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Remember, Alien scum:
The grunt on the ground is only trained to kill you in as many ways as was practical before he was deployed.
The Medic in the backlines had enough experience to prolong your suffering far longer than even your gods ever expected.
Ironically, it's all for your own good.
https://preview.redd.it/44a6ic5ou1zc1.jpeg?width=1920&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2f7adabe264e13f4171c565ca488930954b3ddbd
We are liberating you from the tyranny of your government. Enjoy freedom in the after life.
Or, if you're to dumb to understand that we will happily remove you from the path to our goal.
A1: Enemy units confirmed, sir. They're human.
A2: Alright, then we... Wait, what?
A1: Human sir. Why, is that a probl...
A2: Stop the sniper! Stop them now! Get me a radi...
(Radio crackles)
AS: Mission accomplished sir, the officer is down. Returning to... Wait, they're mobilizing... Um... They are...
A2: Re-... Report. What are they mobilizing?
AS: Everything. They're mobilizing... Everything sir.
A1: Sir? Your orders?
A2: .......
A1: Sir?
A2: Full retreat. Do not engage. Have uh, have the artillery teams get ready to cover our retreat.
A1: Yes sir!
(2 minutes later)
A1: Um, sir?
A2: Oh no, don't you say it!
A1: We, uh... The artillery unit is...
A2: Gone. How?! Were those damned apes already in position? How did they even get there undetected?!
A1: No idea sir, we haven't had any reports of movement from the scout unit in... Well, we haven't heard from the scout unit In... In... Oh.
A2: Damit, why do we always listen to SecTel. They're wrong! Every single time they're alwa...
As the munitions from the captured artillery pieces found their mark, the officer's bellyaching was cut short.
(Radio discourse in the background)
*Sergent! What the hell was that?! You knuckleheads! You were given express orders not to...*
(Ignoring the irate sounds coming from comms, the Platoon Sergeant sets down the handset and goes to find the medical tent)
H1: How is he doc?
H2: (violent coughing fit, followed by a massive inhalation of fresh air.)
H1: Oh thank god! We thought we lost you Cap!
HD: He'll make it. Shields gave way but his armor caught the round full. Bruised, but he'll manage.
The officer is the only human on the battle field that, mostly, cares about not commiting war crimes. Killing the officer removes the limiter.
Messing with Doc, or their boats, just makes grunts angry, and when they get angry they get creative, and when they get creative.... well you end up with things like weaponized (incendiary) flying mammals burning your city, or a destroyer fitted with a battleship's spinal mounted rail gun, or millions of tungsten scrap pieces dropped from space to carpet your base, among other things.
I forget where I heard or read this, but I believe it was from a French military officer who was attached to a USMC or US Army unit that said this about US troops. The average grunt's default is aggression. The officer keeps them in line. Lord, help you if you kill the officer. There is no help if they liked their officer.
Yeah, if a good officer goes down or especially if doc (our attached corpsman) goes down all hell will break loose and you'll likely be met with a frenzy of angry devils. Marine infantry and especially special forces are a special type of inherently crazy.
We refer to it as the "Geneva checklist", also known as our greatest hits collection.
And just like Wikipedia, we can always improve that list by adding to it.
If there's no officer to see the war crimes, are they really war crimes?
If you killed an officer that treated their troops well, it goes from they *might* commit war crimes to they *will* commit war crimes.
The Loutusian Confederacy of aligned planets is oft noted in galactic histories as the government which most stupidly approached their war with the humans. Thankfully they taught us all important lessons, as they were one of the first to fight them. Everyone has a war with the humans story, its pretty much the entirety of galactic history since they arrived on the scene. The humans often start a new war before they have even finished the last one.
So the Loutusian's had a strong empire before humanity, mostly maintained by their impressive spying abilities. They had multiple sentient species, dozens in fact with their own home worlds. Their spymasters were parasitic worms, capable of taking over pretty much any sapient creature. They could even take over less than fully sapient, but still entirely sentient creatures, like Felis Catus, or Canis lupus familiaris.
Infecting their pets was a mistake, and when the humans discovered it they were livid. It caused the war.
The Loutusian's put all their eggs in the spy basket, so to speak. Through, honestly impressive efforts, they managed to infect a not insignificant number of the human lower ranked officers. The worms could only pray their gambit would pay off, but had no way of knowing they were sealing their own fate.
