Military Veterans here, what are some common misconceptions in fiction about the military?

Yep that happened to British forces too - i was out by then, but i understand from friends who stayed in that the MoD designated the "Snatch" Landrover as an armored patrol vehicle. The snatch is so named because it was built for riots in ulster with the intention of being used to snatch ring leaders..its 'armor' is fibre glass and intended to be proof against bricks, bottles and possibly petrol bombs... its not remotely bullet or frag proof. My friend Jamie was wounded in iraq in 2003/4 and he told me about lying on the deck of a snatch, shot through both legs with medics working on him watching bullet holes appear in both sides of the shell as AK rounds went straight through above their heads

I don't think I've ever seen a snatch in Hollywood...when British forces appear in movies they are usually given American kit... because hollywood doesn't know a landrover from a Humvee or an L85A2 from an M4.

The exception being ww2 movies about the SAS and the LRDG where they are nearly always equipped with open top landrovers, a good trick since the Landrover Mk1 entered production in 1947... the fast raiding desert war was mostly fought with trucks, either Bedfords or captured Lancias

 

Ask and we shall elucidate

ROE: rules of engagement - rules that govern when you can or can't shoot at the enemy
Ma Deuce: Browning 50 cal heavy machine gun
Gimpy/GMPG General purpose machine gun, made by FN Herstal (but generally used collectively for any similar gun), firing 7.62 x51.. think more or less like an M60.. (not to be confused with the GMG which is a grenade machine gun, also known as a type 19, auto firing 40mm grenades)
L85mk2 - what civilians call the SA80, piece of shit rifle firing the standard nato 5.56mm. the L86 LSW was roughly the same but with a heavier barrel and bipod, it was supposed to replace the Gimpy but never did on account of being shite
Jungo: Acronym for "Joins up never goes out", British army slang for the rear echelon, what the Americans call Remfs (rear echelon Mother f******) or Pogues (person other than grunt)... incidentally in the British police they use the term Bongo - books on, never goes out. I'm not sure which came first)
Weeble: Intelligence officer, from the acronym WBYL, we bet your life, also know as Green Slime because the Int Corp used to wear bright green berets
Redcap: British military police, some times also known as swans, from Swan Vesta matches which have red heads (this can get confusing as members of the parachute regiment who wear maroon berets are also sometimes called swans for the same reason)
Cabbage head / Cabbage patch doll : Royal Marine (Also Bootneck), the cabbage head comes from the mop of cam net that commandos wrap round their helmets
OMO : strictly its a type of washing powder you can buy in the Naafi (the naafi being a military shop a bit like an American PX but not as good), however urban myth says that when battalions deploy overseas, wives who are restless in their marriages put boxes of OMO in their windows to indicate "old man out" ie they they are available... from there its come to mean anyone who fucks a soldiers wife while hes away (also Joady which is the American version)
Anyone who thinks that seeing a soldiers missus might be a good idea should be warned by the marching song ' Omo Omo 6ft4, never had his ass kicked before, omo din want reaming wi my knife, shouldna fucked an army wife'
Bone: Stupid or irrelevant, as in 'that was a bone question to ask'
Graf: Grafenwohr military exercise area in Germany, uniformly hated by anyone who's ever been because its either freezing, peeing with rain and muddy, or on rare occasions baked hard and dusty.
PC/OC/CO: (UK definitions) PC = platoon commander, a second or first lieutenant in command of a platoon. OC = Officer Commanding* Generally a captain or a major in charge of a company or sometimes a double company unit. CO = Lt Col or sometimes Major in command of a battalion. (* not to be confused with OinC said oink, officer in charge, which is any officer or sometimes NCO temporarily put in charge of a detachment (det) operating independently of its parent unit)
CSM : Company sergeant major, a Warrant officer post who assists the OC
RSM: Regimental Sergeant Major a warrant officer post who assists the Regimental commander...in my day Battalions also had RSMs, who assisted the CO, don't ask me why they weren't BSMs, they just weren't and no one dared question it
PIRA: Provisional Irish republican army. Terrorists who fought for a united ireland (mostly catholic)
Barret 50: a 50 cal rifle firing the same round as the Browning Machine Gun. ie 12.7x99 nato round. A big ass bullet which will go through your body armour without even noticing its there, in my day these were the M82 , but i think they are now superseded by the XM500
POC: potential officer candidate, a trainee officer not yet commissioned who generally doesn't know his arse from a hole in the ground and would struggle to defend a turkish brothel much less do anything worthwhile inside it

