guns, guns, guns

Today marked basic pistol qualification, preceded by premarksmanship instruction.

The folks who conduct the common tasks training (to include weapons instruction) are from an organization called The Edge R&D. The instructors are just about all (if not all) former military and have a pretty good idea of what is required of their students. They're knowledgeable and can translate that into quality instruction.

The quality of the instruction is so much better than what I've seen in other mobilization stations that I'm actually pretty impressed. This stands out in direct contrast to the mobilization of the 30th eSB two years ago...the 9mm range I went to was run to standard. I walked away with a pretty positive impression of what was going on.

There were folks in the group with me who had not fired a peashooter in a long, long while. There were some combat arms types who didn't do a whole lot of handwringing about it. Myself, I'm getting rusty, not having fired in almost three years. Still, I qualified expert with 27 hits. The standard was to qualify; anything above that is gravy. I'm glad I qualified expert, but that's a personal pride issue.

At the risk of sounding snooty, I remarked today about "the look of those who don't go to the field." Dead giveaways include poorly-fitted field gear (particularly LBE/LBV), a helmet sitting (unintentionally) at a jaunty angle in spite of the suspension system, or worse still, a helmet levitated by hair above the skull, and most significantly, the Walk. The Walk is hard to describe, but it's a gingerly hesitant step, as if someone was afraid to get dirty. First time I witnessed it was during the 30th eSB's mission rehearsal exercise at Fort Riley during the summer of 2002, when I saw an observer/controller-trainer who was not a full-time soldier and not in a killing-person specialty, doing the Walk, with an unevenly levelled, pristine, and improperly fitted LBE.

I'm not claiming to be the king of fieldcraft, but in a word, dude!

Still, today was well-run. I was feeling sorry for the guys who didn't return from the rifle range (as they had to do reflexive fire, unlike the pistol shooters) until about 8:00pm.

Here's the current MRE menu.

Today's MRE: Cajun rice with beans and sausage. Tasty. Either that, or I've become less discriminating.

Today's surprise: Cheddar Cheese pretzels. In the civilian world they're called "Combos." Grrr...

Tomorrow promises Death by Powerpoint. Necessary classes, but painful nonetheless.