Home on the Range

Well, we went to the range again this week. Success! No one got injured! Not a single burn from hot brass shell casings sliding down people’s necks (this happened to 2 people the first time we went out). No Berretta bites, the nasty cuts one can get on your hand or thumb from keeping the misplaced appendage in the recoil area of the slide—nothing to sneeze at.

Like any other military adventure, there is always a lot of “hurry up and wait” action. We hustled to get to the range at 1500 so we could go “hot” (live fire authorized) at 1515. Of course, we were there on time, but various hold ups, including a malfunctioning radio (perhaps due to operator error, we will never know…), helicopters flying through our range airspace, safety briefs (these are important!), wind blowing the paper targets off of the plastic silhouette targets because the temperature and lack of shade conspired to melt the duct tape glue after a few minutes—that is hot, when duct tape isn’t worthy of a MacGyveresque use because it melts. Of course, MacGyver probably would have used the melting duct tape as a timer for a fiendishly clever trap to get the bad guys. But, our bad guys were pieces of paper that blew away when the tape melted—not very good for shooting at—especially when there are a bunch of other folks around!!

Anyway, we ended up doing more waiting in “check-fire” mode than actually firing because of vehicles and helicopters in our fire zone (area of the base over a cliff and behind the range) and communications problems. However, we were able to get in quite a bit of M-16 and M-9 firing time. Hell, I even passed the M-9 qualification course (again). First time I did that was back in 1994 as a medical student on a rotation in Whiting Field Florida when I was the medical support for the Marines at the range one day. I remember that February in Florida was very cold. I think I prefer the heat of Iraq to that!

I spent part of yesterday afternoon reading these accounts of the “real life” of Marines here in Iraq from one of two USMC field historians in Iraq —definitely worth the time! Check out these stories (Crowley’s Chronicles): rule308.blogspot.com