 

Which comes about because you're not supposed to swear on the radio or in front of senior rank, so people say Charlie Fox or Foxtrot Uniform in the place of profanities

this also leads to other interesting phrases some of which make it into civilian life, like Snafu - Situation normal, all f*cked up, and Fubar - f*cked up beyond all recognition

incidentally some folks use the latter in casualty reports ... its an abbreviation of fubar bundy..'f*cked up beyond all recognition/recovery but unfortunately not dead yet'

 

Thinking about things fiction gets wrong, 22 Special Air Service regiment, home based at Stirling Lines , Hereford (which is not in wales etc per my previous post). The British army special forces, pretty much like Delta force. (To be clear I'm not claiming iIserved with them)

In the army no one ever calls them the Sass, nor does anyone ever call them the Jedi (looking at you Andy Mcnab- you should know better), they are generally known as ' the regiment' but this can get confusing because soldiers will also refer to their own regiment as 'the regiment'... you can usually tell by context.

Its very rare for anyone to refer to them as 'going to Hereford' - or 'have you been to Hereford?' That entered civilian consciousness as a result of Fredrick Forsyth's books. At the time I used to have to go to Hereford quite often, there's also sorts of army bits around Hereford because its handy for the welsh hills, and we used to have endless fun telling impressionable barracks bunnies (Army Groupies) "Yeah babe I've been to Hereford"

The squadrons are A,B, D and G. The reason there's no C is that they were principally Rhodesian and went off to be the Rhodesian SAS after Rhodesia declared independence. There's never been an E or and F, G got its name because its was originally primarily drawn from the Guards regiments. (Some people talk about E squadron as being this elite within an elite shadowy organisation, as far as i know that's balls... anyone who says different, if they were telling the truth would also be breaching the official secrets act, draw your own conclusions)

There are two other SAS regiments 21 and 23 but these are territorial army formations (The TA being roughly like the National Guard), weekend warriors, ie part time reserve formations... being in 21 or 23 SAS is not the same as being "in the SAS" (looking at you Bear Grylls)... also 23 does not have a shadowy F troop dedicated to hiring international mercenaries (looking at you Gayle Rivers) again if it did you couldn't talk about it.

Lastly they aren't super soldiers... yes they are very hard cases, you have to be to pass selection (a guy in our unit who we called Mr Machine because he was so fit tried and failed) and they are very mentally tough, and very well trained... and no it would be a very bad idea to get into a fight with them, but they're still just men at the end of the day.

Oh yeah and eta, no serving SAS trooper will ever have an SAS tattoo, they have to go under cover and such and that would be a massive tell... anyone who has a winged dagger and who dares who wins tattooed on his body is not a serving member of the SAS

 

Troops has always been a collective alternate for soldiers, as in 'more troops to the front' gos back as least as far as ww1

In terms of names for groups of soldiers , traditionally speaking the cavalry has troops, and a cavalry private is a trooper (which may be shortened informally to troop.. good job troop)... a cavalry troop is like an infantry platoon, where as a cavalry squadron is like an infantry company (although some squadrons can be more like battalions)

It got confusing with the development of the air cavalry in Vietnam - when troopers of say the 7th cav (Gary Owen bro) would actually be doing the same thing as infantry soldiers.

Also Commandos (ie Royal marines) have troops- companies- commandos with a commando as in 40, 42,45 being halfway between a battalion and a regiment.

I don't off hand know why the SAS went with the cavalry model - probably Stirling wanted to be different to separate his men from the green army

 

Never been there - we did most of our training in the UK, Salisbury Plain, Stanta, Brecon ... I think i only went to Graf once, i remember it being a sea of mud.

 

My friend who's a royal (hes more intelligent than average, he's the one that reads the comics to the others) usually shoots back on that one Army= Arent Ready to be Marines Yet.

 

So here's a question for the American vets among us... whats the score with Fort Polk and the Joint Readiness Training Centre... i keep seeing references to how shit it is in you tube skits , but they never say why its so shit.

 

Sounds great

our equivalent is probably Brecon, which when you're not running up mountains, generally involves living under an IPK tarp in the pissing rain, drying to remember when you were last dry or warm while trying to get your zippo to spark so you can burn leaches off your dick