Range Day

So far, this has been a drill weekend. Actually, what's kind of funny is in my previous unit we always called weekends with the army drill weekends, or just drill for short. However here they use the technical term, which is Battle Assembly. Strange is I've never heard it called that before I got to this unit. Of course, I also drilled with a Hospital so that might have something to do with it.

I may have mentioned that I love my unit. I'll continue to emphasize this. I have been told not to expect these guys to be perfect and that this is a unit with its fair share of problems like any military unit, and I've definitely had moments where I may have rubbed a few people the wrong way, but what I've discovered is here I feel like I have purpose, and that I'm needed. This is something that is really big for me, I have to feel like I'm there for a reason, and that may be one of the reasons why I didn't click with Preventive Medicine.

See, Preventive Medicine is a job where the soldier can be as busy or not busy as they want to be. As long as people aren't getting sick and everything is smooth and A-OK, they can disappear off the face of the earth with a random inspection here and there and the higher ups aren't going to be none the wiser. The problem is, I WANT to be busy. I WANT to have something to do. I want to have some kind of PURPOSE! That may have spawned some of my depression with the army over the years in that job field, because many a drill weekend was spent where we had NOTHING to do!

With this unit, there is always something. What's interesting is a lot of it is just things that soldiers in general should do anyway, just most soldiers deal with their regular jobs rather then the soldiering aspect, but Drills always have something to improve upon.

Well, the status is this. I'm officially in this unit, and have been since May. I have to Reenlist before I can go to school. I'm set to go to school in March. In Fort Benning. Between now and then, I just have to keep passing PT tests and work on marching and do ranges and soldiering tasks that all drill sergeants should be proficient at.

This weekend was a range weekend. We have connections with the city government and was able to finaggle the use of the Police Academy Range. Now, I didn't have to qualify, because I qualified in April and we have another range in November (and October for that matter). But what the heck, I was up for it anyway. So I was issued a weapon.

There was something wrong with said weapon. It would fire alright, but wouldn't discharge the spent round, so you had to pull the charging handle back every time you fired to eject the brass. Not the kind of weapon you would like to qualify on. So I took another weapon at random, zeroed it in 9 rounds, and qualified with that.

These were paper targets, so you have ten targets you have to hit four times each, unlike Pop Up Joe who comes up and down at random.

I kicked butt this weekend, and I would like to report that I also kicked butt in the prone Unsupported position, the position I'm usually cursed into failing when firing at these kinds of targets.

I fired 47 out of 40. And no, that is not a typo. After the second 20 rounds, I thought I had hit all the targets when I discovered I still had rounds and tried to figure out why this was so, and thought maybe I had miscounted. No, I just had an additional 10 rounds. One I missed for certain. My first 20 I got my usual 19 out of 20. So if you take integrity into account, and say that I had actually missed those two targets the first time I fired at them I still got 37 out of 40, which is kick-butt. I've never fired that well. However, chances are they will still count me as having 39 out of 40. Which is expert.

Which is freakin' the best I've ever done on a range before!

Maybe I can keep this up? I'm mostly pumped that I have the whole prone unsupported figured out. Now I have to get ready for a PT test tomorrow. More then!