What do you remember most about the Q Course/Training Group?

[sandytroop]

I was a patrol leader in 6-80; Reservist with 12th GP, and not about to quit. I had done very little PT prior to my arrival and it was obvious, but I also had about 2 weeks notice to show up or miss my big chance. We formed up the first evening and took a run in fatigues and boots, LBE and rifles, at a pace I had never seen before, much less actually run. I made it in the gate, and they formed us up under the Flag to figure out who was still in. The guy in front of me fell to the ground crying and actualy begged Jesus to kill him. Then, and I swear this is true, for no apparent reason, I sudenly felt this odd sensation in my lower abdomen, and I had a spontaneous orgasm right there in my trousers. That's how screwed up I was after that run. Needless to say, I about freaked, and I leaned over a bit to the fellow next to me, a little red headed Ranger, also from 12th Gp, named Jim Woodall, and I said "Jim, I'm a mess man. I just shot off in my pants!" And he just leand over a bit toward me, never stopped looking forward and said in a quiet whisper, "Lucky bastard...". It was a sterling moment.

[QRQ 30]

Sandy: I believe every word but it is customary to end any story like that with:

"That's my story and I'm sticking to it!:. or

"If I'm lying I'm dying!"

[Kyobanim]

Originally Posted by sandytroop

I was a patrol leader in 6-80; Reservist with 12th GP, and not about to quit. I had done very little PT prior to my arrival and it was obvious, but I also had about 2 weeks notice to show up or miss my big chance. We formed up the first evening and took a run in fatigues and boots, LBE and rifles, at a pace I had never seen before, much less actually run. I made it in the gate, and they formed us up under the Flag to figure out who was still in. The guy in front of me fell to the ground crying and actualy begged Jesus to kill him. Then, and I swear this is true, for no apparent reason, I sudenly felt this odd sensation in my lower abdomen, and I had a spontaneous orgasm right there in my trousers. That's how screwed up I was after that run. Needless to say, I about freaked, and I leaned over a bit to the fellow next to me, a little red headed Ranger, also from 12th Gp, named Jim Woodall, and I said "Jim, I'm a mess man. I just shot off in my pants!" And he just leand over a bit toward me, never stopped looking forward and said in a quiet whisper, "Lucky bastard...". It was a sterling moment.

ROTFLMFAO!!!!!

[The Reaper]

Originally Posted by QRQ 30

Sandy: I believe every word but it is customary to end any story like that with:

"That's my story and I'm sticking to it!:. or

"If I'm lying I'm dying!"

or:

"That ain't no shit, it really happened."

TR

[magician]

can't really remember my class date...and all my orders and stuff are in storage, in the states, packed away in boxes.

I think I may have gone through with TR, though, as he remembers an O from my class who became a real good friend of mine, and a couple of the other guys from my class, like Cory F, and Robin M, who later went across the fence, and a couple of young guys (Steve C, and "Mac") who went to 1st Group with me, and later on went to the dark side.

Another funny story.

We were done with the course....just waiting to do some civil affairs work, or something, on the very last day, while we were waiting for extraction....so we were on this...plantation....and we were supposed to clean up this area, straighten up a bunch of deadfall and pine cones and pine straw and stuff....and the owner of the place....he was classic, he came down in a GOLF CART in bright green golf pants and a purple Izod shirt, some crazy country club outfit like that....and he had his lady with him, a real Southern belle, all dressed up in lace and finery with a freakin' PARASOL. We were grouchy, in a rebellious mood, and this guy, he just rubbed us the wrong way. He was treating us worse than hired help. It was like he came down from his mansion, complete with columns and statues and fountains and old mossy trees all over the place, to make sure his "boys" were doing the manual labor correctly.

So anyway, I will never forget this, things came to head when one of the NCOs on my detachment told the guy to get on his golf cart and high-tail it out of there, and while he was kicking up dust leaving the AO, my buddy, a West Point O, threw a pitch fork at the golf cart, bouncing it off the back of it. It was funny as hell. I really felt bad for our detachment commander...he was a great guy, a lot of you guys probably know him, his knickname was "Maddog," he had commands on Okie, and retired out of the Schoolhouse as a light colonel back in the mid-90's. I think he had his first detachment in 5th Group.

