It’s 11:28AM, and I’m in my barracks room at Joint Base Base Lewis-McChord packing up my equipment in preparation to move it to my home in Oregon. Looking through salty old uniforms and duffle bags still carrying sand from countless trips to the field with the boys brings back so many ridiculous memories that I figured this was the perfect time to take a break to write out a few of the more colorful ones. Some of these stories will either leave you laughing so hard your abs hurt, or like many field stories, you just had to be there for.

**DISCLAIMER** Some of these stories may not be entirely accurate because of my own state of mind at the time. A lot of these occured at the very limit of concious exhaustion, water deprivation, and weeks of absolutely horrendous field rations. The language and situations surrounding these stories should probably seen for what they are: (possibly) hilarious occurences that have zero bearing on actual opinions or beliefs held by anyone involved.

As much as I hate leading off any sort of story with, “this one time, at basic…”, that’s exactly what’s happening here.

I attended basic training in the Fall of 2013, in what was one of the largest basic training classes of prior service trainees the Army had at that point. This was great for a variety of reasons, but the best part to me was the experience brought by these prior service soldiers. One in particular, whom we shall call Boats, was a Navy vet of 6 years that was joining the Army to go to Special Forces Assessment and Selection at Fort Bragg. This guy was a fucking character, who left me in stitches from laughing more than a few times. No matter what was going on, from smoke sessions to outright stupidity at the hands of the Drill Sergeants, this guy could be counted on to add a joke or a ridiculous facial expression to it both during and after the fuckery was done.

After Family Day, the end of Basic Training and the technical beginning of actual Infantry training, our company went into the field for a week at Training Area (TA) called AO Yellow. Anyone who has been there has had to endure the nasty hole in the ground shitters there, more often than not opting for to haj squat somewhere in the woodline where some unsuspecting trainee or Drill Sergeant might lay down or take a knee on it. The nice ones buried it, but personally I always chose to leave my stool out for everyone to see. It’s more fun that way.

The second morning we were there at AO Yellow, after an dismally wet and windy night, Boats and myself were feeling the typical backup in our intenstines caused by eating a plethora of MRE’s. It was still kinda sorta raining, and since we didn’t want to get wet we headed towards the notorious shitters with a friend of ours. While I’m busying myself trying to find a semi decent place to rest my ass, I look over as see Boats haj squatting backwards on the wooden toilet rim, a nice brown coil snaking it’s way out of his poop shoot. We make eye contact for a solid 5 seconds, only made more awkward by our other friend staring at us, staring at each other. Neither one of us could keep from blinking, we busted up laughing. Here we were, tired, cold, hungry, laughing at Boats looking absolutely ridiculous, taking a duke in the most foul smelling shithole I’ve ever had grace my nostrils.

What the hell was I to do? There was only thing to do: I dropped trow and hopped up on this shitter right across from him and did the same. The laughing continued until both of us suffered from loss of feeling in our legs, and we had to hold hands across from each other to keep from falling over and potentially breaking the derelict wooden shitter and falling into the dark, dank, nostril hair scortching pit below. Throughout the entirety of basic training, I probably shared a shit or a shower with this guy at least a dozen times. Never have I ever been so close to a dude, but don’t worry, no homo.

Alpha Company, 1st Battalion of the 50th Infantry, 22NOV2013