An image making the rounds on Facebook gave us a chuckle — it's a notice posted in a port-a-potty on Camp Leatherneck in Helmand province, Afghanistan, and it sends a clear message to the troops deployed there:
Stop playing with yourself, or else.
The notice threatens anyone in violation of this silly rule with legal action, specifically under Article 92 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Affectionaly dubbed the "catch-all" by Marines, Article 92 allows the military to prosecute its troops for "failure to obey an order or regulation."
The notice, which hilariously refers to a port-a-potty as a "masturbation facility," claims that there have been several cases of illness in the region due to exposure to bodily fluids.
That sounded a little scientifically fishy to me, so I reached out to the Navy Corpsman who was my medic when I was deployed to Helmand province in 2011. He called malarkey.
"Unless they're getting semen in an open wound, there's no way," said Petty Officer 2nd Class Eric Dodson, a Corpsman with 2nd Marine Division in Camp Lejeune, N.C. "There's no transdermal infection passable through semen, at least to my knowledge."