My scariest moment at OCS was also the funniest. It was August 2005, the end of week 5 at Seniors, and the platoon was getting ready to go to the wooded pugil stick engagement. We were squaring away the house at like 0530 when one of our sergeant instructors busts in and screams at us to get on line. Then he walks back inside the duty hut.
After what seems like an eternity (probably 2 minutes or so), he and the platoon sergeant come out and the platoon sergeant says in his low rumbling voice, "I'm only going to ask you this once....who did it? Integrity check, candidates. Whoever is responsible, step out under my lights right now. No one, huh? Very well." Meanwhile, the sergeant instructor gets in my face and eyeballs me without saying a word (I lived right next to the duty hut, which was awesome). Then they both go back inside the duty hut and close the door.
At this point the entire platoon is pretty much scared sh*tless. I'm racking my brain trying to figure out what happened. I look out of the corner of my eye, all the rifles are still there at the end of the squad bay as far as I can see. There are no gaps in either row of candidates, not that anyone would go UA at that point anyway. I'm trying for the life of me to figure out what we could have done wrong.
A couple of minutes later our platoon sergeant comes back out and says, "Ears!"
"OPEN!!"
"Rick James is dead. I want to know which one of you nasties is responsible, and I want to know right now. I know we trained you to kill, but this is just daggone unacceptable, y'unnastand?"
There's nothing quite like the sound of 32 candidates all simultaneously trying not to lose their bearing. Good times.