I drove my First Sergeant to an out of the way place near a tree line on the edge of a series of rice paddies to meet some other people. We had followed the Sergeant Major and now both jeeps sat on the muddy, dusty, almosta road (yeah...muddy and dusty at the same time...what a place). We sat for what seemed to be a long time when the Sergeant Major told his driver to inspect an old ammo box that was laying near by. I was just an old ammo box...no booby or any other kind of trap...so the Sergeant Major told us to fill it full of mud and set it up on the berm between two of the paddies...about 60 yards away. The Sergeant Major took out his Korean era .30 cal carbine and put on a display of outstanding marksmanship. He placed the stripper clips from the .30 cal ammo in the crack of the ammo box lid and commenced to knock them off from 60 yards away...these things are barely wider that the bullet itself.
I got permission to break out my own unauthorized companion, an M2 "grease gun" (a .45 cal submachine gun that really does resemble a grease gun) which I had recently acquired through my brother's contacts in the Vietnamese Army for a carton of cigarettes. Getting started was kind of rough but both of the old sergeants helped me work out the difficulties. It was old and even though I had cleaned it thoroughly when I got it...the magazine spring was sticky and took some extra oiling before it would feed properly. But before long it was ripping like a charm. You couldn't aim it in the traditional sense but instead you started spraying and adjusting from where your bullets were hitting. It was pretty cool and I got a kick out of the way it knocked chunks out of the ammo box door.
The First Sergeant had a pistol he wanted to shoot and before long the old ammo box was showing the wear and tear. The Sergeant Major's driver was fairly new and hadn't had the opportunity to obtain any "special" weapons, but not wanting to be left out, he asked if he could fire his issued rifle, an M14. Receiving permission, he laid it carefully across the hood of his jeep and fired. His bullet hit just above the center of the ammo box...the back of the box blew out and the box did a flip in the air into the rice paddy behind it. There was an awed silence in the crowd as we all compared what little impression our "special" weapons had made on the box with the obvious lasting impression the M14 had made.
The First Sergeant broke the silence after a couple of minutes...he told me that from now on I would carry my M14. A directive I cheerfully embraced and never regretted.
My M14 never let me down. I have had the opportunity to fire many different weapons over the years, but the M14 has always been my favorite. I own one now that is very similar in appearance to the one I carried in Vietnam. I have a group of friends that join me periodically in a nearby gully where we punch holes in paper and blast soda cans to pieces...we arrive with a variety of rifles and pistols...the M14 is by far the favorite. My good buddy's 10 year old daughter summed it up best when she fired it for the first time. Her father's concerns about how she would react to the heavy recoil were quickly put to rest when Carol fired her first shot and turned to her dad with a wide eyed, ear to ear smile and said, "Sweeeeet!"