Well, I eluded to it in my previous post, so here is probably the closest I've come to dying.

Edit: grammatical error

Background:

My service initially started in the Marine Corps, but my battalion decided to mismanage and lose about 60 re-up packages, mine included. The choice to go to the Navy was based on the idea that even if combat deployments aren't available, sea tours mean I'll still get to do my job, something the battalion seemed dead set on preventing. I sometimes wonder what would have been if I could have stayed in the marines, but I don't regret the time spent deployed on a destroyer. Tin cans for life.

Little more background:

Despite my rating not have anything to do with guns, my background in the marines was like a ticket into collateral duties that allowed me to keep playing with them. The gunner's mates were excited to hear their new small arms coach applicant was already qualified as a marine marksmanship coach, and actually knew their way around M9s and M4s, and they're interested in being security team qual'd. As if that wasn't enough they were even interested on being part of the Small Craft Action Team (SCAT, because the Navy loves bad acronyms). Long to short: SCAT mans up MGs on the deck when the ship enters environments where the threat of small boats getting close is increased, Strait transits, entering or staying in foreign ports, stuff like that. Although nearly everything about ship life sucks, for some reason most sailors agree that being on SCAT is one of the worst. I don't get it, sure having to be on deck behind a gun in the hot or rain sucks, but no more than all the other times you have to be out in that shit, but maybe I'm just weird for wanting trigger time with .50 cals.

What you came hear for:

It's a good day, the usual monotony of underway routine is being broken up by a SCAT shoot, so that the gunners stay familiar with the M2s, at least the ones that didn't share my enthusiasm for trigger time, only complaint I have for those days was I need more than 100 rounds. Eventually my turn comes around, check head space and timing (I don't care if you just did it, I'm always personally checking that shit before I get on the gun), load up, and proceed to fire. After five loud rhythmic BANGs, we get a click.

Oh well, this happens.

Rack it, hold it, resume fire. The sixth round is not a BANG, but a BOOMPF, accentuated by white smoke shooting out the sides of the top cover.

Well THAT just happened...

We wait awhile before I hold back the charging handle and open up the top cover. The holding was more a formality than anything in this situation, as the bolt assembly was locked back and wouldn't budge, even if I let go. Sitting right on the bolt face was round number six, with the projectile sucked half way back into the casing, we remove it and begin inspecting the gun. We now notice the bottom right side of the receiver is bowed out a bit. One of the GMs begins running a pen along the rails inside to find any other deformities. As he's tracing out the internal lines of the gun (applying hardly any pressure at all), small bits of metal are dislodged and fall out the bottom onto the deck. It now occurs to me that while my head has a kpot on top and my torso has a flak jacket over it, my legs only had a thin layer of fabric over them...

Not important, they're gonna grill me to see if it's my fault the gun is busted.

I was fortunate that 1: even if no one saw me do the headspace and timing, I was know for doing it religiously before even considering loading the gun up, and 2: the round lot we were using was already listed in the reports our air detachment had submitted when their guns suffered malfunctions. Almost as if we knew the batch had bad rounds in it.

Can we hurry this up? I got watch soon and chow is about to close.

Having been clear of any negligence, I grab chow and go to stand my watch. My chief asks me if I'm good, if I need the night off. I'm an idiot who's built a reputation on being reliable, so I pass on that. I spent the watch thinking about the ordeal and talking about it with my friends who asked about it. If the propellant load didn't do just a partial burn, If those metal fragments that broke off hadn't somehow been kept inside the receiver and had just shot out the bottom of the gun where my legs were.

The gun blows up, and you're either in God's hands or Doc's, it's done and decided before you even realize it happened.

You know what's scarier? Taking a dump and finding out there's no toilet paper, that's a shit situation you're stuck in and it isn't going away until you do something about it.

People were surprised I was acting thoroughly unfazed, as if I didn't just burn at least six months worth of luck in a half-second. I saw no point in worrying over it, even if I just had a one-off in a scenario that should have put me in either a gurney or a forever box, it was over before I had even had time to comprehend what happened, didn't really have a say in how it would pan out.

Bonus:

That was about four years ago, and I hadn't thought much about it until last year when I broke my leg. A simple slip and fall in my apartment's laundry room one rainy day. Didn't think about much while I was in the hospital, other than getting out of there, but when I got home though, I thought about the other slip and fall that hospitalized me when I was four. That got me thinking of all the times I'd been thrown from horses, bowled over by various farm animals, various work with machinery and heavy lifting, and that time a .50 cal blew up on me, and through all that stuff hardly a mark was left on me...

Why is it every time I could get a scar with a cool story behind it, I walk away without a scratch?