The urge to crap (let’s face it, we all do it) always hits at the worst possible moments, doesn’t it? Your body always seems to wait until you’re in a meeting, sitting in the back of a cab in traffic, or sprinting down the sidelines for a touchdown to say, “we need to crap NOW!”
So there I am in the sweltering heat of Fort Benning, Georgia in May, 1992-a basic Airborne student with about 500 others training away. We’re practicing door exits by jumping out of the 35-foot Airborne towers and sliding down the cables to a dirt berm where our fellow students catch us and release us from our harnesses like fish being thrown back into a pond. All is going fine until…
“I have to crap. And I can’t hold it,” I tell my buddy, roster number 14.
“Well go then. They can’t tell you no,” he says.
“You’re right,” I say before trotting off to the Airborne latrine.
As anyone with any Army experience knows, these porta potties are not designed for comfort. They’re small, hot, and reek of…well, crap frankly. And this particular one outside the 35-foot towers had no toilet paper, which I didn’t realize until my solid waste smacked into the mountain of other Airborne crap below me.
“Dammit,” I mutter. “Now what?”
This wasn’t one of those dry dumps that leaves no remnants that you can safely walk away from and wipe later. This was the product of nine beers and super beefy nachos the night prior. There was no getting out of this latrine without some post drop cleansing.
Luckily I’m crafty and came up with what I thought was a brilliant field expedient solution. I whipped out my Gerber multi-tool and unfolded the knife blade, stripped off my Battle Dress Uniform (BDU) top and pulled my t-shirt down to make it nice and tight. I made a small incision and tore it all the way around my body, taking off the bottom four inches of the shirt. I then cut it in half so I had enough for two wipes and proceeded to wipe happily.
“Damn I’m good,” I thought as I put my BDU top back on, exited the latrine, and trotted back to my position on the berm catching students. I could feel my half-shirt dangling under my BDU top, but no one could see it, so I was good right?
Wrong.
“We’re now in heat category 4,” The Airborne instructor (usually called black hats) said. “Everyone strip your tops off.”
“Uh. What?”
“Get your tops off, now!” he repeated, not asking, but telling.
“Of course,” I thought. “Just my luck.”
Sure I could have said, “Sergeant. I sliced the bottom half of my t-shirt off so I didn’t have to walk around all day in my own waste product and possibly get badly chaffed. I need to go get a new t-shirt before I can strip my top off.” But this didn’t seem like a good idea to a 23-year old Lieutenant. The only thing going through my mind was, “pull your pants up and t-shirt down so no one notices” which is what I did.
BDU pants were never meant to be hiked up to the wearer’s chest, but then again the people who designed it never met a dumbass like me. I pulled those pants up higher than the dorkiest gym teacher with a concave chest while pulling the remnants of my t-shirt down so hard that it looked like a v-neck. I made the two meet in the no-man’s land between the navel and nipples with considerable difficulty and proceeded with my Airborne training as if nothing was wrong.
All was okay for thirty minutes until I reached too far up to retrieve a jumper and my raggedy ass t-shirt came dangling out, revealing my six pack abs (it’s my story, dammit).
“What the fuck is wrong with your uniform?” a Black Hat said, walking up to me as I desperately tried to tuck the half-shirt back in and yank my pants up to my throat. “No no! Put your trousers back down to your waist, Airborne!” he said.
I was horrified. Not only was I busted, but the Black Hat’s voice raised the curiosity of the entire class and I was standing on a berm ten feet off the ground for all to see. It might as well have been a Broadway stage.
“What are you, a homo stripper? You need a pole to dance around, little fairy man?” The Black Hat said as I stood there at the position of parade rest in a half shirt. There was nothing I could do but be honest.
“You did what?!” the Black Hat said when I finished my story. “Oh this is too good!”
By the time every Black Hat had heard the story I was nicknamed Lieutenant Asswipe, which stuck for the next two weeks until graduation. Looking back on it, a t-shirt is a bad idea when in need of field expedient toilet paper.
Socks are better.
Great story! Must be Infantry logic.
So, no bullshit, there we were…making our road march in to JRTC in the summer of ’98. We were attacked by the OPFOR. (Of course we were attacked, since we were an Aviation unit road marching in.) In the process of the “battle”, we captured a few of the OPFOR Soldiers and began to search them for intel. As we were searching them, we noticed that all of them had t-shirts that were torn from the bottom, as Kelly has written, and their socks had holes in the top and bottom of the toe area. When we finally broke character and asked them what happened to their t-shirts and socks, they explained that they had been in the field for days before our expected arrival (we were late) and they ran out of toilet paper. So, they used the bottoms of their t-shirts for butt-wipe. They further explained that if they got holes in their socks by their toes, they would rotate the sock around so the hole was on the top or bottom of the foot and their toes were covered to avoid blisters.
Pretty ingenious, if you ask me.
WTF ever happened to C-rats?
Amateurs,
Cut out your left back pocket of your trousers. More than enoguh material for two wipings (keep the other in your chest pocket)Is easy to remove from the seated position on your down trousers, and you never use your back left pocket. Unless you’re a southpaw, then of course reverse to the right pocket.
CPT D
Fantastic… You folks are invited to join us at The Back Of The Buss blog: http://blogtbotb.blogspot.com/ where we banter stuff just like this about. I would have gone for the pocket too… lol
Back pocket… that’s freakin’ genius!! I, being smaller of stature, can get away with cutting off the bottom of my t-shirt AND still being able to to tuck it in so I haven’t researched alternative methods. I’ll certainly share that golden nugget with those who would benefit from it!
my husband just sacraficed his underwear….no one cares if your free ballin
I was following our Section of Sgt. on a run and I noticed the back was cut out of his shirt. I asked what the hell happened. The call of nature between Casey and Hovey in Korea. So I new the answer before I even read anything. What does that say about Army training?
I was following our Section Sgt. on a run and I noticed the back was cut out of his shirt. I asked what the hell happened. The call of nature between Casey and Hovey in Korea. So I new the answer before I even read anything. What does that say about Army training?
Saw this happen at Basic. . .I always kept a coupla packs of MRE TP in my chest pocket there after. Even gave some to a Captain when in the field in Afghanistan, dude thought I was the most squared away comm guy ever!
Similar story…playing OPFOR…60 A Gunner. I had given the gunner a cravat to use as a head rag (he thought it made him look badassed). We were about 5 minutes from moving out. “I gotta go”, he said. Off to the tree line he sprinted…probably could have beaten Usain Bolt in a race. 10 minutes later he came back…sans t-shirt. The entire thing was gone. “Where is your t-shirt?”, I asked. “Man…it was like puddin’. Flies were landing on it before I was done, and I was burying them. I had to sacrifice the t-shirt.” “Uh…why didn’t you just use the do-rag?” His response was wide-eyed, stunned silence.
This reminds me of the morning after our PT run that I had to piss so bad I nearly went in my shorts but the latrine was on the other side of the training area. SGT Airborne told me to go on the other side of the 34′ tower berm and go. So out of site from the formation I pissed in the middle of the open field and jogged back to the formation. As I get back the two black hats in the building on the hill get on the load speaker and say, “the 34′ tower berm will no longer be used as a latrine. That is all.”