<WAR STORY>
Went on a C5 mission with a full flight crew. Including backups flight deck officers and my 7 man utility fix-it team, it was 21 in all. We were gone for 6 weeks and went places...hauled things.... <let 1972, far-east imagination run wild>
A week after we returned I got orders to report to the Flight Surgeon. When I arrived there was the other 20 people from that mission. A very serious looking doctor informed us we were all exposed to Hepatitis A. We were all to receive very painful shots of Gamma Globulin. The amount, or actually the number of shots, depended on your weight. A fact we didn't realize at first.
So the doctor says, "Who's first?" Well the A/C and Mission Commander, a Lt Col, bravely steps forward like some Teddy Roosevelt leading a charge and says he would go first. Tall, big boned guy. The corpsman ask the Col how much he weighed. "230#" was the reply. The corpsman leans back and shouts to another corpsman in the back room, TWO SHOTS - 10CC EACH - ONE IN EACH CHEEK.
The Col turned a shade of pale and went back to get his medicine. We heard some decided "grunts' from the back room. The Col did NOT return. It was about then it occurred to all of us that the amount of butt-hurt was dependent on our weight.
Unfortunately, or fortunately, the precedent had been set so we went in descending rank order. I would have rather gone sooner than later and gotten it over with, but not to be. All officers first. Bless them. (That is the thing about the Air Force, we put our officers on the front line and the rest of us to the rear.) We each went up to the desk, sucked in our stomachs as much as we could, tried to appear as short as we could, talked one octave higher than normal and then took 20#s off our actual weight. I was like, in a squeaky voice, "Would you believe 130#?" By the time they got to my team, I think the corpsman started taking pity on us. After all its not as much fun to hurt fellow enlistees as it is officers. I had only one shot, 7.5cc as I remember and the tears welled up in my eyes. I too left by the back door.