A Sunday Respite — needs no words from me.
Double click the photo, go to full screen, volume up, and enjoy!
Originally posted 2022-02-27 14:12:42.
Tag Archives: Marines
Oh The Memories
‘Sweat, piss and hate’ — What it smells like to carry hundreds of troops in an Air Force C-17
“The Army can be very messy passengers, think toddlers hopped up on energy drinks.”
Over the past few weeks, the U.S. military flexed its rapid deployment capabilities by flying thousands of U.S. service members and their equipment to Europe aboard Air Force C-17 cargo jets in response to the Russian troop build-up around, and invasion of, Ukraine. But amid all the headlines, one key element of transporting hundreds of humans over an ocean in a metal can is sometimes lost: it stinks.
“It smells like sweat, piss and hate. The bathrooms get really really gross on ocean crossings,” said one C-17 pilot when asked what the jet smells like after carrying paratroopers over the ocean, as the Air Force did recently for soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division.
“Hate is indescribable,” the pilot added, “but you know it when you smell it.”
Another C-17 pilot had a similar view of carrying soldiers. Compared to the other services, the Army is by far the most messy, he said.
“The Army can be very messy passengers, think toddlers hopped up on energy drinks,” said the second pilot, also on the condition of anonymity. “The Army has a bad habit of spitting their dip out on the cargo floor, leaving their trash everywhere and taking a piss in places other than the lavatory.”
You might be surprised which branch has a rep for being the cleanest passengers.
“Marines are usually the best passengers, they clean up their stuff and behave themselves,” the pilot said. Anyone care to guess why? Think maybe discipline and leadership may have something to do with it? “Navy is a mixed bag. One time a Navy commander asked about coffee service and inflight beverages. She was 100% serious.”
Go Navy! Wonder if Air Force troops asked if they really had to ride in the back of those things?
To the Navy commander’s surprise, Air Force C-17s are not built for creature comforts such as peanuts and in-flight movies. In fact, the aircraft has only one bathroom which starts to stink by the end of a long flight. 
“Even if just carrying like 30 to 40 people on a long flight the bathroom gets rank,” said one C-17 loadmaster, a member of the aircrew who is in charge of getting cargo and passengers on and off the aircraft. The cargo could involve anything from humanitarian supplies to main battle tanks. Also called “the Moose,” the C-17 made headlines in August when it played a key role evacuating 120,000 Americans, Afghans and other allies out of Kabul, Afghanistan as the U.S. ended its involvement in that country. In one flight, a C-17 lifted a record 823 people out of Kabul. It was the largest non-combatant evacuation in U.S. military history, and Moose crews drove themselves hard to get it done. Yeah, and that was all so unnecessary if Sleepy Joe had any military advisors that knew what the hell they were doing.
“Yeah, the C-17 community is burned out, never been ran this hard,” said one pilot who spoke on the condition of anonymity at the time. “Jets broken everywhere. But we got a lot of folks out. Hopefully, they can find better lives in the U.S. Maybe the silver lining to this whole thing.”
If the situation in Ukraine deteriorates, the Moose may be faced with a similar challenge. Except instead of pulling people out of danger, they would likely be delivering U.S. troops into harm’s way. On Tuesday, the U.S. military announced it was moving 800 service members in an infantry battalion task force; F-35 Joint Strike Fighters; and 20 Apache attack helicopters already stationed in Europe to Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Those troop movements are the latest in a series that have moved 4,700 paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division to Poland and 300 soldiers with the 18th Airborne Corps to Germany over the past several weeks.
President Joe Biden stressed on Tuesday that the deployment of U.S. forces to the Baltic states and Poland is “a defensive move on our part” and the United States has “no intention of fighting Russia.” The night prior, a contingent of Russian troops invaded eastern Ukraine after Russian President Vladimir Putin recognized the independence of two breakaway provinces: Donetsk and Luhansk. Up to 190,000 Russian troops have surrounded Ukraine, including Russian forces that have deployed to Belarus, nominally for military exercises. Whatever happens next, it’s likely that the Moose will be involved.
