Today's award goes to two over-enthusiastic Army junior officers in England.
Two young Army officers set fire to a mess during a boozy dinner after they tempted to settle a disagreement by shooting flares at each other.
A room and corridor in the officers’ mess at Allenby Barracks in Bovington, Dorset, were gutted by fire after the incident at a “fathers and sons” dinner to celebrate the end of a training course.
Flares were fired after the unnamed officers decided to settle an argument by taking a kayak into the swimming pool outside and firing at each other on Friday night, Forces News reported.
. . .
The incident happened during a dinner to celebrate the end of a three-month course for young tank troop commanders of the Royal Armoured Corps officers who had recently graduated from Sandhurst.
One of the flares, which were not military ammunition, was fired through a window in a seven story block and managed to set the room alight.
When personnel tried to put out the fire, sources said the base’s fire hoses had been shut off due to fears over Legionnaires disease following an outbreak on the base in January.
The whole block was left empty for the weekend until the fire alarms could be reset.
Army sources suggested the incident was being viewed as “high jinx rather than criminal damage”.
One former officer told the Telegraph: “They wouldn’t be the first to fire flares at each other at the ‘Bovvy Hilton’. This sort of thing used to happen all the time in my day.”
There's more at the link.
It sounds as if not much has changed since my younger days in the military . . . and the incident confirms yet again that armies (and young men in uniform) are much the same all over the world!
Peter
Lord Mongo was definitely present.
ReplyDeleteSeemed like a good idea at the time....
ReplyDelete6 months without working hoses? The kids might not be criminal, but I wouldn't be so sure _someone_ wasn't.
ReplyDeleteTake care.
Young and stupid + Anglosphere. Some other idiots probably did it and came away fine. I met up with some Tars off a County Class destroyer that had pulled into Naples where I was homeported at the time. I went aboard and met the Quartermasters, and some of the guys came over to the Servicemen's Christian center where we sat around and compared notes. While a QM's job was a bit different in the Royal Navy, shipboard life was pretty much the same.
ReplyDeleteOn a bulletin board they had a picture from Penthouse mag with a caption that said, "If your chest doesn't look like this, keep it buttoned." Seems the Ossifers had the same problems in the RN we had in the USN. :-)
Fire hoses shut off for months in fear of Legionnaire's disease? There's your doofus - the guy who approved that!
ReplyDelete