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 queen_annes_revenge wrote:

 Just Tony wrote:
Almost forgot about all parties involved with the field expedient method of checking to see if a chemical environment is clear...

2 man sniff test?

You take the least important soldier, not necessarily the lowest ranking, and ask to see his weapon. Once you have it, two other soldiers draw their weapon on the "volunteer" as you make them break the seal of their mask and take 5 deep breaths and watch them for symptoms after they mask back up.

Better pick a dumb one, lest they ask "or else what?"

If this ever happened I'd choose a lieutenant

Talk about incentive to not be the least useful soldier!

 Argive wrote:

 Matt Swain wrote:
You know, looking at this thread I'm starting to wonder if we ought to start a thread about what jobs in the military are actually good ones, assuming you don't have the connections to get a REMF position or a stateside cushy job.

Well that would be the cook init

Get as much chow as you want...

Depends. In the USMC the Cooks used to be used on a regular basis as replacement infantry. In the Korean War, a Chinese unit attacked straight into a field kitchen belonging to the 1st Marine division. The resulting fight saw the chinese losing about 10-15 men for every Marine who fell. There is a reason Marines train everyone to fight before teaching them their MOS.

Don't threaten a chef's ingredients.

JWBS wrote:
Storming the Theodosian walls was notoriously pointless (though attempted on many occasions). I can imagine it must have been quite disheartening to get across the moat, over the low wall and beyond the outer wall only to find yourself in another kill zone in front of the inner wall. It took the invention of the world's largest cannon by the Turks to eventually get into Constantinople.

4th Crusade didn’t need no stinking cannons!

There's been some talk about chemical weapons. When they first widely used in WW1, effective defenses and treatments were. of course, an urgent priority. There are stories of many British scientists, in particular, exposing themselves to the agents, to see if the countermeasure, treatment, or equipment they were working on was effective. Literally gambling with their own health and lives to develop protective measures for the frontline soldiers.

 nels1031 wrote:

JWBS wrote:
Storming the Theodosian walls was notoriously pointless (though attempted on many occasions). I can imagine it must have been quite disheartening to get across the moat, over the low wall and beyond the outer wall only to find yourself in another kill zone in front of the inner wall. It took the invention of the world's largest cannon by the Turks to eventually get into Constantinople.

4th Crusade didn’t need no stinking cannons!

Just on a side note is there anything that the Venetians didn't do to undermine the defennce of the holy land? I mean they did also sell prime weapons ( trebuchet) grade timber to Egypt.

I guess the worst military job is the one the person you are talking to has.....

 Easy E wrote:
I guess the worst military job is the one the person you are talking to has.....

Happy VD, keep your head down.

 Just Tony wrote:

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:

 Just Tony wrote:
Almost forgot about all parties involved with the field expedient method of checking to see if a chemical environment is clear...

2 man sniff test?

You take the least important soldier, not necessarily the lowest ranking, and ask to see his weapon. Once you have it, two other soldiers draw their weapon on the "volunteer" as you make them break the seal of their mask and take 5 deep breaths and watch them for symptoms after they mask back up.

So if the 'volunteer' refuses to take his mask off, what? You have the other soldiers murder him?

 Matt Swain wrote:

 Just Tony wrote:

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:

 Just Tony wrote:
Almost forgot about all parties involved with the field expedient method of checking to see if a chemical environment is clear...

2 man sniff test?

You take the least important soldier, not necessarily the lowest ranking, and ask to see his weapon. Once you have it, two other soldiers draw their weapon on the "volunteer" as you make them break the seal of their mask and take 5 deep breaths and watch them for symptoms after they mask back up.

So if the 'volunteer' refuses to take his mask off, what? You have the other soldiers murder him?

Most soldiers would risk the gas before risking the bullet, but since you are getting touchy about this scenario already, this would only happen if a unit had been gassed, it had been a long time since the attack, you couldn't simply leave the area, AND you have absolutely no testing equipment.

