January 18, 2025

Military surprise barracks/locker inspections

Surprise barracks/locker inspection. 1967. Old, wooden, WW2 open bay berthing. Four wings, 16 or 20 cubicles per wing. Four men per cubicle. Everybody gathered in the central lounge, and they would take individuals to inspect lockers. They took Fred to inspect his locker and when done, they left him alone in the cubicle to put his locker contents back in order. He had a key to Joe's locker which had not been inspected yet.
Fred took the bottle of booze out of Joe's locker and put it in his own already inspected locker. Just a matter of luck as to which locker got inspected first.
On the aircraft carrier, the ship did its own customs inspection as we came back to the States. I was one of the inspectors.
One guy had a personal vibrator in his locker. Yes, the VERY personal vibrator. It could have been packed with cocaine but really didn't matter. I was NOT going to
touch it.
We inspected the E9 berthing by walking past the door...
Training included recognition of certain drugs. They burned a tiny piece of Thai stick which smelled like burning hay. Then they passed it around. All E6s and E7s. Some guys passed it on quickly like it was smallpox. Some guys sucked up the smoke to get every molecule available. It was entered in your record in case you got popped on a piss test.
It took several days. On day one, got over a two foot stack of dirty magazines.
After that, they hid them better.

June 25, 2024

Military haircuts

Military haircuts. Standard boot camp joke... First haircut; You want to keep those sideburns? Catch!...

Got hit for needing a haircut in basic electricity School. Haircut was 3 days old. Another 35 cents for reinspection (1967). Checked on board the destroyer tender and got the standard warning about sideburns too long. So we wore sideburns one nanometer from the limit. On the carrier, many guys shaved their heads bald as we were leaving the pier for a 6-month cruise. On the DDG in the Persian Gulf, some of the guys started wearing negative sideburns (shaving up into the side of the head). The wardroom discussed it and decided to ignore it. It was a very short-lived fad. On one ship, the squadron commodore (O-6) gave a little tug on one guy's hair to indicate his dissatisfaction. The commodore later got picked up for DUI. He was known for being a real hard ass.