lysanderxiii
Member
My Dad recounts a story concerning one of these clearing barrels outside a "PX" in a largish base in Vietnam in the late 1960s.The clearing barrel is also a regular feature of military bases in unfriendly territory where the Army has to allow troops to load their rifles.
He was with a civilian engineer testing some new piece of equipment in location that required all US personnel to be armed, so both of them had been issued a pistol belt with an M1911A1 and three magazines and 21 rounds of ammunition. Obviously, two magazines went in the pouch, the third in the pistol, hammer down on an empty chamber. Both had gone through a one or two hour weapon familiarization before flying into the country, but my Dad, who had just left the Marine Corps as a Captain really didn't pay much attention to what was said.
On the first day they were at the base around noon they decided to go over what passed for the PX to get some cigarettes or something like that. Right next to the entrance door there was the dirt filled 55 gallon drum clearing barrel, partially buried so that it leaned over at 45 degrees and the open top was just below waist level. A large sign above the barrel read:
"EMPTY ALL WEAPONS BEFORE ENTRY"
My Dad pulls out his pistol to remove the magazine and clear it, when all of a sudden:
SCHRICK-SCHRACK BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! . . . BAM! BAM!
The other engineer "emptied" his pistol into the clearing barrel.
The rest of the people on the compound were not amused, as they thought all the shooting was the start of some VC attack...