Pig Story

I never knew this until I was stationed there but Germany has HUGE numbers of wild pigs….you know, wild boars. They’re fast, aggressive and plain nasty! They are EVERYWHERE too. Well near where I was stationed in Friedberg we had a local training area that was out in the middle of the woods on a mountain. It’s called FTA—Friedberg Training Area. Anyway we used to go out there for small unit level training events in squads and platoons and do primarily dismounted training without our Bradley Fighting Vehicles. Anyway when I was a platoon leader I brought my platoon out there for like 3 days to do a bunch of training. Well one of my sergeants--we’ll call him Goose—was TERRIFIED of wild pigs. I mean he would nearly shit himself even just talking about them. So one night we finished training and set up a perimeter and went into our sleep plan at 50% security….this means that half the platoon is always awake at regular intervals around the perimeter and they pull security. Well when it was Goose’s turn to sleep I hatched a little scheme….we’d been telling him all day that we were gonna leave food out to lure in the hogs. He would scream at us, “You fucking better not!!!” Well that night when it was his turn he climbed into his fart sack (sleeping bag) and went right to sleep. So I grabbed a washcloth from my rucksack, rolled it up and wet the end of it. The idea here was to simulate a pig snout. Well once he was good and asleep I unzipped the top of his fart sack right where his head was. I then proceeded to grunt and make pig sounds and touch his face with the wet washcloth. The whole fucking platoon was watching through their night vision goggles (nods). They had to cover their mouths because they couldn’t keep from laughing their asses off. Well I kept poking Goose with the rag and grunting in my best hog call fashion. I also had my nods on so I could see his reaction. Well his eyes suddenly opened and almost popped out of his head. He jumped up so fucking fast and tried running but he didn’t realize he was still zipped up in his fart sack…..so he fucking tumbles down this big ass hill screaming the whole fucking time. Once he rolled all the way down he unzipped himself and started just running and screaming. It was like an hour and a half until he came back. We were fucking crying we were laughing so damn hard. When he finally came back his face was all bruised and shit….turns out while he was running he kept running into trees and bushes because he didn’t have his nods on. Dude, that was the hardest I have ever fucking laughed in my life. I learned 2 things that night…..Goose was really afraid of the hogs and I do a really good fucking pig call.

2 nights later I was chased by a wild hog while I was laying in the bushes hiding and simulating the enemy for my guys. I was waiting to ambush them so I could evaluate how they’d react when I heard a loud screech and turned around to see a little fucking pig running straight at me….I took off like a motherfucker down the road. I guess that was some kind of twisted payback. Those little fuckers were mean SOBs.