Army Unit Loses .50 Cal Machine Gun, All Hell Breaks Loose

1… 1 missing .50 caliber machine gun part, ah ah ahhhhhh, but we'll get to that in a second. 

For many troops, a large portion of their time in the military is simply spent… counting. If you're an armorer you have the exact numbers for every single weapon in your care. If you're an ammo driver you know the count of each individual unspent round you're returning to the ammo depot. If you're in boot camp you're constantly "counting off" to make sure you know how many Marines or rifles or whatever are present at all times. If you're just a regular 'ol troop you always have gear inspections where every little government-issued item is accounted for. 

In any of these cases if the final number isn't what it's supposed to be or something is clearly missing it's a massive problem that must be sorted out immediately. And if it doesn't get sorted out? Heads roll & maddening group punishments rue the day… Everyone gets the green weenie. 

A notorious example of this would be back in December of 2020 when two rifles with the Marine's 3/6 Infantry Battalion went missing during training on Camp Lejeune. They nearly lost their holiday leave because of it, and after massive searches yielded nothing & a big investigation took place, the Commander & Sergeant Major both got fired. The rifles were never found & that's such a big deal in our world that "3/6's missing rifles" has been a running joke ever since. 

All that being said, last week I was scrolling Twitter when I came across this doozy of a tale by Military.com reporter Steve Beynon… Someone had reportedly stolen an M2 .50 cal machine gun right out of a duty hut, which is no small feat considering 1. several soldiers were on duty in the area, 2. the weapon system is extremely unwieldy to carry (82lbs all-together) and 3. it's tough to hide something like that when an entire battalion (up to 1,000 troops) is looking for it. 

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Since then more details have emerged from the full circumstances under which it went missing, the command response, the huge search parties and a lot of JUICY troop gossip speculating on whodunit. We cover it all at 23:23 on the latest episode of ZeroBlog30. Check it out HERE: