The following happened when I was stationed at the Defense Language Institute (DLI) in Monterey, CA back in November 1977.
As they are wont to do, the Marines decided to celebrate their birthday in a manner that would disturb the members of the other Armed Forces as much as possible. So they held a 0200 PT formation and ran around everyone's barracks yelling their cadences (and other things) as loud as possible.
One other thing they did was to paint the ship's anchor the Navy had in front of their barracks. The plan was to paint it red with metallic gold highlights and then, in case anyone wondered who had done it, they painted their name on the cross bar.
Unfortunately, they didn't account for a couple of items in their planning. The week prior the Army had painted the anchor camouflage, causing the Navy to repaint it white with black highlights the day before the Marine birthday. This paint hadn't dried when the Marines applied there red and gold paint. Also, the Marines did not pick their most stellar scholar (or maybe they did
) to do the job.
Imagine our amusement the next day to walk out and see a huge pink and mottled gold anchor in front of the Navy barracks and proudly written along the cross bar "MARIENES."
As they are wont to do, the Marines decided to celebrate their birthday in a manner that would disturb the members of the other Armed Forces as much as possible. So they held a 0200 PT formation and ran around everyone's barracks yelling their cadences (and other things) as loud as possible.
One other thing they did was to paint the ship's anchor the Navy had in front of their barracks. The plan was to paint it red with metallic gold highlights and then, in case anyone wondered who had done it, they painted their name on the cross bar.
Unfortunately, they didn't account for a couple of items in their planning. The week prior the Army had painted the anchor camouflage, causing the Navy to repaint it white with black highlights the day before the Marine birthday. This paint hadn't dried when the Marines applied there red and gold paint. Also, the Marines did not pick their most stellar scholar (or maybe they did
) to do the job.Imagine our amusement the next day to walk out and see a huge pink and mottled gold anchor in front of the Navy barracks and proudly written along the cross bar "MARIENES."
