no names
some guys in my year are pretty famed for their pranking and a whole week away on an army base with a couple of hundred other cadets provided far too much in the way of opportunity for them.

aside from playing pranks on just about everyone in our billet - my sleeping bag was full of sugar every night, and yes i know who did it, and yes im still plotting revenge - they had some other tricks up their sleeves. for example, when the broom in our billet broke, a small night mission was arranged to raid another billet and swap the two. the only problem was the vast quantities of masking tape we had used to put our broom handle back together - it looked like a giant set of go-faster stripes. so to take the other billet's members' minds off this trivial detail, they decided to totally wreck the place.

a little bit of background: our schools cadet force had had a similar experience the year before, with a mass night-raid on their billet, the result being they had to stay behind for HOURS cleaning up til the s/sgt was happy. so this was effectively payback and contribution to a vicious circle of pranks.

anyway, the broom replaced, they quietly proceeded to trash the place - white powder all over, personal belongings strewn about, and all this while the occupants slept quietly around them. on the way back they narrowly avoided capture from a couple of patrolling officers, and the next morning, the billet was a sight to behold. of course everyone pretended we knew nothing about the events of the previous night, and offered concern and support to the totally demoralised and mightily pissed off cadets in said billet. word has it they had to stay behind a long long time that day before leaving for home.

(not as bad as the parachute regt base, where billet wars escalated as far as throwing a smoke grenade through a window, where, upon ignition, the curtains caught fire and the place went up in flames. just to put things in perspective)

anyway to protect the innocent, or whatever, no names of places or people have been mentioned.
(zenmeban thinks the weather could be better, Thu 5 May 2005, 23:42, Reply)