“Why didn’t you get another barrel instead of keeping the [one with] the burned out chamber?”
As I said, both the Machine Gunner and I were new to the unit, transfers from a Battalion which was rotating home. The Plt Sgt asked if any of us new guys had any experience with the M-60, and Limbeck, the gunner who had earned the Bronze Star for his actions as a M-60 gunner, volunteered. I was a buddy of his, so I ‘volunteered’ as his Assistant Gunner. Neither of us had even seen the gun or the Spare Barrel Bag before we were issued them and went out...on a night patrol.
When we got back to base camp after that ... incident ..., Limbeck walked into the Arms Room, threw the gun on the counter, and told the Supply Sgt, or the Armorer, or the Supply Clerk, whoever it had been who had handed out the gun, “Don’t you EVER issue me a defective weapon again!” He was soon transferred out of that Company to a Battalion attached to another division, located miles away; I was also transferred, all the way back to Hawaii.
I was pissed off at the clowns in the rear the whole time I was in Vietnam - old gear, ancient C-Rations, nonexistent resupply for worn-out utilities, got my first set of Jungle Boots from a pile taken off dead Marines. The M60 was mediocre but it made noise (usually) when you needed it but the M-16 was an atrocity - jamming hellaciously when you least needed it to happen - and they blamed us for "not cleaning them properly".
I wrote to my congressman, complaining about the crappy M16s and told him that "I don't give a damn if you have to gold-plate the interior of the things and use sapphire bearings, our lives depend on them and we're worth the money".
Needless to say, he never answered my letter