So I went to the range today. Wow! You would think that when your job is to be a range cadre (cadre=worker) and working and teaching at the rifle range is something you do often that you would have your shit together. Right? Not so much. Let me tell you about our range instructor today.
First of all, today was windy so it was difficult to hear anybody. It didn't help that this guy was as soft spoken as a timid freshman on his first day at a huge new school. So he gets the bull horn out, still can barely hear him. All that aside, he was supposed to teach us to shoot while moving and pivoting by the new army standards. One might also think that he would know how to do this, not only step by step but also the physical fundamentals too. Well, in a way, he did. He had a card in his pocket that told him how. The problem came when he was hooked on the verbiage of what we were supposed to do and not on the physical act of us doing it. He wanted us to repeat after him everything he said, for example: Run, stop, shoot; walk, look, turn, shoot. We had to say it right or he wouldn't continue on, even though when we did it, we did it right.
The problem I have with this is that eventually, we're going to be basically shoulder to shoulder doing this with live rounds loaded in our weapons. Turning or even walking right behind our buddies with live rounds. To me, the most important thing that should have been stressed is, where are you pointing the muzzle of your rifle? So long as you turn, walk, run or do whatever without flagging (Pointing the muzzle of your rifle at a friend) your buddies and remembering to put your weapon on safe after each exercise, who cares of all you say is, "see spot run, see spot chase". It took us about 1 hour, give or take, to get all 30 shooters through the lane. It took this guy close to 3 hours to teach us. But wait, that's not all!
In my unit, we have a lot of senior people. No, I don't mean old and crusty people though we have our fair share of those too. I mean we have a lot of high ranking people. When a high ranking person, who has been in the army for well over 15 years, asks a question that our youngest and freshest recruit could answer it kind of makes me cringe. It doesn't help that the answer could be found by applying a very light coating of common sense before ever being asked. During our instruction, we were told that when we ran between two points to shoot, we were to give a yell. Kind of like a battle charge yell. This person, who I will not name, asked if we should yell. They wondered if it were wise to yell since the enemy would be able to hear us approach then. This person was an E-8 which means that they are the second highest rank an enlisted person can make in the army. The person standing next to them, the E-4, easily answered the question by saying that it was just for motivation. That we wouldn't really yell if we were charging an unsuspecting enemy, we just do it in training. Sheesh! Give me a break.
So now I am sitting here, drinking my Gatorde and hoping that the rest of my (hopefully) short time in Kuwait will be a bit less dumb. What I really need is a shower and a shave and probably a good nights sleep. What I want...well, lets just say that if I get caught with it, I'd get in trouble. They don't allow Scotch into country so we're not allowed to drink it or anything else like it. *sigh* I guess I'll just have to wait till June when I hit Italy. More on that when the time is close. For now, I'm signing off.
Good night out there!
Love you Mom.
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