Reminds me of a story told to me a long time ago.
Clearing barrels.
An old 55 gallon barrel set at an angle, filled with sand and backed up by sandbags. This is the contraption that one day appeared at the entrance to the post office/finance office at a medium size military camp in a foreign country we ‘liked’ at the time.
There was a stenciled sign over it saying ‘Clearing Barrel’.
You see, twice a month the troops got paid. This meant each unit sent an officer (usually the most junior officer) to the building to pick up the payroll for the unit. Usually a few thousand dollars. This officer had to be armed and was usually given a .45 pistol and a seven round magazine for the task. On entering the building the officer had to take out the pistol and demonstrate the pistol was unloaded to one of the guards at the entrance. The pistol was carried with the loaded magazine in the gun but no round in the chamber. For months and months and months there had been no problems. Payroll officers came in, and in front of the guard took out their pistol, dropped the magazine, racked the slide and checked the chamber, then lowered the hammer, reholstered the gun and entered to do the paperwork to get the payroll. On exit, with the payroll, they inserted the magazine back into the pistol and put the gun back in the holster, no round in the chamber. This procedure had worked without problem for months and months and months, and then some higher up had come through for an inspection and written up the finance folk for not having a ‘clearing barrel’ in the building, so one was installed.
The procedure now was that after you cleared the pistol you were suppose to point it into the barrel and pull the trigger dropping the hammer.
The new procedure confused some of the young officers.
These young officers were in an area were they occasionally DID fire their weapons and they were reasonably proficient in their use.
It also didn’t help that the NCO guard at the entrance told them that the barrel was there to safely catch the bullets fired from the guns.
They easily grasped the concept that the barrel was there to catch bullets. So, after showing the NCO the chamber was clear and the gun was unloaded they stepped over to the clearing barrel, put the magazine back in, chambered a round and pumped one into the barrel. Their reasoning being that the clearing barrel was there to catch bullets and unless they loaded the gun there would be no bullets for the barrel to catch and the installation of the barrel would have been a pointless waste of time and effort.
A couple rounds were fired the first day and several others might have been except for the now alert and slightly deaf NCO at the entrance giving a much better and more detailed explanation of the purpose of the clearing barrel.