“C-17s are always in the mix,” said the second pilot.“ Globe masters are the lifeline of embassies and bases around the world. With the shifting dynamics of the Ukraine crisis, it’s difficult to say which mission the C-17s will take on, but they will be in the fight.”
And when they do, the crews will pull long hours not only in the sun, snow, rain or darkness, but also in the stink of humans on a diet of Meals Ready to Eat. But sometimes there are ways to avoid the worst of the smells. For example, C-17s and C-130 cargo planes can carry Air Transportable Galley / Lavatory Systems, also called a “comfort pallet,” a kitchen/bathroom combo unit that can roll on and off the aircraft.
“Flying in style on a C-17 with a comfort pallet is the move,” said one aircrew member. “No smell, hot meals, and two toilets!”
Aircrew on the C-130 Hercules may have it even worse than C-17 crews. At least when a C-17 is fully loaded, there are still aisles down which you can move through the aircraft to get to the lavatory. But a C-130 “gets cramped quick, and when you add cargo pallets to the seats, it’s a pain to squeeze by everyone to get to the toilet,” the aircrew member said.
“When carrying paratroopers you’re literally walking on seated troops to get from the front of the aircraft to the back where the toilet is,” he added.
Like many things in the military, going to the bathroom is an example of herd behavior. Once one person goes “number two” on a C-130, everyone else follows and “the aircraft will quickly start to smell like a porta-shitter,” the aircrew member said.
“Thankfully on the J-Model they have a blue toilet so that helps cut down on the smell,” he added. “But it doesn’t quite get rid of it.”
So next time you hear about more troops being deployed to a faraway land, pour one out for the stinky voyage they had to endure to get there.
Have ridden in both, will take the C-17 or the old C-141 any day over that damn C-130. We even fly the damn thing that’s been around for over 60 years
I thought Brandon said US forces would not fight in Ukraine. Now ole joey is asking for volunteers from southern border patrol agents to volunteer to go to Ukraine. The hell with the 100,000’s of scum crossing over to the US monthly. Maybe he is looking to immigrant a few 1,000 of these folks as they could become democrat voters as payback. Talk about priorities, his aren’t mine. He does nothing that will not benefit his party, the hell with the rest of us..
Go get them Putin, can’t wait to see what Brandon does other than shit his pants more than usual in one day. What the hell do we care about Ukraine? I haven’t lost a damn thing there since I’ve never been there. Is this the infamous “Military Industrial Complex” flexing its muscle. They need a war to help them on Wall Street. We should NOT lose one American in that place.
Originally posted 2022-02-25 16:39:24.
The Three “M’s”
I know the author of this article. We never served together in the same unit, but during our careers we were within shouting distance of one another numerous times. Gary is the kind of Marine with whom I could saddle up to the bar at happy hour on Friday night at the O’ Club and shoot the bull. By that I mean we thought alike, had the same philosophies about Marine issues such as training, conduct, discipline, leadership, and the individual Marine himself. I fully concur with Gary in everything he says in this article. In fact, I would be shocked if any of my readers are not in agreement as well.
In the book I talk about some commands in which I served and one in which I commanded that were prime examples about which Gary is talking. An undisciplined command is like the old saying, an accident waiting for a time and place to happen. My fear is that with the current direction our military is headed accidents will be the daily headline news.
The opinions expressed in this op-ed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Military.com. If you would like to submit your own commentary, please send your article to opinions@military.com for consideration.
Gary Anderson is a retired Marine Corps colonel. He served as a special adviser to the deputy secretary of defense and as a civilian adviser in Iraq and Afghanistan.
CBS’ 60 Minutes recently broadcast a feature on accidental training deaths in the military. The segment focused on technologies that could reduce fatal vehicle accidents. Training and discipline were barely mentioned.
I think they missed the point.
Most military accidents, in my experience, occur in units with lax discipline and inept leadership. I came to this conclusion early in my Marine Corps career.
As a young first lieutenant platoon commander, I joined a company stationed in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The company was commanded by a former enlisted man who had risen through the ranks by doing well in combat in Vietnam. He believed in hard and realistic training but had a “boys will be boys” attitude regarding off-duty conduct.
