I suspected Arty ancedotes would dominate this thread - turns
out I'm correct.
My contribution:
I've mentioned that I served with a 120mm-SP mortar (mounted inside
a M113) BN, & that my battery suffered a M113 explosion which
killed one & heavily injured 4 others. Only the driver somehow
escaped unhurt, though later he also got downgraded for another
ailment. Anyway, the SIB-investigated story had the dead guy
supposedly hiding a stray M203 round following SAFTI live-firing,
then taking the full force of the blast & thus "saving" the
others. If that's not the real truth, then it's a secret between
those in the vehicle.
A runaway M113 - driven by a non-licensed concript - from another
battery also destroyed the garage cages during my active
stint.
During the subsequent mono-intake, a fellow DI of mine (from the
same platoon/battery) got hit by sharpnel from a wayward grenade
throw, but luckily escaped with stomach wounds.
Actually, my unit had a bit of an jinx reputation then. There were
also other infamous incidents - from losing a bulky LP3 laser-range
finder during standby (with barb wire! & sentry guards!), to a
hugely-unpopular "scholar" BC getting his car scratched, to a
dramatic face-off on ORD day itself, when a mortarman challenging
another unpopular officer to a fight outside the camp gates!
My own Tekong BMT stint was incident-free, except for my recently
discovering that it took place around the Hotel New World collapse.
When on-course at SOAY, 2 major incidents dominated. The 1st was
another soldier supposedly getting his nuts crushed by some heavy
equipment during the Arty NCO course, which left the whole camp in
poor morale when I was there. The 2nd occurred during our own CPX
exercise along the then-ulu Loyang Avenue, when a civilian car
inexplicably rammmed into a turning 3-tonner's fuel tank &
causing a fire that destroyed both vehicles (many an
unaccounted-for equipment ended up being "blamed" to have been thus
lost, instead of us signing 1206's.)
Reservist was relatively fortunate too, beside some minor accidents
& a short spell when we coincidentally lost a few guys to
cancer. Seems like the wayward 25-pounder episode isn't that rare;
I also saw a similar thing happening during one of the
end-of-parade rehearsals during the early '90s, when the driver
fail to negotiate a bend properly & the trailing gun swiped
into another car.
