Shitbirds: Guard Duty on MCAS(H) New River, NC.
My first real after-boot-camp duty station as a young Marine was in Jacksonville, North Carolina. There were five Marine bases within about 50 miles but most notably, Camp Lejeune, was located about five miles from my base, New River MCAS(H), which means Marine Corps Air Station (Helicopter).
The tour of duty was okay. I was sent there to learn the specifics of my avionics mechanic trade. They say you get out of it what you put into it. Maybe that's why, to this day, I don't know squat about Avionics. Regardless of your apparent work ethics, the new guys always got stuck on mess duty or guard duty. It was guard duty for me this time. Typically, the tour of duty lasts for one month, but I still hadn't learned to stop volunteering for things when I raised my hand to be trained as a 'driver' of the guard. I didn't know how hard it would be for my squadron to replace me in that capacity, so I was destined to be the driver of the guard for a full six months.
Driver of the guard was a very prestigious position. It wasn't as high up there as Corporal of the guard, but at least I was on the same shift and got to cart his ass around when he posted sentries. The best part about it was that I got to sleep a lot, stood very few posts and had lots of time to screw with people's minds. Most of the time Bob (Corporal of the guard) Curtis and I just snuck up on sentries and tried to catch them sleeping. Bob Curtis was one of the most motivated Marines I'd ever met. How in the world he got stuck with guard duty after he made Corporal, I'll never know. He must have really pissed somebody off. On occasion, Bob and I were known to come up with some pretty awful pranks.
Bob Curtis and I got along really well, probably because we were both huge Celtics fans. He would be Kevin McHale, and I would be Larry Bird, and we'd kick everybody's ass on base in two-on-two. Our minor victories off the court involved things like removing the standing-on-end M16 rifle from the reach of a sleeping soldier, letting the slide of the Colt model 1911 .45 pistol 'go home' on his Kevlar helmet, and watching him wake to realize that his rifle was gone and that the Corporal had caught him again. In peace time, we laughed our asses off, but reminded the sentry that they could be shot in time of war.
Some of the better excursions involved sneaking up on the ammo dump at the farthest east post, and heaving rocks onto the aluminum overhang where the sentries like to hide out and catch zzz's. Something about the sound of rocks hitting aluminum from above does something for me. This post was frequently and accidentally run into by civilian hunters who had strayed onto base property. It was so close to the beach that fences were inconvenient. Knowing this made the sentries subject to a little extra fun and games. We'd 'stage' an event as a 'Joe Redneck' from the hills on occasion, just to see how the new sentries would react.
The funniest damn thing that ever happened on guard duty didn't involve posting sentries or sneaking up on posts. Bob had this idea to mess with a buddy of his who had just joined our guard duty company from his home unit. His name was Ernie Delgado and I eventually learned that he was one of the most fun- loving, good-natured, pranksters on the planet.
I guess Bob had to get him before he was got. I was just following Bob's lead, honest. Bob and I snuck into Ernie's room where he was sleeping off the previous night's post. He shared an 8-man room, and it was the middle of the day, but guard duty is weird like that.
Ernie had this habit of sleeping with his mouth open. No doubt, this fact assisted Curtis in dreaming up this nasty scheme. We both created 'wood' from looking at dirty books, and were holding our manhood with one hand, and a polish sausage in the other hand, with our pants around our knees. We started cramming those monster sausages in and out of Ernie's mouth as fast as we could until he started gagging and waking up. The sausages were tossed before Ernie could focus.
When he focused, all he saw was Bob and I standing there with boners, but he must have recalled the feeling of just milliseconds ago of having some large cylindrical object crammed into his mouth. Being the young man that he was, he feared that the cramming object was obvious from what we were sporting and wagging in front of his face.
You never saw a guy jump out of the rack so fast. It was like a drill instructor was yelling at him. You never saw two guys run with their pants around their knees as fast either. You know what they say about paybacks?
"Up to and including four, but not to exceed ten.' Ted Glock