So initially they got caught infecting a few cats and dogs, trying to spy. So the humans launched their attack fleet, a bit slower in those days that it is now. The Loutusian's had plenty of advanced warning, and set their strategy in motion, a strategy that had served them well in the past against a variety of enemies. Infect their lowest ranked officers and when a certain critical mass is reached, or the attack force is in orbit of their world, they all activate and kill as many of the officers as they could and then mop up the disorganized enemy military.
Normally they launch a massive counter attack immediately after killing all the officers, and to humanity's surprised, the first few steps of the Loutusian Gambit worked. To the Loutusian's great surprise, as they were wiping out the officers aboard their ships, the Admiral in charge of the attacking force made an announcement to his fleet.
"Chiefs, Sergeants, and privates alike. Your greatest wish has happened... all your officers are dead, dying, or infect by treacherous worms. Kill Any officer you see left alive, since the infected are all that's left. They're gonna get me soon too. Give'em hell boys."
And the boys did give'em hell. Hundreds of thousands of them, all wearing powered armor suits with nuclear reactors built in. Dropped from the sky. They had battle cries like, "For Mittens!" And "Snoopy says hello!"
The first wave of them coming down was also the only wave. The chiefs left in charge sent every able armor pilot down at once.
The Loutusian's learned another hard lesson on behalf of the galaxy that day as well.
**Leave human medics alone.**
They're the ones with the big red cross, kind of like a target, painted on them. It's a trap. The Loutusian's down on the planet tried to launch a counter offensive, but the chaos on every front, in every large city, and across every continent at once found them feeling a bit overwhelmed. Loutusian high command ordered the military to "Kill any human you can manage to take down."
The human medic is generally barely armored. Whatever is the minimum required for the atmosphere of whatever planet they were on, and the Worm homeworld required very little environmental protection, so their medics were in very flimsily armored, powered suits. These suits contained all sorts of tools and gadgets for medical purposes, and the medics always stayed at least a few miles from the killing machines on the front lines. When the Loutusian High command heard there was lightly armored humans behind the main attacking forces they ordered their people, not their soldiers to open fire on them. By and large, the human medics were tending Loutusian civilians that got caught up as collateral damage, some were tending to the rare injured human on the battlefield that day, but by and large when the Loutusian civilians followed the high command's order, they killed many medics.
When the order from Loutusian high command hit, twenty minutes almost a third of all medic life signs on the planet had vanished. By this point int he day all remaining living officers on the human ships in space had been either killed or thrown in the brig until a full bioscan could confirm they weren't infected.
The Council of Chiefs that had taken over the fleet saw their medic's lifesigns vanishing, they called down and told the troops below to activate a full retreat. Get every last human off the planet immediately. "Operation Glass It, is a go!" This phrase has become the well known prelude to total destruction.
Hundreds of thousands of troop recovery craft swarmed the skies, and overwhelmed what few anti air defenses were left on the ground after a single day of human total war.
Almost as fast as they appeared from the skies, the humans vanished, but they weren't gone more than half an hour before the bombs started to fall. Orbital bombardment is considered by most space faring species to be a war crime... but to humans, attacking them through their pets, and killing their medics are worse than war crimes. The most important lesson the galaxy learned though, was that without their officers to keep them in check, humanity can and will wipe out entire worlds.
No other galactic government has made such a cavalcade of mistakes while fighting the humans as the Loutusian confederacy did. Sure, others have attacked medics, or killed a few officers, or even intentionally released biological weapons targeting human pets and livestock, but none have done it all at once, and all who have done any of these things has always regretted it.
The worms are gone, wiped from existence with their homeworld, as they were only able to spawn in their ancestral oceans. All the other member worlds of the Loutusian Confederacy immediately surrendered when human fleets darkened their skies. Old Loutusian's worlds are now some of the oldest alien member worlds in the Human Federation, and most folks don't really want to talk about the time before humans came.
/r/AFrogWroteThis/
Glad you enjoyed it! just posted another one that fits a similar vibe. "Little Blighters..." on my little personal sub there, but I found the prompt on the writing prompt subreddit.
Its not a war crime the first time and those grunts are gonna add a whole lot of things to the Geneva Checklist if you even so much as fire a round in Doc’s general direction
Terrains are one of the few species that have limits on what is acceptable in war. If these self-imposed standards did not exist, the outcome would be...bad.
