REPORT FROM MATT SETTLE (Navy) What can I say? This week has been an eye opener for all. We started the week with a Negligent Discharge. For everyone that not familiar with this term, a “ND” is a really serious offence. It is where a person fires a weapon that was not intended to fire. Luckily, the first one (yea there was more than one) was into a clearing barrel. The good thing is that the clearing barrel (a device that is intended to capture a rifle round fired into it a very close range) worked as advertised. The second “ND” was during training where a Petty Officer was showing someone how to clear an M-9, 9-mm pistol. When he pulled the slide back and released it, the weapon went off into a near by sand bag. Not sure how that happened, but it did. And the third (and hopefully final one) was with a crew serve weapon on one of the boats. A crew serve weapon is the Navy’s term for a machine gun. That round went off into the ocean.
Well, why am I telling this story. I wanted to point out that no matter what you read or what people back home tell you, this is the real world. We are using real weapons, real bullets and real people. The situations every day that we experience are real. What we do every day has risks associated, risks that are minimized if people follow the correct procedures. It is only when people get sloppy and do not follow these procedures that the risks out weight the benefits. Everyone is OK and we will get over this very large hurdle. But we have along hill to climb to get over this one.
OK, now to the old cheerful me. Good news, the Chiefs have a bye this weekend. GO CHIEFS! The Battlestar Galactica has found the mother world but the Ceylon’s are there awaiting the Battlestar. OK, there is not much TV in these parts so a man has to make do with what is available. Actually, I have gotten into the Battlestar Galactica series. I guess I will have to watch it from now on.
The weather is starting to get cooler. Now hold on to your chair, the high today was 104 degrees. Now that may not seem cool, but four weeks ago the high was 135 degrees. I hear that the temperatures in Kansas City are in the low 60’s at night. Well, that is a 30 degrees change for the highs in the summer. We have had a thirty degree change so far in our highs here in Kuwait. The humidity is in the teens so the heat is dry and the lows are in the high 70’s or low 80’s. Actually the mornings have been quite nice. My Kuwaiti crud has almost gone away. I had called it the Kuwaiti Crude in pervious e-mails but crude is what they send through the pipes in the picture below. The Kuwaiti crud is the cold everyone gets just for being here. Sorry for the black spot. My camera does not like the desert sand. L
1 comment:
Post a Comment