Last Saturday to celebrate an anniversary of the Marine Corps they fired live rounds in Camp Pendelton, California across Interstate 5. They closed down the Interstate as a safety precaution. Still, some shrapnel fell onto a California Highway Patrol car. This reminded me of one of my stories…

I was in the National Guard in the early 1970s. For a couple of years I lived in Jamestown, NY and was in a tank corps. My job in the tank was to be the loader of the cannon. It is a dangerous job as you can get crushed if you are not out of the way when they fire the cannon.

One Summer Camp we were at Camp Drum (now Fort Drum) in northern NY. We only were going to do live fire of the cannon one day out of the 2 weeks we were at Camp Drum. That day I was picked for guard duty instead of being in the tank. I was taken to a small guard shack way up in the northern part of Camp Drum. They told me to stop everyone as they tanks were going to be firing over the road that I was guarding. Only had one Army jeep come along in the morning to check up on me. Then in the afternoon I had to stop a pick-up pulling an aluminum boat. He said he often cuts across the Camp to go fishing.

I told the man that the tanks were firing across the road. He turned around and drove off to take a much longer route to his fishing hole. So my boring day of guard duty may have saved that guy’s life.

I never did get to be in the tank when they fired the cannon. I moved to Rochester by the next summer camp.