When to Carry a Weapon

Interviewer: Did you always carry a weapon?

No, always our helmet and our frag vest but for the support trades we would lock our weapons in a C can. If you were on the two week duty you would take your weapon to a different C can and leave it there. When I worked a week with the Patricia’s we would lock our weapons inside of the LAV which is the light armoured vehicle that has I think 125mm cannon on it, I’m not quite sure, but we’d lock our weapons inside there. It was strange because I mean sometimes four of five days would go by and nothing major would happen so you’d kind of sink into the well maybe it’s slowing down or maybe nothing is gonna happen for a while and then you hear suicide bombers or rocket attacks landing near the camp. Then you almost want your weapon just because you don’t know what is outside. You don’t know what’s happening or what’s coming. I mean, the walls were I’d say at least 15-20 feet high so it’s not like you could see what was going on outside unless you were actually manning a sanger.