He lost a M249

As per requests, I am posting a new Ruckle story. I'm sad to say I have a lot of these because he was a walking Charlie Foxtrot.

So I was a 31B stationed stateside back in 2000. Ruckle was not just a Charlie Foxtrot but also the biggest Blue Falcon you ever met. He tried to bang every one's gf/wife. So where I was stationed, we had some patrols who would go along the desert perimeters of the post in Tahoes and look for people trying to get on base by climbing over the cheap fencing we had out there. Ruckle was on duty with a friend of mine who we will call Bright. Bright was driving the Tahoe because Ruckle didn't have a drivers license. Ruckle often tried to drive vehicles, but caused 3 accidents in 3 months and it was found out that he didn't have a license and so the standing order was that Ruckle was NEVER allowed to drive.

So Ruckle and Bright are driving along the fence line and Ruckle is on his phone texting as usual. He then asks bright to stop so he can pee. This is Ruckle's 3rd pitstop in 2 hours. Ruckle has been assigned the M249 SAW which that patrol is required to have. Ruckle takes the SAW out of the vehicle with him, goes behind the Tahoe and proceeds to relieve himself. He then returns to the vehicle and pesters Bright tot take him by the Chowhall that is open late for night shifters like us. Bright said no and ask Ruckle if he is ready to go. Ruckle ruble yes and they go back to patrolling.

20 minutes later an exercise is called and the scenario has My vehicle, Bright/Ruckle, and our platoon leader show up to a house and handle a possible burglary in progress. The exercises are normally done on empty homes and buildings so as not to wake the people sleeping. It is as we are setting up around the perimeter of the house that Ruckle notices that he does not have his M249. He then pretends to have it and goes to his assigned location. it becomes clear to our platoon leader that Ruckle does not have his firearm with him. He then proceeds to ask where it is.

Ruckle tries to lie and say it is in the Tahoe, but a quick look inside shows that its is not there. Ruckle then tries to say that Bright had left it somewhere, but that doesn't float either. He then admits that he must have left it when he took a piss. When asked where that was, we soon discover that it could be anywhere along a massive stretch of desert. As you can imagine the SHTF.

All available personnel are called to go out to the desert fence line and look for it. It takes us 2 hours of looking until someone comes upon it. Upon it's discovery it is also found that Ruckle had not only loaded the M249 (Which we NEVER do for safety purposes. Instead the ammo stays in the box and the weapon is charged, but the safety is kept on.), but has the weapon charged, and the safety off. They were riding around the desert on bumpy dirty roads with the weapon like that.

So Ruckle receives an Article 15 (not his first or last), looses his one stripe, is relieved of duty for a few weeks, and spends the time with SWAT (Sweeping, Weeding, and Trash), but somehow returns to duty. Later it is discovered that the reason Ruckle was kept from getting booted was that Investigations made a deal with him to be their snitch in exchange for not booting him when he was found to have doctored his military ID to make him look 21.

Morale of the story: Never trust a Ruckle.

Let me know which Ruckle story you want next: The time he lost a 40MM grenade in a training exercise or a rundown of the 3 vehicles he destroyed (including an uparmored Humvee). I have dozens of Ruckle stories.