sweatily. It went on like that for a while. Good times.
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27. PT'ing in The Pit.
A friend of mine joined the Marines in the late 80's. Every day, his whole group would end up PT'ing the entire day. They'd dig a 3x3 hole and fill it back in again. They'd fill buckets with sand and then run through the sand pit, dump the buckets, refill them and run back again. If they weren't doing that, they were just PT'ing in "The Pit" which was all sand. The DI's would make them stand at attention for hours until parade rest felt like lying down. They ran them ragged. My buddy thought that this was normal.
Then it came time to do drilling on parade in front of everyone. Their group was so bad that the DI's changed their personalities into pleasant calm people and asked everyone, "Why are you guys so bad? How do you not know anything?" The answer was, "We haven't been taught." There were 4 or so DI's that would trade off training the group and everyone of them threw my buddy's group in "The Pit" all day, every day. They had each independently decided that my buddy's group was the worst so they should be straightened out with more exercise.
After the DI's talked it over, they apologized to the group and then went back into drilling them into proper shape with all the yelling and screaming as normal. Just this time they taught them how to do military stuff instead of how to haul sand. He did get into crazy good shape though.
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26. Knock, knock.
One morning two guys were laughing when our sergeant walked in so he had them stand with their noses touching each other. One would yell, "Want to hear a joke?” and the other would yell, "Ha ha ha!” repeatedly for hours. It was hilarious at first but once their voices started to crackle it got old pretty quick.
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25. It went down easier.
My wife was in basic training and said they were eating chow one day early on (maybe first or second day out of reception) and they hear a drill instructor yelling, "WHY ARE YOU EATING SALAD WITH A SPOON?!?!"
Apparently, in reception they had been told not to bother with forks since they had 5 minutes to eat their meals. One guy wanted a salad, he decided, "Whatever, I'm eating salad with a spoon." Hilarity ensued. Drill instructors let everyone know that not using forks is a dumb rule and whoever told them that was just messing with them.
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24. It was better the second time.
It’s an unwritten rule that early on you’re supposed to stick to the normal foods and not venture off from the basics. We had one guy on the first week grab a cheesecake for lunch. Next thing I know, all 4 DI's have their own cheesecake and sit down next to him. They’re all asking him how his day is going, if he’s having fun, any girls in his life, etc. Totally normal exchange, which caught us all off guard. Finally they all finish and as our DI is getting up he says, “Recruit, that won’t be the last time I see that cheesecake.” It wasn’t the last time. The recruit threw it up later after the DI made him run 3 miles more than the rest of us.
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23. He'd do anything for his morning cuppa.
We had an old Korean dude in our platoon in BCT. He had been part of the Korean Marines and Air Force, and just joined to get a green card. Anyways it's like week 2 and in chow the only thing you can drink is juice or water. This guy goes and sets his tray down, walks back to the drink line in front of the Drill Sergeant's table, pours a cup of coffee and walks back to his seat.
The DS couldn't say anything for a bit because they were all just stunned. Finally one yells, "Private, what are you doing?!"
Dude doesn't stand up or anything, and in his broken English, with a dismissive click of his teeth and wave of his hand just goes, "I'm tired! I need coffee!" And just ignored the further yells while he got a couple of gulps down. Dude got smoked for awhile on that but nothing they did bothered him.
Whenever he got back to barracks I asked how bad it was and he said nothing could ever be worse than the Korean Marines.
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22. A touch of class in the mess hall.
One day in Navy boot camp, I made myself a devilled egg using a hard boiled, a packet of mayo and one of mustard. My Petty Officer walked by, saw it on my tray, and froze.
"RECRUIT. WHAT THE HECK IS THAT?"
"...its a deviled egg, Petty Officer."
"Where on Earth did you get a devilled egg?!"
"I made it, Petty Officer."
"Goshdarnit recruit, that's the best idea I've ever seen. Carry on."
"Yes, Petty Officer."
I had been so terrified I was about to get in trouble for it for some reason.
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21. Which one's which?
We had two 5'1" stocky blond guys named Johnson in our company one cycle. Different platoons, no relation at all but they looked really similar. One day during grass week a couple sergeants made them face each other and go back and forth screaming, "You're not Johnson, I'm Johnson!" "No! You're not Johnson, I'm Johnson!" You have absolutely no clue how hard it was to not break into a million pieces after about 5 minutes of that.
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20. Everyone's a poet.
