Things that go boom

Yesterday was our Squad Weapons Field Exercise. I love things that go boom. Not as fond of the bangbangbangs...

In the morning we threw a live grenade. They gave us two practice throws with training grenades that pop and smoke, then sticks of 17 went to the live grenade range and threw one each. It was funny to see the looks on Marines faces when the live rounds started to boom. The range was more than 200yds away and the ground still shook beneath us. They sprint you down to the range, probably to work out any nerves, and then give you the grenade in its wrapper. Once you unwrap it, you put it in your grenade pouch on your vest. Its an interesting feeling strapping 4lbs of death to your chest.

Your pit is a concrete box about 5x5ft and 3ft high. You walk in and kneel down until your instructor is ready for you. Then you stand in front of him, take off the thumb clip, pull the safety pin, and throw the grenade. The closer you throw it, the louder and more concussive the sound. I tried to thow mine kind of short without being stupid and I could actually feel my inards wiggle. It was awesome.

Then we were bussed out to another live fire range where we spent the rest of the morning shooting the SAW machine gun, the rocket launcher AT-4, and the M203 Grenade launcher. We shot live rounds for the SAW, some training rounds and 1 live grendade for the grenade launcher and then 9mm training rounds for the AT-5. The weapons we were using weren't the greatest and it was frusterating have to unjam your machine gun after every burst. Like I said, I'm not so fond of things that go bangbangbang so I just tried to get through the 25 rounds as quick as possible. It was also frusterating because the instructor wouldn't let me adjust the gun for my height and my kevlar kept falling in my face.

I LOVE the M203 mostly because it goes boom and I can shoot it fairly well. They showed us the illuminating rounds and star clusters that you can shoot from the 203 for signaling and illuminating as well. I was uber excited to shoot a live grenade. BOOM! But it fired so far away that it was more like boom.

The AT-4 with the training rounds was exactly like shooting a shoulder-fired bottle rocket at a tank.

Then we did this combat hunter exercise where we tried to spot dangerous items staged in the woods. We had binoculars and were looking about 10-20m in front of us. Its all about practicing your observation skills like snipers do in their training.

In the afternoon, we did a Table 2 exercise with the SAW. There were two sections, movement to contact and shooting unknown distances. Even though I don't really like the bangs, I thought this was fairly fun. In the movement to contact we lined up 12 SAWs, sent a 5 round burst down-range, then stood up, rushed a few feet, dropped down and sent more rounds. We did this about 20 feet worth. It was cool because it was live rounds and we were actually shoot at something. I saw that the trick to the whole thing was to be as aggressive as possible with the weapons and with your movements. If you were passive with loading the weapon, charging it or your movements, the instructors would freak out that you didn't know what you were doing and were shooting live rounds. I think they paid particular attention to me because I'm a girl and they expect us to be afraid of the weapons.

The unknown distances was even more fun because targets would pop up and when you would shoot them, they'd get knocked down. There was an unspoken competition to see who could get to the targets the quickest (me). It was good practice because you had to load and fix any jams all by yourself as fast as possible.

That was the end of the day section of SWFEX. We bussed back to garrison and waited until night fell so that we could do Night Combat Hunter... or as I felt, Combat Hunted. More on that later.