Bad, Bad, Boys. Had fun diden ya. I'd done the same.
A Military Gun Story...
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Got a military gun story. Date, December 7, 1958. Place, Oklahoma Military Academy, Claremore, Oklahoma. I joined the Army Reserve in Bartlesville Oklahoma in November of 1958, didn't go on active duty for basic training until May, 1959. On December 7, 1958, prior to basic training, the reserve unit went on a weekend drill by driving south to
Claremore, Oklahoma and shooting Browning M1917 machine guns on a 1000 inch range at Oklahoma Military Academy. (OMA is now the campus of Rogers State University.)
We took 6 MGs to the range and went through a proscribed 1000 inch course of fire. During the shooting, a guy next to me was blasting away with his MG and a tracer round impacted the earthen berm behind the target. This tracer went vertically, straight up into the air, and fell back to earth, landing right in the middle of the guy's back that had shot the round. He was wearing one of the old OD Korean vintage field jackets, and the still spinning bullet layed in the middle of his back,.......spinning,.......on fire,.........and set his jacket on fire! I kid you not! We put the fire out on the jacket and the guy was OK. During that same day, I had a jam, ( as well as many other of the shooters). The ranger officer called "lock and clear all weapons". Well, I had one in the chamber and I could not get it out by pulling the operating handle to the rear. Well, I did the most logical thing? Had to clear the gun, right? Well, if you can't get it out of the chamber,.......squeeze it off! WRONG!!!!
I was never stupid enough to do that in my military career!
. Other than that, it was just a wonderful day at the range. Cloudy, cold, overcast and we were burning the wood from the ammo boxes in a 55 gal drum to keep warm! In addition, before the day was over, we had shot the prescribed course of fire and had literally mountains of ammumition left,....so what did we do. Well there was not a jack rabbit in sight that was safe,....and before the day was over, all the target frames were down and we had "used" six barrels for each MG! OMG! What a day. Now to add insult to injury, before we left, we had over a pickup truck full of .30-06 cases and links. The people running the show offered the brass to anyone who wanted it. A few took a few "buckets full" of brass, ........but I wasn't into reloading yet,......so I passed! ;-(
Claremore, Oklahoma and shooting Browning M1917 machine guns on a 1000 inch range at Oklahoma Military Academy. (OMA is now the campus of Rogers State University.)
We took 6 MGs to the range and went through a proscribed 1000 inch course of fire. During the shooting, a guy next to me was blasting away with his MG and a tracer round impacted the earthen berm behind the target. This tracer went vertically, straight up into the air, and fell back to earth, landing right in the middle of the guy's back that had shot the round. He was wearing one of the old OD Korean vintage field jackets, and the still spinning bullet layed in the middle of his back,.......spinning,.......on fire,.........and set his jacket on fire! I kid you not! We put the fire out on the jacket and the guy was OK. During that same day, I had a jam, ( as well as many other of the shooters). The ranger officer called "lock and clear all weapons". Well, I had one in the chamber and I could not get it out by pulling the operating handle to the rear. Well, I did the most logical thing? Had to clear the gun, right? Well, if you can't get it out of the chamber,.......squeeze it off! WRONG!!!!
I was never stupid enough to do that in my military career!
. Other than that, it was just a wonderful day at the range. Cloudy, cold, overcast and we were burning the wood from the ammo boxes in a 55 gal drum to keep warm! In addition, before the day was over, we had shot the prescribed course of fire and had literally mountains of ammumition left,....so what did we do. Well there was not a jack rabbit in sight that was safe,....and before the day was over, all the target frames were down and we had "used" six barrels for each MG! OMG! What a day. Now to add insult to injury, before we left, we had over a pickup truck full of .30-06 cases and links. The people running the show offered the brass to anyone who wanted it. A few took a few "buckets full" of brass, ........but I wasn't into reloading yet,......so I passed! ;-(
Ahhhh, the dreaded 83.3 foot range qualification.
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