Some are lifted from friends. I'm a computer nerd a rule follower. I've worked on our national police dispatch system - a little on the dispatch workstations and servers, helped build the communications gateway and the mobile workstation software. I did a short stint in the infantry reserve, but many of my tales are ones from the exceptional and disparate friends I have acquired including:

- Ex USCG pilot, top ranking pilot when Katrina hit, supervised the CG taking over flight planning for all agencies, ran hundreds of flights into New Orleans and back

- USN officer, former XO of the borrowed Jervis-Bay class high speed trimaran, did damage surveys and cargo moving around Katrina, also happens to be Jerry Pournelle's son

- US Army Ranger, now a teacher

- US Army Special Forces (18 years, after 7 in 82nd Abn), now involved as a logistics guy at his local police station in the Covid-19 response - while he was serving, his unit got a Presidential Citation for the work hunting down Balkan war criminals

- Former Canadian infantry reservist, now RCAF Intelligence, has a degree in History (medieval focus) and a Master of War Studies from Royal Military College

- Former Canadian Army reg, re-sleeved to Royal Canadian Navy, retired, now doing same job - Image Analyst

- Software engineer with a background in Telco stuff, now working for our equivalent of NSA

- Gaming buddy, civilian DND employee for a while, moved over to our spy agency

- Father of my Godsons, Royal Canadian Navy reservist Lt. Cdr, served a tour in Afghanistan doing CIMIC and the Op Planning, did the deployment to Phillipines for the Hurricane to coordinate local response teams, was just chasing pirates in the Gulf, is a qualified surface warfare officer, maritime engineer (no longer a trade for reserves), and a graduate engineer who worked on mass transit in Asia and other places

- A bunch of software nerds working in military, intel, law enforcement, AI, web services, and other spheres/sectors, one in a new crypto startup he is one of the founders of, plus one that has worked for Spotify and MS

- A bunch of other US SF guys (including a medic) thorugh my other US SF buddy

- A friend who used to work for GE doing software, now just retiring from another job that had him doing tests (physics stuff) on reactors being installed onto USN vessels

- Another who worked on the NEAR (Near Earth Asteroid somethingorother mission where they landed on the asteroid!)

- Another who worked downstreaming and distributing imagery from Hubble and now is sending command loads to an active spacecraft (forget the mission), he writes coffee table books about rock climbing in NE US

- All my TML friends

- Several teachers (at all levels)

- An electrical engineer with a focus on commercial and industrial electric stuff who forges stuff and does competition International Defensive Pistol competitions and shoots black powder too

- Some IT guys for the government

- A bunch of world travellers

The list goes on and I'm not even catching all the major players.

Funny thing is, social stuff can drain me. I'm somewhere between introvert and extrovert, but I like people and their stories.

The bazaar/market story was from when my friend was commissioning the light rail project in Ankara. The one about the bus pulled over by the cops happened to an massage therapist friend of mine in a rough state in Mexico (Giving the cops a Werther's surprised them and they didn't get robbed and stripped). The market in Havana and the Dominican Republic informed some of them.

I'd have some for strange things that go wrong on military missions too....

A snatch and grab that sees  your team inside the target building, with explosives placed ready to breach, then recall ordered because the target has a woman and child with him. Remove explosives, try to creep out so nobody knows you were even there.

Seeing what others miss: To approach a hostile force through an impassable swamp, notice someone has strung a fence through it. Climb along this fence over or partly under the swamp for a km or two to reach a position where you can walk into the enemy encampment, capture their officer, then capture the rest of the platoon.

Friendly fire: You are on picket duty. A wheeled 6x6 AFV shows up, is in a hurry and tries to bull through the checkpoint without appropriate sign/countersign discipline. What are you to do with your shoulder fired anti-vehicle weapon? (It turned out it was friendly, but they didn't follow protocol and would have been dead if it wasn't an exercise).

You are camped in the woods as part of a security detail for an electronic warfare asset (camouflaged). Two hostile tracked AFVs drive *right through* the middle of your camp. They never even knew you were there. You don't have a weapon that can harm them, so it is just strangers in the night....

You are working with a planetary militia, kickoff day for a big offensive triggers. You expect tough resistance from a large enemy division of proud stature on the other side, but with your help, the local division expects to be able to smash through. Your unit and other supporting units move when zero-hour arrives. The local unit you are working with, having failed to get communication amending the launch date, is encamped still. The enemy division counterattacks, and your side suddenly is doing nothing but breakout after breakout to try to escape. (The unit that missed the memo was US 1st Infantry Div - the big, dead one).

You get caught with a key command asset in the open by an enemy air asset. You know your higher command should have let you camouflage  the asset, but they wanted fast mobility (then never moved it for a week or more...). The enemy air asset does not engage because the pilot reasons that no enemy would be out in the open like that.... <when incompetence appears to be brilliance...>

You and your people are the last group out of a country becoming hostile. You are loaded on the plane with local pilots. The pilots identify that the locals are coming and they are not to take off so that several soldiers can be arrested for a crime (a made up thing to grab hostages). What do you do? [Answer - Army officer in charge goes to the cockpit, informs the pilots they either begin takeoff or he will throw them off the plane and fly it himself - and he could. Location: Suez.]

Your unit is pulled out of a hard earned, exhausted sleep. You are all ordered to scrub weeks of mud and muck off your gear, shine up your tattered combats, and assemble at attention for review by a visiting Noble at 0300 next to a country road. Staff car with flags flying approaches, drives by, all windows draped. Nobody even notices you and your unit mates. So much for being reviewed. Source: My grandfather, UK 16th Highland Light Infantry, WWI. The noble: UK King.

A unit of exceptionally talented native troops, expert night fighters and hand to hand sentry killers, is dismissed from the battle lines. They have a reputation for leaving their long arms behind and just taking a long, bent knife with them to go into the no-man's land between forces to search for enemy patrols and snipers as well as spotters. They either don't come back or come back with a string of ears. The ears start to stink and gross out some upper echelons with squeamish stomachs, so the unit is rotated out of this theater. (Also WW1)

Your unit is operating with other national units of an alliance. You are staging a major offensive. You launch your attack, everyone gets into the fight. About an hour into the assault, you look to your left flank.... and nothing! One of the other nation's units has buggered off back to friendly territory which leaves your flank exposed to a competent enemy who doesn't miss a beat. Suddenly you have to fight a turned-flank battle. Said nation's troops are war weary and they display enthusiasm at the outset, but rapidly head back to safer pastures (mid WWI French).

You are part of a naval crew deployed into a potentially compromised (from a security perspective) harbour. You are an officer on your ship and you are supposed to be engaged in force protection. You are not, however, given any direction that is useful. The wise brains at HQ wrote the FP doctrine for much larger ships with dedicated boarding parties. You cannot implement what they have laid out. You lack the resources and manpower. Suddenly, you must think on your feet to get some kind of FP stance in place. (Spice up with an actual attack starting....) (RCN reserve ships... small coastal boats and minesweepers... not full fledged modern Frigates).

You are engaged in a Naval Mission and your main drive starts acting up. It turns out the procurement authority bought the cheapest thing it could for your ship class. The M-drive is unreliable. Comms goes out because of overloads of the circuits. Some sensors are intermittent because the mounting causes to much stress leading to intermittent shorts.

Oh, the tales one could tell (or has been told).

Lol, there's something to be said for tame. Usually adventures are what you call the bad things that happen that shouldn't have happened but you lived through.

T.