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Okay, listen up, you magnificent degenerates, you asked for it. For those who’ve spent more time waiting in the dirt than in their own beds, who understand that the military experience is 10% sheer terror and 90% soul-crushing boredom punctuated by moments of profound stupidity – this one’s for you. We’re talking about the fine art of staving off the existential dread that creeps in during endless field ops, training exercises, or deployments where the biggest enemy is the clock. We're talking about field games.
You know the scene. You've secured the objective, set up the perimeter, dug your fighting position that somehow immediately fills with either freezing water or biting ants, cleaned your weapon for the tenth time, and now… you wait. You wait for orders. You wait for chow. You wait for the sweet release of sleep or, barring that, maybe just a decent signal to check if your dependa left you yet. This is the primordial ooze from which field games are born – necessity being the mother of really dumb inventions.
The Pantheon of Pointless Pastimes
The types of games played are as varied as the MRE menus they try to disguise.
Rock-Based Ballistics - This ranges from simple throwing contests (“Bet you can’t hit that tree/Lieutenant/dead thing”) to complex architectural endeavors involving pebble castles doomed to be crushed by a passing boot or vehicle. Advanced levels include skipping rocks across stagnant puddles of questionable origin or the ever-popular game of “Bounce the rock off the HMMWV hood without SgtMaj seeing.”
MRE Alchemy - Boredom breeds culinary creativity or at least attempts at it. This isn’t so much a game as a desperate ritual. Who can make the most disgusting/surprisingly edible concoction? Common entries include the “Ranger Pudding” variation involving cocoa powder, creamer, sugar, and icy hot (allegedly), or attempts to deep-fry Charms using C4 (Note: Don't actually do this. Or if you do, don't tell Safety). The real game is convincing someone to eat it.
The Combat Critter Derby - Catching various forms of wildlife – beetles, scorpions, spiders, the occasional bewildered field mouse – and pitting them against each other in makeshift arenas drawn in the dirt. Bets are placed, usually involving dip, cigarettes, or coveted MRE components like Skittles. It's like a Roman gladiatorial spectacle, only sadder and with more exoskeletons.
Creative Camouflage Contests - Seeing who can best blend into the surroundings using mud, leaves, discarded pieces of trash, and sheer force of will. Points are deducted if you get poison ivy. Bonus points if you actually manage to startle someone. Double bonus points if you fall asleep and get left behind.
The Insult Olympics - A time-honored tradition, Marines and Soldiers sharpening their verbal knives on each other. Topics range from lineage to questionable life choices to the perceived inadequacies of one’s gear/face/entire existence. This often escalates until someone’s feelings get genuinely hurt, at which point everyone awkwardly pretends they were just joking… Or doubles down.
Makeshift Physical Challenges - “Field Olympics” involving flipping HMMWV tires (until Doc tells you to stop), ammo can lifts, seeing who can hang from a tree branch the longest, or impromptu wrestling/boxing matches that inevitably end when someone lands on a sharp rock or twists an ankle right before a long patrol.
When Fun Meets FUBAR - Games Gone Wrong
Now, while most of these activities result in nothing worse than lost dignity or a mouthful of dirt, sometimes… sometimes things go sideways. Because we’re talking about tired, bored people, often armed, in possession of dangerous equipment, and occasionally supervised by leaders who are just as bored.
The Unintentional BANG Drill - Weapon handling is serious business. Cleaning, clearing, functions checks – it's drilled into you. But complacency is a snake, and boredom lets it coil. You’re sitting around, maybe after chow, maybe during a lull. Someone starts messing with their weapon. Not maliciously, just… messing. Maybe practicing disassembly, maybe just fidgeting. Then comes the click that isn't followed by silence, but by a BANG. The negligent discharge (ND). It’s the sound that makes sphincters pucker a mile away.
Statistics on NDs are notoriously hard to pin down precisely because nobody wants to admit they happened, but they do. The Naval Safety Command even publishes periodic roundups detailing these lapses. According to a report discussing these incidents, at least 60 Air Force personnel were injured by NDs over a decade. More chillingly, the same report references data noting a Marine was killed by an accidental discharge during training at Camp Pendleton in August 2021. While not explicitly labelled a "game," the root cause often lies in that zone where boredom meets complacency during routine handling or downtime – the exact incubator for ill-advised actions. Someone wasn’t following procedures, someone got distracted, someone was treating their weapon like a toy instead of the tool it is. It’s the ultimate example of how a moment of inattention, often born from the monotony these "games" try to alleviate, can have the gravest consequences. Suddenly, nobody's bored anymore. They're filling out paperwork, facing UCMJ, or worse, explaining things to a grieving family.
The Gravity vs. Grunt Experiment - Remember those physical challenges? Sometimes they involve less muscle and more… questionable physics. Picture this: A group is waiting for transport near a structure, maybe an old building or a CONEX box setup. Boredom sets in. Someone gets the bright idea to climb onto the roof. Why? Because it’s there. Then someone else dares them to jump off. Maybe onto a pile of sandbags, maybe onto that suspiciously soft patch of mud. What could go wrong? Now picture the roof of the barracks mixed with either a pair of mattresses (padding) or a poncho liner (makeshift parachute).
Well, ask anyone who’s ever seen a paratrooper land badly after a routine jump, and then apply that to someone who hasn't been trained, jumping off an unstable surface onto uneven ground, probably wearing full kit. Ankles snap like dry twigs. Knees discover angles they were never meant to achieve. Sometimes, it’s a concussion from an awkward landing. While finding a specific, citable news report for "PFC Johnson broke his leg jumping off a CONEX box because he was bored" is difficult (likely relegated to internal safety briefs and unit lore), the type of incident is depressingly common. It's the kind of non-combat injury that earns you a Purple Heart… from your buddies, drawn onto your cast with a Sharpie, usually accompanied by deeply sarcastic comments about your heroic sacrifice in the war against gravity and common sense. You become a cautionary tale, a punchline in safety briefs, and worst of all, you have to explain it to the First Sergeant.
The Punchline
So, yeah. Field games. Born of boredom, fuelled by caffeine and questionable decisions, occasionally resulting in paperwork or a trip to BAS. They're stupid, they're sometimes dangerous, but they're also part of the shared tapestry of misery and dark humor that gets people through. It's about finding a sliver of autonomy and amusement in a situation where you have very little of either. Just try not to become the Said Named Marine in the next safety stand-down, alright? Someone has to fill the HESCOs, and it’s way harder to do with a broken leg or while explaining why your rifle decided to go loud in the TOC. Stay safe, stay stupid, but maybe not too stupid.
