Brand new XM-16E1 at Fort Jackson. C-9-2, October 1968. Unlike everyone else at the time who was still training on the M14. They said our company was test. After AIT at Fort Knox, it was an M1911 and the occasional M3A1 grease gun off and on for the next twenty plus years.

Along the way an interesting array of small arms, both individual and crew served, from a few different armies and eras, passed through my hands. Some I liked, some I didn't. However, as a tank commander, the Browning Caliber .50 M2 and Browning Caliber .30 M37 were my favorite machine guns.

I tolerated the M85, a maintenance intensive and somewhat finicky machine gun. There are no words to describe how positively vile the M73/M219 series machine guns were. The bean counter civilians that condemned a generation of tank crewman to the agonies of that awful gun should be relegated to the deepest pits of hell.