Who served, and with what unit?

[NLT]

A Royal Baby is a fat guy with grease or some other sticky disgusting stuff smeared all over his belly. The prospective Shellback has to stick their face in his navel. Problem is most like to peck it and leave. Hard to do while he's grabbing your head to keep you from getting away. (Just one of the reasons I hated the Navy) Initiation takes about 45 mins. If you do it wrong they make you do it all over.

Good lord!

Yeah, the Navy's got some very strange rituals, some almost bordering on the homoerotic.

I'm not Shellback myself, but I am a member of "The Turtle Club". And if you're ever asked if you're a member, the correct and only answer is "you bet your sweet ass I am".

Line-crossing ceremony - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Crossing the Line ritual goes way back to the 17th century British navy. Time honored tradition

 

[mudwhistle]

US Navy 1969 - 1989
Boot Camp, Great Lakes, IL
Hospital Corps School, Great Lakes, IL
National Naval Medical Center, Bethesda, MD
USS America
USS William M. Wood
USS Sylvania
Urology Technician School, Portsmouth, VA
Naval Hospital, Philadelphia, PA
USS Mitscher
Advanced Hospital Corps School, Portsmouth, VA
NALF, San Clemente Island, CA
Naval Hospital, Cherry Point, NC
USS Trippe
Naval Hospital, Charleston, SC
USS Guadalcanal (TAD)
Naval Medical Material Support Command, Fort Dietrick, Frederick, MD

Fleet Reserve on December 1, 1989

A Pecker-Checker

 

[mudwhistle]

Those aren't medals Bush is wearing, dumb fucking idiot.
Their ribbons. Probably unit commendations or something meaningless. If I color I could be precise.
And you claim to have served?
You should know better poser.

Unit citations are over the other breast pocket in the Army. He has his flight wings, which he earned.

It would help if the pic was in color.

 

[ABikerSailor]

Whats the Royal Baby?

It's a Shellback thing...
Having never achieved that status - I will defer to Mudwhistle.

A Royal Baby is a fat guy with grease or some other sticky disgusting stuff smeared all over his belly. The prospective Shellback has to stick their face in his navel. Problem is most like to peck it and leave. Hard to do while he's grabbing your head to keep you from getting away. (Just one of the reasons I hated the Navy) Initiation takes about 45 mins. If you do it wrong they make you do it all over.

The Royal Baby on my initiation was an SK1 named Higgins. Fucker had a navel that was probably 2 inches deep, and in our initiation, they stuck a cherry in his navel and you weren't allowed to go crawling through the bilge dump (full of leftover food and garbage from the past week) until you popped back up with the cherry in your teeth.

I also had someone jam a 2 1/2 inch fire hose in the back of my pants and turned the damn thing on. My legs shot out straight back and for 15 seconds, I looked like a human Y gate.

 

[mudwhistle]

It's a Shellback thing...
Having never achieved that status - I will defer to Mudwhistle.

A Royal Baby is a fat guy with grease or some other sticky disgusting stuff smeared all over his belly. The prospective Shellback has to stick their face in his navel. Problem is most like to peck it and leave. Hard to do while he's grabbing your head to keep you from getting away. (Just one of the reasons I hated the Navy) Initiation takes about 45 mins. If you do it wrong they make you do it all over.

The Royal Baby on my initiation was an SK1 named Higgins. Fucker had a navel that was probably 2 inches deep, and in our initiation, they stuck a cherry in his navel and you weren't allowed to go crawling through the bilge dump (full of leftover food and garbage from the past week) until you popped back up with the cherry in your teeth.

I also had someone jam a 2 1/2 inch fire hose in the back of my pants and turned the damn thing on. My legs shot out straight back and for 15 seconds, I looked like a human Y gate.

we had 3 of them. After that we crawled on our hands and knees through the gauntlet of guys with firehoses whipping us with them....through a pile of garbage and into the makeshift watertank with garbage floating on the surface. A Shellback was on the other side that asked us what we were....and if we didn't say "I'm a Shellback" we'd have to go back through the whole mess again.

Some Jarhead kept saying "I'm A Marine".


On the 3rd try he finally got it.


I forgot to mention the beauty contest they held the day before Shellback day. About 15 guys went on stage with women's clothes on and wigs and started shaking their stuff. Some guy won that I swear to God looked just like a woman. He won the honor of being Shellback Queen and didn't have to go through the initiation.

Where all of those guys got all of those bras, wigs, and women's clothes from I can't figure. The beauty pageant was supposed to have been a secret.

 

[NLT]

It's a Shellback thing...
Having never achieved that status - I will defer to Mudwhistle.

A Royal Baby is a fat guy with grease or some other sticky disgusting stuff smeared all over his belly. The prospective Shellback has to stick their face in his navel. Problem is most like to peck it and leave. Hard to do while he's grabbing your head to keep you from getting away. (Just one of the reasons I hated the Navy) Initiation takes about 45 mins. If you do it wrong they make you do it all over.

The Royal Baby on my initiation was an SK1 named Higgins. Fucker had a navel that was probably 2 inches deep, and in our initiation, they stuck a cherry in his navel and you weren't allowed to go crawling through the bilge dump (full of leftover food and garbage from the past week) until you popped back up with the cherry in your teeth.

I also had someone jam a 2 1/2 inch fire hose in the back of my pants and turned the damn thing on. My legs shot out straight back and for 15 seconds, I looked like a human Y gate.

Fun Stuff

 

[usmcstinger]

I avoided the draft by enlisting in the USMC. They sent me a Draft Notice while I was in Boot Camp at PI. My father had fun telling the Draft Board that I would not be reporting.
USMC 0311 Infantry Fire Team Leader
I Co. 3rd Bn 2nd Marines Carib 66 Cruise USS Boxer LPH and Swamp Le Jeune
C Co. 1st Bn 4th Maines 3rd Mar Div Vietnam 67-68 Northern I Corps: Dong Ha, Phu Bai, Camp Evans, C2 Bridge, Leather Neck Square
Operation Cumberland Road, Operation Hickory 2, Operation Granite, Operation Kentucky ( Indian Country ) OP/CON 9th Marines. Spent December, 1967 north of the "Cleared Trace" toward the "Z". Just us and the North Vietnamese Army.
We got a good dose of Agent Orange from 2 C 123s while we were there. No mention of it in the Battalion Command Chronology for December 1967.

I was not a hero. I got mostly the being there medals plus a PUC and MUC.
My most coveted award is the Combat Action Ribbon.

To all those who served, thank you.

 

[ABikerSailor]

It's interesting to see what units people have served with.