Drill instructors are no f*cking joke. When you go into basic training, they can be your best friend or your worst enemy. Sometimes, they’re BOTH! Basically, DO NOT piss one of them off and do exactly as they say… or else.

But sometimes, when people actually do exactly what they say… some seriously hilarious things can happen.

So somebody on reddit asked the question: Drill Instructors/Drill Sergeants of Reddit, what’s the funniest thing you’ve seen a recruit do that you couldn’t laugh at?

Their answers are sure to make you smile!

1. Geese!

Had one recruit paying attention to a bunch of geese rather than us.

Made him get up and chase them all away, as they flew in the air we made him follow them for several hundred feet to make sure they wouldn’t come back!

I was dying of laughter on the inside.

2. You pukes!

I can pass along a classic Boot Camp story.

I was in the Navy, and in the Navy, your final inspection as a Division is before the Division Officer. Which is usually some Junior Officer puke that got assigned that job, but we didn’t know any better. Anyway, before the inspection one of our RDC’s, that’s what we called the “DI” in the Nav, found a locker out of sorts and decided to beat us in our dress blues.

That was not fun, let me tell you. Wool uniforms, if we lost our cover we got beat more, it was bad. Anyway, the DO rolls in for inspection, walks up to the first dude in formation, and he pukes. HOWEVER, this guy was a genius, he puked down the T-Shirt in his dress blues, saving the DO from getting puked on and US from getting beat even more.

The Division Officer was so impressed at this dudes “Military Bearing” that he called the inspection right then and there. 5.0 Sailors all around. We still got beat that night. But that guy was a hero.

3. Oh crackers!

We weren’t allowed to talk during chow at the galley. You had to point at what you wanted another recruit to pass, and they had to silently pass it. One recruit wanted a napkin and pointed. The other recruit asked “this?”

The CCs (Coast Guard DS) immediately came over, circling him like sharks, screaming at him. They made him put like 10 saltines in his mouth and chew until his mouth was full, then ask the first recruit if he wanted a napkin again. He barely could get it out, spitting pieces of cracker everywhere.

Then they screamed at the first recruit to answer him, but we were all silently cracking up. Sounded like this: “Phew phwant a nupkeen?” (Pieces of saltines flying out) ANSWER HIM!!!! (Cracking up, almost crying) “No…thank you.”

It was the best.

4. Our very own werewolf…

An RDC in another division asked a guy if he shaved that morning and the guy claimed he had.

The RDC said “recruit you are either a werewolf or you are lying, so which is it?”

The guy responded “I must be a werewolf, petty officer!”

5. Water you doing?

Not me but I had a great Team SGT who had a floater (wonky eye) that he was blind in from an injury in Iraq.

So one eye was dead on and worked fine but he had this one Uncle Rukus eye that just did its own thing. He was a very physically imposing man with that classic Drill SGT bass filled voice and his crazy eye just added to it and he knew it. He told a story about his time as a Drill SGT when two privates had sat down on Firewatch and were kinda just being real lackadaisical about their duties when he found them.

So he starts just giving them the business classic Full Metal Jacket style, and finally he just ending his rant right before he’s about to smoke them for who knows how long when one of the offending Privates just says “Drill SGT are you yelling at us or the Water Fountain?” It stopped him dead in his rage and he just walked away mid knife hand.

6. “You told me to beat myself!”

In navy Bootcamp they call forced PT “beatings.”

Everyone knows what a beating is. Navy doesn’t have drill instructors they call them RDCs (Recruit division commanders). One day standing in ranks the RDC is going around asking random trivia questions about a test we had to take to make sure we had been studying. He gets to a guy who was eccentric, to say the least. This is about a month and a half into Bootcamp. RDC asks the question guys gets it wrong so RDC yells “No wrong, BEAT YOURSELF!” Literally everyone knew this meant start doing pushups so the expectation is he will start doing pushups as the RDC moves to the next guy to ask a question. I was standing across from the guy and he had a confused look on his face. He looked at his own hand for 5 seconds then hauled off and slapped himself in the face.

It made a loud crack sound he got himself good. I cracked and chuckled trying to keep composure at attention. The RDC looked to me then realized why I laughed had to do with the slapping sound. He turned back to self slapping guy and asked him if he slapped himself. Guy says, “You told me to beat myself!”

Queue the entire barracks cracking up.