For the record though, I would simply not ask about scenarios where soldiers would shoot another soldier, I don't think you could handle the answer.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, simply ripping his mask off is totally a thing. You ARE operating under a reasonable assumption that the area is already clear.

 Just Tony wrote:

 Matt Swain wrote:

 Just Tony wrote:

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:

 Just Tony wrote:
Almost forgot about all parties involved with the field expedient method of checking to see if a chemical environment is clear...

2 man sniff test?

You take the least important soldier, not necessarily the lowest ranking, and ask to see his weapon. Once you have it, two other soldiers draw their weapon on the "volunteer" as you make them break the seal of their mask and take 5 deep breaths and watch them for symptoms after they mask back up.

So if the 'volunteer' refuses to take his mask off, what? You have the other soldiers murder him?

Most soldiers would risk the gas before risking the bullet, but since you are getting touchy about this scenario already, this would only happen if a unit had been gassed, it had been a long time since the attack, you couldn't simply leave the area, AND you have absolutely no testing equipment.

For the record though, I would simply not ask about scenarios where soldiers would shoot another soldier, I don't think you could handle the answer.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, simply ripping his mask off is totally a thing. You ARE operating under a reasonable assumption that the area is already clear.

That's a bit nuts. The 2 man sniff test is an actual thing we do, followed by individual sniff tests.

 trexmeyer wrote:

 Easy E wrote:
I guess the worst military job is the one the person you are talking to has.....

Happy VD, keep your head down.

Happy Veteran's Day!

Thanks to all who have served, past, present, and future.

Happy Vet's Day, for those who can't have one, or who limp while they do.

Oh, how about Medieval Sapper? Responsible for undermining castle walls.

I’m not exactly claustrophobic myself, but stuff that for a job!

Just thought of another one that, while normally its something you learn to do while working on quals on the boat, I never had the pleasure of doing because I was too big. Submarines, like RVs (or caravans I think you guys across the pond call them), have black water tanks for toilet waste. Occasionally these have to undergo a deeper cleaning to knock the "solids" off the walls and such and to do this someone actually has to go into the tank in a hazmat suit and scrape/power wash everything down.

Glad I never got to do it because overall it looked like a pretty crappy job...

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Oh, how about Medieval Sapper? Responsible for undermining castle walls.

I’m not exactly claustrophobic myself, but stuff that for a job!

I don't think its too bad.. You're mainly just digging pretty safe unless the enemy is counter sapping. Withour explosives its probably a safeish detail.
Better than being the poor sod carrying a battering ram up to the gate while having every manner of projectile thrown at you from stones to boiling oil..

Medic. . . .

We keep devising new and inventive ways of destroying each other, and they have to keep stitching up the poor sods who survive it.

And, 80% of their job is simply looking at penises all day. Sure, they all join with lofty ambitions of saving gunshot wounds and amputees, but reality is, most of their job is dealing with venereal diseases.

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:
Medic. . . .

We keep devising new and inventive ways of destroying each other, and they have to keep stitching up the poor sods who survive it.

And, 80% of their job is simply looking at penises all day. Sure, they all join with lofty ambitions of saving gunshot wounds and amputees, but reality is, most of their job is dealing with venereal diseases.

I swear half of the dialogue from the Doc's mouth in Vietnam films is about crotch rot.

Regarding wounds. Small-arms fire isn't the worst thing in the world, but explosives (IEDs) are a whole other story. I can't imagine trying to comfort and tend to someone who just had their legs blown off or took shrapnel to the gut. Yeah, the modern day death toll is lower, but that's only because we can now keep people alive that have suffered terrifying injuries.

This is very dark... But who has the job of cleaning/colelcting the remains off walls/surrounding area of a soldier who just got blown up by a mine/ied/missle and putting it all into one box?

Do they have external contractors doing this or medics/l troopers?? (like they do in UK once forensics are done at gruesome murders) or do you get the short straw? I cant think of a worse detail if you're just an army grunt...

