The Laughing Wolf

Never Trust A Senior/Smiling Marine

Heh. T1G tells of a painful learning experience, and such things can be most interesting. The best story I have heard was (Me? Why no, nothing like this ever happened to me... *innocent look*):

He had wanted to go tour in East Germany for some time, and finally had the chance. Knowing that some members of his unit dealt with intel and were fluent in German and Russian, he went to them for some linguistic help as he wanted to make a good impression whilst showing the flag. They assured him that Russian was the best language for such purposes and proceeded to help him with his list of phrases which started with a "cheerful greeting" and ended with "Which way to the train station" for the end of the day and the return to the West. Happy, he memorized them and went forth.

The looks he got in response to his cheerful greeting, delivered with a huge smile and a wave from all reports, were interesting. A few people sort of snorted and smiled back, but most just gave him looks. At the end of an interesting day, he approached a police officer to ask how to get to the train station. To his horror and surprise, the officer turned red with anger and swelled up. He was then told in a cold voice that the train station was that way, to go get onboard and NEVER come back. Several plain clothes "police" materialized and just happened to walk with him to the train station.

As it turned out, the greeting was a Russian swear phrase involving your mother and the final phrase really came out as "Where are your secret military installations" or some such. The others were in the same vein.

No, I was not involved with any of this other than rolling with laughter upon hearing the tale, but did have a buddy who knew a little about intel and was commended for blowing up one of our own command posts... The worst I have ever done was to suggest to someone that "Su Madre" was a nice response to Spanish speakers...

LW
remind me one day to tell you about the "Russian" tank commander in our top line tank...