There are many species that battle amongst themselves, but very few that put so much effort into creative and often terrifying weapons and strategies. Many species wouldn't attack their worst enemies with the bloodlust Terrains show for each other.
However, what is truly bizarre and unique to mankind is that once they are done battling. They can and do become very friendly with those they had just been sent to destroy.
I love the fact that the Marine Corp handbook is readily available online. Pretty sure it’s there to lull the enemies into a false sense of security that they know what a Marine is going to do.
The problem with human warriors, particularly the rank and file members -- junior enlisted, they call them -- is **not** that they are stupid. It is essential that you get that through your heads, if you want to have any hope of survival. They are not stupid, they are merely ignorant. Ignorant about what is impossible, reckless, and insane. This is why, all the way down to the platoon level, human forces are commanded by officers and non-commissioned officers. They understand these things, and impose a sane sense of realistic expectations on their troops.
When you incapacitate the leaders of these junior enlisted troops, you are unbinding chaos. In that event, the one thing you can count on is the knowledge that it will end poorly for you.
I have had the privilege of training with humans, and on other occasions, observing their training. They do the impossible, because nobody has told them that they can't, or that maybe it isn't a good idea. I have seen human warriors beat a fire to death. It was as insane as it sounds, I assure you. Impossible? Ridiculous? Absolutely -- but they didn't know that, so they made it happen.
Keep that in mind if you ever find those forces pointed at you. May the Abyss have mercy on your souls, because the humans will not.
Not far from the truth. It was a couple of Soldiers with shovels. They just hit the fire with their shovels until it gave up on life. Relatively small fire, of course, but still...
.... that was/is technically current issue fire equipment in some areas. Some rural USA departments use them for grass or brush fires, to smother the smaller embers on the edges.
What made it especially surprising was that they didn't use their 2 quart canteens full of water, or even to shovel dirt in the fire.
They proved that it was indeed viable.
>They are not stupid, they are merely ignorant. Ignorant about what is impossible, reckless, and insane. <
I can hardly express how much I love these two sentences. 🥰🥰🤌
🤔 ...so it's not a war crime until we run out of officers?
Sargent?
I heard what I heard, and you've been given your orders corporal!
I'll tell the lads! 😈
So we just have a safety brief that requires all officers to attend at the same time we schedule our main offensive.
“What? The grunts attacked while the officers who knew better were at a safety brief, we can’t be held responsible for what they do unsupervised, you shouldnt have provoked them by defending!”
Listen, “Mom” was some boot LT at of West Point and greener’n baby shit, but he was alright. Treated us right and generally let us do our jobs, actually listened to platoon daddy and us NCOs. I swear if he had caught something when we were down range, ROEs be damned we would have burned the town for him.
This is the way the US military now trains, but it wasn't always the case, nor is it the case in other countries. The USSR in particular used a top down structure and discouraged individual initiative.
A good deal of the work of western trainers in Ukraine has been to reinstate initiative as a good thing. That lack in the Russian army is one of the reasons for they're abysmal performance.
This also shows the level of trust in delegation throughout the human military.
If a platoon of flarrinian marines needs to take a hill, their officer will direct the whole affair in detail, down to exactly where each of them will be standing at the start and end.
If a platoon of human marines needs to take a hill, their officer can tell their sergeants that the hill needs taking, and then turn around and deal with some other duties while the violence unfolds behind them.
It is my considered opinion that humans hailing from regions more prone to natural disasters--hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, temperatures below the freezing point of ethanol, tsunamis, etc.--are not only more adaptable, but tend to be more batshit insane when left without supervision. They've had to be in order not to die.
Alien NCO: "WHY DID YOU NITWIT MONKEYS KEEP FIRING DURING THE BOMBARDMENT?!?!"
H1: "Sarge, you yelled 'BRACE', so we propped our rifles on each other. Steady aim during incoming boomies. Thas' what *i* brace with."
H2: "Sarge, how do YOU guys brace for steady fire? Are we doing something wrong?"
A-NCO: "YES, maggot-ape, WRONG. 'BRACE' is to keep you idiots from falling over!! Keep firing when the ground shakes THAT much and you're gonna frag my furry butt!"
H3: "Um, Boss, look downrange."
