Deadeye

Just got done cleaning my M16 and M9. Pretty good at dismantling them. We were at the range today and had to get our weapons sighted in. The army calls it "grouping and zeroing." Got a pretty tight center. As soon as I get a cable for my camera I'll upload the picture of how tight my groups were. All within about 4cm, center body mass.

It was mostly fun, but we were in our IBA (Interceptor Body Armor) all day long. And when we did our M9 quals we had to wear it. There's even a stress fire we do where we have to take shots, go prone, take shots, reload, get up, run to a 'window', fire, run to a barricade, fire....etc. Gets tough in that armor, but it was the most fun.

Tomorrow is another virtual firing range with a different scenario and pop up targets. It's like a video game, so I should ace it.....

3rd day of Training

It's been GLORIOUS here at sunny Camp McGrady, part of Ft. Jackson. I've been trying to pass out while in my body armor so I can make sick call and avoid another hour of wearing said armor, but it seems pretty tough to do without head trauma or dehydration. And I'm too much of a wuss to not drink water when I'm baking in my armor. It weighs around 60lbs, not counting the M16 and M9 I have to carry. The fun part is getting to occasionally hear someone fire off a blank by accident because they didn't clear their weapon correctly. The chaos brims me with euphoria. One guy with a red face in the middle of a platoon of startled people, a laughing drill seargent...it's like satellite but different.

Anyway, we start our range training tomorrow. Has been long days, but gonna be even longer starting tomorrow. We'll be wearing our "Battle Rattle" all day. I get this vision in my head of the seargents watching us sweat and taking bets on who passes out first. I'm also not convinced it's not an accurate account of their behaviour.

And an interesting thing about the Army is that everyone says "Hooah" all the time. I've heard it used as a question; "So don't point your weapon at someone else, hooah?" What does that mean? And when someone else says it, you're supposed to say it back. I can just imagine two army guys getting into a hooah loop where they both forgot who said it first and it never ends.

I may write more tomorrow, I may come back to squad bay and die. Not sure which yet, but I'm sure the army guys have already voted.