Probably the best part about being in the Army, aside from my actually doing my job, was being able to shoot a variety of guns. Of course I got to fire your standard issue M16A2, but I also got fire other stuff like the M-60 Machine gun, the M203 grenade launcher and the AT4 anti-tank system. Say what you will, but guns are still amazing things to me. It also didn't hurt that I was very, very good with a rifle in my hand. I qualified with my weapon (that is to say, I took it out to a range and tried to shoot a set amount of targets at various distances within a certain amount of time) countless times. Every time a unit in my Battalion went to the range, I tried to tag along. In fact, I almost missed the birth of my first son because I was out on a range in the middle of nowhere. That's a story for later though.
When you are in Basic Training though, weapons are just as tedious as everything else. You only move as fast as your slowest person, just like every other activity in which you participate. The process goes something like this:
1. Get your weapon from the arms room. The arms room is a secure area of a building where the rifles are kept under lock and key. You present some shmuck with your weapons card and he gives you the rifle that possesses the corresponding weapon ID number, I don't remember my weapon number from basic, but my permanent party rifle was 641246. I loved that rifle.
2. Get in the truck and go to the range.
3. Sit in the bleachers while ten or so of your classmates zero their weapons. Now, this is where the ponderous bullshit starts. Think about it. There are something like 100+ soldiers in each regiment, and only ten or so people can be shooting at once. Each person can only shoot three rounds, then walks down to their target to see what their grouping looks like. Once they see where the adjustments need to be made, they go back to their rifles and make said adjustments. This goes on and on and on and on until each person has their M16 shooting a nice, tight shot group inside of the middle of a target from 25 meters away. Theoretically, this should NOT be a hard job, right? Most people zeroed their weapons in 5 tries or less. So that's about 15 shots for most folks. However, we had lots of troops in our regiment that couldn't pick a rifle out of a police lineup, never mind pick one up and shoot it. Enter Private Garza. Private Garza was about zero foot tall. She was also a very..."broad"...lady. So not only did she have a nearly impossible time seeing over the foxhole from which she was shooting, she also found her rifle to be impossibly heavy when loaded. Garza would shoot her three rounds, walk to the target, find ZERO holes in said target, walk back, fiddle with her windage knob for some reason, and then shoot again. This had to have gone on for an hour or so. She shot for almost an hour and found not ONE hole in her target. From 25 meters, she should have accidentally hit it a few times. So Garza shoots again, walks to her target and just kind of stands there. You can tell that she is mystified as to her predicament. Suddenly, as if the skies had opened up, Drill Sergeant Creek gets on the megaphone and screams out "GARRRRRRRRRRZA! WHAT'S THE FUCKING PROBLEM?". All of us in the bleachers laughed. We put our heads down and pretended to be studying or something, but there was no denying our joy. Garza answered back in her Puerto Rican accident "Drill Saryent, I am thinking I got the blanks in my gun." To my left, someone howled with laughter and stopped trying to pretend that they weren't amused. Of course this set off a chain reaction of uncontrollable belly laughs. Creek was too pissed to care though. *click* "GOD DAMNIT GARZA, GET UP HERE" *click*. So Garza came to the top of the hill that she was shooting from and slid back into her entirely too deep shooting position. At this point, DS Creek was no more than a foot from her. He was literally standing over the top of her as she shot, but he refused to not use the megaphone. She shot two rounds and Creek screamed out *click* "HOLY SHIT GARZA! WHERE ON EARTH ARE YOU SHOOTING?!" *CLICK*. So Garza turned around, rifle still in hand, pointing it at Creek's chest and began to say "The bottom le..". But Creek was in war mode. Someone had pointed a weapon at him. He sprang to his feet, kicked the rifle out of her hands and stomped Private Garza on top of the head like he was trying to kill a gigantic spider. Garza went down in the foxhole like a wet sack of squid. Without missing a beat, Creek turns to the bleachers, where we are all sitting with wide open jaws and says super calmly, with no megaphone "see privates. This is why I always tell you to keep your weapons up and down range. Everyone clear now?". We were crystal clear.
4. After zeroing, you go out to a range where targets pop up all over the place. As short as 50 meters and as long as 300 meters. The first time that I qualified with my weapon, I got a perfect score. But because Drill Sergeant Greene didn't believe that a new soldier could be that proficient with his weapon, he docked me a point. "Expert" is nothing to sneeze at, but I wanted that damn "Eagle Eye" title!
5. You leave the range and get "rodded off". All that means is that the Drills make sure that your chamber is clear and that you aren't trying to carry any ammo off of the range. To check for ammo, the drills would slap your pockets. All of them. And if you had been fucking around that day, or pissing off a drill, they would "check you for ammo" as hard as they could. You know, they didn't want any stray brass getting in to the barracks. I always feared the days when Creek and Hightower took us the range. Creek took some sort of weird thrill from knocking the holy hell out of you, no matter who you were. I liked to tell people that I thought that Creek was a massive sub in his personal life. It occurred to me that anyone who is in charge that much for their job HAS to love it when some girl straps on a studded phallus on and does work on him. But that's just a theory of course.
I want to buy an M16, but the wife won't let me have one at the house. Probably for the best.
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