Victor Vermis posted:

Back on track while sticking with the tangent. Semi-idiot story:

They stuck a boot engineer in my squad. The kid was absolutely clueless. Anyone ahead or behind him on patrol would have to look past him when glancing to make sure the patrol was still intact because this kid took weeks to learn the simple concept of "look places other than directly ahead of you". You'd shout his name in the dark and his little head would pop up out of the tall grass 10 yards off the route, "I'M HERE LANCE CORPORAL!"

Besides our corpsman and our usual compliment of four ANA, he was the only non-white kid in our patrol. I don't recall anyone ever calling him a spic or a beaner, and we never beat him with rocks, and I wouldn't have condoned it if anyone even suggested doing such a thing. We probably threatened to buttfuck him "during the next tactical pause if you don't shape the gently caress up", but that's just another way of saying "I see you're trying. I believe in you."

We never had to drag him out of bed or even so much as threaten him with hazing to get him to understand the importance of doing the job well. Physical "smoking"-style hazing is like pre-work-up gently caress-with-the-boots nonsense. Sure, I made guys dig. I dug too. Just like I had to dig while my team leader dug alongside me. Even if you don't agree with it, at the end of the day you still have a hole and sandbags. Someone's gotta do it.

Anyways. This adorable little fucker wound up back with his unit to kick off Marjah. Fucker got a CAR (combat action ribbon aka the highly-sought-after ribbon I lucked out of despite two pumps full of combat patrols).

Would we have stoned him or any of that other ridiculous poo poo if he had been a giant turd infantryman instead of an ignorant little try-hard engineer? No. Because gently caress all that physical exertion. We'd get him moved into the COC and/or permanent post and/or menial labor inside the wire and never let him forget that he's not one of us. He'd cry. He'd maybe get sassy and refuse to work. He'd maybe blow his brains out. And then we'd see how "we're going to buttfuck you during the next tactical pause if you don't shape the gently caress up" plays in court once his weeping family members have had their 15 minutes of fame sandwiched between commercials for life insurance and gold plated dollar coins.

quote:

Hubbard said he was involved in the preliminary CID investigation into Chen's death.
He said he investigated soldiers from Combat Outpost Palace for shooting unarmed civilians and forcing soldiers to hold live grenades as punishment, but testified that those claims were unsubstantiated.

MassivelyBuckNegro posted:

its not so weird when you think that you were an amtrak mechanic who never deployed.

we never murdered our shitbirds either. they just spent 5-7 months standing post, watching coc and doing every working party there was.

Thump! posted:

I deployed twice, just not to combat zones. Oddly enough, we got to do the traditional Marine thing of riding on boats, getting hammer drunk in Asian ports, and getting in fights with the locals/sailors/other platoons.

Zeris posted:

Everything here rings true/reasonable up until the point where the guy is taken out of a line formation. At that point, what is the purpose of active hazing (not the "you're never one of us") - low crawls, wakeups, etc? Just sadism, and not even the productive kind.

quote:

To bring this back to Chen, I wanted to figure out what the deal was. I learned a few things that make the cause(s) of suicide alter what I figured was a cut and dry example of a lovely unit.
-Chen's parents were pissed that he skipped a full ride to Baruch college and instead enlisted (if only he read the GIP thread). And they disowned him for this.
-Chen was a late deployer / addon to his unit, which is guaranteed additional hazing (does this make it okay? no. but will it always be a reality of war? yes.)
-He was constantly hosed up - out of shape (supposedly), and forgetting equipment (no helmet for guard duty), for which he was punished

On the other hand:
-military.com:

-The racial stuff in his circumstances sounded way beyond the infantry "background noise" racism I was used to hearing

MassivelyBuckNegro posted:

then it really isnt the same thing, is it?

Thump! posted:

I mean, I never claimed I was a combat deployed guy so I'm not really sure of your point.

Victor Vermis posted:

If anyone can find transcripts (or something similar), I'm really curious about the Prosecution's witnesses. The only first-hand stuff I've seen so far came from a Pvt who confirmed that the Sgt was a racist rear end in a top hat. I'm curious how much of the testimony/evidence came from the family. I think they denied the disowning.

MassivelyBuckNegro posted:

my point is that your experience with the vampire guy isnt relevant to the current tangent the thread is on. you offered the anecdote as if sleeping in a wall locker is somehow relevant to these army retards that hazed this kid to the point he opted to commit suicide.

ded posted:

his point is he enlisted

DownByTheWooter posted:

All the text on this page is a lot of words for, "gently caress you if you ever enlisted."

xthetenth posted:

Isn't that the mission statement and goal of the military?

MassivelyBuckNegro posted:

i dont know anything about military law but, unless these sorts of things are required to be made public, i'd be surprised if they ever were.

MassivelyBuckNegro posted:

i dont know anything about military law but, unless these sorts of things are required to be made public, i'd be surprised if they ever were.

Aranan posted:

Do the Coast Guard have any dumb thing they yell?

MA-Horus posted:

I'm trying to wrap my head around the fact that a guy got hazed to death and basically nothing was done about it.

Booblord Zagats posted:

Getting an officer's opinion on reality is like getting a fish's take on mountain biking

Casimir Radon posted:

No point in piling on the condemnation of stupid opinions about hazing, not much to say that hasn't already been said.

Our prior service ARNG guy was telling me about how they had some inspection in basic training that was overhyped a bit in terms of how tough it was going to be. So some genius decides the best way to clean his weapon is to get a little bit of sand and Barbasol in the receiver and barrel, then go to town with it with a wire brush jammed into a drill. A bunch of other guys followed right along and did the same thing.

McNally posted:

Icon Of Sin posted:

I'm sure there's someone at one of the veteran service organizations that would gleefully wreck someone over that kind of bullshit. Hell, you could probably call in a congressional investigation on how some office is screwing surviving spouses, or IG (since the CAO was assigned to you by the Army and they're seemingly being impeded from doing their actual job).

McNally posted:

McNally posted:

Well, we got it straightened out. The supervisor's problem was that they're used to dealing with living people. Service over = benefits over, pretty easy.

The real issue was that the office that shares information with the CAO didn't have a copy of the orders that the CAO did have (which suggests to me that it was more a case of "gently caress that, it's lunchtime").

Anyway, now I'm waiting for some fucknugget at Fort Knox to upload a single sheet of paper into the system so it recognizes that my wife was on active duty when she died.

But since she's dead, the dependent ID I had is no longer valid and they took it. So while I legally have access to the base and everything I just don't have any way to prove it.

lol army

Godholio posted:

Jesus Christ, wouldn't it be nice if they'd at least not be lovely to someone in your situation? gently caress this entire Department of Defense.

Are you in Kentucky or what? There's got to be someone from GIP nearby who can get you on base when you can get the ID card you're entitled to.

McNally posted:

Oh, I'm also in the middle of disputing a charge for a VA outpatient visit that my wife never made. The date they claim they saw her was the date I went to speak to the Patient Advocate telling them that she'd received lovely treatment.

So lol va too

Zeris posted:

McNally posted:

Affi posted:

Eh. I know people who use knives and other hard metal objects to "clean" their weapons. The focus is on passing the inspection, not having a weapon that works. Its loving dumb.