My buddy...was amazing, a Ranger-qualified signal officer out of West Point, he later went on to be the C&E officer at 1st Group, and later did a lot of black box work before he got out and went to work for the government doing computer stuff. I have not talked to him in a long while....last I heard, he was down in the Research Triangle. Good guy. I really miss him. He totally changed my opinion about West Pointers. Got to figure....any officer who can hurl a pitch fork at a stuffed shirt in a purple Izod shirt with a snooty girl carrying a parasol is alright with me.

I seem to remember graduating around September, 1984, and signing back into 1st Group around October. My dates may be off here, as it is all from memory, and this was a long time ago. I was one of the first guys to sign into 1st Group, back when there was just a shack with a counter and not much else. I drove from 2/75 to North Fort after extending for the Q-Course, signed in, and drove right out to Bragg. I went to the Q-course TDY from Ft. Lewis. Totally awesome deal. I remember buying a stereo when I got back.

Then I went to ODA 151, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Good times.

[NousDefionsDoc]

Originally Posted by sandytroop

I was a patrol leader in 6-80; Reservist with 12th GP, and not about to quit. I had done very little PT prior to my arrival and it was obvious, but I also had about 2 weeks notice to show up or miss my big chance. We formed up the first evening and took a run in fatigues and boots, LBE and rifles, at a pace I had never seen before, much less actually run. I made it in the gate, and they formed us up under the Flag to figure out who was still in. The guy in front of me fell to the ground crying and actualy begged Jesus to kill him. Then, and I swear this is true, for no apparent reason, I sudenly felt this odd sensation in my lower abdomen, and I had a spontaneous orgasm right there in my trousers. That's how screwed up I was after that run. Needless to say, I about freaked, and I leaned over a bit to the fellow next to me, a little red headed Ranger, also from 12th Gp, named Jim Woodall, and I said "Jim, I'm a mess man. I just shot off in my pants!" And he just leand over a bit toward me, never stopped looking forward and said in a quiet whisper, "Lucky bastard...". It was a sterling moment.

That is not normal. Trust me, I'm a medic, I know things...

[sandytroop]

Well, that's one of the defining traits of this business. You can't make this stuff up. Now the short list of memories...

Old Phase 1, I misplaced my M-60 and carried half a Huey skid on a 60 sling for a couple of days to help my memory. I never made that mistake again.

I remember comming out of survival just about to croak I was so empty. The mess tent had c-rats for us, and I got the spaghetti. It was the perfect combination of carbs, fat, oil, and "water". I still eat canned spaghetti out of the can with a big spoon, and I still smile and remember that moment. It was the best lunch I had ever had to that date.

In Robin Sage we had some G's from Cos Com who were "intransigent" as my team sergeant described them. When they fell asleep, he would collect large blobs of that phosphorescent goo from the Pineland ground cover, put it in his mouth, wake the G's and make sure the first thing they saw was him puking that green stuff out. They thought he was possessed, I am sure.

The best though was after our last raid at Sage. We then occupied the open field where we had set up our air strip, kicked back and waited for the trucks. All the guys had their beenie hats on (it was November), and we all pulled them over to one side, like berets. Ronald Reagan had been elected President 5 days before. We were the new generation of warriors, and the world was ours. Man we were just invincible. You never forget a feeling like that.

[magician]

I remember...finding this brown paper bag on the side of the road....I had to cross the road to find water, to go to my water source, a stream, where I would sometimes catch a glimpse of another stud in the distance. Of course, we never talked, and we never, ever linked up. The trees had eyes.

Anyway, in this brown paper bag, I found a bunch of ants, and the soggy remnants of some pork rinds. Hell, yes, I ate the hell out of them. They were awesome.

I also scooped underneath the river bank looking for snails, and was elated to actually find some. Carefully lurping back to my hooch with them in my canteen cup, I filled up the canteen cup halfway with water, and put it on my fire to boil.

I was going to have escargot.

Well.

