I was recently re-watching HBO’s The Pacific. It is an excellent mini-series. If you liked Band of Brothers, you will likely like The Pacific. It isn’t quite as good as BoB, but it is very good.
Anyway, in one scene, our Marines are dug into foxholes on a hillside on Iwo Jima. The enemy is dug in just on the other side of the hill. Both sides can hear each other, but due to darkness and terrain, they cannot see each other.
The Marines are trying to get some fitful rest during this lull in the action, but they must be absolutely quiet so as not to give away their position. The stress of the situation finally gets to one of the Marines and he stands up and starts to shout incoherently and generally cause a loud disturbance. This exposes the entire formation to possible enemy action. The other Marines attempt to subdue the loud Marine, but are unable to do so. There is not a medic nearby to administer any drugs that might help the situation. Finally, one of the Marines shoots and kills to loud Marine, ending the disturbance.
Is this a crime in the UCMJ? In the story, this shooting of a fellow Marine is portrayed as unavoidable and it ended what could have been a very real threat to the unit. Still, the dead Marine’s family will be informed of the casualty. There will be paperwork. Would the officer in command of the unit at the time of the death concoct some more appropriate battlefield death for this event? Assuming that an accurate report is filed, how would the Marine leadership have responded to the intentional killing of a Marine by a Marine?
There is another scene where a Marine dies due to friendly fire, but this doesn’t seem like it would be a crime as the Marine who fired the fatal shot had every reason to believe he was firing on an enemy combatant.
A couple of the guys in the fighting hole would grab him and someone would choke him out until he went out, if there was a corpsman close by currently there is a sealed autoinject of thorazine. There was an incident on the USS Spadefish where they tranked out a chief who had ‘issues’ underway. He was hauled off in a hug me coat after being contained in his racking area until the helo got there.
There have been an issue in 1987 mrAru knows of where a chief got extended on station where he needed cardiac meds not carried on board. After his third heart attack on watch, he was confined to his rack for the remainder of the underway. I still don’t get why they didn’t drop in meds.
Well, there were a couple incidents where a couple of marines were playing quick draw and got shot [hospital gate New London, 1991ish where base OOD found both dead after playing quickdraw. Oops. In 1993 the roving watch on the floating drydock went and discharged her .45 ACP in a companionway, narrowly missing the duty chief, at the time the roving watches were not to have a round chambered, much less a mag in the weapon. People don’t be the cause of a safety brief.]
No idea, would have to ask mrAru when he gets home. I know he was armed for topside watch whenever at a liberty port overseas, when they did a pop through the ice in the arctic [polar bears think subs are potential food, or at least canned spam] and a few times on shore duty [nuke devices, the main warehouse at New London, once at NSSF rad con, no idea why]
Is it possible it was because a-gang are considered ground troops?