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Message: <blockquote data-quote="KurtM" data-source="post: 4206528" data-attributes="member: 6064">This is anecdotal at best, but during the Viet Nam war a bunch of South western New Mexico guys signed up in 1969. I knew almost each one of them,( I didn't go in until 1974) this was small town patriotism at its best. They all went Airborne, and many ended up as LRRPS and Rangers. There were 17 of them. The one thing they asked for from friends and families after they got there was CLEANING EQUIPMENT! I can remember going to Western Auto and buying almost every bottle of Hope's #9 and oil and packaging it up and sending it. Of the guys that made it home, NOT ONE complained of the M-16 not working! These were good old country boys who had been taught to take care of equipment. Several of them detested the AR because of small bullet size, but not one of them said it was unreliable. All of them knew the importance of cleaning and oiling and since Uncle Sugar wasn't supplying the material to do so, they got friends and family to supply it. They all said if ya kept it clean and oiled it was reliable! When I went in I was already to hate that little gun, because my brothers( some of that 17) said it wouldn't knock them down! I ended up in a unit where a M-14 was a T.O. weapon for some, but not one of the M-16A1 that the other guys had ever quit on them, and we played in the sand, like our kids had to do latter. Bottom line is sorry Ken learned a terrible lesson, but if you guys had been doing a bit of pre ops maintenance instead of just sticking them in the rack and only grabbing them after who knows how long, old Ken might have been successful! Now at the same time I know you guys didn't have access to them on demand, so I'm thinking that your Capitan has a big old blame factor in what happened to Ken, and I'm real pissed off that Ken didn't have the basic skills with his T.O. weapon that one round wasn't decisive, and that blame goes right on command. Now with all that said, I have a real strong feeling that both you and Ken didn't take any of this real serious like 17 guys from southern New Mexico did, and we did a bit latter on.</blockquote>

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