Military history shows us that no matter where you come from, strict discipline, training, and dedication, combined with some innovation and ingenuity, can do amazing things. But along with that comes a long list of rituals, beliefs, and superstitions that sometimes make sense, and sometimes are completely baffling to outsiders, and sometimes even to their own. Take, for example, these more unusual examples of things that have been considered unlucky by the military at one time or another.
10. Apricots
The military has a long history of nutritional problems. Soldiers in the field need to be fed, and that’s not always easy. Many of the ways to ensure that this happens have been hit-and-miss at best. Check out some MRE reviews to see just how bad the food can sometimes be. But there are unexpected nutritional problems in the military, and one of the strangest involves apricots. Marines in particular found the dried fruit to be a real bummer.
As early as 1968, a correlation had formed in the minds of the Marines of the First Airborne Tractor Battalion. Every time someone ate apricots, they were hit enemy artillery The answer, apparently, was clear: the apricots had provoked the enemy attack.
Legend has it that the bad luck began during World War II, when many destroyed vehicles were found to be carrying one general cargo - Apricots. By the time Vietnam broke out, Marines didn't want to be around anyone who ate apricots, lest they themselves become targets. Apparently it got to the point where if a fellow Marine caught you eating an apricot in the communal tent, you'd be kicked out until the apricots were gone.
Even today, apricots are blamed for car breakdowns in the Persian Gulf. The military stopped including them in MREs in 1995.
9. The charm of candy
Apricots aren't alone in their cursed presence in MREs. The dreaded Charms candy was another item that made soldiers wary to the point that the military had to stop issuing them in MREs, too.
The little squares of candy were basically just sugar with fruit flavors, but no Marine would eat them. Stories tell of new Marines being kicked right out of their hands if they tried to eat them. The reason was simple – Charm was a failure, and everyone knew it.
Charms can do anything from roadside bombing before a mortar shell hit your position. All a Marine had to do was open the bag to bring the terror. Different flavors had different effects. Lime would bring rain. Lemon would ruin your car. Raspberry? This would kill someone .
How did the Marines overcome the danger of Char? They simply threw them away. Soon, the Marines' superstitions migrated into the Army, and drill instructors directly encouraged soldiers to throw them away. unopened candies on the battlefield. By 2007, the Department of Defense stopped including them in MREs because they were such a problem.
8. Clean coffee mugs
Many service members enjoy a strong cup of coffee in the morning, and the Navy is no exception. What’s different is how coffee cups are handled in the Navy. If you want to fit in, you don’t wash your mug. Ever. The nastier and more ugly your coffee mug, the better. This habit has become so ingrained that sailors keep theirs at home, and rumor has it that spouses and partners are surprisingly unimpressed with the results.
The idea is that a well-aged coffee mug, i.e. one that is stained with dark, night-like spots, shows height and seniority . This means it's seen a hell of a lot of cups in its time, and it means you, as the owner of the cup, have been around the block yourself. It's also rumored to somehow improve the taste of the coffee.
A dirty face becomes a source of pride and, perhaps, makes an impression on others . Think of it as having the biggest scar or the grossest wound. It's a weird way to compete and show off your skills, even if it's a little gross.
7. Air Force Wings
In the Air Force, when you graduate from pilot training, you are given wings. Although the badge you receive to commemorate your graduation seems like something you are actually supposed to use and wear, the opposite is true. According to Air Force tradition, it is bad luck.
Instead, you need straightaway break these wings and give half to someone important to you. The two halves of the wings should only come back together after the pilot's death This tradition is actually older than the Air Force itself, dating back to the Army Air Corps, and is a generally accepted formal behavior that every pilot should engage in.
6. Lucky cigarettes
Have you ever heard of a lucky cigarette? In the military, this tradition is as old as cigarettes themselves. The idea is that when you open a new pack of cigarettes, you turn one cigarette upside down and put it back in the pack. That's the lucky one. You don't smoke the lucky one until the very end of the pack.
The exact origins of the tradition are shrouded in mystery, but there have been some guesses. First, the tradition dates back to World War II, when soldiers were given Lucky Strike cigarettes. In this version, every cigarette but one is turned over so that Lucky Strike stamp was on top. Since cigarettes were unfiltered back then, you could smoke from either end. If you turn the cigarette upside down, you quickly burn the Lucky Strike logo, so if you later drop the cigarette, the brand will disappear and the enemy will not know what country you came from smoker If you managed to survive until the end of the pack, you smoked the last unturned pack, proving that you were lucky.
