The military is built on discipline, standards, and the comforting belief that the people in charge are making good decisions. Then someone with a rank that comes with its own parking spot decides to emulate George Washington in the only way they probably shouldn’t: trying to match the Father of America drink-for-drink.
Related: George Washington celebrated becoming president by running up an epic bar tab
Everyone, civilian and military alike, kind of expects service members to hit the bar. From the American Revolution onward, we’ve earned that reputation. Sometimes, the hardest drinking sailors and soldiers (and airmen. And Marines) are the ones supposed to be keeping everyone else in check.
1. The guy in charge of ICBMs got too drunk for the Russians in Moscow.
It takes a lot to be considered “too drunk” in Moscow, but Air Force Maj. Gen. Michael Carey took a trip there in July 2013 and somehow managed to make the Russians look like teetotalers. He was the commander of 20th Air Force, the U.S. Air Force’s operational designation for its land-based Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) forces. He was supposed to be in Moscow for a two-day nuclear security exercise, but things went… awry.
The fact that Carey began his military career as an enlisted airman might explain some of this. People on the trip said he was drunk on an official visit to a monastery, where he tried to fist-bump the guide. He allegedly was out late picking up local women, and was said to be drinking excessively in the hotel bar, where he claimed to be “saving the world.”
After he arrived late to the morning meetings, the general gave a toast at an official lunch, where he made comments about Edward Snowden that “were not well received by his Russian colleagues.” He later went to a Mexican restaurant to meet two foreign women he knew to be suspicious, but danced with them all night anyway, got extremely drunk, and tried to convince the restaurant’s Beatles cover band to let him play with them. Carey was later fired from his position and retired as a one-star general.
2. Ulysses S. Grant (may have) drunkenly ridden through Army camps.
In June 1863, the famously alcoholic Gen. Ulysses S. Grant was leading the critical Siege of Vicksburg, the last Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi River, when he ran into journalist Sylvanus Cadwallader. Cadwallader later described meeting Grant as he was steaming on the Yazoo River. Grant was already drunk, but when he boarded the ship he made a beeline for the bar.
The journalist then describes working with Grant’s security detail and aides to stop his drinking by confining the general to his wardroom and chucking whiskey bottles out the window. When they arrived at Satartia, which might have been hostile territory, Grant reportedly escaped to the shore.
Cadwallader wrote Grant sobered up briefly, found more whiskey, got drunk again, and ended up back near Chickasaw Bayou alongside a sutler’s “open bar.” From there, Grant—allegedly on a borrowed horse named Kangaroo—took off through the camps at full speed, scattering fires and causing a full-body panic as everyone tried to keep the Union’s most important general from faceplanting into disaster.
Cadwallader said he finally caught him, got him to lie down, and had him hauled back by ambulance. Historians cast doubt on the story, though, pointing to other accounts that said sickness confined Grant to his room on the trip.
3. A Confederate general got so drunk he couldn’t attack.
The Battle of Stones River was one of the most significant battles of the Civil War, and resulted in the highest percentage of casualties on both sides. A few thousand of those casualties were the result of Maj. Gen. Benjamin F. Cheatham’s drunken escapades.
The rebels had just been pushed out of Kentucky and were fighting to hold Tennessee, while the Union had just issued the Emancipation Proclamation. The stakes were high, but that didn’t seem to affect Cheatham.
He drank to excess and rode his horse, whooping and hollering until he fell off. Not normally a big deal, except that he did it in front of his men while he was supposed to be leading them into battle.
Sober or drunk, Cheatham’s two brigades of irreplacable veterans were late to the attack and were deployed piecemeal against one of the Union’s best generals, Philip Sheridan. It allowed the Union forces, who should have been on the run, to regroup and re-establish their lines. They later managed a stunning artillery barrage that caused 2,000-3,000 casualties in four hours.
The incident was so legendary (notorious) among southerners that Jack Daniel’s supposedly later issued a bottle with a portrait of Cheatham on it.
4. An admiral was fired for wandering a Florida hotel naked.
Rear Adm. David Baucom was one of the Navy’s top logistics officers, in charge of the Defense Logistics Agency Troop Support, a $14 billion organization that supplies American troops with food, uniforms, and other supplies. He was later promoted to director of Strategy, Policy, Capabilities, and Logistics at the U.S. Transportation Command. Then, he went to Pontevedra Beach, Fla., to attend a National Defense Transportation Association advisory board meeting.
It was there, on April 7, 2015, that he was found wandering around the hotel naked and drunk. Baucom had been drinking heavily the night before, slamming drinks until he couldn’t stand on his own. He reportedly banged his head on a stool, peed his pants, and had to be escorted back to his room.
He woke naked and attempted to enter his bathroom, but used the wrong door, exiting the room and becoming trapped outside. Two female hotel guests spotted him looking for a towel to cover up with before a peer got him back to his room.
According to ABC News, Baucom told investigators his prescription heart medications exacerbated his drunken condition. The Navy didn’t care. He was found to be drunk and disorderly, and was removed from his command. He later went to counseling and settled into a job at the Pentagon.