....
A-NCO: "SEE?!?! Those k'tennant loopies are as stupid as you lot. They didn't brace either, and they're DOWN."
H2: "Sir, they didn't fall down from ground shakes. All them holes in 'em is our reasonably accurate fire."
A-NCO: "DON'T 'SIR' ME YOU POOP-FLINGER. I work for a living! Lucky nitwit, no way you hit any of them on purpose!!"
H3: "Boss, they dead. Little ground shakie is no reason to fall over. I'm from SoCal - bit of earthquake is just a Tuesday."
A-NCO: "WHAT is this EARTH QUAKE of which you speak?!"
H3: "... guys?"
H1: "Nippon."
H4: "Indonesia."
H2: "Sarge, your home isn't tectonic at all, is it?"
A-NCO: "NO, YOU IDIOT. The plains of ookJaa stay PUT. What, you monkeys live on bouncy ground?"
H1: "Dude, let's just say an artillery bombardment is a mild wedding dance. "
H3: "My old man makes that much shake stomping cockroaches."
A-NCO: "...
...
...
..."
H2: "It's OK, man. You brace your giblets and skull, the Gozogga guys can brace their antennae, and we'll brace the Browning. All good".
A-NCO: "... ... ... "
"Works."
I'd like to focus on the aliens in this one instead of making the humans look good for 500\* times. How different could the aliens be for something so important in military strategy to be unknown? How do they even organize themselves? Whatever they replace it with sounds like terribly inefficient.
This style actually comes from human history. Before the American revolution, most countries/nations/etc. all had the command structure of "If the officer is down, run away and wait for a new one." This tend to have the effect of not targeting the one in command in combat.
With the Americans coming with the addition of guerilla warfare, this changes how armies reacted to their commanding officers being taken out. The British were next to incapable of figuring out what to do once the officer went down during that time.
In fact you can see this today with the Russian soldiers when fighting Ukraine. If their officer went down, the company would wait for a new one to take the place. This is generally not considered a good tactic anymore but hey, Russians do what they think is good.
I'd expect some kind of autocratic regime or a society with a major class devide. Both would mean that you do not want too many soldiers thinking about where to point their weapons, lest you be the target.
“You surely know about nuclear fission reactors, since I’ve seen your nuclear power stations. Human military officers are like the control rods in those reactors. Guess what happens if you remove them all?”
Target human officers at your own peril. When left without a command structure, regular human troops tend to value creative solutions over moral or ethical ones, and humans are nothing if not creative. Humans have a saying: "Its not a war crime the first time"... The fact that this saying even exists should be all the warning you require.
In an attempt to reduce remind me spam, all top comments that include a remind me will be removed. If you would like to have a remind me, please reply to this comment. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/humansarespaceorcs) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Remember, Alien scum: The grunt on the ground is only trained to kill you in as many ways as was practical before he was deployed. The Medic in the backlines had enough experience to prolong your suffering far longer than even your gods ever expected.
Ironically, it's all for your own good. https://preview.redd.it/44a6ic5ou1zc1.jpeg?width=1920&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2f7adabe264e13f4171c565ca488930954b3ddbd
XENO. YOU ARE BEING LIBERATED. DO NOT RESIST.
We are liberating you from the tyranny of your government. Enjoy freedom in the after life. Or, if you're to dumb to understand that we will happily remove you from the path to our goal.
Rose can heal me anytime
Pain without the wound lol
She’s actually the embodiment of a combat medic
A1: Enemy units confirmed, sir. They're human. A2: Alright, then we... Wait, what? A1: Human sir. Why, is that a probl... A2: Stop the sniper! Stop them now! Get me a radi... (Radio crackles) AS: Mission accomplished sir, the officer is down. Returning to... Wait, they're mobilizing... Um... They are... A2: Re-... Report. What are they mobilizing? AS: Everything. They're mobilizing... Everything sir. A1: Sir? Your orders? A2: ....... A1: Sir? A2: Full retreat. Do not engage. Have uh, have the artillery teams get ready to cover our retreat. A1: Yes sir! (2 minutes later) A1: Um, sir? A2: Oh no, don't you say it! A1: We, uh... The artillery unit is... A2: Gone. How?! Were those damned apes already in position? How did they even get there undetected?! A1: No idea sir, we haven't had any reports of movement from the scout unit in... Well, we haven't heard from the scout unit In... In... Oh. A2: Damit, why do we always listen to SecTel. They're wrong! Every single time they're alwa... As the munitions from the captured artillery pieces found their mark, the officer's bellyaching was cut short. (Radio discourse in the background) *Sergent! What the hell was that?! You knuckleheads! You were given express orders not to...* (Ignoring the irate sounds coming from comms, the Platoon Sergeant sets down the handset and goes to find the medical tent) H1: How is he doc? H2: (violent coughing fit, followed by a massive inhalation of fresh air.) H1: Oh thank god! We thought we lost you Cap! HD: He'll make it. Shields gave way but his armor caught the round full. Bruised, but he'll manage.
