The joys of the navy
I'm not in any of the armed services and hopefully never will be, but 2 of my cousins are in the Navy. Their opinions of such a "career" vary on an almost weekly basis.

Luckily, when they're home on leave, they usually have a funny stuff to tell.

My cousin Carl was air-lifted off his ship around 13-14 months ago. His appendix was causing him pain and they weren't due to dock for another 2 weeks. So the 'copter was brought in and took him to the nearest hospital.
It turns out that Bangor hosptial in Wales in rather nice. His brother, mum, dad and I went to visit him... not before we'd wandered round Bangor town centre and been to KFC before hand though. (He was less than impressed with us using his illness to travel a few miles and go shopping.) Eventually he cheered up and told us of how he'd had his testicle sack pierced in Belgium a couple of weeks before-hand. Did I say he told "us" ? I meant he told "us and the whole damn ward".
Apparently he walked into a tattoo/piercing shop in Belgium, slapped his cock out onto the counter, pointed at his bellend and said "pierce that!" to the dude who worked their.
Seeing as he didn't speak much English, the dude had to resort to drawing a cock on a piece of paper and putting an X through the bellend section.
Not discouraged by this, my cousin took the pen off him and drew a ring in the ball-bag. The dude behind counter gave my cousin the thumbs-up, took his £30 and proceeded to fullfil the request.

Imagine hearing that story in a packed hospital ward, knowing that everyone is discreetly listening in.

His brother isn't much better in terms of competence.

Apparently the deck of certain ships has to be painted in a certain type of paint. Paint that has been mixed with a type of grit to prevent people from slipping... makes sense.
One day my cousin and 3/4 of his crew-mates are putting more of this paint down in the needed area's on the deck in the nice sunshine.
Some fool accidently knocked the big-ass tub of this paint over and gallons of the stuff go everywhere. In a panic they use turps and a couple of large brushes to sweep/push the spillage off the deck.
Problem solved.... well.... sort of.
About 20 minutes later a helicopter lands on the ship and the crew of the helicopter proceed to tell the commanding officers and the Captain that there's a large grey streak following the ship for the last 2 miles or so.

Apparently the paint, turps and seawater kind of balanced each other out and instead of mixing into the sea/dissolving... it just sorted of floating there. Resulting a a huge grey line.

My cousins' comments on this story?

"We got a bollocking for it, but it was well funny."
(tylrdiablos, Fri 24 Mar 2006, 22:46, Reply)