It was a single moment during Bootcamp where the curtain was raised and a moment of unadulterated levity came over everyone. The RDC couldn’t stop laughing so the tough guy a**hole persona melted away for a good 60 seconds until he regained composure and made us all do pushups.

The pushups were an easy price to pay for that moment.

7. Johnson?

We had two 5’1″ stocky blond guys named Johnson in our company one cycle. different platoons, no relation at all but they looked really similar.

One day during grass week a couple J Hats made them face each other and go back and forth screaming “You’re not johnson, I’m johnson!” “No! F**k you, you’re not johnson I’m johnson!”

You have absolutely no clue how hard it was to not break into a million pieces after about 5 minutes of that.

8. Pocket full of tears

I work at basic training ranges and we had a drill SGT yell at his solider while they were getting ready to go down a buddy live fire exercise.

The solider froze and started crying. This 18 y/o kid was just in tears for getting yelled at.

The DS yelled at him some more and he finally gave up cause this kid wouldn’t stop crying.

So he made him scoop tears off his face and put them in his pockets till he filled his pockets up with tears.

He did this for like an hour. It was hilarious.

9. You’re sh^tting me!

So when you start basic your body doesn’t know how to handle no sugar, caffeine, rigorous exercise, and sleeping schedules so it’s in shock.

With this shock, sh^tting becomes a problem for a few.

Well, every DI after the first week is required to ask around if everyone has taken a sh^t, and from there he assigns one recruit to track who has sh^t and who has not. I sh^t you not (pun intended), we had one guy who would stand in the barracks at the end of the night rolling off names of people who hadn’t sh^t yet. Finally, we have one guy who is still on there after two weeks and the DI tells him to go to the doctor. The dr. gives him an get out of jail free card essentially saying that at any point, he says the magical words “I gotta sh^t” and he can escape any situation. Well, recruit can’t sh^t we’ll call him gets the smart idea that he’s going to play his new trump card as long as possible. Every time that we’re getting grilled, “I gotta take a sh^t” comes ringing in from the back of the formation. This probably happened six times until our DI caught on.

Finally our DI devises a plan that when recruit can’t sh^t goes into the bathroom, he’s going to have a couple of us hold onto his legs and slide him into the stall all exorcist style. The time comes and recruit can’t sh^t excuses himself. We all follow our DI into the bathroom and slide him under there like he’s the spawn of Satan. This catches recruit can’t sh^t by surprise, he doesn’t know what the f*ck is going on as the DI is utterly berating him about lying and using this as an excuse to sit on the toilet. Then we hear a very audible “Oh sh^t” from the stall.

The DI scared the recruit so much he actually took a sh^t right then and there. The DI made every recruit look at it and we played played taps for it as we flushed it down the toilet.

10. Magnum P.I.

I was going through Air Force basic training and when on guard duty if an unauthorized person wanted to be let in to the bunks you had to report it to your drill sergeant. Our sister flight’s drill sergeant came up while I was on guard and requested entry so I reported to my sergeant and he had me ask the other a series of questions. This particular sergeant had a bushy mustache so one question I had to ask was “In what year was Magnum PI cancelled?”

He dropped out of view from the window laughing, came back up and yelled ” It was never cancelled because IM STILL HERE!”

It took everything I had not to crack up.

11. Killing the smile

While in basic we had a female that loved to smile. She was just a happy person in general.

Well my TI (Training instructor) came in, and she caught the female trainee smiling. TI didn’t like smiling. She walked up to the female trainee and yelled, “Wipe that smile off your face!”

Female trainee stopped smiling.

The TI continued to yell, “No! Literally wipe the smile off your face with your hand!”

Trainee does so.

“Now throw it on the ground!”

Trainee follows orders.

“Now stomp on it and scream ‘die, smile die!’ As loud as you can!”

The female trainee stood there for a second before following through.

Her tiny little voice cracks as she yelled “die, smile die!”

And I will say it took everything I had not to bust out laughing.

12. The p*nis mightier than the… wait a second

At boot, it was taps out and one of the RDC’s show up and was doing a walk through. it was just before lights out. He was going through the head and then a loud scream “Oh-my-gawd, get your p*nis out of your hand and out of my site, why the hell is your p*nis staring at me, recruit?”

‘Taps’ didn’t happen as scheduled and I still talk to this guy X years later…

Also my bunkmate lm*o.

Well, those were intense!

Have you ever been to bootcamp? What are your favorite stories?!

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