Barracks Tales, Vol. 2

This One Time in The Barracks- Vol. 2

Stories from Barracks 404 by: Steve Sebby

I don’t know if you’ve ever seen anyone piss on their own face, but I have, and I’d like to tell you all about it because I had to clean up after this drunken hero, as is the job of the Marine on duty. Also, fuck that dude. ( I will, however, not use this Marine’s name, ONLY because I can’t remember it.)There’s one thing that all of us share throughout each branch of service. We all have this one commonality. One thing that every service member can agree upon unanimously is our unified hatred for dealing with the mind numbing monotony of barracks duty. Nothing ever happens. But sometimes, horrible things happen.We walk our post from flank to flank and deal with shit from every rank. We sit in the duty hut, and wait for two things. First, the phone might ring, and whoever they want to speak to will be impossible to find. Second, every hour you’ll have to get up from your desk, walk around your post, sit back down, and write that there was nothing to report. That’s basically your job for the next 24 hours. Sure, the duty NCO will take about three hours off your hands so you can get some shut eye on a musty rack in the back. That’s three hours you’ll spend staring at the ceiling with a pit in your stomach, wishing you didn’t eat that whole Little Ceasers pizza by yourself. But what choice did you have? You had literally all day to kill. It happens.On weekend duty, there’s obviously more chance of running into some idiot doing some stupid thing like getting hurt, hurting someone else, getting arrested and being returned to base, or just making some kind of mess in the barracks. On these nights, the job is only slightly less unbearable due to the minimal excitement. Any kind of action that one might run across still doesn’t make up for the fact that you are in uniform on a weekend and chained to a desk for a whole day. And, if you have good enough friends, they’ll think of you whilst you sit at your duty desk and show their faces on the way to or from having a much better time than you.

“Oh shit man. You’ve got duty tonight? We were just going to [insert most fun thing you’ve ever heard]. Too bad you can’t come out with us.” And then they’re gone.This particular Saturday was a rather uneventful, quiet night. Nothing to report until around 0330, when he started stumbling down the stairs and crossing the street to the duty hut. We’ll call him Brains McGee from here on.I had seen him only in the barracks since I had arrived, a few months earlier. He had always just seemed like a gross dude. His cammies were always baggy and unkempt. A little smelly, too. This guy either cut his own hair every week, or he had his favorite, blind barber do it for him every time. He was a total ass-basket, and a corporal at that. But, he was a friendly enough guy and he kept mostly to himself.Brains McGee zig-zagged his way into the duty hut, positioned himself in front of the couch in the corner of the room and collapsed into it, sinking down into a slouched seated position. I made my way across the room and sat down on the couch opposite him. There was no one else even up at this hour, so I didn’t mind the company.“Hey man. It looks like it’s been a long night. eh?” I said, observing that he was visibly drunk. He sat straight up on the couch, his head bobbing left, right, up and down, around in slow circles.“Shiiiiii mai it’s a grrrrreall g’night. YouknowwwwhatIsayin?”At this point, it started to seem pretty funny to me. This conversation would be my own personal entertainment to get me through the next little bit of time that he could even stay conscious.“Were you guys having a party up there or something?” I asked.“Nahmaaaahhn. It’s was jusssss me.”Now this was starting to get sad. “What are you doing getting this drunk by yourself?” I continued. He just sat and stared. I thought for a moment that he might not have heard me.“Hey guy. What were you doing, man? Do you need me to call someone for you?” Eyes wide, he kept on staring into the distance past me. It was getting weird.“Hey! Are you okay? You gonna be okay?”After staring a few more seconds, he started to move. His hands fumbled around his belt for a second, and then he started to undo it, followed by the button.“Yo! What the fuck are you doing, man?” I yelled. He was not hearing anything I was saying. He unzipped his pants, and started to fumble a little more in there, but I couldn’t tell what the hell he was even doing. Was he trying to take off his pants to go to sleep on the couch? His body wasn’t making any movements towards laying down, or even standing up, for that matter. Then, he started pulling his junk out just in time for the stream of piss to start jetting straight up out of his pants.“What the fuck are you doing?” I yelled, as loud as I could, hoping that anyone who was up could come witness what the hell I was witnessing right then. “Are you pissing? Right here on the couch? There’s a bathroom right there!!!!” I continued, gesturing to the bathroom not more than twenty steps from where he sat. Still, he was in his own world, not hearing me at all. The never ending stream swayed from left to right, hitting the leather couch and splashing all around him, occasionally landing on the bill of his hat and running down the sides of his face. He had his eyes closed and his head tilted skyward like people do when they’ve been holding it for a long time, and they finally get to go. There wasn’t a spot on his whole body that he wasn’t hitting. The general direction was up, and he was fully raining on himself. It was like he hadn’t relieved himself in days, just so he could come and play this “hilarious” prank on me while I was on duty. He just kept going, and I just kept screaming at him to stop.Realizing how absolutely drunk he was, and that he’d never remember any of this, I ran up to him and punched him in the head. It barely phased him and definitely didn’t get him to stop. I continued to yell and punched him a few more times in the head, kicking his shins with my boot. Still, not much of a response. Eventually the stream slowed to a small trickle landing on his pants. Then, he finally stopped. He zipped up his pants, and buckled his belt. After a short silence, I sat down on the opposite couch again, defeated.“What the hell, dude? You have GOT to clean that up. I’m not touching it!” I said angrily. I knew he wouldn’t have the wherewithal to do any of that. Still, I got up and grabbed a roll of paper towels from the back and chucked them at his head.“Clean it up, asshole!” I exclaimed, standing over him with my arms crossed. He started to move. He pulled himself off the couch, leaving an impressive pool in the cushion indentation from where he was sitting. It was just everywhere. It looked like someone had dumped a gatorade cooler on his head after a big game, but the game was on MY duty couch. He started to shuffle towards the door, so I grabbed the paper towels once again, shoving them into his already piss covered face.“Clean it up, dude! Where do you think you’re going?” It was no use. He was an absolute drunken zombie. I was going to be the one to clean it up. This was my jurisdiction and my responsibility. He continued his drunk shuffle back up to his room, which I’ll never understand how he was able to accomplish. It may not have even been his room, but that wasn’t my problem, at least at the moment.I started to throw piles of paper towels at the floor and couch and mash them into the upholstery with my boots, trying not to touch any of it with my hands. I angrily threw open the duty book and started to write in detail who, what, where, and how Brains McGee did all of this to the leather couch in the duty room. I wanted to put every piece of information in there that would leave no question as to what this guy just did to my night on duty. I wanted him to get in trouble. I wanted his commanding officer to rip him a new one the following Monday. I wanted to see him go down.Sadly, as far as I know, nothing ever happened to him the next workday. I never spoke to him again, other than flipping him the bird occasionally when I would see him around base. He may have even been a little confused as to why I kept doing that, but he never said anything either. I think he probably got that a lot.Still fuming, I angrily shared my story to my friends the next day, to an unsurprised audience.“Yeah, he does shit like that. That dude is a serious mess.” they explained.It just goes to show that sometimes duty sucks, but then again, sometimes it really sucks.This is the second entry for Barracks 404. Do you have a barracks story worthy of making it into our Magazine? If so, send your best work to magazine@gruntstyle.com.[mwi-cat-listing cat="94" ppp="4" cols="4" desc="false" type="view" btn_color="black" ]