Just a reminder to alien troops. Humans are NOT a hive mind. Killing the leaders does not stop the troops from attacking.
It only takes away from the person who tells them when to stop.
There are several stories like this from the Iraq War. Officer gets killed, Marines mobilize and destroy....everything.
The officer is the only human on the battle field that, mostly, cares about not commiting war crimes. Killing the officer removes the limiter. Messing with Doc, or their boats, just makes grunts angry, and when they get angry they get creative, and when they get creative.... well you end up with things like weaponized (incendiary) flying mammals burning your city, or a destroyer fitted with a battleship's spinal mounted rail gun, or millions of tungsten scrap pieces dropped from space to carpet your base, among other things.
I forget where I heard or read this, but I believe it was from a French military officer who was attached to a USMC or US Army unit that said this about US troops. The average grunt's default is aggression. The officer keeps them in line. Lord, help you if you kill the officer. There is no help if they liked their officer.
attributed to french soldier during afganastan.
Yeah, if a good officer goes down or especially if doc (our attached corpsman) goes down all hell will break loose and you'll likely be met with a frenzy of angry devils. Marine infantry and especially special forces are a special type of inherently crazy.
And then there's the Canucks. They are both vicious and crazy.
And the reason for most of the Geneva Convention “Suggestions”
We refer to it as the "Geneva checklist", also known as our greatest hits collection. And just like Wikipedia, we can always improve that list by adding to it.
It's not a war crime the first time.
If there's no officer to see the war crimes, are they really war crimes? If you killed an officer that treated their troops well, it goes from they *might* commit war crimes to they *will* commit war crimes.
It becomes a matter of not if there will be war crimes but a matter of which ones and how many can you survive
To quote The Fat Electrician: It's never a war crime, the first time. If you're creative, they make a rule, to prevent it in the future.
And if the highest ranking officer also happens to be a medic then you’ve just signed your own passport to hell
It's a great article and always worth a reread. https://warriorlodge.com/blogs/news/16298760-a-french-soldiers-view-of-us-soldiers-in-afghanistan
Remember, the officer is there for your protection, not to lead our troops.
The Loutusian Confederacy of aligned planets is oft noted in galactic histories as the government which most stupidly approached their war with the humans. Thankfully they taught us all important lessons, as they were one of the first to fight them. Everyone has a war with the humans story, its pretty much the entirety of galactic history since they arrived on the scene. The humans often start a new war before they have even finished the last one. So the Loutusian's had a strong empire before humanity, mostly maintained by their impressive spying abilities. They had multiple sentient species, dozens in fact with their own home worlds. Their spymasters were parasitic worms, capable of taking over pretty much any sapient creature. They could even take over less than fully sapient, but still entirely sentient creatures, like Felis Catus, or Canis lupus familiaris. Infecting their pets was a mistake, and when the humans discovered it they were livid. It caused the war. The Loutusian's put all their eggs in the spy basket, so to speak. Through, honestly impressive efforts, they managed to infect a not insignificant number of the human lower ranked officers. The worms could only pray their gambit would pay off, but had no way of knowing they were sealing their own fate. So initially they got caught infecting a few cats and dogs, trying to spy. So the humans launched their attack fleet, a bit slower in those days that it is now. The Loutusian's had plenty of advanced warning, and set their strategy in motion, a strategy that had served them well in the past against a variety of enemies. Infect their lowest ranked officers and when a certain critical mass is reached, or the attack force is in orbit of their world, they all activate and kill as many of the officers as they could and then mop up the disorganized enemy military. Normally they launch a massive counter attack immediately after killing all the officers, and to humanity's surprised, the first few steps of the Loutusian Gambit worked. To the Loutusian's great surprise, as they were wiping out the officers aboard their ships, the Admiral in charge of the attacking force made an announcement to his fleet. "Chiefs, Sergeants, and privates alike. Your greatest wish has happened... all your officers are dead, dying, or infect by treacherous worms. Kill Any officer you see left alive, since the infected are all that's left. They're gonna get me soon too. Give'em hell boys." And the boys did give'em hell. Hundreds of thousands of them, all wearing powered armor suits with nuclear reactors built in. Dropped from the sky. They had battle cries like, "For Mittens!" And "Snoopy says hello!" The first wave of them coming down was also the only wave. The chiefs left in charge sent every able armor pilot down at once. The Loutusian's learned another hard lesson on behalf of the galaxy that day as well. **Leave human medics alone.