23-26 May 2011

                  Before jumping into the week’s events, I want to address another logistical aspect of DCC, which bears mentioning: showers.  That came out of left field, but after receiving a couple frustrated questions from the current OBC class that is currently going through DCC, I decided that it was worth mentioning. 

The bottom line is that JAOBC will condition you to an environment completely unlike Fort Benning.  When you’re told that you’ll be living in barracks for 6 weeks there, certain realities go along with that.  One is the shower situation.  It’s a matter of simple logistics: two bathrooms with 3 showers each on the male floor, which houses 60-70 people.

(Look at this dump.  This building is a miracle for having survived Vietnam, because that's the last time it was ever even close to nice.  That well worn path you see in the foreground is the trail of Soldiers tearing out of there in a full sprint.  Don't expect much, including an adequate number of showers.)

       It’s not the worst situation by far, but the solution is easy: either get to the showers immediately after coming in from PT/the field/etc, or hang out in your room until the line dies down.  It’ll inevitably take some individuals a few days to realize they can’t take their customary 20-minute shower as they shampoo and condition twice.  To avoid being crushed by the mob outside, you’ll have to shower with the speed that a NASCAR pit crew works.  The situation isn’t ideal, but look, you’ve got it incredibly incredibly easy compared to almost every other Soldier.  The 6 weeks will come and go like nothing.

(12.21 seconds.  That's the amount of time you have to get in an out without being crushed by an angry crowd.  A short pit stop...your shower should be the equivalent of a 2-tire change, no fuel, no air, no body work.)

        This is especially true right after everyone is released for the weekend.  The DCC barracks will resemble a scene from a movie where the world is about to end.  Everyone is rushing around throwing whatever clothes they can grab in a bag, hustling to shower up, and running for the doors.  The squealing sounds of tires will fill the air until the 3 people staying around for the weekend are left in the barracks. 

        Now, back to the exciting DCC week three.  Qualification on the M4 was the only thing standing between our class and a four day Memorial Day extravaganza.  Monday was zeroing day.  The easiest way to describe this concept is that you’re adjusting the sights on your weapon to your own vision.  Unlike every other qualification I had done up to that point, we used the close combat optic (CCO), rather than the weapon’s standard iron sights. 

(Cue the disgruntled old men complaining about this new-fangled gizmo.)

        The CCO mounts on top of the weapon, and internally projects a laser dot, which you place on your target.  No laser emits out from the scope to the target.  Instead, the idea is that if your weapon is properly zeroed, you should be able to put the laser on the target, pull the trigger, and hit it.  After the Army taught me a very specific way to fire for years, switching to the CCO was like stepping into a new world.  Seemingly little changes like keeping both eyes open as you aimed were new and foreign concepts to me, and many other classmates with prior experience firing on iron sights.

       Zeroing is a fairly tedious exercise where you fire three rounds at a simulated 300-meter silhouette on a paper target at 25-meters.  You walk down and check your targets every 3 rounds fired, and make adjustments to your sights based on where you’re hitting.  The little kicker is that you need to be hitting close together for adjustments to be accurate.  If you’re firing all over the place like a bad guy in any Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, adjustments are going to be tough to make. 

(Arnold disapproves of my criticism of zeroing.  Consequently, this is one of the funniest scenes in any of his movies.  Anytime someone just gets straight picked up by one leg, then dropped off a cliff, you have a quality movie, and a quality tangent to distract from a mediocre blog post.)

Overall, the range was efficient thanks to class leadership.  The huge piece of evidence I’ll offer is to MAKE SURE YOUR WEAPON IS ZEROED.  Too many people were trying to rush their way off the range so they could get back to reading in the bleachers.  Whatever time off you gain here will be lost on qualification day.  Trust me.

(There is literally no reason for this picture to be here, but I wanted to reemphasize one point: ZERO YOUR WEAPON PROPERLY. Make it so.)

(The actual zeroing range.  Be thankful you're not in full battle rattle for this one.)

       Tuesday marked the first time we made our way to the qualification range.  The ranges are within marching distance of the barracks, which is nice, although it makes for a tedious march when you have someone calling the same cadence over and over and over.  I’m looking at you, “64 Rangers on a one way trip.”  This visit was simply a familiarization fire.  We each got to fire through a qualification table to get used to the range. 

(Sing "down by the river, took a little walk" one more time, and you'll end up strapped in as a 50-meter target.)

       The range has plastic pop-up targets at various ranges from 50 to 300 meters away.  You’ll fire 20 rounds from the prone supported position (laying down with sandbags underneath your hand holding the front hand grip), 10 rounds from the prone unsupported (no sandbags), and 10 rounds from the kneeling position.  This is all done with your body armor, load bearing vest, helmet, gloves, and eye-protection on. 

