OPERATION: PONCHO PARADE MAY 2004
BR and I arrived substantially late, around 1300 or so.
Temperature was 48 degrees with rain. The rain continued steadily throughout almost the whole day.
The parts of the road that had been "gravellized" were fine, but the parts that were not blessed with gravel were wet, slick, and yucky. Hopefully, we can come up with some kind of fund-raising mechanism that will enable some further road improvements before next winter. We are working on a couple of new t-shirt designs and hopefully we can also start on the 2005 calendar soon. Maybe these can help.
Upon arriving, we had discovered that Tin Man had already qualified Level One (with an M44, no less!), pending a gear inspection and weapon breakdown. His gear checked out OK, and the weapon breakdown, well, you pull the trigger and pull the bolt out. Ta-da! (There are further levels of weapon disassembly, but for our purposes, we really only need to see a simple field strip.)
Mak9 and Bishop had also completed their Level 2 three mile walk (with a qualifying 2 mile "split" time), and Bishop easily hit the Level 2 shooting standards.
After a quick lunch (mmmm, Spam and an oatmeal cookie), everyone threw on their ponchos and we did a perimeter walk, to get everyone familiar with the boundaries of one of the wooded areas at Camp Stasa. About halfway through, we halted, set up two op/lp teams, and put the rest of the group into a small defensive perimeter. The solid green ponchos were too shiny, the woodland camo ponchos were better, but in this particular environment, my opinion is that the German Flektar ponchos were the most effective. So the movement was really one big "poncho parade".
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| BR and Alpha team moving out. Note Flektar poncho..... | Mouse with Real Tree poncho and Flek hat... |
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| Mouse and Bishop. Compare faces and hands.... | Super Six and Sabre Two One. Compare ponchos. |
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Toward the end of the movement, I scurried ahead to serve as an opfor, along with Frank, a guest from the west side of the state. Instead of staying together, Frank and I occupied two separate positions, hopefully to throw off the coming assault. It sort of worked. Alpha team flanked to my right (their left) and got online, and Bravo team got online to my front. Both teams opened up and as Alpha team began to move out and sweep the objective, Bravo team lifted and shifted fire (this, I could hear very loudly as it seemed every member of the team echoed the command to shift fire. This is how it's supposed to be). The monkey wrench was the secondary position, occupied by Frank, which caught some (but not all) of Bravo team by surprise as they moved up on the objective.
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| Tin Man, Dirty Boy, and BR move out. | Mak9 with camouflaged L1A1. Gloves would be perfect... |
There are a couple of things we need to work on following this, mostly hand and arm signals during an assault. After the exercise, there was an almost universal disdain for ponchos of any sort. Mostly they made noise, interfered with gear and weapons, and got hung up on foliage. In any sort of real situation, consideration must be given to NOT wearing them. At least two of them were damaged during this short movement, including mine (it's ok, I have a better poncho rolled up nice and neat on my butt pack). We are thinking of either some kind of expensive Gore-Tex rain gear, or just getting wet.
Then we did some more function testing and shooting. Much to my grief, there were a couple of AR issues which we need to resolve. These seem to occur with newer weapons (not mine), and maybe after they are "broken in" a little more, they will smooth out. There was also a slightly painful "trigger slap" issue with an Egyptian Maadi. We understand that there are kits available to correct this. Anyway, you can only locate and correct these issues if you get out and shoot. (Shameless plug for older AK-style rifles: Super Six has never had a malfunction with his old beater AK. Never.)
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| Semi-automatic, they really make these??? Wow... | All-important marksmanship training...not from the bench. |
In an effort to determine whether or not our newly proposed pistol marksmanship standards for support personnel are reasonable, several of us tried hitting 8 out of 10 shots at a 9 inch plate at 50 feet. Like the Level One rifle standard, this is not hard to do, nor is it a "freebie" either. None of the "test team" are regular pistol shooters, but BR got it on the first try and both myself and Super Six did it after another try or two. (Yeah, it is painful to shoot a mere ten rounds out of my Glock....) This is a reachable goal.
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| .45 ACP revolver pistol practice. Very accurate revolver.. | Super Six with (what else?) a .45 auto, his favorite. |
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| Striker1 getting some gas mask marksmanship training... |
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More work was being done by some of the Militia's best commo people. Get your amateur license soon, so you can participate in some of this. Heck, even if the "whole militia thing" is not your bag, getting your Ham license is a good idea.
And finally, because sometimes you just have to have fun, a couple of the fellas did some 100 yard pistol shooting. We are thinking of doing this again using larger silhouette targets instead of bowling pins. (ummm, who ELSE would be out there in the rain shooting at bowling pins at 100 yards??) Also, let this be a notice that some of us are working towards next year's bowling pin competition...So come out and practice with us.
It was really good to see so many folks show up for training on a cold, wet day upon which the Red Wings were playing a playoff game. We hope to see more of this kind of dedication from more folks.
Next month will be bolt-action day, so remember to bring out your old military surplus type bolt action rifle, and have fun with it. We will run some competitions between teams of rifle types, so we can see how the Mosin-Nagants stack up against the Enfields, Mausers, and even your Japanese Arisakas. We are always suggesting that the new militia person pick up one of these for starters, or for a back-up rifle, or for a rifle to hand along in the event that someone shows up without one, so we will use this training event to showcase their effectiveness and value as militia weapons.
See you out there next time.
-Weapon M
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