Excellent, excellent, excellent reading. Than-you [MENTION=47475]Doraemon[/MENTION]. This is like the old times where people read serials, waiting for the next part of the story to arrive in the mail.
Drill Sergeants are interesting creatures. They come in all shapes, sizes, colors, and personalities...Army life was very different from real life indeed [I guess we were strange bunch...especially looking at it from the trainees eyes ].
...In basic training I got my first, and, believe or not, last experience with KP, or Kitchen Patrol. [(ah...that brought back memories), and with the Drill Sergeants who had to 'pull' KP Pusher for that day].
Doraemon:The one thing all of us looked forward to, even those who hated basic training the most, was the chance to fire real military weapons....Guns and other weapons are odd things....
Rifle practice [or what we call Basic Rifle Marksmanship (BRM), and there are 10 periods of instruction (POI)] was strictly controlled, and all rounds and brass had to be accounted for. We were told that being caught with any live ammo away from the range might result in our executions (or so we inferred), but more than one of us managed to swipe a round or two as a souvenir. [even after the Drill Sergeants conducted 'shake-downs' i.e., squads of firers were moved 'off the line' onto the Range access road. Lined-up in a row and were instructed to 'empty all pockets including opening you ammo pouches'. When the Drill Sergeant 'checked you out' for ammo, you 'sounded-off' with "No brass, No ammo"].
We were taught endless exercises on how to fire a rifle accurately, like the "dime-washer" [or the 'target-box' exercise among others] exercise, were a thin washer is balanced on the barrel, and you had to pull the trigger gently enough that the washer wouldn't fall off when dry firing...
Our instructors told us that to qualify as expert, we needed to hit 36 out of 40 targets. We were given only 40 rounds to fire. The 300m target came up only 3 times, so the instructors recommended that we not fire at it, and save the three rounds for closer targets in case we missed them on our first attempt. [oh sooo true...I gave the same advice]
Needless to say, I can't describe how good it felt to qualify as expert in my first attempt...