Anyway, I promised to post a picture if I could find it. I couldn't find the exact one I was looking for--that one was with a .50 cal which makes this one look like a bit of a pipsqueak. But I found this one of me on the same day with a .30 cal (actually rechambered for 7.62mm), ca. 1988 (I'm the trigger man):
But then while strolling down memory lane I came across this picture, me ca. 1974:
I'd forgotten about that one. This illustrates a few things about me, I think. For example, I'm morbidly goal-oriented. I generally end up where I intended going, eventually, even if I forget having resolved on a plan. The subconscious is a wonderful thing! This is also how I ended up teaching in the Department of War Studies. I decided just after that first picture was taken that I'd better go to university because soldiering in the Canadian Forces wasn't going to be very satisfying for me after all. I think what clinched it was that it's the same damn gun in both pictures, and it was old in 1974. I suspect I took the lesson that I was taking the idea of warfighting a little more seriously than the people paying me were. So, I managed to convince the army to pay for me to go to university where among the first books I read was The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy by Lawrence Freedman, Professor of War Studies. Now that's a cool thing, says I. Next thing I know here I am telling you to read something cool. If I could just get them to install a heavy machine gun in my office--I'd machinegun for peaceful purposes only, promise!--my life would be complete.
Hey, you army guys should invite me on a firepower demo. It might increase your grade. Wait. Damn! I'm teaching civilians and air force guys this term. Hmmm... if I get a ride in a jet I could perhaps an arrange a degree to arrive by first class post. ;)
9 comments:
Wierd - Lawry's Evolution of Nuclear Strategy was one of the first academic books I also read in strat studies. Mind up, I was taking a first year course on nuclear strategy. So maybe not so weird after all.
Don't tell me that it was Sergio's first book as well? Then we can conclude that nuclear strategy was actually all about how to evict undesirables from night clubs during your bouncing days!!!
And what's with the "Lawry"
Scary photos - especially the one in 74 - not long before I joined up myself!
Snow? Where was that, Germany?
In basic training at Fort Dix NJ, they oddly grouped us in a circle, a machine gunner and an assistant, each pair pointing inward at an aiming stake. I was supposedly feeding ammunition to a fellow 'cruit who as I recall had green stuff beneath his nostrils. He was in ecstasy. 'Gosh', he said, 'if that was *real* ammo, I could kill *all* those guys!' And so he could have done.
Great photographs David. We'll have to get you on the range one day and continue the series. I'm sure that JSCSC has got at least one of those in their armoury.
Personally, having smashed my frint teeth out on the magazine of an LMG (Bren variant) in 1989, I try to avoid MGs wherever possible these days.
That'll be front teeth, not frint teeth.
'if your fingers are too fat to dial, mash the key pad with your palm now' (The Simpsons).
Dan, that's CFB Petawawa. Lot's of snow there. Funny story about your crazy partner in the machine-gunning circle. I think a certain percentage of crazies, 'gun nuts' basically, are attracted to the military. Mostly they get weeded out or leave voluntarily (my experience is that practically inevitably they then go on to be police officers or, worse, private mall cops). I remember a guy on my basic infantry course who was exemplary of this variety of maniac. We had been on the range qualifying with rifles all day. As often happened once the sun got low in the sky and the firing stopped the ground hogs started to pop out of their holes and graze (for whatever it is they eat) in the grassy space between the butts and the first firing point at 100 metres. We'd just fired off all of our ammunition and made safe. So this guy fixes his bayonet, tears off after one of the rodents and spears it to death. Somehow, incomprehensibly, he wasn't kicked out, althuogh he was RTU'd from the course. A year and a bit later I'm back on a range with the guy who has since remustered as a military policeman and is one of a couple of guys putting a section of recruits through quallification with Sterling submachine guns (souped up Sten gun). I'm sitting with my infantry section about a hundred metres away cleaning our weapons. One of the MP recruits gets a stoppage which he can't clear. Crazy guy takes the weapon and while not only clearing the jam incorrectly pays no attention to where the barrel is pointing, rotates 90 degrees and, to make a long story short, lets off a round at us. I heard a buzz and then a gasp near me. Then I see my friend is holding his hands on his chest where there's a growing bloody patch, muttering 'f**k, f***k, F**k' over and over. Luckily he hadn't been shot in the chest as I'd initially feared. The round had hit the ring finger of his left hand, blowing it off except for a shred--painful, apparently, but not life threatening. That time they booted crazy guy out. He's probably a police commissioner now. They sewed the stump of the finger back. When my friend got married a few years later he had a wedding ring with a hinge made because he couldn't get a regular one over the 'knuckle'.
Shortly after completing my basic training in 1988, I was in a holding troop at the Corps' depot in Aldershot. One day a member of the permanent staff decided it would be a wizzo idea to do some bayonet fighting drill training (oh dear, I can hear you mutter). But 'don't worry, we'll be leaving the scabbards on, so it'll be perfectly safe', I remember being the gist of the brief. Long story short, I spent the best part of two days in the garrison hospital (remember the days when the Army had hospitals?) looking after my buddy who managed to bayonet himself through the foot, scabbard and all. It took 2 people to pull it out of his foot and I can still hear the screams to this day.
I was also present in Saudi Arabia in 1990 during the run up to the last Gulf War when Brigadier Hammerbeck (then Comd 4 Armd Bde)'s PA managed to shoot the Bde Comd's Driver 4 times in the leg with his SMG. You know they say that 'the training just kicks in, man' when you encounter an emergency incident like this? Well, I'm not sure why but we just fell about laughing. Poor guy, the Brig's PA standing there in a flat spin because he just knew this was a career-defining moment, and everybody else pissing themselves. Totally bizarre.
Pip,
"Lawry" is the term of endearment that the "inner circle" of friends and academics can call Professor Sir Lawrence Freedman, aka The Strategic Studies Meister.
As for first books, I think it was "The Anarchical Society" by Hedley Bull...Those were the good old IR days...when everything was so much simpler...theory detached from reality....
Cheers,
Sergio
David,
I understand what you mean about firing a machine gun. Though I spent a lot of time on training ranges, don’t have any good stories. I heard a number of them from my buddies and read about them in the follow on investigations. I agree with you about the .50 cal, it’s a hell of a weapon. I was one of the first Marines to shoot the squad automatic weapon in the mid-eighties and the new M240G when it replaced the jam-prone M60 in the mid-nineties. The M240G is a significantly better weapon than the 60. In the initial infantry officer training, I always volunteered to be the gunner. Though the gun was a real pain to carry because it was heavy and difficult to move through the brush, it didn’t hurt my ears so much to shoot it as much as it did to be next to or near it (odd as that sounds). Even though these were refurbished guns, they weren’t all that good. Here’s a brief example: towards the end of a long exercise, I was riding in a helicopter and because I was dead tired, I fell asleep while sitting down with my head resting on the gun’s butt plate. When we got to the LZ I ran off the bird and into the woods. As I was running I reached for the grip to get ready to fire and it wasn’t there. The helo’s vibration had worked the retaining pin loose and the whole damn thing had fallen off! So here we are about to go into the attack with me the machine gunner now carrying a 23 pound assault club! Just then, another Lieutenant came running by handed me the grip and said, “Found this on the helo, figured you could use it.” What a piece of junk.
If you have the chance to fire a Mk 19, the 40mm grenade launcher, you may put it at the top of your favorite automatic weapons list. It’s an amazing thing to fire or watch; you can see the rounds fly through the air like very well thrown softballs that blow up.
Semper Fi,
Mike
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