The company lacked discipline and had a “cowboy” mentality in the field that troubled me. During a tank-infantry exercise, a Marine who was riding on the back of the lead tank fell off and was killed by a tank that was following behind. He should not have been on the vehicle to begin with.
The next day, the battalion commander called me into his office. His message was curt. “I just fired your company commander. You are the new commander. Square that mob away, or I’ll fire you too.”
I got the picture. I survived that command and went on to a few more over the course of three decades, but the lesson stayed with me. No Marine or sailor under my command ever died or was seriously injured in a training accident or while off duty. Nobody died in combat either, but I write that off to pure dumb luck. I am sure many people who served under me considered me to be a martinet, but all left under their own power, and not feet first.
I encouraged hard training, hand-to-hand combat and live-fire exercises, but all were conducted by the book. Over the years, I studied unit accident rates, and what I found confirmed my earliest observation: An undisciplined unit is an unsafe unit.
As I studied organizations that had poor safety records — and this included aviation units — there were four interrelated signs of underlying safety issues, but all are connected to leadership.
First is a unit’s incident rate. Serious incidents range from automobile accidents to off-duty bar fights.
Second is how commanders deal with such incidents, which one can find by looking at the Unit Punishment Book. If minor infractions are ignored or trivialized, an atmosphere of laxness sets in that tends to permeate the command.
A third indicator is maintenance. A commander can learn a lot about a unit by just walking around. A sloppy work area in a motor pool is a good indication that the little things in maintenance are not being attended to.
Finally, there is the attitude of the commander. “Cowboy” commanders who think that injuries or accidents in training are part of toughening the troops eventually are disasters waiting for an opportunity to happen.
The normal military response to a horrific accident is for higher headquarters to call for a “stand down” to examine safety procedures. This has always seemed to me to be a case of closing the barn door after the horse has escaped. If senior commanders would begin looking at the real causes of problems by spending time talking to the troops and poking around in their workspaces before accidents happen, we might prevent some of these events such as the five recent mishaps aboard the USS Carl Vinson.
One of the primary problems leading to a lack of leadership is command climate surveys. Too many commanders are more concerned with being popular than running tight ships, as the surveys can be critical to their career advancement. Gen. George S. Patton and Adm. William “Bull” Halsey likely would never have survived today’s command climate evaluations.
This brings me back to the Vinson. If the fleet commander would visit the ship and look at the indicators noted in this article, I think that he would find that several, if not all, are present in the Carrier Air Group — if not among the ship’s total complement.
Fortunately, no one has been killed … yet. This does not mean that the commanders are inherently bad, but they probably want more to be liked than respected or feared.
In war, a commander’s job should be to accomplish the mission with the least possible casualties. In peace, it should be to accomplish the mission without killing anybody.
The Three M’s; Mission, Men, Myself
Originally posted 2022-02-15 09:47:59.
Time for a Respite
Hi Gang, so much is going on in this once great nation, and often I get tired of posting about it. So, today, I am going to take a respite from it all, and give you three and one-half minutes of something to listen to and watch. I’m sure many of you have heard and watched this one before, but do it again brothers and sisters. If your blood runs like mine, you will get chills up and down your spins. Every now and then we need to remember there are folks in our society that really are true patriots. Sit back, crank up the volume, relax, and enjoy!
Lee Greenwood, et al.
Originally posted 2022-01-22 12:55:35.
Sanity at Last
Did you miss me? You are probably saying, “Oh no, he’s back.” LOL Had a wonderful trip up and back, and a wonderful Christmas. The only thing bad about it was I froze my you know what off. As a Floridian, my blood is so thin it can’t handle those northern temperatures for very long, not to mention how this broken up, busted, arthritic body handled it. But it is nice to be back in shorts and sandals again. LOL
Finally, someone with a left and right brain asks some serious and valid questions about why the Marine Corps is gender integrating recruit training.. Listen to the you tube video and decide for yourself. I suspect I already know your answer.
Isn’t it heartening to listen to the officers explain what they are doing, then try and explain “why” they are doing it? Seriously?
Originally posted 2022-01-02 09:50:25.
