No Kidding There I Was… Hallucinating on Patrol Phase

Yea SF phase 2 SUT, saw elephants, my dead grandpa and swore I could walk and sleep at the same time! Good stuff

I had a similar experience during officer training at The Infantry School in Gagetown, NB (Canadian Army). After a week of defensive withdrawls by day and fighting patrols all night long, they threw us into an escape and evasion ex. My buddy and I had to cross a road on our improvised route and surprisingly to me there was a juice bar with some stools across the road. Man, I was so thirsty. I ran right to it, and did a face plant into the ditch. Sleep deprivation for the win.

These are great stories. I had some hallucinations in SF training, during Hell Month/Selection. I think most of my buds and classmates did. Exhaustion and dehydration can mess with the mind. Especially exhaustion. 

I went thru the SFQC in 83. Selection/McCall was 30 days. Yes, Selection did not officially begin until 1986. But the term "Selection" has been bantered about and seen even on orders since the late 1970s. We more used the phrase "Hell Month". Lots of weird sightings and conversations by most guys.

An idea would be to plan and provide for some weird shit during such training, lay on some folks to dress up in bunny costumes or gowns and tuxes or some weird shit and show up out of nowhere out in the sticks like in the last couple of days into the training, when all the trainees are really whacked, and see how they react. Might be a bitch getting such stunts approved by command. Or not. Depends. GORUCK or other such groups might be able to do something like that, due to lack of military bureaucracy. But those sorts of outings don't last long enough for hallucinations.

I served in the Army so I have no idea what the BRC is about. I'm assuming all Marines don't go through this. Is this a Recon thing? Apologies for my ignorance on the subject.

An old friend of mine who went through BUD/s with Class 77 swears that during Hell Week on the third night (Wednesday) he and his swim buddy stopped on a little invisible island and were treated to a delicious meal cooked by none other than Julia Child.

SERE school evasion phase. Woke up shivering in my snow hide one night to find four chimpanzes sitting at the end of my sleeping bag playing cards. I asked them how they could see the cards in the dark and one of them put his finger to his mouth and went; "Shhhhh." So I laid back down and tried to go back to sleep.

As a former BRC instructor, I have seen some of the funniest stuff once ever during patrol phase. One of my favorites is sitting in while the TL and RTO were getting ready for a comm shot, out of no where the RTO starts in with "big bird this is grover". I looked him square in the eyes and asked if he was alright, of course he said yes so I gave him the go ahead and he did it again. Long story short, it was day five and the kid was a wreck, had the TL put him down for a couple hours and when we got him up he had no idea what we were talking about. Arguments with trees, following imagined team members, I have seen it all and laughed every time. I do miss the good days.

Had been up for a couple of days while leading a patrol through an area of newly planted trees in the middle of nowhere. my sergeant came up to me and asked me if the steam powered train he was seeing was friendly. Needless to say there weren't train tracks within 200 miles of the site. I just told him it was friendly. A couple of minutes later point man stopped the patrol to ask me if the very short men around him were friendly. he was talking about the newly planted trees. 

All I can think of to say is, 1) WOW, had no idea! and 2) THANK YOU for pressing on. Don't mind @LauraWalkerKC  she's just MEAN! ;)

That elf was real . . . =P

After 5 days of field training in a Cyprus wasteland, sustaining heat more than 120o degrees, we were downrange, shooting barrel targets with the MG3s. Suddenly a sergeant stands up screaming and runs waving his hands right in front of the shooting weapons. He was trying to fend off some imaginary children playing in front of the barrels.

One story about hallucinating that always comes to mind happened after our 4 mile Friday swims. We were getting out of the water, getting dressed for chow when I noticed one of the guys was protesting getting dressed. Bill L. was his name and he had a little hypothermia going on, we were trying to get some heat back into him and dress him but he kept resisting saying all he wanted was a hamburger. 

While serving as a line medic in Iraq I wound up running double patrols covering down on two separate units due to personnel shortages. After about day 3 with max 1hr of sleep a day which consisted of 10-15 min power naps when I had the opportunity to climb in the back of a Humvee, I wound up having a conversation with one of my team members who all the sudden stopped talking to me and I asked him why he stopped talking.. He laughed and said I had been blabbering talking to myself for about 30min.

Haha, I loved hearing these stories!  Thanks for the share.

Last time I had a hallucination I was on some serious painkillers for post-op recovery. Let's just say what I saw was creepy enough that even my meds couldn't get me to sleep.