Sad but it happens. It’s a dangerous job, even just training. During my military career I remember the bi-annual REFORGER (Return of Forces to Germany) where massive troops along with tanks, personnel carriers, and other equipment was airlifted to Germany and for two weeks was deployed all over Germany in war games. The number of troops killed each exercise ran between 10 to 20 from all kinds of accidents. Troops got run over by tanks for sleeping out in the open, troop would die by electrocution when forgetting to pull down their vehicles whip antenna when traveling under electric cables for electric trains. A number of Germans would also die and I recall when a German in a Mercedes doing about 180 mph on the Autobahn hit the rear of a tank column.
I have a friend who drove M-60’s during some of those reforger ops. He said his unit had a public relations officer whose sole job was to hand out money for stuff the tanks broke or damaged. A friend of his took a turn too tightly and trashed the front of a bakery.
CC
Wow. Serious_
During the 8 years of the Reagan presidency we averaged 2200 military deaths a year.
Yep, I was a pill roller attached to an artillery outfit in Germany in the early 60's and we had multiple deaths caused by training accidents {overshoots, failure to remove barrel plugs prior to firing, getting run over by vehicles, and just plain stupid and careless actions of young men in warlike settings}.
War is hell but so is war training when using live ammo {which was a regular practice back then}.
The tankers and the arty guys all used live ammo when out for training purposes.