Basic Training Journal: Monday, September 22nd

Today we had a wall locker inspection first thing in the morning. They had practically all the drill sergeants in the company checking each platoons bay. The senior drill sergeant and first sergeant were there too. They look EVERYWHERE for contraband, like the ceilings, cubby holes...everywhere. We have a diagram in our wall lockers showing how we're supposed to organize it. Rolling your clothes takes the longest time but all in all it doesn't take that long to straighten up your wall locker to standard.

This inspection was about finding contraband, they weren't nitpicking the organization of our wall lockers unless you just stuffed your stuff all over the place. They even said they weren't focusing on neatness with this inspection.

After the wall locker inspection, we ate breakfast before getting trans to the range for U.S. weapons. We got to fire the M249 SAW, M203, and modified AT4(it shot out 9mm tracer rounds and not an actual rocket). One rocket for the AT4 costs $1,500 so that explains why we didn't fire the actual AT4. The AT4 is a fire and forget weapon, one time use anti tank weapon. It wasn't that difficult to fire and it's virtually recoilless.

We got to fire 25 rounds from the SAW. We fired in ~3 round bursts although it's fully automatic. I guess they didn't want us pretending to be rambo holding down the trigger. We pressed the trigger for a ~second to fire a 3 round burst. We only fired the SAW..no fixing jams or anything.

The M203 attaches to the M16 or M4 carbine. It's a grenade launcher. We shot 2 "paintball" grenades at old disabled tanks downrange. Not much recoil with the M203, but you had to really arch the weapon to fire a long distance.

We also setup a claymore mine...not a live one of course. They did give us a demonstration of a real claymore going off though. We just low crawled about 20 meters with the claymore, put it in the ground, connected the wire, and low crawled backwards, then tested the claymore with a testing device. You had to crawl backwards since you are always supposed to face the claymore.