Military "hazing" and traditions....
- Thread starter SpokaneCY
- Start date
Our chow halls were dining facilities with table cloths, real silverware and proper plates. I received hazardous duty pay, flight pay and NEVER had to do any base-wide drills because we were combat crew. Sure we had to salute a random officer, but nobody ever could come up to us and say "you were in a chemical attack - play dead".
If we got the sniffles we went to the flight doc and he'd give us cold pills and pretty nurses would tell us to get better.
As a young 3 striper, you sometimes felt you were **** hot...
Even the coast guard has weapons. We "qualified" with .22s over the course of about an hour. If you DIDN'T shoot someone - you passed. If you hit the target once, you got the "marksman" ribbon!
For some reason at basic we qualified with the ladies at the range. This lady from Kentucky score like 37 out of 40 and the range master thinks there was an error so he makes her do it again in front of everyone. So she does it again and scores like 38 and she jumps up and says “heck u should see me with a shotgun”.
We also decided that it would be great fun to shoot our tracers into the sky ... it was fun till they smoked us for almost 2 hours.
I "crossed the Equator" when I served on an aircraft carrier in the late '70s. We were called "polywogs" and the vets were "shellbacks."
They piled a bunch of garbage from the mess deck onto the flight deck and covered it with a tarp of some kind. We had to army crawl through it, and whatever got added to it by the previous group, while the shellbacks beat on us with paddles. When you came out of it, there was a big fat bare-bellied chief petty officer, and you had to kiss his navel. He'd grab your head and smear it all over his belly, which was covered in gear grease.
Well our division chief had volunteered to store the paddles, made out of old fire hose, in one of our lockers on the main deck. One of the watches through them all overboard during his rounds. Yeah, we paid for that little trick.
They piled a bunch of garbage from the mess deck onto the flight deck and covered it with a tarp of some kind. We had to army crawl through it, and whatever got added to it by the previous group, while the shellbacks beat on us with paddles. When you came out of it, there was a big fat bare-bellied chief petty officer, and you had to kiss his navel. He'd grab your head and smear it all over his belly, which was covered in gear grease.
Well our division chief had volunteered to store the paddles, made out of old fire hose, in one of our lockers on the main deck. One of the watches through them all overboard during his rounds. Yeah, we paid for that little trick.
My stepdad was a Golden Shellback since he crossed the equator at the International Dateline. I guess the shellbacks had additional surprises in their bag of tricks for the polywogs in those cases.
My father in law is a plank owner of a ship, but he has never shared what hazing he might have undergone.
My father in law is a plank owner of a ship, but he has never shared what hazing he might have undergone.
I was a submariner.
Yes when I was awarded my subsurface warfare pin ( dolphins)there was an initiation. The captain pins a brand new set of dolphins on your uniform. Immediately after the ceremony your division LPO swaps them out for an old worn pair that’s been passed down. The pins have long been pushed in through the back. As everyone leaves quarters the crew congratulated you by rubbing or punching your dolphins. Each time those pins are dug into your chest. My chest was a bruised bloody mess. At around midnight I was woken up and dragged out and taken out drinking to the ships dive bar where my dolphins were thrown in a pitcher of beer and I had to drink to get them
Yes when I was awarded my subsurface warfare pin ( dolphins)there was an initiation. The captain pins a brand new set of dolphins on your uniform. Immediately after the ceremony your division LPO swaps them out for an old worn pair that’s been passed down. The pins have long been pushed in through the back. As everyone leaves quarters the crew congratulated you by rubbing or punching your dolphins. Each time those pins are dug into your chest. My chest was a bruised bloody mess. At around midnight I was woken up and dragged out and taken out drinking to the ships dive bar where my dolphins were thrown in a pitcher of beer and I had to drink to get them
