# Downtime in Afghanistan



## Boondocksaint375 (Aug 29, 2007)

As most of you know, their was plenty of down time during the first deployment for Operation Enduring Freedom I. This is a short story about what me and my former team leader Timothy Conneway (KIA Iraq) did during the periods of time where not much was going on. 

We lived in some relatively large tents...although we were sharing it with a bunch of other Rangers, so it wasn't the Hilton or anything. Our tent was filled with my squad (1st squad), the Platoon Leader, Platoon Sergeant, medic, and RTO. We slept on cots, and had all of our gear in piles next to (and under) our cots. Well, me and Conneway decided to start screwing around with our Platoon Leader (PL). 

The first jokes were pretty immature and stupid.....okay, they were all immature and stupid. The first one we did was write a fake "I love you Sir" letter on his cot, signing it from the newest Private in our squad. He was kind of an ass-kisser, so it was rightfully deserved. 

The second joke involved me low crawling through the tent at night with a tube of super glue. The target? The PL's shower shoes. The mission was a success, as the PL woke up the next morning and slid his feet into the shower shoes and calmly spoke, "oh look.....2nd platoon glued my shower shoes to the floor." Needless to say that was pretty damn funny. Not nearly as funny as the final prank. The best part was he had no idea who was doing it....

The third and final prank....wasn't the nicest one. Pure genius, yes, but would have been slightly frowned upon back in America. During this time period the whole Anthrax letter scare was going on back in the states. So we decided to send an Anthrax letter to our PL. We copied one of the letter we had read about; I recall it said something like:


> You die American. You need penicillin. We have anthrax


 
or some similar mumbo jumbo. We revised it...tried to use the same handwriting technique, etc. It came out to saying something like:


> You die now American Ranger. We have Anthrax.


 
I''m sure their was more to it, but its been a few years. Anyways, we stuck some white foot powder in it, sealed it, and wrote on the front "LT. XXXXXX, US Ranger." Basically during that time, people would send letters within another letter to get it to you, by Regiment policy if I recall correctly. You couldn't just mail a letter to SGT. Jones, Africa. It went to Regiment and was sent out from there. So we would only see the inside letter, which would just say our name. So we placed it on his cot and went about our business. Eventually the PL comes in and hear's someone outside of the tent say "hey sir, you've got some mail on your cot." I am just guessing that his eyes lit up since mail was always a good thing to get when deployed. So the PL walks over looks at it, opens it up... and I shit you not... a big cloud of white powder poofs out of the envelope. It worked better than I had planned. Meanwhile me and Conneway are pretending to be sound asleep on our cots, buried under our poncho liners, and trying our best not to laugh. "What the fuck....what the fuck..... what the fuck," he says (getting louder each time). "Is this some kind of joke?!" "What the fuck!" He turns to the Platoon Sergeant, "is this some kind of joke!?" The PSG replies calmly "I don't know what you're talking about." The PSG wasn't exactly paying attention to what was going on. He drops the letter and books out of the tent. I think our squad leader caught up with him and finally stopped him. Needless to say me and Conneway ended up doing a few pushups while laughing our asses off. I could have only imagined what would have happened if the PL actually ran to someone important :eek:.


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## pardus (Aug 29, 2007)

That Anthrax one is awesome! LMAO!


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## tova (Aug 29, 2007)

Excellent on the Anthrax!


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## Gypsy (Aug 29, 2007)

Love reading stories, especially how you guys entertain yourselves.  The powder/anthrax was a nice touch...lol.


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## Crusader74 (Aug 31, 2007)

great Story Boon,

I think Soldiers all over the world play these types of pranks..another one was shaving foam into the boots!!!


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## EATIII (Aug 31, 2007)

Love the Banner!


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## Ravage (Sep 4, 2007)

Push up punishemnt 

Its great to read such warm and happy stories about Timothy Conneway (may he Rest In Peace).
Loved the glue part, and Anthrax of course :)


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## JBS (Sep 6, 2007)

ROFL!


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## TheWookie (Jul 8, 2009)

Great humor, I wouldn't have thought to post some funny shit if I hadn't read this first.


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