Darwin says, "Accepted into the Archive (at-risk survivor)."

It was coming up on the end of my time in the Marine Corps. I was within ten days of driving off the base I called home for the last time. In celebration of being "short" a good friend, that served in Iraq with me as a Corpsman decided we should have a quite night hanging out in the barracks. That lasted for a brief moment and we were back to drinking and yelling like we've become accustomed too.

As the night went on, I found some cleaning punch rods and caps from a toy gun. I decided it would be a funny joke to place a cap over the punch rod and set it off to scare my corpsman. Sure enough, he almost jumped out of his seat when it exploded. We had a share of laughs, then in a drunken stupor decided to see if we could set one off on his forehead.

This entertained us greatly for a moment and I was back on to something new. I had found an extra 30-06 round in my belongings and taped it to the punchrod. When I gave it to my corpsman, he laughed and acted out setting it off on his head like we had with the caps. Looking back, I realize that he must have been a little more sober than I was. I had thought it would be funny to scare him again by dropping the rod on the ground next to him with the round still taped to it. Sure enough, he jumped out of the seat and into a nearby bed. This time however, instead of laughing, he had a look of shock and horror. "You can set that off doing that." With logic that only a drunken man can have, I responded, "Nah, they only go off when you throw them." Followed immediately by a forcefully toss to the ground. This is one of those times in your life when you realize that you screwed up. You even regret doing it. Unfortunately, it's too late to take it back. The punch rod landed square on the ground, causing the inertia of the round to dent the primer and set it off. The blast was sudden, followed by the smell of gunpowder, in turn followed by the stinging pain in each of our legs.

The part of the round covered by tape had held the integrity of the shell. The rest of it however had split into pieces. It caused small pieces of shrapnel to pierce our legs, and one into the chest of my friend. Powder burns raised up to our knee levels as well.

Later we found a small circle in the tile floor where the punch rod had been indented. We traced the trajectory as well as we could and found where the round slapped against the ceiling. Finally we found the 7.62mm round laying in its resting place in a corner. We estimated that were I was standing when I through the "loaded punchrod" and the path of the round, it came close to a foot from my head. I've found that this was the quickest way to "sober up" but it still causes chills down my back thinking about being one of the few that can shoot himself in the head without using a firearm.

Submitted on 11/10/2008

Submitted by: Anonymous
Reference: April 2006

Copyright © 2008 DarwinAwards.com

Bruce said:
Definitely Keep: Personal Account
As I said in your last submission, bored Marines can be dangerous Marines. Bored, drunk, Marines can be deadly! Thanks for another great story.

Candi said:
Definitely Keep: Personal Account
What Bruce said! These stories make the rubber snake in my dad's hammock (in 'Nam) sound positively tame by comparison! Thanks! (Oh, and Dad tore the mosquito netting over his bed in half fleeing the snake.)

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