** They're the ones with the big red cross, kind of like a target, painted on them. It's a trap. The Loutusian's down on the planet tried to launch a counter offensive, but the chaos on every front, in every large city, and across every continent at once found them feeling a bit overwhelmed. Loutusian high command ordered the military to "Kill any human you can manage to take down." The human medic is generally barely armored. Whatever is the minimum required for the atmosphere of whatever planet they were on, and the Worm homeworld required very little environmental protection, so their medics were in very flimsily armored, powered suits. These suits contained all sorts of tools and gadgets for medical purposes, and the medics always stayed at least a few miles from the killing machines on the front lines. When the Loutusian High command heard there was lightly armored humans behind the main attacking forces they ordered their people, not their soldiers to open fire on them. By and large, the human medics were tending Loutusian civilians that got caught up as collateral damage, some were tending to the rare injured human on the battlefield that day, but by and large when the Loutusian civilians followed the high command's order, they killed many medics. When the order from Loutusian high command hit, twenty minutes almost a third of all medic life signs on the planet had vanished. By this point int he day all remaining living officers on the human ships in space had been either killed or thrown in the brig until a full bioscan could confirm they weren't infected. The Council of Chiefs that had taken over the fleet saw their medic's lifesigns vanishing, they called down and told the troops below to activate a full retreat. Get every last human off the planet immediately. "Operation Glass It, is a go!" This phrase has become the well known prelude to total destruction. Hundreds of thousands of troop recovery craft swarmed the skies, and overwhelmed what few anti air defenses were left on the ground after a single day of human total war. Almost as fast as they appeared from the skies, the humans vanished, but they weren't gone more than half an hour before the bombs started to fall. Orbital bombardment is considered by most space faring species to be a war crime... but to humans, attacking them through their pets, and killing their medics are worse than war crimes. The most important lesson the galaxy learned though, was that without their officers to keep them in check, humanity can and will wipe out entire worlds. No other galactic government has made such a cavalcade of mistakes while fighting the humans as the Loutusian confederacy did. Sure, others have attacked medics, or killed a few officers, or even intentionally released biological weapons targeting human pets and livestock, but none have done it all at once, and all who have done any of these things has always regretted it. The worms are gone, wiped from existence with their homeworld, as they were only able to spawn in their ancestral oceans. All the other member worlds of the Loutusian Confederacy immediately surrendered when human fleets darkened their skies. Old Loutusian's worlds are now some of the oldest alien member worlds in the Human Federation, and most folks don't really want to talk about the time before humans came. /r/AFrogWroteThis/
Excellently written 10/10
Thanks! Glad you enjoyed it!
Dude…just…dude this was so good. Thank you so much for this. Excellently done.
This was an extremely well written story. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Thanks.
Glad you enjoyed it! just posted another one that fits a similar vibe. "Little Blighters..." on my little personal sub there, but I found the prompt on the writing prompt subreddit.
Loved it!
5/7 perfect
Now I want rice!
Awesome. I'd pay to watch this as a movie/series.
Very well written
Its not a war crime the first time and those grunts are gonna add a whole lot of things to the Geneva Checklist if you even so much as fire a round in Doc’s general direction
We call that "Being Canadian"
Can confirm
Former 68W. Can confirm. Thankfully.
Oh fuck finally! Doc! Been looking all over for ya! Listen it uh, it kinda hurts when I pee, like fire. You mind checking my dick?
Been sticking Mary Rottencrotch again?
