[Laughter] [Music] when I enlisted in the Marine Corps it took me a while to get used to being in the military because some of the most mundane things that we did as part of the job well initially they seemed very strange to me one of those things was the idea of going to the field my first thought was that we were literally going to an actual field just setting up tents in an open grassy area and living outside for a few days but since there would be work involved it would be like camping with extra steps I guess that's not exactly wrong but we never had tents being Recon we spent the entire time doing patrols and just roughing it out in the jungle like mowgly and even if we did sleep in tents at times most people would pick nice safe dry spots to set up their tents when they go camping right the military doesn't do that well maybe the air force uh does because well they go camping at the Hilton but when I reached my first Duty station in Hawaii going to the field meant packing up a week's worth of food water fuel batteries our rifles all of our personal gear radios and so on and then we would drive in military vehicles in Convoy Fashion on the highway or hop on a helicopter and go from our base to one of several military training installations on the island most of which were covered in thick jungle going to the field therefore means something different depending on where any given unit is located in the world for instance Hawaii was often windy rainy and miserable at night but besides the centipedes there wasn't much animal life out there in the jungle that would bother you and and they do bite and they're very painful but other than that there wasn't really much out there going to the field on Camp Pendleton in California meant you might run into a rattlesnake or two uh and probably stick yourself with a few cacti when you're walking around out in the desert at night but the following two stories one from a marine conducting training in the mountains of Northern California and the other from a national Guardsman training in the Wisconsin Mountains east of the Mississippi River well I'm not sure I have any idea what they encountered especially as they indicate if it wasn't human this is the smoke pit and these are true stories submitted by fellow service members stories about encounters that they had with something that is collectively known as a pale crawler a [Music] rake Marine Corps Mountain Warfare training center Bridgeport California this story was emailed to me earlier this year by a young Marine whose name I have chosen to keep Anonymous mostly because he is still active duty and I don't want his command or anyone else to catch wind of this and berate him for sharing this bizarre story and associating his command with it or to otherwise draw any unwanted attention on him publicly he writes my name is corporal Oscar with the United States Marine Corps and I have a story I'd like to share with you from our platoon time in Bridgeport for Mountain training exercise a couple years ago from September to October our platoon Alpha 2 of first CB combat Engineer Battalion went to Bridgeport for a joint exercise with our Victor unit 21 before we got there we were briefed back on Camp Pendleton about things like high altitude pulmonary anemia and how the oxygen difference with the altitude could cause hallucinations we also heard other strange stories about the training area such as people sometimes waking up right as marine animal Packers Marines patrolling with horses and donkeys would unexpectedly walk through the middle of the patrol bases at night uh because the animal Packers course used the same training area anyway when we got to bridgeport's lower base camp we were given 2 days to acclimatize our bodies to the altitude in that time we explore the surrounding mountains and we may or may not have climbed up mountains we weren't supposed to and taken some cool pictures the strange activities though started around 2 weeks into Bridgeport we'd always make jokes about Skin Walkers coming by and grabbing Us in the middle of the night but something did actually show up yo Rambo you put your damn knife away going get these tarps up all right but one it's a bayonet and two you got to admit this thing is pretty damn cool look at this thing how much you pay for that thing anyway uh 250 damn bro seriously did they come with a Camaro and 29% financing whatever man this thing is awesome I mean it's a classic just help me get the damn tarps up will you all right all right one night during an operation we called the Cool C I'm not sure what it stands for probably combat operations something something we were at bridgeport's highest Landing Zone LZ owl we'd set up shelter with our tarps for the night I should mention this tree we hooked our tarps on was growing up against a large rock face I was a lance corpal at the time I had with me one other lance corporal engineer and Lance corpal Water Dog a water specialist and we used large rocks like small Boulders and wooden staks to anchor down our tarps to make a pyramid shape uh against the tree so one one end of the tarps was attached to the tree and it was like a lean to kind of built around the entire perimeter of this tree so any water would roll off and keep our gear and US dry underneath another thing of note the the water dog we had with us would often be messing around with his rifle because he had a bayonet with him and you know he'd stick it on the end of his rifle he liked playing with it he liked showing it off so once night came and the freezing snow started falling we went under our tarps and into our sleeping bags this was around 9:00 p. m. I woke up around 10: p.
m. to the sound of someone racking the charging handle of their weapon back it's dead quiet up there and we're supposed to be in a tactical environment so making unnecessary noises like that is going to piss somebody off so I look around and me and my other Engineers m4s were on the ground next to us and only the water dog's rifle was around the backside of the tree where only he could see Ito youw it was dark yeah and so I figure what's up it's this guy he must be screwing around with his bayonet again is that you so I asked him if that was him messing with his rifle me he gets up out of his sleeping bag and tells me that it wasn't him so now I'm thinking that someone maybe one of the Infantry guys that we're training with has snuck up to our patrol base and is messing with us so I pull out my Kar and I crawl out from under the tarps I'm I'm going to go threaten some poor guy who thinks he's going to scare us right but there was nobody else nearby what the hell hey Oscar yes Sergeant what the hell are you doing uh I I heard a noise did you hear like a rifle or something yeah is that you guys no Sergeant what's with the knife I came out cuz I thought it might be one of the Infantry guys or something yeah okay let me go ask the firewatch see if they're screwing around God so when I came out my sergeant he sees me coming up out of Arlene to and he walks up to me and asks me what the hell I'm doing you know standing there holding a knife and all and I asked if he had heard the noise that we did and he said that he did thinking it was one of us racking our rifles which I told him it wasn't so then he walks over to the nearby infantrymen on firewatch and he asks if he or his guys were screwing around with their rifles but that guy also knew nothing about it so our Sergeant comes back up and tells us that and says to just go back to sleep so I went back in my sleeping bag and I forget all about it next time I woke up was 6:00 a. m.
