MCRD PARRIS ISLAND, S.C. – A Marine was killed when his shirt stay unexpectedly detached from his sock and struck him in the right testicle with the full force of Hooke’s law, sources confirmed today.

Staff Sgt. Jeremy Yates, 29, died while instilling a young Marine recruit with “some goddamn intestinal fortitude,” witnesses reported, adding that at the moment of impact, Yates grunted, eyes bulging, and sank to his knees gasping, “My God, why have you forsaken me?”

According to NCIS archives, shirt stay attacks are not unprecedented, although most incidents merely strike the fleshy part on the inner thigh or the cusp of the buttocks, leaving the victims in a state of shock, but alive and intact.

Yates’s death marks the first shirt stay fatality since the Vietnam War, when 2nd Lt. John Porter was strangled with one by his own men for enforcing asinine uniform regulations during combat.

“I’d like to say that he passed painlessly, that it happened so quickly that he didn’t feel a thing,” said Sgt. Jordan Howard, Yates’s platoon heavy. “But at that speed? Right in the ‘nads? Who knows?”

“I just hope that his shirt is squared away when Chesty inspects him in heaven,” Howard fearfully added.

Yates is survived by a KA-BAR and a pair of silkies.