trainfire

Kurtz: Did they say why they wanted to terminate my command? Did they tell you?
Willard: They told me you had gone totally insane and, uh, that your methods were unsound.
Kurtz: Are my methods unsound?
Willard: I don't see ... any method ... at all.

Apocalypse Now

Basic training at Fort Ord is a mixture of extreme exhilaration, total fatigue, intense competition, good food and always constant mind-boggling activity. It rolls thorough the memory like an unperturbed ghost as a collection of images, pictures, voices, incidents, emotions, some of unimagined hilarity, others of contradiction, embarrassment, emulation, but mostly just a lot of confusion. The first two weeks are spent in some innocent activities like PT (physical training) and DD (Dismounted Drill, better known as marching till you know how to do it right, which is never).

Sergeant: People listen up. We have an extremely busy program for all you fuckheads today. At 9 AM promptly we will have PT, followed at 10 AM by DD. Do you understand me.

Sergeant: We will then break for chow, and then we will have class on how to use a gas mask, rig a bayonet, and do a little hand-to-hand combat, where the sergeant here [big guy] will demonstrate how to break your neck in one easy lesson. Any volunteers?

Sergeant: But tomorrow we have an even better surprise. You will be introduced to all the parts of your newly issued M-14 semi-automatic 7.62 millimeter gas powered chamber action rifle. You will soon know every single part of this fine weapon; the chamber, the housing mechanism, the trigger assembly, the barrel. You will be able to disassemble it blindfolded and put it all back together in the right order. You will do this in the rain, snow, sleet, mud, and any other kind of weather and at every moment of your miserable waking existence. You will live with this fine weapon. You will sleep with this fine weapon. You will develop a passionate love for this fine weapon. You will know it’s serial number backwards, forwards and sideways and upside down. You will not loose or misplace this weapon. You will keep it with you at all times. It is your best friend. It is your salvation.

If I find just anyone without this weapon at any time, he will have to answer to me, and my punishment is severe indeed. Do you understand this?

There was other activities to fill our days like CBR (chemical, biological, and radiological warfare). But it’s all part of just usual commonplace training. What everybody really looked forward to was trainfire. It’s considered a right of passage, a highpoint, a milestone, a way to prove your mettle, a circumcision, an epiphany, a time when you are actually able to fire the rifle that you have been cleaning, polishing, loving and disassembling for interminable days. It’s the big moment you’ve been walking around with and dreaming about for a long time.

Our barracks was B-3-1, a leftover, rundown, well used, temporary World War II structure, conveniently located just near the I-5 freeway that ran through the fort. The beach ranges were just a short distance away on the other side of the freeway, so we figured those big 50-pound M-60 machine guns didn’t look so heavy after all. This is going to be a breeze--but the Army had other plans.

A day before trainfire was supposed to start, we were loaded into trucks with all our gear and transferred way up on the hill to C-3-A, an extremely remote part of the post, and from there it was a good three miles down to the beach firing ranges. The large cold concrete structure we moved into looked more like an ancient Egyptian mausoleum, with it’s dark uninviting hallways, dank poorly lit latrines, and harsh surroundings. It seemed so cold all the time. A high fence had been constructed just east of our barracks and at night the coyotes come down from the hills to search for scraps of food and bark at the moon. I thought sometimes that I was on the wrong side of the fence.

The day we moved into the big mausoleum at C-3-A was October 15,1964. That day was my birthday and I was 23 years old, so I got me a cup of hot coffee and made a toast to the coyotes. "Hey all you coyotes out there, Today I'm 23 years old. Now how 'bout dat."

Trainfire

On our first day of trainfire we had early mess, formed up and marched off. The bigger guys were in back and got to carry the M-60 machine guns. They would switch off every few minutes. It was cold. The morning fog had a way of getting inside your field jacket.

