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I would have been run over by a Bradley Fighting Vehicle one night if I didn't have the radio handset jammed up against my ear and clipped onto my helmet strap. I heard the vehicle commander screaming BACK UP! BACK UP! when enemy infantry was advancing on his vehicle from the front and I was right behind him. I head another vehicle commander scream "DON'T BACK UP! But he did anyways but I was able to get out of the way. That same year we had a tank driver drowned in his driver's seat in a failed river crossing. The tank sank into the mud and wouldn't budge and it just filled up with water. At one point field artillery miscalculated and lobbed 155mm rounds into people's yards. Nobody was hurt thankfully. Then during a nightfire training exercise, one of our Bradley gunners managed to shoot an actual helicopter that he mistook for his training target. Another guy forgot to lock his barrel into the breach and sent it flying downrange about 50 yards when he engaged the weapon. In my sister unit, a private bounced 5.56mm rounds off another soldiers helmet during a trench clearing exercise. I heard the CO about beat him to death for it. Then there was the guy that shot another soldier with a 7.62 machinegun because he didn't understand the concept of open breach firing. It looked like it took his leg off. Someone left me a coax machine gun with 3 live rounds in the feed tray once and I accidentally charged the weapon as I removed it from the turret. I was about to let the bolt go forward when I thought "I better look first". Sure enough. I would have fired that weapon inside an armored vehicle had I not looked. Another soldier handed a M16A2 to his buddy after accidentally charging it instead of clearing it in the clearing barrel and he had no idea until he went to clear it a few hours later. And then there was the 5 ton we rolled down a mountain in Bosnia. And then there was the bridge we destroyed accidentally with a Bradley fighting vehicle. And the civilian car we ran over accidentally. And then there were the card games which occasionally escalated into attempted murder.

Training can be dangerous.

Holy smokes, training can be dangerous, but in my regiment, if you picked up any weapon at all, even if handed to you, you checked the chamber, if not you were going to get a smack in the head.

We did have one guy laying in frozen tire track from a LAV III and had his mattress in the rut to hold it there, and that’s what saved him when a LAV drove over him in a night move. The edges of the rut were pushed up and frozen so he didn’t take the full weight. As it was it drove over his midsection and it took a few months until he could walk normally again.

Fraser Shot Walsh with a c6 (your m240) when the sear was broken and walking in Afghan it just let go, stitched Walsh up the side and dropped him dead on the spot. That particular weapon had gone back to the weapon techs a dozen times, and they kept putting it back into service.

A few years later I was sitting in a classroom doing some air training and that incident came up, and the guy in front of me said oh ya, he worked on that weapon and it was fine, because the incident was making weapon techs look good. At that point I asked at what point do you take a weapon out of service when it keeps coming back for the same thing? He began yelling that it was the soldier’s fault for incorrect weapon handling at which point he learned first hand that Fraser was a friend of mine etc and the poor airforce wog (without guts) got to witness what a fully pissed off Patricia looked like and what he does to idiots.

As I was standing at attention later in front of some airforce junior officer (civilian in uniform), they were attempting to give me grief over the incident. All I said was, once a Patricia, always a Patricia, and I will always defend my brothers, especially when one watched his best friend die from a faulty weapon.

I never did apologize or say anything like that, but the guy who I schooled and I got along quite well later on.

>>Training can be dangerous.

Exactly...training how to write computer code? not so dangerous - training to go to war - extremely dangerous.

There is no way you can train soldiers in realistic scenarios, without them being in danger - extreme danger at times - and enough people in extreme danger for enough time, and people get killed - very sad of course, but probably inevitable.

In my opinion unless you train to the point that some people get might get killed - i.e. in extremely dangerous situations - then you would probably end up with more people getting killed when they are in actual combat situations - because they haven’t done ‘it’ before - whatever that ‘it’ is.

Jail higher-ups because soldiers get killed in training? no thanks - unless you can prove deliberate malice and intent, which I don’t think we have here.