Day 19

May 13
Ah, our first day on the firing range started with no PT in the morning! I think we were on Charlie range or something like that. This is the largest range and the one that you can see from almost anywhere on the base. It is 1000m long so we walked a full km before we got to the 25m mark where we learned how to group our shots and zero our weapons. I got some pretty good groupings and my rifle was pretty close to zero. We practiced firing in the prone (laying down), the sitting down, kneeling and standing positions. We walked up to the target after every 5 rounds or so to see how we were doing. Then we went to the 100m mark and did the whole pattern again but instead of walking to the target, we just looked through binoculars. Now since 1 section was firing first, 2 section was behind the targets in the “butts” marking our shots, patching the holes, raising and lowering the targets. Then after a “lovely” boxed lunch we switched places. It’s a good thing I had a hard su-do-ku in my pocket because there was a lot of down time while we were behind the targets. After everyone had some practice there was a test and I was one of the 3 who got a perfect score! After supper we spent all our time getting our rifles cleaned and getting ready for a big inspection by our future bosses! We did another magazine cleaning assembly line in the bathroom and I’m sure we all spent close to two hours on our weapons. They were sooooo dirty! Then we super cleaned the bathroom and all other areas of the shack. We even moved the laundry machines away from the wall to clean behind them. Once we were exhausted, we went to bed.