I got my first lesson in well-planned harassment when our platoon sergeant barked out. “I see a man with his field jacket off!! People!! Do you know what that means! If any one of you swinging dicks takes off his field jacket, then everybody had to take off his field jacket.”

So we took off our field jackets and stuffed them on our field packs. It was cold.

There's no place to sit down when you're on the beach ranges, except in the temporary latrine. Everybody ate standing, smoked standing, talked standing, and went to training class standing. And everybody had to have a rifle. If you didn’t have a rifle all the time you were in big trouble. I think about the Bible story where the guy who didn’t have a wedding garment was cast out into the cold where there was weeping and gnashing of teeth. Hmmm. Maybe the weeping and gnashing part was better than this. I don't know.

After awhile you get tired of standing and you welcome a chance to sit down, anywhere. The instructors were all boring and monotone and over thirty-something career men. They talked about the rifle, rules of combat, methods of attack, how to dis-assemble, re-assemble, clean, load, un-jam, your weapon. We had big tables and had to demonstrate that we could dis-assemble our rifles in two minutes, and then re-assemble them also in two minutes. Then we got to do it again blindfolded.

The M-14 is a semiautomatic, magazine-fed firearm. It’s an absolutely miserable excuse for a rifle. Unlike its predecessor the famous M-1 the M-14 is poorly balanced, inaccurate, jams easily, hard to clean and un-jam. It recoils excessively, it’s too heavy and besides all that, it has no class—it’s just plain, flat ugly. Fortunately the rifle did not stay in service long, at least not as long as they had wanted, soon replaced by the M-16 jungle rifle. But it was my unenviable fate to learn everything about the M-14.

Trainfire was busy. You never had much of a chance to worry about the cold or the heat or the sun, because there were so many classes, training exercises, and lectures you had to go to. And all this feverous activity was topped off by that grueling march back up the hill to our barracks.

By 3:30 PM Fort Ord had gotten hot, very hot. And every day on the way back we received the same kind of torment. Our platoon sergeant would bark. “I see a man with his field jacked on!! [I really doubt it]. People!! Do you know what that means!! If any one of you assholes puts his field jacket on, then everybody has to put his field jacket on.”

Qualification

Qualification was simple. You were given a magazine of 20 rounds, and you got up on a platform. Pop-up targets were hidden in the bushes anywhere from 10 yards to 100 yards away. They were driven by motors that caused them to come up at any time during the test. The range sergeant’s assistant controlled this operation. The order of popup targets was random. Two range sergeants sat at a table with binoculars and would do the scoring. Scores range from 1 to 20, one for each hit. Sharpshooter was the highest, followed by marksman first class, and then marksman. If you got less than 5 hits, you failed the test you got recycled. That meant you had to be reassigned to the next training group, and you got to do it all over again. Nobody wanted to be recycled. This was a huge disgrace.

I was feeling fairly confident because I had been a certified NRA instructor at a boys camp for two years where I taught riflry. I had a good eye and a steady hand and a great deal of confidence. When qualification day came the fog was unusually thick. In fact I had never seen the fog that thick before. I was sure they were going to postpone qualification because by 9 AM the fog had still not cleared and visibility was down to about 20 yards. Also I was feeling OK because my name was next to last and I would qualify in the afternoon after the fog had all burnt off--so I thought.

Our platoon sergeant barked. “Listen up people!! I see that all you [expletive] are ready and eager to qualify. Right!!! We will not disappoint you. Today people, we are going to get tested in reverse order just to make it fun.”

I was the second man to qualify. The guy before me almost failed, and he was a real good shot. I got up on the platform, and slammed my full magazine into the rifle and did the "lock and load". My eyes strained against the fog. I saw mysterious images floating around out there and I would often catch a glimpse of a target as it was just going down. I couldn’t even see 30 yards yet I knew there were 100-yard targets somewhere bobbing up and down out there.

TrainFire

(pronounced train-fire "firearms training")

Trainfire

Qualification