Thread: The Thunderbox!

Excellent thread Spaz.

Originally Posted by 23GN00

I was lucky enough to be a mere bystander in bout of practical joking that started with a Landrover being parked with front bumper against the door of the thunderbox but soon escalated to such highlights as a CS pellet being fired in through one of the air vents of the portaloo whilst the occupant was mid grunt.
The victim stumbled out, coughing and spluttering with trouser and skiddies around the ankles minus any dignity.
Revenge was later achieved via a sliver of CS tab being gently pushed into the end of a cigarette that was then given as a peace offering during a very short lived ceasefire.

That nearly made me ROFLMAO / spit coffee over keyboard etc.

Fortunately being in the BAT world, our thunderboxes on ex / in the 'Stan are never far from the rubs (makeshift aircraft hangars) which contain an abundance of 'locking wire'. This has the advantage of being a lot quieter than Harry-Black and you can get several runs around the thunderbox creating several loops of locking wire, before eventually pulling it tight, by which point your victim is powerless to escape. Finished off neatly of course, by employing the wire-locking pliers to instill a few deadlock twists on the ends.

Only problem being of course, people became all too aware of this tactic, and eventually I braved the way by being the first to have a dump with the door wide open, using the same locking wire to make sure it stayed that way too.

One thing you can always count on though. is when someone takes things a step too far. When it comes to oiling up the baseball bat, slapping the granny etc - some people just have no shame.

An old and bold WO2 who taught us tin bashing at Middle Wallop used to love telling stories about his time in Sharjah. As we preferred his stories to working, we used to encourage him. Two that I remember are as follows.

The thunderboxes pits were prone to snakes and scorpions so every so often a smoke grenade would be chucked to persuade any nasties to seek shelter elsewhere. The drill was of course to check if all the traps were empty, then lob in a smoke grenade and retire. On one occasion the check to see if the traps were empty was perhaps overlooked as after the ceremonial chucking in of the smoke grenade, a cry was heard and a bod complete with blue arse and legs staggered out with trousers still round ankles and looking extremely annoyed.

When the pit was getting too full, it would be filled in (with a vent of course) and then a new pit would be dug and everything placed over it and so on. One new officer decided that to save time, they wouldn't bother with a vent as nothing seemed to happen anyway. So the new pit was dug and well in use when one day when most were (fortunately) in their tents, a large explosion was heard. The wiser or simply the lucky people stayed in their tents for a while but those who immediately ventured outside to see what had happened, received the full force of the fallout of the exploding shitpit. Pennies from heaven? Not quite.

Anybody ever had the fun of shitting in a PIG latrine.

Firat time, no every time it scare the shit out of you .

Your crimping off an AB biscuit log and you hear the snuffle of the pigs below fighting over your brown log.


Super story from the RLI of a proper dug concrete covered shitter on the banks of the Zambezi,Engineers built it and the CSMhad a duty walla to burn the flys off by using a cup of benz.

CSM goes on a patrol and the duty mong takes on the task, full Jerry can into the pit on a very , very hot day. He is not trusted with matches, so wander off to borrow some.

On his return its a benz haze but he still strikes and is blown away as the concreted slab is blown off the pits as the contents is liberated in seconds.Everybody in a 200 m circle gets their share of 6 months of shite and piss.

On basic training we headed up to Sheringham. The camp was already in place and the toilet facilities were just about hidden from view but obviously anybody sat on one was not. This was fine during the week but at the weekend the place was totally different as you sat there while somebody walked their dog or flew a kite or even rode past on a horse.

There seemed to be some sort of reluctance to answer a simple 'Good morning' just because you were sat there taking a dump at the time.

1st gulf, Troop location somewhere in the middle of the desert of sunny Saudi. Our sh!t pit consisted of a rectangular box, 12 ft long 2 ft wide and 3 ft tall with 4 holes in it, a bog seat attached to each hole. No screen between each throne but they did have the decency to put a screen of hessian around the actual box. You know you are in pretty desperate times at 6 in the morning as the sun has just come up and you've had your first coffee of the day and you are sat next to your Tp Commander, troop staffy and section full screw having a dump and your troop staffy asking you to pass the paperwork...

Thank you gents for bringing tears of laughter to my eyes on a boring Monday.

My experience was a bit of al-fresco action in Telic one. We were in a forward location with little in the way of ammenities. Moved forward of our location, had a quick look about and dug away until required depth was met.
Was squatted down and emptying out a day or 2's worth of MRE's when my gaze alighted upon an unusual looking rock. Fortunetly I had been issued a combat engineers (I am not) mine/sub-munition recognition guide. The 'rock' turned out to have a seismic trigger and tripwires.
At least I was in the right position for finding out this information. I gently crimped it off and crept away to inform the ATO.
The bit that put a smile on my face was reporting it to HQ - "what were you doing when you found the device".

Originally Posted by Ryder02

Thank you gents for bringing tears of laughter to my eyes on a boring Monday.

My experience was a bit of al-fresco action in Telic one. We were in a forward location with little in the way of ammenities. Moved forward of our location, had a quick look about and dug away until required depth was met.
Was squatted down and emptying out a day or 2's worth of MRE's when my gaze alighted upon an unusual looking rock. Fortunetly I had been issued a combat engineers (I am not) mine/sub-munition recognition guide. The 'rock' turned out to have a seismic trigger and tripwires.
At least I was in the right position for finding out this information. I gently crimped it off and crept away to inform the ATO.
The bit that put a smile on my face was reporting it to HQ - "what were you doing when you found the device".

