When I was in the Army back in the 80’s, my company was doing a field exercise where we were doing a patrol in a semi-final area.
We went into a trailer park on the edge of Ft. Lewis near the Nisqually River...a real, non-military trailer park. There were ‘opposing forces’ (one the other platoons) hidden in the trailer park. All of a sudden, the OPFOR attacked, and we returned fire. Now, we were using blanks, of course. It was a short engagement,
Within 2 minutes, a Pierce County Sheriff’s deputy came driving in, lights going. He stepped out of his car...with his shotgun in hand. One of the sergeants yelled out “These are blanks!”. The deputy replied “ This isn’t shooting blanks. Drop your weapons!” We did.
It turns out the 1LT who put the exercise together failed to tell anyone in the trailer park that we were going to be doing this. They then thought there was an honest-to-God battle taking place...and called the cops.
When we got back to the barracks, the LTC in charge of the battalion was livid...to put it mildly. The lieutenant was busted down one grade and transferred out of there forthwith.
Sorry... “semi-final” should be “semi rural”.
Years ago, here in central Alabama, the Air Guard had a jet malfunction. The pilot punched off his tip tanks and made it to the base. One of them went sailing over a deer blind with two good ‘ol boys in it. They didn’t know if it was Russians or aliens but they took off for civilization. Called the sheriff who thought it over and called the Guard. They wanted to go get it but he told them to wait until after deer season.
My husband drew the short straw and got to supervise the ensuing goat rope. They found one tank way back in the swamp and had a devil of a time getting it out of the mud and out of the woods. Never did find the other one. They were empty so no real danger.