Weeks 4-6 were devoted to basic rifle marksmanship, the purpose of which is to take trainees, some of whom have never touched a weapon before their issued M16 and get all their information about firearms from Hollywood, and train them to reliably hit a human form at any distance up to 300 meters. It is remarkably boring, since 90% of the training takes place up in the bays, balancing dimes on a cleaning rod stuck out of your weapon’s muzzle and trying to pull the trigger without the dime falling off.
The culmination of all this is the rifle qualification shoot. There are 40 pop-up targets to engage at ranges from 50 to 300 meters away, with 23 hits being the minimum required to pass. Some of us shoot pretty well, others not so well. I scored 35 hits, a decent record but nothing to brag about. If you don’t make the cut the first time, you will shoot again. And again, and again, until you pass. At the end of the day, everyone will have passed (although it is worth noting that after a given loser gets to about his seventh or eighth re-try, a Drill Sergeant will go out and shoot in the lane next to him, and the trainee’s targets mysteriously start going down)
And that’s really about all that there is to weeks 4, 5, and 6.
One thing worth noting was our trip to the National Infantry Museum. If you are ever in the Columbus/FT Benning area and have some time, the NIM is a fascinating place to spend a few hours (assuming that you are interested). They have a huge collection of original artifacts of the infantryman’s trade, going back to swords used by the Spanish Conquistadors, personal letters from Revolutionary-war generals, and captured Nazi ceremonial daggers. Not just copies, the originals. Outside the museum are parked armored vehicles and artillery pieces, including a massive Iraqi howitzer captured during Desert Storm. It is definitely worth visiting.
It was during this portion of the training that the Drill Sergeants started backing off of us, and expecting more from us to make up the slack. Of course the platoon failed at first. The Army does it’s training in sort of a crawl-walk-run manner, and we were still crawling at that point.
Anyhow, that concludes this section. More to come later.
