The Range

Sure, I grumbled when I learned that I'd spend over a week truckin' down to Stone Bay rifle range for the slow, painful slog known as Rifle Qual.  For those that don't know, there's nothing like waking each day at 3-something a.m., meeting at 0400, drawing your weapon from the armory, and then standing around in the dark for over an hour, waiting for the word to form up in 45 separate short lines...then wait some more, receive a brief, walk downrange, line back up, load some ammo...then wait some more, until it's light enough to see your target.  You know what happened, though?  A funny thing...I remembered that I like being paid to send hot lead downrange.

There must be some voodoo or trickery in all this Marine Corps marksmanship business...because a guy like me can arrive at pre-deployment training wanting no part of the bizarre world of the Range, but end up feeling pretty damn happy that he got to simply be a rifleman for a week.