During Basic, the standard for clearing the range was to point your M16A2 rifle up and down range and the DS would then clear each rifle with a brass rod. Upon completion, each recruit said, "No Brass, No Ammo, Drill Sergeant." One soldier messed up and said, "No Brass, No Brammo." Our DS stopped, sat down, laughed, got up and forced everyone to push until he was done clearing each platoon's rifles.
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19. You want soup with that?
We weren’t allowed to talk during chow at the galley. You had to point at what you wanted another recruit to pass, and they had to silently pass it. One recruit wanted a napkin and pointed. The other recruit asked “This?”
The Commanders immediately came over, circling him like sharks, screaming at him. They made him put like 10 saltines in his mouth and chew until his mouth was full, then ask the first recruit if he wanted a napkin again. He barely could get it out, spitting pieces of cracker everywhere.
Then they screamed at the first recruit to answer him, but we were all silently cracking up.
He sounded like this: “Phew phwant a nupkeen?” With pieces of saltines flying out.
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18. At least he got a proper goodbye.
In formation one morning, I heard a slap and a guy killed a fly or a mosquito or something. The instructor started screaming that Corpsman do not kill unless defending themselves, their Marines or patients. He had just killed a unarmed friendly and will give it a proper burial. So he made us all dig a human size grave while the sailor that killed the fly stood there watching with dead fly in hand. We gave it a funeral and everything (without honors) and had to fill in the hole. We kinda hated that guy for a while.
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17. A monster under the bed.
I was a super light sleeper during basic training. One night I woke up for no reason. The sleeping bay was dark except for the light by the desk where the two soldiers on 'fire guard' were supposed to be awake and alert. Both of them were leaning back in their chairs dead asleep.
I started to throw my covers off to go wake them up, if a Drill Sergeant came through and caught the fire guards sleeping we'd all pay. But then I heard a slow scraping sound to my right, off in the darkness. I froze, and heard it again, closer. A few heartbeats later I almost screamed out loud as I saw the sharp intense face of our Samoan drill sergeant in the darkness. His face was covered in full camo, he was low crawling underneath the line of bunk beds towards the fireguard.
He had a bayonet in between his teeth.
We locked eyes, and he silently raised one finger to his mouth, signalling for silence. I nodded, and sat back to watch the show as the Drill Sergeant resumed his low crawl under and past my bunk in the direction of the sleeping guards, who he proceeded to scare the bejesus out of.
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16. Those had to be some wet pockets.
I work at basic training ranges and we had a drill sergeant yell at his solider while they were getting ready to go down a buddy live fire exercise. The solider froze and started crying. This 18-year-old kid was just in tears for getting yelled at. The DS yelled at him some more and he finally gave up cause this kid wouldn’t stop crying. So he made him scoop tears off his face and put them in his pockets till he filled his pockets up with tears. He did this for like an hour. It was hilarious.
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15. We understand his reluctance.
When I was going through basic, it was one Trainee's birthday when we went to the gas chamber for experience of the crowd control gas. This trainee happened to be Jewish, so first thing in the morning when we have the little huddle about what's going to happen that day, the TI asks if there are any questions? Trainee Goldberg raises his hand and says "Sir, don't you think it's a little messed up to send a Jew to the gas chamber on his birthday?" And everyone busted up laughing, including our TI. But the story doesn't end there.
We go to the dining facility for breakfast, and as he's going through the line, our TI yells out "Trainee Goldberg, why don't you tell the other TIs what you told me this morning."
With a straight face, Trainee Goldberg says "Oh, I was just telling our TI how it's pretty messeded up the air Force is sending a Jew to the gas chamber on his birthday." All the TIs at the long table just fell silent, almost scared, and our TI just busted up laughing so hard, that all the Trainee's stopped. Trainee Goldberg despite being 6'2" and solid muscle was perhaps the funniest guy in our flight. He owns a few gyms now in his home state. Awesome guy.
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14. A happy ending for everyone involved.