It turns out that those snails were more akin to slugs than...snails.

I ended up scraping the first one off the roof of my mouth with a stick. The broth...was horrifying. I had to pitch it. I was pissed.

I never did catch any freakin' fish, either. Thank God for my bunny. He was a good friend for a while. We kept each other warm. Then I killed him and ate him.

[Team Sergeant]

Originally Posted by magician

Thank God for my bunny. He was a good friend for a while. We kept each other warm. Then I killed him and ate him.

"Then I killed him and ate him."

I've got tears in my eyes I'm laughing so hard.....

I'll never forget my bunny either, he was, delicious, and on completing my bunny meal I fashioned fish hooks from his bones…..

[NousDefionsDoc]

Thank God for my bunny. He was a good friend for a while. We kept each other warm. Then I killed him and ate him.

LOL

Some city kid that was a recycle told everybody "Don't name them, it'll make it easier."

I named mine "Chow". Communist Chinese POW. Had no problems. LOL

[Razor]

Whew! I guess I'm in good (if not abnormal) company here. I got some funny looks from the Marines and 82d dudes when I held rabbit puppet shows (eviscerated rabbit carcass, head intact, propped on your hand a la sock puppet) in SERE.

[magician]

Heh.

I remember the instructors telling us a story about how some stud just could not bring himself to kill his bunny, but because we had to bring the feet with us to prove that we had done it, he chopped off his bunny's feet, bandaged him up, and then set him free.

The instructor claimed that they found a bunny with amputated legs hopping around the survival area a couple of classes later.

Probably an apocryphal story, but I laughed at the time.



What was that big basket that we had to weave? You remember...the one to catch fish? I cannot remember what it was called. Mine looked like ass.

[sandytroop]

ok, 10 minutes later I can finally stop laughing...

My Jr Demo guy, Greg D, was demonstrating to the G's how to send the bunny to sleepy land in Sage, and instead of doing something "official", he did something akin to the Atomic Drop. He just jumped into the air and came down hard right on top of him, crushing the little guy. It horrified the G's and they were afraid of him from that moment on.

[magician]

I am trying to remember how I killed my bunny....I remember using the "hypnotism" trick to calm chickens, stroking their necks from front to rear, holding the chicken's feet and legs with one hand beneath him, lulling him into a false sense of security, then grabbing his head and pulling it away from his body in one quick motion, ending up with a kicking chicken body in one hand and a bloody dripping head perfect for Santeria purposes in the other.

Bar none, the grossest "survival" chow I ever ate was goat. The lane walkers in Ranger school brought us a goat one day, pretty sure that it was in Florida, and we had a monstrous fire and a bunch of chickens and freshly dug onions.

After we killed the chickens, we put them in ammo cans with the rubber seal removed, along with a bunch of onions, carrots, and potatos, and set them in the fire with a little bit of water in them. After a little while, we put our gloves on, opened them up, and had the best damned chicken stew I had ever tasted. I will make it a point to make chicken stew that way sometime in the future, just to do it again, it was so damned good.

But the goat.....I do not remember how we killed it....I guess one of us cut his neck....and bled him out....then skinned him and cut him up and cooked him up on e-tools or something....but that meat tasted really, really bad. We were so hungry, that we tried, we really tried, to eat it.

I remember after we moved out, we had some goat meat left over, and we wrapped it up and took it with us, thinking that we would chow down in the patrol base later.

Well.

That meat made me gag. I just could not eat it. And I was starving. I had been there for a long, long time.

And that reminds me of another time...I was on ODA 151....and we went to Alaska. Someone had the brilliant idea to have a survival exercise, so we loaded up, got one MRE, and had like a hundred miles to cover in a week. We had some rounds for our M21. So we could kill a mountain goat, or a moose, or a cougar, or something, but of course, that never worked out.

Anytime that we saw mountain goats, they were up high on the mountainsides, and even if we had shot one, it would have been one hell of a hump up some vertical inclines to haul the carcass down.

So, we got pretty hungry, and we were humping some miles. We tried fishing, but had no real success until the last day. And this is where the story gets funny.