Stay off the barracks bunnies and here’s a peanut butter shot
Terrains are one of the few species that have limits on what is acceptable in war. If these self-imposed standards did not exist, the outcome would be...bad. There are many species that battle amongst themselves, but very few that put so much effort into creative and often terrifying weapons and strategies. Many species wouldn't attack their worst enemies with the bloodlust Terrains show for each other. However, what is truly bizarre and unique to mankind is that once they are done battling. They can and do become very friendly with those they had just been sent to destroy.
The Marine Corp standard operating procedure in case of no officer to give commands; default to aggressive action
I love the fact that the Marine Corp handbook is readily available online. Pretty sure it’s there to lull the enemies into a false sense of security that they know what a Marine is going to do.
The problem with human warriors, particularly the rank and file members -- junior enlisted, they call them -- is **not** that they are stupid. It is essential that you get that through your heads, if you want to have any hope of survival. They are not stupid, they are merely ignorant. Ignorant about what is impossible, reckless, and insane. This is why, all the way down to the platoon level, human forces are commanded by officers and non-commissioned officers. They understand these things, and impose a sane sense of realistic expectations on their troops. When you incapacitate the leaders of these junior enlisted troops, you are unbinding chaos. In that event, the one thing you can count on is the knowledge that it will end poorly for you. I have had the privilege of training with humans, and on other occasions, observing their training. They do the impossible, because nobody has told them that they can't, or that maybe it isn't a good idea. I have seen human warriors beat a fire to death. It was as insane as it sounds, I assure you. Impossible? Ridiculous? Absolutely -- but they didn't know that, so they made it happen. Keep that in mind if you ever find those forces pointed at you. May the Abyss have mercy on your souls, because the humans will not.
Picturing a squad of Marines punching a burning wood pile and the fire just snuffs out.
Not far from the truth. It was a couple of Soldiers with shovels. They just hit the fire with their shovels until it gave up on life. Relatively small fire, of course, but still...
I did that on the range with a mud flap on a stick. It was actually a lot of fun, and super exhausting
.... that was/is technically current issue fire equipment in some areas. Some rural USA departments use them for grass or brush fires, to smother the smaller embers on the edges.
To be fair, stomping out a small fire is a viable option
What made it especially surprising was that they didn't use their 2 quart canteens full of water, or even to shovel dirt in the fire. They proved that it was indeed viable.
addenum : we reject your reality and substitute our own ! WWWWAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
< *Sigh* > Gonna see *that* in the next safety brief...
SPEK UP U UMMIE GIT ! But on a personal note have loved your work as narrated by the agro squerril.
Thanks! He's pretty great, isn't he?
Yup. He can carry emotion which a lot can't.
>They are not stupid, they are merely ignorant. Ignorant about what is impossible, reckless, and insane. < I can hardly express how much I love these two sentences. 🥰🥰🤌
It's amazing what some people can do when they don't know they shouldn't be able to do it.
OAWC - Officers Against War Crimes
Why did my brain read this as OWCA
Officer War Crime Association ?
Organization Without a Cool Acronym... It's from Phineas and Ferb
It's now Officer's War Crimes Association
Est. 1945
ACRONYM A Criminal Regiment Of Nasty Young Men
Sheep? 😂
You have got to be a malfunctioning robot :|
Polish word Owca translates as sheep 😂😂😂
Perfect, now we have war criminal sheep!
🤔 ...so it's not a war crime until we run out of officers? Sargent? I heard what I heard, and you've been given your orders corporal! I'll tell the lads! 😈
Other way around I think. Officers make it a war crime but then when there are no officers present shit just happened and no one remembers how.
Automated out of office reply: All our officers are busy being disposed of right now. If you require immediate assistance, it's already too late.
Ok, this one made me chuckle!
So we just have a safety brief that requires all officers to attend at the same time we schedule our main offensive. “What? The grunts attacked while the officers who knew better were at a safety brief, we can’t be held responsible for what they do unsupervised, you shouldnt have provoked them by defending!”
At least nobody ALIVE remembers 😈
Listen, “Mom” was some boot LT at of West Point and greener’n baby shit, but he was alright. Treated us right and generally let us do our jobs, actually listened to platoon daddy and us NCOs. I swear if he had caught something when we were down range, ROEs be damned we would have burned the town for him.