Sorry old-schoolers, the days of the foxhole are gone.  Perhaps if the Taliban builds a tribute to the Maginot line, they’ll bring that one back.  This day had 0 pressure, as no scores were kept.  It was a long, hot day, but a fun one.

       Wednesday was actual qualification day.  Both the Army and DCC standard is to hit 23 out of 40 total targets.  It doesn’t matter if you hit all 20 from the supported position, and only 3 out of the next 20, but you just have to get to that number.  For the vast majority of our class, and for future classes, this will be an incredibly easy day.  The range is one of the more difficult ones I’ve fired on, based on a number of factors like the torn up targets that bullets tend to pass straight through. 

       There’s also the dreaded 75-meter target.  I’m not sure whether many people had trouble on this one, but it quickly became my nemesis as the day wore on.  This was the first range I’d ever fired on where the 75-meter target was just the top part of the head of the silhouette (normally it’s at least a small chunk of the silhouette).  Even at that range, it’s pretty tricky to hit.  I’d say that 65% of my rounds went low into the dirt, or high because I over thought my last miss and tried to adjust my aim incorrectly.

(An artist's rendering of what this target looks like.  Obviously, it will be plastic when you see it, but it makes little difference.  You have a better chance of hitting an atom out of mid air than this little guy.)

 I’m making no excuses here-I am certainly not in the category of elite shooters by Army standards.  Even though I don’t usually fire expert, I’ve never had a problem qualifying…until DCC.  I won’t bother going into my score on the first two rounds through, because it would probably cause the Army to rush me in for an eye exam. 

       Please, please, qualify on your first or second time through.  I’m begging you, for your own sake.  Don’t suffer the same fate I did based on my terrible, horrible, no good, very bad shooting.  As the day wore on, those who hadn’t qualified kept rotating immediately back through the firing line.  It was about 99 degrees that day, and between the heat and my repeated idiocy on the firing line, I kept rotating and rotating.  The bleachers slowly filled up with those who had already qualified, and they hung out reading and disguising naps.  I’m not one to get bitter, but I wanted to throw a bunch of rocks in their general direction.

(It's tough to see the dejection on our faces at this distance.)

(The targets in the distance are intentionally blurred so that this classmate's dignity remains intact.)

       I must have fired 15 to 20 times through that day, finishing without qualifying.   I wasn’t shooting miserably, and it was even more frustrating that I was only missing the qual mark by 1 or 2 at most each time.  By the end of the day I wanted to run downrange and smash each of the targets myself.  Especially that 75-meter one.  Feel free to judge me on my performance-it makes no difference to me.  I was in the company of some of the class’s most squared away students, and we quickly became this misfit band that just couldn’t figure out how to hit 23.

      As the day wore on, the tower would announce “lane ___, good shooting!” whenever anyone managed to qualify.  It was like they were some sort of lottery winner, dancing back to get rodded off the range, as the rest of the rejects slowly shuffled back in the heat to the ammo point to collect new magazines.  I’m normally a pretty cheery and optimistic person, but I was a completely cynical…grumpy person…by the 18^th time through the firing line.

If you find yourself in the same position, just take a deep breath.  There’s no magical lane that’s better than any other, and you’re not a terrible Soldier.  I’ve been around some Soldier’s with incredible careers under their belts who have a bad day on the range.

     Our crew of flunkies trudged back into the company area long after everyone else had come back to clean weapons, and all I wanted to do was throw my M4 in the ocean. 

("Would you and your crew of flunkies like some pancakes?"  No, Prince.  Not even those could cheer me up after firing so terribly.)

Instead, we got some sleep and got marched out by ourselves bright and early the next morning.  Not much ammo remained, and we had one last chance to try and qualify.  The cadre was incredibly supportive, and we had use of a handful of weapons that had been zeroed dead on.  Using someone else’s weapon with iron sights was always unthinkable, but not so with the CCO.  I went out on my first time that morning, and threw up another dud with my own weapon.  I then switched out, and qualified on my first time.

      That was a long story about something most Soldier’s would never admit to, but the point is to never give up.  I’d count being a bad shooter as one of the biggest embarrassments ever for the average Soldier.  You’re in the Army, for crying out loud.  If there’s one thing you should be good at, it’s pulling a trigger and knocking down a target.  That’s all hogwash, though.  If you run into trouble on qual day, just take a deep breath and realize that it means nothing.  You will qualify, and that’ll be the end of it.  No one cares whether you shoot 23, or get the class marksmanship award.  Maybe care a little bit about it if you have some crotchety grandfather that will disown you if he finds out you’re missing targets at 50 meters, but I’d just fudge the truth with him.

The four-day weekend felt like a huge reward earned at that point, and I relaxed appropriately-by visiting Disney World.

(Another unrotatable sideways picture.  Look, I'm not happy about it, but you get the idea here.)