November 12, 2011

Well today we go to do one of my favorite ranges, when I was active duty we called it the walking range here they call it reflexive fire.  You walk up close fire two to the chest one to the head then back turn sideways and turn quick fire, then you set back 25 meters run to 10 meter stop and fire.  It’s really fun.  After that we dropped people off at the big guns range and to my surprise I was suppose to qualify on the 249, so I was pleased to be able to shoot that machine gun.  When I finally went to qualify my gun jammed twice so I got another go at it.  Over all it was a fun training day to be at the range.  The two days after that were mostly classes with a short combative course thrown in there.  We are all excited to be going home in six days.  We hear that there will be an end of cycle party…………that should be interesting.

November 9^th 2011

Today Chaplain was staying back to finish some of the on-line training; I finished all of them before we left California so I was happy about that.

So we got up ready to go to the M16 qualifying range, it was cold and raining.  After breakfast we got back to the area and it started snowing, pretty heavy kind of that sideways snow.  We were all ready to go anyway we had snow gear and it was going to suck but hey we are in the Army.  Then word came down that the range was cancelled and we all need to report to classroom.  So there we were in class ready to start when a high-ranking NCO came in and said “ Stop complaining we are shooting today”  um…..ok so we went got all mounted up to head out in the snow really heavy in even heavier Humve’s unfortunately for me I had to drive the commanders in my vehicle, I learned a bunch about driving in snow even though I informed them I had driven in snow many many times, we got to the range and received a brief….”It’s cold so bundle up, follow the range rules, and no horse-play like snow balls or snow angels.”  Well it was difficult to follow that rule but I found a place to hook up a snow angel or two.

It was so so so so cold laying on the ground firing, I couldn’t really see very well my glasses kept fogging up and when I had to but the gas mask on I was more like guessing where I was pointing the weapon.  I finished my turn after about an hour and fifty bullets later.  I passed the Gas mask fire and the limited visibility but needed to shoot qual again, so I waited awhile in the warming hut waiting for my turn.  The snow stopped and it was a bit warmer and I had no problem with it.  It was nice to see our commander who doesn’t have to qual with M16 shoveling snow, usually a job someone of lower rank would do.  This group is unique but has some good leaders. We finished the day, cleaned up the range and were back in time to head to PX to get a new pillow to replace the rock hard one they issued me.  Great day to be in the Army.

This is the Soft Top Humvee they gave me after I broke the other one, it was cool at first but when it started getting

cold we were happy to get our Up Armored one back with its heater