Policies and useless paperwork create their own problems.

Back when I was in the service I was an armorer for a while. I ran a small arms locker and was responsible for the small arms of an artillery battery.

If anyone went to a range to shoot anything I was there and as a result got to shoot up the excess ammunition. There was sometimes a lot of it and I wore out a few machine gun barrels in the process. I also shot out the bore of my own issued rifle a time or two.

I also threw enough leftover hand grenades to make my arm pretty sore for a few days. That's a lot of hand grenades.

This is because the paperwork to turn in unused ammunition was a real nuisance. It was a whole lot easier to shoot it up. I was also quietly offered a can of it for personal use. I knew better than that. I didn't touch that offer with a ten foot pole. Besides I didn't have a rifle that could us the ammunition. I simply shot it up at the range and we turned in the brass.

This is no real military secret.

Sometimes someone would just ditch a some of the leftovers somewhere. Burying a few cans of ammo somewhere is not unheard of. The people that do this are rarely caught. In fact the only time I ever saw anyone get caught was the time one lieutenant ratted out another (a captain designee, no less)out of jealousy. The squealer had been passed over for promotion and his classmate had been promoted. Actually if I recall correctly the actual crime had something to do with faking paperwork.

Admittedly they are very hard on people where ammunition is involved. The lieutenant and two sergeants were booted out of the service.

Still, It's whole lot easier to ditch stuff than turn it in and when that happens people simply ditch stuff.

Military bases have had this problem for at least a century.

I remember listening to an old timer that was a B-17 waist gunner telling me about chucking ammunition out over the desert gunnery range. "Crates, cans and bandoleers" he said, with a chuckle.

At least back in the day the practice was pretty much limited to basic small arms ammunition and not explosives like grenades which could cause huge problems down the road. I'd venture it's the same way now.

I would imaging that virtually every military firing range probably has something buried in or around it somewhere. 

Over the years I've heard a couple of stories about Camp Perry prior to 1969. Prior to 1969 the National Matches were run by the army and they supplied just about everything. They supplied housing, bedding, ran a mess hall, and even supplied rifles and ammunition.

One guy told me about helping a couple of sergeants bury a small quantity of .45 pistol ammunition and another guy claimed to help bury an unknown quantity of .30 Match ammunition down in the butts somewhere. Both these men were WW2 vets and are now dead and gone.

At Perry I'm sure the practice stopped when people started having to supply their own ammunition simply because it was their personal property and they simply took unfired ammunition home with them.

Today the army only supplies small amounts of ammunition for one or two matches if I am not mistaken. It's generally civilian made match ammunition and very hard to get so they probably are careful with it and account for it carefully. My guess (guess) is they take the leftovers back for use with the marksmanship unit.

I have heard two stories of guys actually digging some of this up. Both got small quantities of .30 Cal Match ammunition and because most of the cans had not rusted through completely most of the ammunition was perfectly shootable. 

One of the guys said that he took all of the cans, rusted or not because he didn't want to leave any evidence behind. He said he ditched the unshootable ammo by burying it in his back yard somewhere. In a way he actually did the government a service by doing this because eventually the government is/was going to have to deal with this one way or the other. What he carted off reduced the eventual problem, at least a little bit.

Still, the fact remains that all of this happens simply because the process of turning it in makes ditching the stuff somewhere a pretty attractive option.

This kind of thing isn't just a military or an ammunition problem. It occurs in a lot of other places, both in government and in the civilian sector. There are any number of things that happen that parallel this headache. 

If someone gets the wrong part in a business it's often a whole lot easier to toss it out and reorder. If the policy says the part must be turned in and there is little paperwork or ballyhoo it's likely the part will be turned and and returned to its source. If the procedure for returning it involves time and trouble the likelihood of the part getting tossed increases in direct proportion the the amount of hassle it takes to do the right thing.

Most people actually do want to do the right thing and will if it isn't really too inconvenient. 

The old saw of 'No Good Deed Goes Unpunished' holds true here. 

Of course every time good deeds are punished, the good deed doers stop doing good deeds. I am guilty of this. I suppose most of us are.

Not a week goes by when I am not telling someone to "Make it easy for me!"

If more people and organizations would make it easier to do the right thing we'd all be better off and more of us would do the right thing.





   




To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY