The problem with writing a blog and getting older at the same time is that sometimes I think of something to write about, sort of start composing in my mind, and then by the time I get home and find the time to get on the computer, I have forgotten what it was I was thinking about. Then sometime later I will think of that subject again but will be unsure if it was something I actually wrote or just something I thought about writing. So...if this sounds familiar to you, it's okay, it sounds familiar to me, too.
I wrote about the Patton Match I participated in when I was at Fort Ord in the seventies. A rough competition, and one in which I did quite well. But my favorite pistol competition came a few years later in Baumholder, Germany. I was a Sergeant First Class, an E-7, the platoon sergeant of the 2/68 Armor's Support Platoon. Our mission was to follow the Battalion's tanks around and make sure they had all the fuel and ammunition and everything else they might need to fight.
Every year the Brigade at Baumholder (one of three infantry brigades in the Eighth Infantry Division) hosted a pistol competition for all the units in Baumholder. There were two infantry battalions, a couple of artillery battalions, some engineers and various other support-type units, and our armor battalion. Our battalion commander, LTC J. Burns, announced that he was tired of watching the dad-gum infantry win this pistol match every year and he wanted to field at least one solid team and win the trophy that year. He asked everyone who was a decent pistolero to try out for the team.
Platoon sergeants don't usually have the opportunity to participate in things like that, but if the colonel was serious about winning, I decided I would offer my services. On the day of the try-outs, we went to a pistol range and received a briefing from a buck sergeant, E-5, who had been selected to select, coach, and lead the pistol team. He had shot in several types of competitions before joining the Army and had been to a school run by some big-time shooter...Weaver? Cooper? Something like that. In any case, he was the guy the colonel was counting on to create a team of winners.
After using up half of our shooting time talking about stances, braces, bone support, breath control, recovery, follow-through, and a bunch of other phrases I had sooooo little interest in, he finally announced that we would be firing at a man-sized target at twenty-one feet. Twenty-one feet! I know that police shooters had gone to close in training many years prior to this, they found that most police shoot outs happen inside the seven yard range. The sergeant explained that he was looking for shot groups, not so much accuracy...how consistant we shot...how close together our bullet strikes were.
When he placed us in our firing positions he told us to take up the stance we would use to shoot. Then he went up and down the line making critical remarks about how we were standing and what kind of two-hand grip we used, etc,etc,etc. When he came to me he was a little intimidated (rightfully so, too, I was just about fed up with the micromanagement and yapping going on) because I had two stripes on him, had been in the Army a lot longer than he had been, was at least six inches taller and thirty pounds heavier.
He asked me if I had ever shot competitively before. I said I had. He asked if I had ever fired in a combat match (a kind of pistol competition with pop-up targets representing good guys and bad guys). I gave him my best glare and told him that my experience in combat shooting had all taken place in Vietnam. He gave me some pointers on how to hold my pistol, how to stand, etc. I smiled and thanked him then went back to my own time-honored, tried-and-true methods. I know it irritated him, but that wasn't the last of his irritations.
When we finally got ready to actually pull the trigger, he told us that those who had the tightest shot groups would be selected for the team. I asked him, "What happens if we get them all in the same hole?" The group laughed and he smirked at me. Then he said, "If you get them all in the same hole, I'll make YOU the team captain". More laughter.
We were given two magazines, seven rounds each, and he told us to aim at "center mass"...an Army way of saying "shoot at the middle of the target". When the shooting started, I aimed carefully at the "center mass" and started drilling the man-sized, man-silouette target. It sounds a little braggy, but I am pretty good and the target was only seven yards away. I could have thrown the bullets over-hand and gotten a tight shot group. So when the shooting stopped and the pistols were all cleared, we walked out to the targets and stood next to them to wait for buck- sergeant-shooting-expert-team-captain-coach to come by and critique their shooting. I was about the sixth shooting position but the giggling started as soon as we got by our targets. The sergeant was talking to the first position and kept making irritated glances down the line as the other shooters were openly laughing now. He stopped his critique and asked everyone what was so damn funny. Several of the others told him he would find out soon enough. He finally worked his way down to my target, I could tell from his demeanor that he was gearing up to put me in my place, me with my unorthodox shooting stance and grip and all, but when he saw my target, he was actually very quiet for the first time that day. There was a hole in the center of my target about two-to-three inches across. I had torn the center out of the target...and all of my shots had either gone through or added to the hole. The other shooters had gathered around to see what the young buck would have to say. All he did, or could really, say was, "Good shooting, Sergeant". We did all our clean up of the range and cleaned our weapons and put them in the Arms Room, and he told us we would have another meeting in the morning.
The next morning we all met in the conference room and our "leader" came in and announced that the commander had decided that, due to our excellent shooting the day before, we would be fielding two teams; he would be the captain of team one and I would be the captain of team two. He made the team assignments and then told us when we could use the range for practice. I noticed that he loaded his team with the top shooters, the ones who had the most experience. But there was no discussion, we just took our assignments and filed out.
The next couple of weeks went smoothly; we were given the rules for the match and the grading system. It was to be a "rapid-fire" competition with a time limit to fire three magazines at the man-sized targets at 25 yards. Each hit was worth a point, no matter where it hit the target. I don't recall exactly how much time we had to empty three magazines, but I think it was around thirty seconds. At first everyone was getting hyper about the time limit and the range.
We showed up at the range for our appointed practice time and Young Buck was just finishing up. He made a dazzling display of emptying a magazine in seconds, blasting away as fast as he could pull the trigger. I don't know how many hit he had on the target, but it was an impressive show of rapid-fire. There was a little jauntiness in his step as he and his followers left the firing positions.
When my team got on the positions I told them that the "rapid fire" exhibited by Young Buck was not necessary and certainly not efficient. If we fired one round every second that left us with seven seconds to effect two magazine changes. I counted off what that would sound like: "boom-one-thousand, boom-one-thousand, etc" It is a rush, but if you are calm, one second is enough to at least do a front sight aim and hit the target. The magazine changes were a little trickier but still do-able with practice. And the beauty of it was that if the other teams were trying to "machine gun" the event, they were going to be throwing away a lot of shots. If we kept it in a smooth cadence, even if we didn't empty the last mag, we would probably still have more hits than the other teams. So that is the way we practiced. And by the end of our second day of practice, all five of us could get off 21 fairly well -aimed shots and make the magazine changes within the thirty-second limit.
On the day of the match, we found out we would be shooting indoors, just one shooter at a time. It took a lot of time to get through all the teams that way, but by the end of the day we had all fired and I felt that our team had done pretty well.
There was a battalion formation the next morning and we marched down to the big parking lot in the center of the post. The whole brigade and supporting units were in that lot. The brigade commander gave a short rah-rah about the shooters and the spirit of competition and all that...then announced the winners. 2/68 Armor team one (the young buck's team) was third place. The MP company got second place. First place went to 2/68 Armor's team 2 (my team). Our battalion commander, totally out of character, whooped out a cavalry cheer for his shooters. The battalion roared along with him. For the first time in a long time, the infantry had been shut out of the finish.
We received a nice trophy with the shooters' named engraved on it and it was placed in the trophy case at battalion headquarters. A year or so later, when it was dusty and pushed to the rear of the case, unappreciated and unnoticed, it just disappeared. I think one of the shooters must have felt bad about the way it was treated and just took it home. 