A California listener shares a couple of pranks from her time in the U.S. Marines, where unsuspecting recruits would be ordered to complete impossible tasks. She remembers that newbies would be sent to retrieve a bucket of frequency grease or a...
John, a Navy veteran in San Diego, California, shares some pranks played on new recruits. One involves sending a newbie to the boatswain’s locker for ten yards of gig line. In military jargon, a gig line is the imaginary line from the middle...
A listener shares yet another prank played on newbies: One of the first things you learn in the Coast Guard is that rope is called line, not rope — a vocabulary lesson reinforced by officers who would send new recruits down below to fetch 100 feet...
A listener in Fort Rucker, Alabama, remembers a prank played on new Army recruits: when a sergeant barked the order “Zonk!,” all the seasoned soldiers would fall out of formation and run away, leaving the newbies to wonder what was going...
boots on the ground n.pl. personnel deployed under military command. Editorial Note: Boot dates to before World War II as indicating a military recruit or a green enlisted man. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)