Don't ever make fun...

Today was M16 qualification day. We have been fortunate enough to shoot at immovable targets prior to today. Our qualification range, as Emiril would say, "Kicked it up a notch". We had 40 targets to shoot at with 40 rounds. These targets would pop-up intermittently at 50/100/150/200/250/300 meters on the left and right of my firing lane. A very humbling experience as it took 3 tries to qualify. Now as I mentioned above, dont make fun of others peoples shooting ability or God will blow your bullets everywhere. A couple of us were giggling a bit at one fellows inability to even hit the stationary target...anywhere. Low and behold, despite my accurate successes in the last couple of days, my bullets did not run true to their targets. My Drill Instructor, SSG Serna, has had plenty of combat experience and imparted upon our humble 4th platoon the age old lesson, "If you ain't cheating, you ain't trying." Thus when he was my safety officer for the 3rd go around, he handed me an extra 20 rounds and said,"Sir, don't stop shooting until hit the damn things!" Only 3 times did I have to expend 3 rounds on any one target. Most were single and double shots to take the target down.

Tomorrow we have the day off. I have my turn at weapons and fire watch tonite from 1200-300 a.m. That still gives me time to sleep in a little and make it to church by 1000. The rest of the day will be spent culling out the things I won't need to take on the rest of this adventure. We found out that we leave on Saturday via chartered commercial airlift. Next week, we will work on convoy operations, urban operations (read: kick in doors and foot patrol), and get to fire the BIG guns: .50 caliber, Mk19 grenade launcher; M249 squadron assault weapon, and a few others. I truly miss being at home with my family and church family - but your tax dollars are going towards paying me to blow stuff up for the sheer fun of it! How great is that??!!!