It would have been the A2 version of the SA80 I used. Many hours spent cleaning those gas parts and lubricating and doing drills. Also many ceremonial duties holding those things with many hours stood still and feeling it get heavier and heavier even though it weighed nothing
Edit: you have used way more than me, I respect your experience!
i hated the ceremonials too - they even gave us instruction what to do if you have to stand still for a longer time to prevent loosing consciousness, it was something like move your right toes a bit then your right butt cheek then your left butt cheek then your left toes and so on and so forth until your allowed to move again...
One of my squadmate stole a can of stewed pork with tomatoes during a training trip. He could not find a can opener, so he lit it on fire (why did he do that still remains a mystery till this day). Aaaand the can exploded with a large boom. We rushed to the kitchen and lo and behold, the smoking remain of a tube shaped object on the ground with our friend covering his bloodied face with his hands and screaming in agony, alongside bits and bits of flesh scattered around the kitchen. No word can describe the horror we felt at that moment.
We thought he was playing with explosive when it exploded and ripped open his face. We rushed him to the infirmary, all while he was screaming at the top of his lungs and woke half the barrack up. Frankly, most of us were new then and didn't really know what to do during that situation. Already someone was shouting ''He played with a grenade and had his face blown up !''.
The guy was fine apparently; he was only burnt a little, and the blood we saw on his face and the bits of flesh on the ground were actually tomato sauce and cooked pork. He was then stuck with latrine duty for the week.
boiling hot stew to your face is not healthy hehe - there was this uper stoopid trend in USA where they would put those big "jawbreaker" chewing gum balls in the microwave oven... many kids burnt their mouths severly when they started to chew on it and basicly molten hot sugar poured out from it in to their mouths..
regarding Army stupidity there was an incident on an exercise wich involved me and one of those special foam grenades that resemble the old german stick grenade but made of styropor but with actual 5gr of TNT in it. one of those actually
they are as writen on them for referee use only ( in military terms thats a officer that observes an red vs blue exercise, he would then throw one of those to simulate an mortar strike or something and would point out soldiers who are "dead" from that Point on). Like i said theres 5gr of TNT in them so they make a heck of a bang..
So during this excerise i was on the attacking team - the defenders were not ordinary soldiers but higher ranks and they decided to spice things up by preparing some booby traps with those motherfuckerz.. ( was totally illicit but who cares i guess) ..
so i was running behind some big guy and i saw him running between two trees and i recognised a thin line spanning from one tree to the other on ancle level. He just went trough, oblivious to it. I reached it a sec later and saw the wire still intact so i stopped raised my arm and shouted for all to hear :,, booby trap here!" ...Thing was - they had set up a fake wire non colored (so a bit shiny and easy to spot ) and the actual life green wire was somewhere behind it in one footstep reach - so that whoever see the obvious wire will take a big step over it and by doing that he would step on the life wire...
When i stopped there the thing was already ticking. And it was nearby.. like in 2m distance...
They later told me that it was sick sight. It went off and i was blasted away. My rifle flew that direction, my backpack in the other. I made some kind of somersault. I spend 1 Day in an Army hospital because of dizzynes and my ears did ring for 3 days or so.. like a tinitus..
Yeah ..
edit: found a video of some soldiers throwing one of these..
another one showing the power of these .. and also what can happen if your are stupid..