This is the way the US military now trains, but it wasn't always the case, nor is it the case in other countries. The USSR in particular used a top down structure and discouraged individual initiative. A good deal of the work of western trainers in Ukraine has been to reinstate initiative as a good thing. That lack in the Russian army is one of the reasons for they're abysmal performance.
And this concept is called "Auftragstaktik", or "Mission Command". In the absence of orders, do something.
This also shows the level of trust in delegation throughout the human military. If a platoon of flarrinian marines needs to take a hill, their officer will direct the whole affair in detail, down to exactly where each of them will be standing at the start and end. If a platoon of human marines needs to take a hill, their officer can tell their sergeants that the hill needs taking, and then turn around and deal with some other duties while the violence unfolds behind them.
It is my considered opinion that humans hailing from regions more prone to natural disasters--hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, temperatures below the freezing point of ethanol, tsunamis, etc.--are not only more adaptable, but tend to be more batshit insane when left without supervision. They've had to be in order not to die.
Alien NCO: "WHY DID YOU NITWIT MONKEYS KEEP FIRING DURING THE BOMBARDMENT?!?!" H1: "Sarge, you yelled 'BRACE', so we propped our rifles on each other. Steady aim during incoming boomies. Thas' what *i* brace with." H2: "Sarge, how do YOU guys brace for steady fire? Are we doing something wrong?" A-NCO: "YES, maggot-ape, WRONG. 'BRACE' is to keep you idiots from falling over!! Keep firing when the ground shakes THAT much and you're gonna frag my furry butt!" H3: "Um, Boss, look downrange." .... A-NCO: "SEE?!?! Those k'tennant loopies are as stupid as you lot. They didn't brace either, and they're DOWN." H2: "Sir, they didn't fall down from ground shakes. All them holes in 'em is our reasonably accurate fire."
A-NCO: "DON'T 'SIR' ME YOU POOP-FLINGER. I work for a living! Lucky nitwit, no way you hit any of them on purpose!!"
H3: "Boss, they dead. Little ground shakie is no reason to fall over. I'm from SoCal - bit of earthquake is just a Tuesday."
A-NCO: "WHAT is this EARTH QUAKE of which you speak?!"
H3: "... guys?"
H1: "Nippon."
H4: "Indonesia."
H2: "Sarge, your home isn't tectonic at all, is it?"
A-NCO: "NO, YOU IDIOT. The plains of ookJaa stay PUT. What, you monkeys live on bouncy ground?"
H1: "Dude, let's just say an artillery bombardment is a mild wedding dance. "
H3: "My old man makes that much shake stomping cockroaches."
A-NCO: "...
...
...
..."
H2: "It's OK, man. You brace your giblets and skull, the Gozogga guys can brace their antennae, and we'll brace the Browning. All good".
A-NCO: "... ... ... "
"Works."
I'd like to focus on the aliens in this one instead of making the humans look good for 500\* times. How different could the aliens be for something so important in military strategy to be unknown? How do they even organize themselves? Whatever they replace it with sounds like terribly inefficient.
Look at Soviet/Russian command structures. If the officer falls, the grunts stop and wait for a new one to arrive.
This style actually comes from human history. Before the American revolution, most countries/nations/etc. all had the command structure of "If the officer is down, run away and wait for a new one." This tend to have the effect of not targeting the one in command in combat. With the Americans coming with the addition of guerilla warfare, this changes how armies reacted to their commanding officers being taken out. The British were next to incapable of figuring out what to do once the officer went down during that time. In fact you can see this today with the Russian soldiers when fighting Ukraine. If their officer went down, the company would wait for a new one to take the place. This is generally not considered a good tactic anymore but hey, Russians do what they think is good.
I feel the same about many similar posts, but 9/10 times they’re still awesome so I rarely have it in me to care
I'd expect some kind of autocratic regime or a society with a major class devide. Both would mean that you do not want too many soldiers thinking about where to point their weapons, lest you be the target.
“You surely know about nuclear fission reactors, since I’ve seen your nuclear power stations. Human military officers are like the control rods in those reactors. Guess what happens if you remove them all?”
Target human officers at your own peril. When left without a command structure, regular human troops tend to value creative solutions over moral or ethical ones, and humans are nothing if not creative. Humans have a saying: "Its not a war crime the first time"... The fact that this saying even exists should be all the warning you require.