That's what a soldier looks like.
Today I had the biggest anxiety attack since this whole
deployment started. It was first of two days of live fire with the M-16.
Although I spent 11 years in the military back in the 70s and 80s, I have not
fired an M-16 on a qualification range since Air Force basic training in
February in 1972. Worse, in AF basic we did not go through the whole
qualification process: zeroing the weapons, pop-up targets, night fire, firing
in gas masks. In the Air Force, they handed us a weapon, we shot at some
targets, they took the weapons and that was the one and only day in my Air
Force career I handled a personal weapon.
When I joined the Army, I went straight to tank training.
For the next eight years my personal weapon was a 45 cal. pistol. So this
morning we boarded a bus to go to the range wearing our new bulletproof vests
and helmets.
On the first range we zeroed the weapon. To zero, you shoot
three rounds at a paper target at 25 meters. To zero the weapon, you must put 5
rounds in a 4 cm square. Since the M16A4 we use has both traditional iron
sights and the new close quarters optical device, we have to zero the weapon
twice, once with each sight.
So to zero the weapon with both sights, you have to shoot at
least 12 rounds--six with each sight--and hit at least five out of six. Most of
the 25 of us who were shooting fired 36 to 48 rounds. I fired 60. A few
soldiers fired more. One soldier, a female sergeant, fired 12 rounds and was
done.
We fire side by side in 8-foot-wide "lanes" with
very prominent numbers. When the safety NCO told the tower the woman in Lane 6
zeroed with 12 rounds, the tower told her to walk down the embankment we shoot
from and clear her weapon. As she walked toward the ammo point to turn in her
unused ammunition, the tower told all the rest of us to turn around and look at
the female sergeant walking to the ammo point.
Congratulations again Carrie!
