The thing that most freaked me out was in basic we had to take
our rifle to the shower with us. They had cleaning stations set up
in the head. Water was so hot you could see it evaporate before
your eyes. It worked very well, it just seemed reverse of what I
was taught. The only water we ever used at home was on Muzzel
Loaders. I trained with both, m16 first in Basic, M14 in AIT in
Automatic Weapons MOS. Later M16 in RVN, where m16 was not
my main weapon but I was around a lot of m16 fire and the bugs
in gun and ammo had been taken care of. Very little complaint
on m16 from then on. I like to hear Remington Raider war stories
about using a AK instead of a m16. Did they ever stop to think
that there would be a lot of fire directed at AK fire. SOPs guys
used them to confuse Commies, but a US Army soldier best be
carrying his issue weapon. We were lucky we could carry anything we wanted, as long as we were carrying our issue weapon.