August 13, 1997 - Eating Bullets

970816 - Wed, Thu, & Fri was more A-Line. I could go into detail about it but I hated it so much that I've blocked most of it out of my mind. One thing I remember is that the DIs treated us like DUNG all week. Partly because they wanted to and partly because there's a DI from San Diego who's here for the rest of our stay here on "Paradise Island." 
First of all, the DI was not from San Diego. Eventually, we learned that he had just completed DI school and was now finishing up his training by spending time with an actual platoon of recruits. At times it was extremely frustrating, like when the DIs treated us as though we had just gotten to boot camp. At other times, it was actually entertaining, like when the new DI (Sgt. J____) would call out some command and we would follow it, knowing it was the wrong command. Then, one of our DIs would slowly walk over to Sgt. J____ and whisper something to him. Then, he'd call out the command that he should have called in the first place.

One of the things that we did during A-Line was firing from behind cover. This means that we would lay down in the prone position and shoot down targets while sheltered behind a structure. Normally, this is not a complicated process: you lie down with most of your body behind a large post (picture a cut-off telephone post), you fire your weapon, you hit a target, repeat. Well, I did the same thing, with one notable difference: I'm left-handed. What that means is that, in order to be behind the post, I had to have my rifle to the left of the post. Well, an M16 has something called an ejection port where the recently-fired shell shoots out, still smoking. The port is on the right of the rifle. When I was laying down to fire the rifle, I had one eye closed and my mouth was slightly opened. I fired my rifle, the shell ejected, and proceeded to bounce off of the post and land in my mouth.

It was hot.

But I couldn't do anything about it other than to spit it out and keep shooting. There was a DI behind me, yelling at me to hurry up, shoot faster, shoot better.

That's just one of the "blocked out" memories of A-Line.

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