All this time, we are slowly starving. I am eating flowers as I walk.

We get to the trailhead, and drop rucks, and one of the guys says that he knows the area, and will go on ahead and recon for the pickup point. The Dai-uy (our team leader) says ok, go ahead, he will stay behind and try to catch some fish. There were these little pan fish in the river.

Well, this guy was our heavy weapons leader, his name was Brad, our team sergeant was deployed on a singleton mission at the time and missed all the fun, and Brad was trying to get me to go along with him and a couple of the other guys to recon for the pick up point. I wanted to go, but no one wanted to stay with the Dai-uy, so I told them, "nah, you go ahead. I'll stay with the captain. Someone has to stay with the poor guy."

They said ok, and off they went.

Me and the Dai-uy fished, and we fished, and lo and behold, we actually caught some fish. Not many. I think we caught three of them. So we decided to wait until the guys came back before we cooked them up and ate them.

Sometime after nightfall, they returned.

We had a huge white man's fire blazing, and man, we were ready to cook up our three little fish.

We put them on e-tools, fried them up, and then passed the e-tools around the circle so that we all could take a little nibble and then pass them on to the next guy.

Well, the fish came around the circle. They were still pretty much intact.

Now, remember, I was freakin' starving here, but here were my team mates, and they were obviously controlling themselves, denying themselves the fish, sacrificing so that their buddies could have more.

That made me want to share more, too, so I took just the tiniest nibbles of the fish, and passed them around again.

Well, the fish kept coming around, and it was killing me, how good and loyal and generous my team mates were, so I was absolutely intent that I would not be a pig and eat more than the rest of them.

The funny thing is, I noticed that they seemed to have a lot of energy, they were laughing a lot, but I did not think anything of it.

Fast forward a few months later to Korea.

We are hiding out in some hills, up in a grave yard, and some of the guys want to go with our counterpart down into this little ville and get some good food. Our counterpart is saying that not only will they get some good chow, they will go to the bath house, and get clean, and then get laid, too.

I think about it, and for some reason, I tell them, nah, go ahead. I am going to stay up here. I told them not to worry. It was not like I was going to rat them out or anything. It was just that the mission was to hide out, and not get caught, we were evading, and I did not want to violate the spirit of the exercise. It is not like I was a goody-goody kind of guy. Far from it. I just wanted to stick to the mission, this time around, for some reason.

So our intel sergeant, his name was Sam, he told me that he would stay with me. I was touched, and I appreciated the company.

He and I holed up in the graveyard, huddled around a little fire, and shot the shit. The rest of the guys went down to the ville.

It was while hanging out with Sam that he told me what really happened that night in Alaska at the trailhead.

Brad had brought his credit card with him, and he had been stationed in Alaska before, so he knew that there was a hunting lodge up near the extraction point. The guys all went to this lodge and sat down to a sumptuous dinner of steaks, wine, brandy, cigars, the works. They actually had to wash in the stream to get the smell off them, and rub dirt all over themselves, as the Dai-uy and I would have smelled the chow and cigars on them in a heartbeat if we had not had that huge fire roaring, waiting for them to get back.

Everytime that the fish came around, they just pretended to nibble at it. They were stuffed, see. They had chowed down on huge steaks. They wanted to let me and the Dai-uy eat the fish. And me and the Dai-uy, we thought that the rest of the team were just being really generous, taking care of each other.

So this time, when the guys went down to the ville, Sam decided to stay with me. We starved together, and man, I busted a gut when I remembered that fucking fish going around the circle, and how I kept trying to take the smallest bites.

Good times.

[Guy]

Originally Posted by Razor

Whew! I guess I'm in good (if not abnormal) company here. I got some funny looks from the Marines and 82d dudes when I held rabbit puppet shows (eviscerated rabbit carcass, head intact, propped on your hand a la sock puppet) in SERE.

We got "wrote up" for that escapade as SERE instructors, by one of the students.

Even had one write about..."Snares were in-humane." Because the animal suffered before dying.

Go thru the survival portion with Middle Eastern officers..."culture my ass."

Kill that SOB. I'm starving!

LMAO!