SC: Fort Jackson soldier, 29, found dead in barracks, marks 4th death at base in past year

Fox ^ | Sept 13, 2020 | Stephen Sorace

[sushiman]

Gomer Pyle was 32 when he joined the Marines .

[logi_cal869]

I’m grateful that I passed through Ft Jackson in Jan/Feb rather than the hot, humid eastern summer.

I’ll never forget the day that they called an unusual formation, paraded us into a building we’d never been in, sat us down in a room with a bunch of student desks and put the news on a large screen in the front of the room about the Challenger disaster, January 28, 1986.

It was surreal, but nobody in our platoon died. One blanket party for an idiot was all.

[HANG THE EXPENSE]

Oh yeah

[ExGeeEye]

In 1986 we were mixed. The only time one’s destiny made a difference was in calling out meal card numbers in the chow line.

“J4045475, National Guard, Ma’am!”

—that was me.

In 1987, finding I enjoyed Guard Drills more than my civilian job, I joined the Regular Army.

[ExGeeEye]

That’s when I was there. Did the same thing.

[Mark17]

How sad.

Yes it is. I didn’t know all these older guys were joining up. I was 19 when I went through Air Force basic training. My son was 26, when he went to Air Force OTS. He sent me some nice pictures of himself, in front of the aircraft he flies. 👍

[BerryDingle]

I went through in March of 73, tough as nails, but in addition to basic rifle marksmanship, we went through an additional week of automatic fire familiarization.

[Gay State Conservative]

Automatic was fun! I did BCT in '69 and our company was the last at Ft Knox to qualify on the M-14 and the first to qualify on the M-16. While on the M-16 we were allowed to switch to "auto" once...and only once. Those few seconds were the most fun I ever had wearing olive drab.

One week? Impressive!

[BerryDingle]

Yes. We got a class on the care and feeding of the M-60, then we lined up as 4 platoons behind 4 M-60’s on the range and fired around 35 rounds. I learned how important bracing sandbags into the bipods were, LOL.

[central_va]

These tragedies only happened because the US Army forts in the South are named for CSA generals.