Loon - Jack McLean [20]
We could then take a sip of water, and repeat the process.
The following days brought more new positions to be mastered. First was the sitting position, which included a new set of contortions that bore little resemblance to those of the day before, other than the pain involved. The closer to the ground, the steadier the shot. Every few minutes, the drill instructor’s right foot would bear down on your back to be certain you understood what “closer to the ground” meant. Don’t move a hair for one hour.
Take a sip of water.
Repeat.
The kneeling position was mastered on day three and the prone position on day four. On days five and six we snapped-in, drilled, did PT, and attended classes that taught us what to expect the following week when the actual shooting began.
At the beginning of the second week, we went to the shooting range for the first time. After hours of sight adjustment, we snapped-in at the one-hundred-yard line and fired several rounds of live ammunition. With each early awkward round fired, an instructor would lean down and whisper our new mantra into our ringing ears, “Breathe, relax, aim, slack, and squeeze, motherfucker.” He might then continue for emphasis, “You better hit that target, shit head, or you are never getting off this island.”
Qualification, two days later, was all business. We woke up early, skipped PT and drilling, had a light breakfast, and were on the range by six A.M. There were smoking smudge pots along the firing line. We each carefully applied the soot to the top of our cheeks so that our sweat would not reflect the sun back into our eyes. We then awaited our turn to shoot at the targets. At two hundred yards, we were to fire from the standing and kneeling positions. At three hundred yards, we’d use the kneeling and sitting positions. At five hundred yards, we’d fire from the prone position.
By the end of the day, all but two of us had qualified. We were mostly satisfied and enormously relieved. The two non-qualifiers did not go directly to hell, as Staff Sergeant Hilton had promised, but they were quietly removed from Platoon 3076 and placed in a special platoon to become “motivated.”
Our mastery of the rifle complete, we proudly made the return march to the 3rd Battalion area. The endless new facts and skills that we had mastered over the previous two weeks brought a smile to my face as I recalled my Andover roommate Spike Tolman. Spike was so knowledgeable about early rock and roll music that he could, when prompted with only the time of a song on the B side of a 45 rpm record, instantly come up with the title of the A-side hit.
“Spike, two minutes, fifty-two seconds?”
“‘Great Balls of Fire.’ Jerry Lee Lewis. Sun Records,” he would reply without so much as drawing a breath. Two minutes, fifty-two seconds was the time of the little known (except to Spike) flip side titled, appropriately, “You Win Again.” Spike could do this over and over through dozens of records until the asker became bored.
So it became with a United States Marine and his M14 rifle. There are facts about the M14 rifle that most marines will remember long after they’ve forgotten their own names—such was the rigor of Marine Corps rifle training.
“PRIVATE McLEAN.”
“SIR. YES, SIR.”
“11.09.”
“SIR. The weight of my 7.62 mm gas operated, magazine fed, air cooled shoulder weapon, with sling, with magazine, with cleaning gear, and with twenty rounds of NATO 7.62 caliber ammo. SIR.”
The only unknown element