So when you start basic your body doesn’t know how to handle no sugar, caffeine, rigorous exercise, and sleeping schedules. It’s in shock. With this shock, bowel movements become a problem for a few. Well, every DI after the first week is required to ask around if everyone has done their business, and from there he assigns one recruit to track who has and who has not. We had one guy who would stand in the barracks at the end of the night rolling off names of people who hadn’t gone yet. Finally, we have one guy who is still on there after two weeks and the DI tells him to go to the doctor. The Dr. gives him an get out of jail free card, essentially saying that at any point, he says the magical words “I gotta go,” and he can escape any situation. Well, recruit gets the smart idea that he’s going to play his new trump card as long as possible. Every time that we’re getting grilled, “I gotta go,” comes ringing in from the back of the formation. This probably happened six times until our DI caught on. Finally our DI devises a plan that when this recruit goes into the bathroom, he’s going to have a couple of us hold onto his legs and slide him into the stall all exorcist style. The time comes and the recruit excuses himself. We all follow our DI into the bathroom and slide him under there like he’s the spawn of Satan. This catches the recruit by surprise, he doesn’t know what's going on as the DI is utterly berating him about lying and using this as an excuse to sit on the toilet. Then we hear a very audible “Oh, crap” from the stall. The DI scared the recruit so much he actually went to the bathroom right then and there.
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13. He rose to the challenge.
I just got off the trail a month ago. The biggest standout for me was while conducting a urinalysis (UA) we have a set of things we tell the Soldiers to do. Wash your hands without soap, open the cup, place it on the urinal. At that point I usually say, “I think you can take the rest from here.” This kid at that point tried to climb on top of the urinal to fill the cup still placed on top of it. I had to yell at him to stop and tell him to pickup the cup to urinate in it. I almost had to walk out because I was going to lose it. In probably 1000 UAs that I had to be there for I’ve never had a kid climb the urinal before.
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12. Seems like a fun way to wake up.
So I was a DS in (Advanced Individual Trainjg) AIT for the Army. One of the first since they brought them back. In AIT they have a bit more freedom and they can have certain things in their rooms. One of the things they like getting and usually hid in a locker would be a google mini or an echo dot. When doing room inspections of soldiers that had a messy room I’d randomly say things like, “Ok Google, set an alarm for 1 am.” or “Alexa, play Katy Perry at 2 am.” I’d have super confused Soldiers in the mornings at physical training wondering why they had random alarms going off all night.
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11. No such thing as a pointless exercise.
When I was in bootcamp, our drill instructor had a recruit sit in front of his own reflection (stainless steel panel) and continually ask himself if he really wanted to be here.....for 3 hours. All while screaming at him to “Mean it!”...and “I DON’T BELIEVE YOU!”
I don’t know how they didn’t crack up. Was hilarious.
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10. Measure twice.
I was a recruit in Navy boot camp. We had an inspection the following day, so our Chief was going around inspecting inside everyone’s rack to make sure it was squared away. Eventually he made it over to my section. He was checking the rack (bunk bed that opens up) beside me and had it propped open so I couldn’t see his face and kind of forgot he was there. He’s searching through this guys stuff and sees his small gloves. And he asks, “You know what they say about small gloves?” Now keep in my mind, I don’t think any of my RDCs heard me talk until this point, and I said without any hesitation, “I know that’s not true. I wear a size 12 boot but I can tell you right now I don’t have size 12 anything else.” And my Chief slammed the rack shut and looked at me. “WHAT DID YOU SAY?!” He then stormed off in to the fish bowl and all you could hear was him trying to hold back his laughter in the office with the two Petty Officers
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9. Meet your new family.
When I went to Army Basic, I was in the chow line looking at the back of the guy’s head in front of me. All of the sudden I can feel one of my drill sergeants breathing on me over the separation wall and he yells “RECRUIT, WHO IS YOUR DADDY?”, to which I responded, “YOU ARE DRILL SERGEANT,” as I felt that was the appropriate response. My other DS sprints over and says, “Oh yeah, what does that make me then?” And all I thought to say was “MY MOMMY, DRILL SERGEANT?” Every DS in the chow hall was dying and I got the crap beat out of me outside.
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8. He needed it for a Twix.
When getting to the depot you get rid of all personal items aside from your wallet, phone book, glasses, and religious items. It was 2nd phase and we were drilling on the parade deck. We finish and are marching back to the house when our DI catches someone smiling. He says, “Oh good, something's funny? Empty out your pockets!” The recruit empties his pocket's contents: a pen, knowledge card, and lo and behold he has a dollar bill. Our DI was dumbfounded and asked “WHY DO YOU EVEN HAVE MONEY? YOU GOING TO STRIP CLUB AFTER THIS?!” The recruit responded with “I heard we get to use the vending machine if we do well.”
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7. Sneaky sergeant catches him out.