In the Vietnamese version of the story, the soldiers throw away just one cigarette. They were filtered back then, so in that context, the one that flipped over made more sense, but again, the idea was that you were lucky if you lived long enough to get to it.
5. Sniper takes pig teeth from enemy snipers
In the world of snipers there are PIGS and GODS A PIG is a professionally trained marksman, meaning the sniper has learned how to use their rifle. But a PIG becomes an official HOG when they kill an enemy sniper and are now a Marksman Hunter.
When a Marine sniper completes sniper training, he is given pig tooth . It's a 7.62 caliber round on a nylon cord. But technically it's not a real pig's tooth. A real Hog's Tooth is a round from your enemy's gun, removed after you've killed him.
Part of the knowledge about Boar's Tooth says that every sniper in the world is destined to be killed by another sniper someday. But if you can get a hold of your sniper and take that bullet, your bullet, it will become your Boar's Tooth and prove that you have cheated death and are essentially invincible. And at least when facing another sniper at the moment, that's true. If you're fighting another sniper, chances are only one of you will survive.
Considering that you not only have to find the sniper, fight him, defeat him, sneak up to his position, and then take the bullet for his gun, getting a real Boar's Tooth is a hell of a task. But once you have it, you're the luckiest person in the world. Not getting it would be a big failure, since it means the bullet with your name on it is still there.
4. Light three cigarettes from one match.
The saying "three on a match" isn't the most well-known in the world, but you may have come across it before. The superposition states that lighting three different cigarettes with one match is bad luck. Potential origin — World War I, and it was a warning against snipers. The idea was that if you were hiding in a trench or something at night and you lit your match, the enemy sniper would see it light the first cigarette, aim at the second one, and shoot the third one.
Superstition seems to have returned in the USA and spread among smokers who didn't really understand why it could fail. It also only worked when people used matches, so it has died out considerably in modern times due to the decline of both smoking and matches to light them.
Another theory suggests that the idea of invoking the Holy Trinity for a heartless and unimportant act makes it unlucky, as anything done by three people can be considered disrespectful and can open them up to evil.
3. Even pronouncing the names of ham and lima beans was not a success
You can find many places on the internet that will appreciate the taste MREs. Some of them seem surprisingly good, while many are food-grade atrocities. However, many of them have to deal with modern MREs and will never know the scourge of the old MREs that our grandfathers had to endure in Korea and before.
One dish that has become infamous and dates back to World War II, though it seems to have survived into Vietnam, is ham and lima beans. This dish was so bad that soldiers refused to even use the correct name for it, fearing it would bring bad luck. Instead, they gave it a new name that should not be uttered in polite company. Ham and M-F'ers would be one sanitary way of calling it.
According to James Mosel , a U.S. Marine who served in Vietnam, they were also known as beans and balls, beans and dick, chopped eggs and ham, and no one ate them.
2. Military eggs will reduce your libido
As we have seen, soldiers can be a bit picky about what they eat. One of the oldest and most widespread food rumors concerns eggs. As the story goes, the military spiked the soldiers' breakfast with saltpeter to lower everyone's sex drive. The rumor allegedly began in the navy in colonial times.
The rumor has survived for so long due to the fact that there is anecdotal evidence to back it up. Men sign up, all virile and full of life, and then, as the weeks of training go by, they find their energy levels have dropped and their libido fell off a cliff . So the idea that it's something outside of them, some kind of chemical sabotage, seems reasonable, even if the truth is that they're just exhausted.
Ironically, saltpeter doesn't actually reduce sex drive, but the military doesn't hide it in food anyway, so there's nothing to worry about.
1. It is a bad omen to sheathe a combat knife before it has drawn blood.
Have you ever come across a piece of knowledge that is simply known to everyone in a certain group? This seems to be the case with one of the most widespread superstitions in the history of warfare, which also has the curious feature of being completely untrue in the sense that everyone must agree that it is impossible to follow. It applies not only to the military, but to anyone who might use a blade in combat, and it states that if you draw a blade, you cannot sheathe it until it has sheathed blood .
At first glance, it is something very militant. It even appears in fiction dedicated to alien races . And that can never be true, because people need to clean their blades or otherwise maintain them all the time when there are no enemies around, so it's silly to think that you're going to stab someone every time you draw a blade. So to speak, everywhere. You can find about 3 million views , if you google it.
The myth seems to be specifically aimed at combat knives , but it is by no means exclusive to the US military. Hopefully no one actually practices this, but it seems like most people know it.
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