The DU Lounge

When I was an Army sergeant in Berlin, one fine day I decided I had more than enough people to do the mission (we were on an artificial hill in the middle of a wild-boar-infested forest) so I told one of my troops - one who rode his bicycle to work - he could go home. We called this a turnaround.

Two hours later he walked back into the office looking significantly worse for wear. "Never give me another turnaround again."

What had happened was he got all the way to the bottom of the hill and started pedaling his bike through the forest when he got treed by three wild boars. After about an hour they got bored and walked off, but he's sitting up there thinking about how these massive pigs were going to eat him just on general principles.

Some time later our operations officer decided to work a swing shift so she could learn all about what we did. REALLY nice person. So comes chow time and she wants me to go first so I can tell her what they're serving. "Ma'am, I think someone ran over a grunie pig on the way up here. There are like six different cuts of pork on the serving line." A different one of my troops decided the German word for "road kill" was "strassen-unfälle" (which directly translates to "road accident&quot so he'd go to the chow hall, ask for the "strassen-unfälle" and...the server always knew exactly which bin was the one to give him.