Day 19; Negligent Discharge

I received an email from my soldier today.  Facinating to me.  I had to censor the names for obvious reasons:

This'll take you a while to read, but I thought it may be interesting to you to know what kind of crap I have to deal with as a leader.

You noticed that there is some tension in my platoon right now.  Part of it came from the ass-chewing SFC [A] and I gave them because of a negligent discharge.  Basically means some mof fired off his weapon when he wasn't supposed to.  It's never considered an accident -- always negligence.  One of the two deaths in the Ghan this month was because a soldier had an ND and capped his buddy in the head, so the Army is taking this type of incident (and always has) seriously, even though we were using blanks.

One time at [location] one of the guys in my platoon had an ND and our captain smoked us ragged for it.  The guy had fired off a round inside the back of a troop carrier vehicle and the dude sitting across from him would have been shot if it was a real round.  So we had to throw him on a stretcher and the platoon had to take turns running him back and forth until we basically couldn't hold the guy up anymore.  I actually had an M4 with a 203 grenade launcher slung over my back, as well as having to carry an M249 I was using on that mission, while I was helping carry a 180 pound soldier on a 30 pound metal stretcher with 50 pounds of gear, a weapon, and two 5 gallon water jugs between his legs.  It is probably the second-most exhausting thing I've done yet in the Army.  So that instilled in me how serious an incident like that was... 

I wanted to have my platoon do the same thing but the good idea fairy told me I could get in trouble if any of my soldiers were injured from that smoke session right before deployment.  So instead I'm making them do an exhausting amount of weapon safety training, with the help of an NCO, to include clearing procedures and memorization of four weapon safety rules.  They are:

1. All guns are always loaded.

2. Never point your muzzle at something you do not wish to destroy.

3. Keep your finger off the trigger until you have acquired your target and are prepared to fire.

4. Be sure of your target, and of what is in line with it, both in front of and behind it. 

I can tell this stuff is reinforcing safety because I have a couple of my soldiers walking around, of their own accord, challenging others to recite the four safety rules.

Anyway, I just wrote up a sworn statement that's probably going to get sent up the chain of command to the general level and an investigating officer is going to be assigned to the case.  Here's what I wrote into the form as my statement:

"26 personnel from [classified] Company conducted Entry Control Point operations on [date] in [location].  After completion of the lane, we had a formation at approximately 1930 to conduct an After Action Review.  At this time, soldiers were clearing their weapons and turning in any unspent ammunition.

A blank cartridge discharged in the back of the platoon during this formation.  From my vantage point, facing the platoon at the front, the incident occurred in the rear rank in the vicinity of SGT [B] and SPC [C].  I distinctly remember SGT [B] suddenly moving his face away from SPC [C], who was standing to his left.  I did not see a muzzle flash so I cannot be certain that it came from SPC [C]'s weapon.

The soldiers using M249 SAWs during this ECP lane did not have the appropriate blank firing adapters on their weapons.  Because of this, two of the three weapons were not firing correctly.  SPC [C]'s weapon had malfunctioned during the lane and I gave him my M16A2 to fire from his position in the guard tower.  It is very possible that he left an unspent blank cartridge in his weapon while he was using mine.  Since the M249 is an open-bolt weapon, the bolt may have ridden forward and discharged a cartridge left in the chamber.

SGT [B] approached me and SFC [A] a couple hours after the incident.  He completely denied that it was his weapon that discharged the blank cartridge.  SGT [D] told me that he had a clear recollection that SGT [B] had already cleared his weapon before this incident.  SGT [D] remembered this because the round SGT [B] cleared from the chamber struck him in the face."

[did my son just use sarcasm to make a point?]

If the investigating officer ends up pointing his/her finger at SPC [C], his rank can be reduced from E-4 to E-1. This is not because of what he (probably) did -- it is because he has had numerous chances to come clean and admit it but he hasn't, out of fear of UCMJ actions.  

At this point it would be an integrity violation and it would mean that he outright lied to his commanding officer, to SFC [A], and to the Command Sergeant Major of the battalion.