On day two of basic training at Lackland AFB, my flight was returning with our newly issued gear after having our heads shaved. Our Training Instructor told us to go upstairs and stand at attention by our beds. We ran up there, tired after attempting to march what felt like two miles each way in the August Texas heat. We are all standing there waiting for whatever is going to happen next. After about 5 min. Donnie Barnes says “That Sgt. Gates is a total jerk, am I right?” And you would not believe what happened. As soon as Barnes said “Gates,” the locker directly behind Barnes pops open with a creek. Barnes is frozen solid. Out of the locker pops one leg after another and the three taps as Sgt. Gates walks out of the locker and puts his mouth directly next to Barnes’s ear and shouts in his gravelly voice “ON YOUR FAAAAAACE!” We did so many push ups, I lost count.
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6. A few buttons short of a full metal jacket.
I was a lieutenant in a basic training company. During final inspection I had to go down the ranks with one of the drill sergeants and inspect the soldiers one by one while they stood at attention in their class A uniforms. I had to inspect their appearance, ask some questions about their weapon or the general orders while they stood at attention.
While moving down the line I turned to face one soldier. There he was standing at attention, proud as can be. But his uniform had no brass buttons. My best guess is someone stole his buttons the night before. But there he was standing there with his perfect military bearing. I imagine he was hoping I wouldn't notice or something.
It was everything I could do to keep my military bearing because I wanted to bust out laughing so badly. I was afraid if I opened my mouth to ask a question I would start laughing so I just looked at him all mean, sighed, and shook my head slowly in disappointment and moved onto the next soldier.
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5. Hopefully you'll get the reference.
I was going through Air Force basic training. When on guard duty, if an unauthorized person wanted to be let in to the bunks you had to report it to your drill sergeant. Our sister flight's drill sergeant came up while I was on guard and requested entry so I reported to my sergeant and he had me ask the other a series of questions. This particular sergeant had a bushy mustache so one question I had to ask was "In what year was Magnum PI cancelled?" He dropped out of view from the window laughing, came back up and yelled "It was never cancelled because I'M STILL HERE!" It took everything I had not to crack up.
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4. That'll teach you not to grin.
While in basic we had a female that loved to smile. She was just a happy person in general. Well my TI (Training Instructor) came in, and she caught the female trainee smiling. TI didn’t like smiling. She walked up to the female trainee and yelled, “Wipe that smile off your face!” Female trainee stopped smiling. The TI continued to yell, “No! Literally wipe the smile off your face with your hand!” Trainee does so. “Now throw it on the ground!” Trainee follows orders. “Now stomp on it and scream ‘die, smile die!’ As loud as you can!” The female trainee stood there for a second before following through. Her tiny little voice cracks as she yelled “die, smile die!” And I will say it took everything I had not to bust out laughing.
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3. It's supposed to be Navy blues, not Navy greens.
I was in the Navy, and in the Navy, your final inspection as a Division is before the Division Officer, which is usually some Junior Officer puke that got assigned that job, but we didn’t know any better.
Anyway, before the inspection one of our commanders found a locker out of sorts and decided to beat us in our dress blues. That was not fun, let me tell you, especially in our wool uniforms.
When the Officer rolls in for inspection, he walks up to the first dude in formation, who immediately pukes. HOWEVER, this guy was a genius: he puked down the T-Shirt in his dress blues, saving the Officer from getting puked on and us from getting beat even more.
The Division Officer was so impressed at this dudes “Military Bearing” that he called the inspection right then and there, giving us a perfect score.
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2. He had good reason to be scared.
We were touring an old army base base in Europe. Anyways, there’s this big sign that says “GAS CHAMBER” so I go up to one of the Drill Sergeants and requested permission to speak. He angrily asked, “What, Private?!?” and I was like “Drill Sergeant, not for nothing, but I’m Jewish and not going anywhere near this thing.”
He quickly turned around and I could tell that he was holding in his laughter. When he finally could talk with a straight face, he simply turned back around and told me to fall back in. I’m sure he had fun relaying my self-deprecating joke to the rest of the Drill Sergeants.
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1. He wasn't wrong.
My husband was a drill sergeant. In chow hall once you’re finished with your non-carbonated or non-caffeinated drink the glass is supposed to be turned upside down.
My husband yelled to a trainee, "Hey trainee, turn your glasses upside down!” The trainee proceeds to remove his eyeglasses, turns them upside down and puts them back on his head.
