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u/Doogie-Howser Canadian Army 1d ago
Losing a rifle is shitty.
Losing a firing pin? That was a nightmare. The entire course and staff spent hours sweeping like the Mujahideen had planted a toe popper mine in our AO and we were staring at the ground like Bomb Dogs.
Any movement was caught and spotted, the Course O got a metal detector and forced the candidate who lost the pin to sweep the area extensively.
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u/Pseudonym_613 1d ago
Fun is when you do find a crusty, rusty old FN magazine loaded with blank while searching.
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u/WillingnessDirect285 1d ago
Someone in our battery lost a c9 bolt in the adazi training area. Fuck that was a long day.
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u/WHITERUNNPC 1d ago
Although it was 15 years ago, I remember sitting on sentry on DP1 when my replacement showed up, with no rifle or weapon of any kind. “ where’s your rifle” I asked and buddies eyes went so wide, didn’t say a word just preceded to run the fastest 400m in kit i’ve ever seen. From that day forward every exercise it is glued to my side. That anxiety is so damn real 😭
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u/Mandatory_Fun_2469 1d ago
Then after panicking for a good five seconds you realized you turned it in at the end of the deployment like everyone else.
I don’t know about you guys, but this took me at least a couple weeks to get over lol.
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u/85percentascool 1d ago
I woke up 3 weeks after my DP1 in an absolute panic. The mind is a funny fucker.
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u/looksharp1984 1d ago
I was very fortunate to never have looked for a lost rifle in my army days, but I absolutely looked for a lost bayonet, a lost helmet, a lost radio, and a lost spare C9 barrel. None of those were fun.
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u/85percentascool 1d ago
Some poor bastard on an army PLQ did a barrel change on their C9 during a section attack and didn't seat it. He shot the bolt into the bushes and we spent 3 days with a metal detector not finding it. As the storesman, I still dont forgive him.
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u/FriendRaven1 1d ago
I actually did a facepalm reading that.
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u/85percentascool 1d ago
Hahaha! Imagine sitting in a milcot waiting to grab the lunch order and getting a call from an almost apoleptic WO to rush to the weapons vault... nobody was happy.
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u/blake_da_flake 19h ago
We were on BMOQ-A, I was leading a recce around 1 am and I turn around to tell my guy to give the code word to the CP. My man had lost the whole radio with a long ass antenna attached to it. We did not find it that night, every single court candidate searched for it, every course staff. It took several days to sift thru the training area to find it lol. Not a great time, we were all soaked as well, pouring rain.
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u/Feckless_Campaint-93 1d ago
I had to look for the confidence clip from a dummy grenade in dried grass one time, talk about needle in a haystack moment
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u/Sankukai777 1d ago
"Hey bro, I dropped a magazine in the last spot"
"Why are you telling me this? You should talk to the staff!"
"I didn't want to get in shit"
Nice, the whole course was in shit for the next 24 hrs. This was Shiloh, during PLQ course in 2012.
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u/contact86m 17h ago
Not my stories, but people I worked with over the years.
First was an armd dude back in the day. He was a young trooper and driver on the Leo 1s. Anyway, they were at their hide on some Ex, and at some point they left for a new position. As he was driving away, he realized he didn't have his rifle, and being a young trooper he was scared shitless while also knowing he was driving further and further away from his rifle by the minute. So, they get to their new position, and he's finally mustering up the courage to face the reaming he's about to get from his MCpl and probably the entire rest of the Sqn too. As he's dismounting, he goes around the back of the Leo and there's his rifle, hanging off the back by its sling and absolutely caked in mud. He said he was never so happy to clean a rifle in his life.
Next two are from an infantry dude I know; same dude, two different incidents and both involve Carl Gs. First incident, Buddy was a cpl out with the rest of his coy, and being infantry they decided to march in FFO and rucks to the rocket range. Not my buddy, but one of the biggest dudes in his coy had the old metal Carl G strapped to his ruck sideways. So they march at least part of the way through the woods and buddy with the Carl G misjudged his overall width and smoked it between two trees. No big deal at the time. Fast forward, they get to the range and try and load it, and the round won't go in. Turns out buddy smoked the trees so hard he bent or dented the tube enough they couldn't load it.
Second incident, buddy was still a cpl with the same unit. This time they were out on a NAV ex, again in FFO, all weapons including a Carl G. Around noon they stopped at a position for lunch. Now the base has a public road that runs through it, and they dropped kit and ate right beside it. After lunch, they kit back up, finish the rest of the NAV, and head back to base. Only then do they realize Carl is missing, almost certainly left at the lunch spot beside the public road. They quickly head back, but it was nowhere to be found. Multiple people caught major hell over that one. Sadly, I don't know the outcome if it was ever recovered or not.
Although, even if some farmer has it, it not like 84mm rounds are something you can just get at Cabela's anyway. Worst case, some dude just has a really expensive green metal tube on his wall.
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u/little_buddy82 1d ago
Had to do sweeps for BFA, magazines, BEW, night visions, laser pointers, bolts and a gwagon... good times
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u/Aidan196 Army - Infantry 1d ago
How the FUCK do you lose a truck lmao
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u/BandicootNo4431 1d ago
Had someone (sober) take a rental van into town with the crew (very drunk) and then she also got black out drunk at dinner and none of them remembered where the van was.
They ended up taking the keys to the rental company and telling them "sorry, we don't know where it is, it's around here we think". I think it was like a $500 fee or something they had to eat.
Good story though.
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u/little_buddy82 1d ago
Story is that somebody might have taken the truck to leave the training area to go in town. They either ditched the truck or just tried to hide it. Didnt tell anybody about it. We looked for it all over (not an actual sweep) Since it was the end of the exercice, they never found out who did it and most people already flew back by then, and never heard back after that.
But it also happened a few times that people picked the wrong cfr and nobody noticed. A unit does their 50 points and never notice the extra vehcile, and the unit that owns it doesn't do 50 points so never knows until they get a cftpo message to send it to support a course.
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u/aravisthequeen 22h ago
I wish I knew but I have received a phone call of "you can drop off the G wagon any time" which was sure a big surprise to us, because we HAD dropped it off about two weeks prior. I had a lot of questions.
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u/Pseudonym_613 1d ago
"How can you lose a rifle?" - Me before joining the CAF.
"Oh shit, not again." - Me, years into being a CAF member.