Quote Originally Posted by Skyyr View Post
When I went through basic, we were issued Colt M-16A1's. Saw some Hydromatic rollmarked ones and even a Colt M-16A1 lower marked "AR-15." They were OLD. None of them had failures, all of them shot decently, and we treated them like crap. The only "event" I recall happening with any of the M-16's concerned a one Private Ferrucci (fairly certain that's how his last name was spelled).

We had just returned from some exercise and had split up with our various drill sergeants to work on disassembling and cleaning our rifles. Pvt. Ferrucci was disassembling his M-16 with the rest of our group and, somehow, managed to lose the bolt. How that happened, no one knows - but he actually lost it. Our drill sergeant (who was actually a very cool guy) had disassembled his M16 and had his BCG laying on the table. He had left, briefly, to tend to something, so Pvt. Ferrucci decides to grab the drill sergeant's BCG and take the bolt out of it, hoping he wouldn't notice.

Drill sergeant returned and it didn't take but a few seconds for him to realize someone took it. A few minutes later and Ferrucci was outed. Ferrucci got smoked, Article 15'd, and then was told he would receive further counseling/punishment for "stealing" government property. I'm pretty sure the "further punishment" was a ruse to scare him into straightening out. However, he didn't take the stress too well and decided to goose another private while he was in the shower. The private he decided to pick on (can't remember his name) was about the worst target he could have picked. The guy was so emotionally fragile, he screamed "rape" and went straight to another drill sergeant, who also happened to be one of the company EO officers. Once he told him, it was an unrestricted report and they turned it into a sexual assault case.

Ferrucci got put on suicide watch for the next several weeks while waiting for an actual court martial. I know - I got stuck on rotation watching him twice a week. Not sure what happened to him, but it wasn't good.

Sorry for the diversion. Carry on.
Great story, thanks for sharing it.