A post to laugh at a considering some of the threads.
I went to Marine OCS two college summers. I’m acting sometimes in the rationale of a 20-21 year old.
This particular day we’re rappelling down a sand cliff/hill and running 3+ miles carrying a rifle. The rappelling is more of a bunny hop down the hill, no safety gear although a guy broke his neck in another group one of my summers. Bad luck.
It had rained the night before and everything was sticky wet. There’s a few hundred of us lined up to go over the edge and start the exercise. I’m in the middle of the group. I’ve done the course a few times.
I drop off for my turn and about halfway down I loose my footing on the churned up, wet sand, spin backwards and slide down the hill on the rope head first. I’m a sandy mess at the bottom. As I hit the end of the rope, I spin and run off into the woods for the run. I can hear the sergeants on top yelling at me to climb back up and rappel again. No thank you. I’m blended in the mob and they can’t tell who I am.
I knock most of the sand off me and my rifle. I notice the end of my barrel has sand in it from being inverted during my slide. I wipe it off and notice more. I start banging the barrel against trees as I run by them trying to get sand out. It’s a never ending flow of sand. Knock some out, more appears.
I finish the run and get into formation with my company. I notice the sergeants in a huddle talking and then they all go to the different companies running from candidate to candidate inspecting about 300 of us.
Sergeants are bull dogging around when one comes to me. He’s asking me questions and I’m giving yes and no answers that are technically true based on the question. He can’t find anything on me but grabs my rifle at his last chance. He sees sand. He screams found him. I’m told to go in front of the formation and I have about six sergeants going crazy yelling at me. I knew they couldn’t touch me but could yell all they wanted.
After a good chewing out, I was made to run around the battalion on the way back to the barracks repeating the This Is my Rifle saying for about a mile.
I cleaned my rifle quickly when we got back to the barracks. They never mentioned it again. I graduated that summer so my pluses must be at least one more than my minus column.