When I served as the Commander of the 305th Supply and Services Company in the 227th Maintenance Battalion At Yongsan, Seoul, Korea, the company passed several major tests and milestones. And the company picked up new missions without skipping a beat. My company had participated in the Team Spirit field exercise, but we had finally deployed back to Garrison at the end of the exercise. After Team Spirit operations wound down, daily life in my company returned to normal. When I say that things returned to normal, I mean that the usual things such as monthly ten-percent property inventories, daily physical fitness, weekly training activities, assigned MTOE (Modified Table of the Organizational Equipment) missions, and other duties as assigned were being performed. One of the usual things that came up on the list that I just rattled off happened to be range week. Most of you that are or have been in the active military know that range week, usually, generally, always consists of attending a number of different qualification ranges such as the M-16 rifle qualification range, the M60 machine gun range, the annual MOPP (Mission Oriented Protective Posture) Gear familiarization range, the Claymore mine familiarization range, and the M67 fragmentation grenade qualification range. Now, I know that some of you are thinking, “wait a minute, we don’t use the M-16 or the M60 anymore.” Before you start saying anything. Let me just say that. Back when I was in command, these were the weapons being used by the Army. I know that times have changed and the weapons have gone through a modernization program. That’s how things work. Ain’t life grand? The military industrial complex has to make a buck or two just like any other corporation. Except, in the case of the military-industrial complex, the buck or two that they make is usually on a profit scale that is exponentially higher than the profit scale of normal corporations. And we all know just exactly how high the profit scale of normal corporations is, don’t we? What? Some of you don’t know just exactly how high that is? Why surely you must know that it is sky high. I know. I know. Don’t call you, Shirley. Anyway, how high is ‘sky high’? Well, a fighter jet can’t fly that high. In fact, you need a goddamn rocket to get that high. Okay. Some serious druggies think that their drugs get them sky high. But they are just hallucinating. Cuz let me tell you something that sky-high shit that they’re thinking of is all in their minds. And their minds are kind of fried from all the drugs that they are doing. No. That ain’t really what sky high is all about. Just exactly how high is ‘sky high’? I don’t really know. I just know it is really goddamn high, and I also know that you need a goddamn rocket to get there. In fact, a celebrity was so shocked when he got there recently, that he had a significant emotional event on nationally televised news outlets. So, can you translate that into an equivalent amount of dollars? Well, if we look at our macroeconomic perspective of things and relate it back to our black sheep perspective, it would be lots and lots. And for you sharp readers out there, you may remember that lots equals three bags full. So, lots and lots must equal six bags full. Exactly how much is in a bag? Well, that’s a good question. But depending on the size of the bag, it could very well be one million large. But we all know that corporations don’t speak in terms of millions. Oh hell no. They speak in terms of billions. So, six bags full could very well be six billion large. That is all pure profit. But I digress, I was originally talking about range week. I brought all of that up because I wanted to make one small teensy tiny little point about the Claymore mine. The Claymore mine is a directional fragmentation, anti-personnel mine. That is a really important point to understand about the Claymore mine, the part about it being directional and all. But, apparently, that point gets lost on a lotta soldiers. I am not sure why, but it does. So much so that the Army had to have the words “FRONT TOWARD ENEMY” printed on the side that faces the enemy, or the convex side of the weapon. Even with that obvious warning, some soldiers still manage to screw it up. How in the hell does that happen? I don’t know? Perhaps the poor bastards just can’t read. The letters are pretty damn big, so even if somebody needed glasses in order to see shit, that somebody should still be able to see those big ass letters up close. But, of course, that assumes that the poor bastards can read. And we all know what happens when you assume shit, don’t we? Yep. Well, I happened to arrive at a Claymore familiarization range just in time to watch a soldier damn near blow his head off with a Claymore mine. He was one of those poor bastards that apparently couldn’t read. And he also must have been asleep during the training portion of the familiarization range. Cuz he didn’t know a damn thing about that mine. Well, that’s not entirely true. He knew how to hook it up to the clacker and how to emplace the mine. He just pointed the mine the wrong damn way. Instead of pointing it down range at the enemy, he pointed it at himself. Smart. If the range NCOIC had given the go-ahead to detonate the mines, that soldier would have been in one helluva hurt. As it was, a soldier in another unit actually detonated a Claymore mine that was facing the wrong way and caused a mortal wound to his neck and face. I just happened to be at the hospital when the medevac helicopter brought the soldier into the emergency room. The hospital immediately put out an alert seeking donations of a very rare blood type. Unfortunately, the soldier didn’t survive. Three simple words could have saved his life if he had paid attention to them. Those three simple words were “FRONT TOWARD ENEMY,” which should have been staring him in the face. The Claymore mine familiarization range had gone horribly wrong, and the training accident that ensued was a huge exercise in futility for all who were in charge of the range that day.
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