Defending American Values: Story 4589

I'm not gonna share when I went to Basic because you window-lickers are looking for any excuse to not read. I was the guidon bearer for my platoon through most of basic, simply for the fact that I was the tallest private. 1st platoon had someone taller, but f*ck that guy, he looked like a giant dick.It was white phase, and we were getting used to having our rifles with us all the time before the qual range. We went to some training area for a good day of CLS training, and various other learnings because why not multitask. We get off the big white buses and put our assault packs and weapons in a formation so we could go grab chow and receive our MREs.

Dress right dress, all that good sh*t.

Because the ground was so hard and frozen, I couldn't plant the rickety guidon into the soil, so we had to use the carrying handles for two assault packs to keep it upright, and me and a battle buddy would stack our rifles accordingly on them.Too easy.

Now I had to take a leak. Me and Pvt E, who is a gigantic blue falcon in other stories, go to the porta-sh*tter and come back to find everyone else had moved their formation about 20 feet to the left. Pvt E's and my assault packs were left in the original spots, along with the guidon, but no rifles.

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We look around and in 2 seconds, we see our 6'6" body-snatcher DS (he told us about black-bag-over-head captures he's done, names and locations omitted) and our 5'6" Sapper DS with our weapons slung over their shoulders.

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So we double-time over, ask for our weapons back and the Sapper takes both of them, going "Nope,nope,nope,nope" as he leads us over to a certain path. He makes us low-crawl a couple hundred feet. I had to keep pushing Pvt E's head down cause he didn't wanna get muddy. I end up missing the top couple layers of the right side of my face for a few weeks after. I also somehow inhaled a f*cking twig through it all, so go ahead and make the gay jokes.

DS chewed our asses at the end of the trail for quite some time, I mean up one side and down the other. I could tell this was something personal for him, and I don't think I really wanna know the story behind why he was so angry about us leaving our weapons. Obviously a bad experience for him or someone he knew. I get that leaving our weapons behind is very serious, but this ass-chewing was soul-crushing.I thought I saw skulls in his eyes at one point, which makes me believe he was actually staring through my soft, weak flesh and peering directly into my soul as he defecated within. Push ups and burpees and monkey f*ckers I could handle, but this messed with me. If I had a stress card I might have used it.He later made us write a personal letter to Pvt Snuffys mom about how he died because I didn't have my rifle with me to save him in an ambush.This isn't a story about an awesome punishment or something hilarious a DS said to me or did to me. It's a lesson I've always kept with me, and has led to me stepping on a few toes from time to time because I refuse to let it go.The lesson is - always be accountable for your own sh*t. Never assume that anyone will actually look after anything for you. You might get people who can do that, but never take it for granted. If sh*t hits the fan and you don't have it, don't know where it is and no one else does, YOUR ass is gonna fry.tl;dr, I didn't keep my weapon with me one time, had to low crawl to get it back, and years after I am an asshole about trusting anyone with my stuff. Here endeth the lesson.