Saturday was originally scheduled as a break. Instead, some of the students wanted an extra day, and the students were willing, so four of us, plus Colin, spent the day together. We remained in character, pretty much the entire day, and the very cool Maura McMillan came to hang out, sit in on our class, and watch us “play sniper”.
Things we worked on:
cutting my rifle’s barrel, hand cranked crowning tool
Getting out of range mentality
running with full gear and rifles
patrol and movement formations
battle drills, movement to contact
INCOMING drill, hit the dirt, team leader yells command, sprint with full gear and regroup hundred of yds away
hand signals
crossing linear danger areas, ie roads
scouting, reporting back
tracking, looking for wires, things out of place, “spore” food trash, foot prints, bipod prints, direction of travel of footprints
360 degree security at all times
taking turns resting and pulling security, eating, working
ghillie up to sneak through the desert, stalking up on the paintball players
pointing rifles at unsuspecting pballers, milling them to estimate range
wading balls deep through a pond, rest of the day in wet boots
running in place, PT until we were all tired
crawling, crawl up a sand berm, teamwork important
setting up and ranging the porta potty, could you shoot someone through that car window? split second shot
how far away is it? whats your dope?
can you shoot from that position? could you stay there for hours in the same posture?
sprint, last person does pushups
trip, fall, break scope cap, pick myself up, sprint
do pushups in full gear, with rucksack on.
form up, run back to the range, right through the paintball staging area
stack up and sneak into the ghost town, each covering a sector, watching rooftops and windows
kicking the door in, clearing house with sniper rifles and pistol
setting up an urban hide, darkening the room, moving furniture, busting through the dry wall
ranging targets on the mountain,
shooter and spotter then firing rapidly on targets
one person pulling security at all times.
What would you do if an entry team kicked open the door and rolled your sniper team’s hide?
keep crowning my barrel, rest
force on force counter sniper stalk with blanks, sun goes down, can’t see
texas guys practicing shooting steel with night vision
sneaking up on the ghost town, walking reallly, really, really, really slowly to not make noise
sneaking up on our house, cracking open the door, clearning house by night vision silently
colin and maura would set a dummy in the house, move it around, shoot the dummy with blanks
when slow, go very slow and quiet, as soon as shooting starts, go white light, and go loud and fast
taking a turn on the texas guys night vision, not used to it, can’t tell what im looking at, walk right past my tango, get me and partner killed.
go to in-n-out with colin and maura after a long day of training
army stories from colin