Rifle Wielding Soldiers Develop Breasts
BY Herschel Smith
11 years, 4 months ago
The rhythmic impact of a rifle wielded by a military man can puff up his chest. This sometimes leads to worry, or worse. Though soldiers might appreciate a good pair of breasts, what would happen if they themselves grew a pair? Or if they grew just one?
Some men do experience this affront. A study called Gynecomastia in German Soldiers: Etiology and Pathology, published last year in the journal GMS Interdisciplinary Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, analysed the plight of 211 male German soldiers who suffered from, or at least exhibited, one or two enlarged breasts. The ailment has a medical name: gynecomastia.
The study’s authors, Prof Björn Dirk Krapohl, Dr Dietrich Doll, and four colleagues at Bundeswehrkrankenhaus, the German Armed Forces Hospital in Berlin, played detective. They set out “to investigate the increased incidence of left-sided gynecomastia in members of the German Ministry of Defense Guard Battalion who perform ceremonial duties in Berlin … A possible explanation is the mechanical impact of the carbine against the left side of the body during the drills that these soldiers regularly perform as part of their ceremonial duties”.
The doctors compared those patients with other enlarge-breasted men who had not spent years frequently and intensively slapping rifles into their left breast.
They noticed a stark difference.
Seventy-five percent of the gynecomastiacal Guard Battalion chest-slappers had an enlarged left – only the left, not the right – breast.
I resisted titling this post titty-titty bang bang as suggested in the comments to this article because it’s not mine. But I have to say that this is the stupidest article ever to come out of The Guardian, and doctors in Germany surely have better things to do.
They studied the “German Ministry of Defense Guard Battalion who perform ceremonial duties in Berlin.” Honestly – after hundreds of thousands of Marines and Soldiers deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan discharging their rifles as much as they did and still have no breasts, and the best they could do is come up with 200 Germans who shoot carbines at ceremonies.
Good grief.
On July 31, 2013 at 5:48 pm, DAN III said:
The Waffen-SS they ain’t !
On July 31, 2013 at 9:13 pm, True Blue said:
My take from this was that it was due -not to discharging the firearm- but due to the ceremonial rifle drills, “slapping the left breast” with the stock of the rifle. At a guess, this means that ‘present arms’ or some other command of their rifle drill involves holding the butt of the rifle in the right palm and moving the weapon to a 45 degree angle with the muzzle finishing the maneuver toward the left shoulder, slapping the left pectoral area in the process before goose-stepping off.
Granted it Is a stupid article, but it should serve to modify the Germans’ rifle drill -which sounds stupid anyway as slapping your left breast instead of maintaining an inch or two clearance between the soldier’s body and his weapon would seem to me at least to indicate incomplete control of the rifle.
Still, it is better than having some guy behind you in formation do this:
http://www.blinkx.com/watch-video/soldier-nearly-has-head-blown-off-during-rifle-drill/VeyFDKKQ86eTxVymS4eH7A