I'm not sure why I just remembered this story, butt....

Back in AIT, we had this one female drill sergeant who was maybe 100 lbs soaking wet and stood around average height. Black woman with one of those loud, from-the-diaphragm "command voices". Let's call her DS Black for the moment (I can't actually remember her name but it was something like Brown / Black anyway). Also, at various points I had a DS Brown (who was white), a DS Black (who was white), and a DS White (who was black).

DS Black was notorious for nit-picking. And then yelling whatever correction she wanted made, loud enough for the next battalion over to hear it....even if it was 2am and she was yelling at CQ, you could hear it on the 3rd floor kind of loud. It was pretty impressive in hindsight, her voice just carried. One of those command voices that you felt as much as heard.

Well, one of her favorite habits was, during bed checks, to walk in with an aerosol or spray bottle of febreeze or similar, and just absolutely douse people with it at random. More than a few of us were woken up to the sound of "YA'LL PRIVATES ARE FUCKIN NAAAAAAASTY!!!! THIS ROOM STINKS!!! I BETTER NOT SMELL SHIT BY THE TIME I GET BACK HERE!!" followed by <pffssttsttttttttttttt> as she sprayed the room, or us. This meant you had to get up, scrub down your room real quick, or at least febreeze your dirty laundry bags hanging on the end of the bunks. Cue hatching the revenge plan.

We had this one guy, a pretty....hefty....Mexican guy. His party trick was that he could fart on command. To this day I don't know how, maybe it's like "that's my secret captain, I'm always angry gassy". But he could rip some gnarly ones and the stench to go with it depended on what the DFAC served that day and whether or not he'd hit the "gut truck" at the schoolhouse. Let's call him SPC Burrito.

We waited until we knew DS Black was going to be on duty that night, then had SPC Burrito swap bunks with someone in the first room by the stairwell (3rd floor). This was key because by the time she got to our floor, she usually sprayed the first couple of rooms by the stairwell, but left the middle rooms alone for the most part. So there was a good chance she'd spray SPC Burrito.

SPC Burrito laid carefully on his side on the top bunk, closest to the door, with his back facing the door. And waited. And waited. Until he heard her coming up the stairs.

I was 2-3 rooms down the hall, and this is what I heard:

- DS Black stomping up the stairs

- DS Black sniffing in a theatrical exaggerated manner as soon as she hit our floor

- DS Black going into the first room

- "GODDAMN PRIVATES, HOW THE HELL DO YA'LL GET SO NAST--"

- A loud and thunderous passing of gas

- "OH FUCK NO PRIVATE YOU DID NOT JUST DO THAT RIGHT IN MY FAAAAAAAAAACE"

- furious aerosol noises as she beat a hasty retreat

- She didn't even check the rest of our floor, just went back downstairs.

- a significant amount of poorly muffled laughter

DS Black never sprayed our bunks again after that, and chilled out with the yelling / waking everyone up for bullshit, but she did smoke the whole platoon from 3rd floor the next day as revenge. We took it in good nature and figured it was well worth it. SPC Burrito got several beers on us the next time we got a weekend out on the town.