I actually never made it out of Training. I went in as an Army MP and did the full basic and AIT at Ft. McClellan in late 1988. I didn't pass the final PT test and rather than getting a restart, I got sent home.

The only I have of my own, that I can think of here, happened one night on out last camp out. Our company had 4 platoons. I was in 2nd. 1st was all female. The week of this last camp out was in late November and happened to be the week later in the Moon phase. Night was pretty dark. Since it was supposed to be combat condition, there was a light restriction. No light unless you absolutely HAD to use it. This meant forming up in the dark, and it was pretty common to line up in the wrong platoon.

This particular night I was back at our camp with one other guy. Basically CQ and radio sitting. I didn't see this first hand, but the story was pretty consistent among all that told it.

The rest of the company had just finished some assault/defense game where we used blanks and blank adapters. A blank is a round that had a high powder charge held in place with a little plug rather than a bullet. They are dangerous at close range because they still expel hot gas, but past about 10 yards they are just loud and scary. Except the one for the M-60. This uses a bigger round the M-16, and the blanks are also bigger and louder. We had a guy actually blow his blank adapter off the end of the barrel. That makes it a manual repeater instead of a machine gun, but it sounded like something totally NOT a rifle round.

So anyway, Pvt. Bad Day is one of the last to get to the company area to form up. He doesn't want to be the "one we're all waiting on", so he's running up to a group that he can sort of make out in the dark. Pvt. Trigger Control hears him running up from the side of the formation and turns, M-60 slung over his shoulder and held in the firing position "Rambo" style. As Pvt. Bad Day get right up to them, he runs into the muzzle of Pvt. Trigger Control's 60. Pvt. TC had the forethought to line up in the back of the platoon finger on the trigger, safety off. The weapon "just went off" and Pvt. Bad Day took an M-60 blank to the daddy bits.

The one time I talked to him, he didn't want to talk about it. I don't think he was actually injured, but for the whole company to know what happened would be a bit embarrassing.

I never did find out what happened to Pvt. TC. My hope is that there was a significant amount of reinforcement that forming up with a loaded weapon, off safe, finger on the trigger, is a bad idea.

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