My SDI told us a story about a Marine that committed suicide while he was on duty (basically guard duty for the barracks, not sure how to describe it better) and I'm pretty sure they cleaned it up themselves.

If you're out in the field and say, someone in the humvee takes a round but it's still serviceable there's really no one else to clean it up. An IED would most likely render the vehicle totaled.

 trexmeyer wrote:
My SDI told us a story about a Marine that committed suicide while he was on duty (basically guard duty for the barracks, not sure how to describe it better) and I'm pretty sure they cleaned it up themselves.

If you're out in the field and say, someone in the humvee takes a round but it's still serviceable there's really no one else to clean it up. An IED would most likely render the vehicle totaled.

I meant more if you are in like a peacekeeping/training detail so more likely to be due to accident/suicide than being in hostile territory.

 Argive wrote:
This is very dark... But who has the job of cleaning/colelcting the remains off walls/surrounding area of a soldier who just got blown up by a mine/ied/missle and putting it all into one box?

Do they have external contractors doing this or medics/l troopers?? (like they do in UK once forensics are done at gruesome murders) or do you get the short straw? I cant think of a worse detail if you're just an army grunt...

I was voluntold for this duty my 2nd tour in Iraq. . . Thankfully, never got the call to do it (there were, apparently, always better equiped and stationed battalions closer to any incidents, and, my battalions MA team was more of a "check the box" kind of thing), but it isn't really a military "job" per se, but rather an additional duty to your other jobs, similar to being on a UAV DART (downed aircraft rescue team), where you have your normal duties, but should an incident happen, be called away from whatever else you have to go do this high priority thing.

 Argive wrote:
This is very dark... But who has the job of cleaning/colelcting the remains off walls/surrounding area of a soldier who just got blown up by a mine/ied/missle and putting it all into one box?

Do they have external contractors doing this or medics/l troopers?? (like they do in UK once forensics are done at gruesome murders) or do you get the short straw? I cant think of a worse detail if you're just an army grunt...

The guys whose job it was to clear the body parts out of salvageable tanks and wrecks during WW2(well any war but few have had the same scale). I think in the British army it was still the responsibility of the tank unit(therefore the comrades of the now desceased inside the vehicles). Read this account where the chaplain decided that it was his duty to spare the men at least that much and would use a machete should the body not fit through the hatch as it was found. I don't doubt the credibility of the account because it was a direct account in a very well researched tank, but one has to wonder how effectively you can use a machete inside a tank. Then again if you sharpen it up enough drawing cuts would work alright. I digress. On bad day you might have to work through any number (if your a chaplain maybe your'e servicing a company so that is potentically a lot)of vehicles each with their own private hell inside them. tank fires, solid shot punching straight through, explosions inside. Not the nicest working environment.

Soldiers on corpse collection duty as well. I read a Russian account of Chechnya and the first job the author was given when he deployed along with the other new guys was to recover bodies which during some of the fighting had sat for a considerable amount of time and were apparently filled with dirty great rats that had been obviously feasting on the dead. They were apparently quite aggressive and unafraid of people.

In some ancient militaries,it was common to cut off the junks of enemy soldiers and bring thousands of them back in triumph.

Yeah, cutting off dozens, scores, hundreds or more guy's junk and bringing back a huge pile of them thru desert heat.... That might make an ork vomit.

 Matt Swain wrote:
In some ancient militaries,it was common to cut off the junks of enemy soldiers and bring thousands of them back in triumph.

Yeah, cutting off dozens, scores, hundreds or more guy's junk and bringing back a huge pile of them thru desert heat.... That might make an ork vomit.

That's why Samson only took the foreskins. Less to carry back.

I think heads are the most common and seem to be a thing amongst difefrent cultures and time periods. Especially with long hair. Ties around a belt and or saddle of your warhorse very easily

Also works more effectively for both sexes.