Yes, and I was happily a Fobbit, except that one time... Ugh.
Discussion
I was a fobbit like 80% of my deployed time. I got really jacked because I spent so much time in the gym and chow hall.
Good. It's better that way.
Thanks for your support soldier 🫡
You know what was the worst? Guarding the mother flipping PX. Abd then having to tell all the high-speed, low-drag douchecanoes to unload and clear their sidearms. "But I'm so and so..." "You don't outrank the effing general who posted the orders you're welcome to read. There's the clearing barrel, or have a nice day, names rankless operator prick." And telling the dimeits that their weapon was not on safe. My goodness...
Had a few encounters regarding loaded weapons myself when I was on a MiTT team because our Colonel told us all to stay strapped. Most of us carried our M9s in paddle holders when we were on the fob so our blouse would hide the fact that we had a magazine loaded. We didn't trust the Iraqis we were working with.
I wouldn't trust them, either.
My funniest "oops" story comes from my first deployment. I was a welder in the army, too. So, I had to fix anything metal that was broken. (Anyone not in the military: EVERYTHING IS METAL! I HAD TO FIX EVERYTHING!)
I was deployed with a maintenance company. We ended up doing vehicle maintenance on anyone that would roll through, especially the nutter marine detachments that were just a convoy of hummers running around in the middle of nowhere for weeks to months. We took care of them first, usually, since they had pretty much nothing except ammo and MREs.
One time, they come through and the mechanics found a bunch of stuff that I needed to fix (early up-armored HMMVs were such a mess...) so they rolled over to my building. The marines grabbed their gear out of the trucks so I could get to work. Part of my pre-welding inspection was to pull the battery cables off, since I didn't need to fry quarter million dollar radios, and while I was doing that, I started laughing.
"Hey, Gunny! Sorry to bug you, but could you come here for a sec?"
"What's up?"
"I gotta weld on this truck."
"Right." He looked at me with the unasked "And so what?"
I nod my head to the passenger foot well. I stop never forget how wide his eyes got when it hit him.
So, there were a few live grenades and open boxes of ammo rolling around. He hollered over his shoulder for a private to secure the ammo and explosives. "We kinda forget about those."
"No problem, Gunny. Thanks for the help. You know I'm not supposed to mess with stuff in not signed for."
I never had to worry about that particular issue again with that group. I really, really liked working with the Marines. They really appreciated that we took care of their gear. I got more thankyous and offers to help from them than from anyone in the army outside of one or two individuals.
And that concludes story time with The Beave.