Reminds me of a job we were called to on Herrick!! One very lucky Afghan policeman, one not so lucky ATO! Haha!!

Originally Posted by davyskuller

Edited to add: I miss the flies buzzing round my gink-hole :( ( I would guess its akin to having a gerbil/hamster run around your ring piece. I'm sure Jarrod or Wedge could inform me)

:D This just reminded me of one of the American EOD lads who I worked with in Bosnia with UXB Int; a Top geezer, we were down on the Croatian Coast downing a few Karlevacko Pivo's (Large Cold Beers) when he came out with a comment that had us in tears of laughter.

"One of the best feelings you can have for the 'Old Pork Sausage' is to have a bath and to 'test and adjust' the water until your helmet is just breaking the surface of the bath water. Then with your Blue Peter Fly (a fly you have prepared earlier with both wings removed), place said 'wingless' fly on Bell-End Island, apparently the poor little fella scurries around and around the Island trying to find a way off, according to my American pal the feeling is one not to be missed

We all put it down to his two tours of Vietnam


(he was a U.S. Navy Clearance Diver)

Originally Posted by Gundulph

Originally Posted by davyskuller

Edited to add: I miss the flies buzzing round my gink-hole :( ( I would guess its akin to having a gerbil/hamster run around your ring piece. I'm sure Jarrod or Wedge could inform me)

:D This just reminded me of one of the American EOD lads who I worked with in Bosnia with UXB Int; a Top geezer, we were down on the Croatian Coast downing a few Karlevacko Pivo's (Large Cold Beers) when he came with a comment that had us in tears of laughter.

"One of the best feelings you can have for the 'Old Pork Sausage' is to have a bath and to 'test and adjust' the water until your helmet is just breaking the surface of the bath water. Then with your Blue Peter Fly (a fly you have prepared earlier with both wings removed), place said 'wingless' fly on Bell-End Island, apparently the poor little fella scurries around and around the Island trying to find a way off, according to my American pal the feeling is one not to be missed

We all put it down to his two tours of Vietnam

YOU WEREN'T THERE MAN! :D

Originally Posted by HE117

Even tactical sh1tting had to be taught and the skills maintained."

Ah - indeed. "Survive to Fight". A veritable goldmine of scatalogical best procedures. Including, IIRC, how to drop your charcoal lined, NBC trousers in a post-apocalyptic Arctic without either absorbing enough radiation to kill you or having a fallout addled Polar bear bite your arrse off.

Having said that, few things can be as soul destroying as trying out a one piece, boiler suit style Noddy suit and inadvertently dumping into the hood. There's not enough shampoo in the world to erase the memory of what happened on pulling the hood back up onto ones head.

The nearest I ever came to a tactical sh1t was using one of those Asian 'squat' contraptions during my service in the far flung reaches of the Empire.

Originally Posted by Ancient_Mariner

... shampoo...

:D :D :D

Why have a sham when you've got the real stuff

Op Fingal - Kabul 2002. I was doing a groundworks in a light wheeled tractor at B Coy 1 Royal Anglian location when their CQMS came up to me. He knew me as he was the Sgt who recruited me. He said "right Mr Engineer, we've got a problem with one of our DTL's. It's full! Any suggestions?" I was amazed as I didn't think it was possible to fill a 5m deep hole with sh1t in the space of a couple of months. We went over to see what was happening. It turns out our carpenters had made the seats and frame for the DTL and had dropped it off at the Coy location. Unfortuantly the blokes had cracked on and started sh1ting in it straight away before the trench had been dug! Needless to say the frame filled up pretty quickly; it was rats. There was a lovely pyramid of turds which nearly reached up to your hoop it was that full. I felt sorry for one bloke who had D & V and was having to stick his head in there. The CQMS asked "so what can we do?" "Burn it" was the immediate reply suprising enough!

P.S Davy Skuller; that post has to be the funniest thing I read on ARRSE for a long time.

Originally Posted by plant_life

Op Fingal - Kabul 2002. I was doing a groundworks in a light wheeled tractor at B Coy 1 Royal Anglian location when their CQMS came up to me. He knew me as he was the Sgt who recruited me. He said "right Mr Engineer, we've got a problem with one of our DTL's. It's full! Any suggestions?" I was amazed as I didn't think it was possible to fill a 5m deep hole with sh1t in the space of a couple of months. We went over to see what was happening. It turns out our carpenters had made the seats and frame for the DTL and had dropped it off at the Coy location. Unfortuantly the blokes had cracked on and started sh1ting in it straight away before the trench had been dug! Needless to say the frame filled up pretty quickly; it was rats. There was a lovely pyramid of turds which nearly reached up to your hoop it was that full. I felt sorry for one bloke who had D & V and was having to stick his head in there. The CQMS asked "so what can we do?" "Burn it" was the immediate reply suprising enough!

P.S Davy Skuller; that post has to be the funniest thing I read on ARRSE for a long time.

Cheers mate, not quite up to the word-smithery of some of the old and bold but think it gets the message accross! :D

I had heard stories about a Sapper throwing himself around a porta loo or DLT in mid summer on Herrick 8 whilst wearing Softie and Osprey! Now that would be a proper man test; good weight loss programme as well.

That is hardcore!! Would leave one very sweaty Sapper!