Flashbacks

So, this one has been sitting in "Drafts" for three years now. No idea where I was going with it. But someone was extolling the virtues of the M60 Machine Gun the other day, and I just happened to remember this, so...

 Flashbacks. Thanks to Tamara, I'm having them. Weaponsman's fault, mostly.

I once had an M60 machine gun that wouldn't fire. I lost track of all the way some genius had found to reassemble it with all the parts -- no "spares" left over -- most of them inserted incorrectly. The hammer was installed backwards and upside down, the gas cylinder was backwards, the trigger group pins were inserted backwards, and the leaf spring was on the wrong side and upside down...

If it had been Basic Training I'd've suspected a test of some sort.

My loathing for the M60 machine gun knows no bounds, since, in addition to the above incident, it has to be held together with baling wire. Well, they'll tell you you're the armorer is using baling wire to make sure that the person who is qualified on and issued it is not performing unauthorized maintenance... including cleaning the gas cylinder. Because it was allegedly simple to clean the gas cylinder, you can just (allegedly) roll it around in the dirt and it'll scour all the caked on carbon right off, but the odds (and risks) of re-inserting it backwards was considered to be too high so not only was it not operator maintenance, but the thing was supposed to be, you guessed it, wired shut.

Also, R.I.P. Weaponsman.

(Edited to add the point about the hammer.)