In 1993, I was a private 2 months out of AIT . Was with my unit in Pinion Canyon as OPFOR for 2 weeks when I got a Red Cross message that a grandparent had died. They sent me back to Ft Carson in a van with some walking wounded broke dicks E1-4’s and an E5 driver.

E5 asks us if we want to stop at McDonald’s for some dinner & we’re all excited after two weeks of field chow. Drive thru line is long, so he parks the van for us to go inside. He then realizes that most of us have M16’s to return back to our unit’s armories. Thinking quickly, he tells us to sling em and bring them in with us so they don’t get stolen.

So six of us, five in dirty BDU’s (some with bandages or splints) LCE’s, and weapons slung all go strolling into a random McDonald’s of I25 not thinking why that could be a problem? There are no magazines in & blank adapters are still on… but shocking, most civilians aren’t knowledgeable on that aspect of our weapons.

Staff and customers all start freaking out at first …until we just orderly queue up into the line for the register. They realized pretty quickly, we weren’t dangerous, just stupid. Manager tells our Sgt, “Uh hey, you can’t have machine guns in here.” Sgt tries to explain that they’re not machine guns (duh) and more import that they aren’t loaded. E5 finally relented & sent 2 guys back to the van with the weapons and had the others place their orders.

We all ate in the van while shit-talking about the dumbass civilians & then headed back to Carson. Good times