Introduction
Yesterday I started a serie about my time in the Army during my Obligatory military service. At the end of thispost you can find a link to the other part(s). My idea to write about this came from the news that on Morocco they are planning to re-introduce the obligatory service again. It reminded me at myself servicing the army when it was still obligated.
The army and weapons
Yesterday I told about my first encounter with the hierarchy in the army and that I had to get used to that because it wasn't something what was in my system. The same thing with guns. Before I was in the army I had never seen or hold a real gun in my life, and to be honest I never had the need for it. There were a lot of guys in my time of army who really couldn't wait to get their hands on a gun, if it was macho behaviour I still don't know, but at that time it looked like if that was the most important thing for them in the whole world.
Personal weapon
Every soldier had his/her own personal weapon. The type of weapon depended on your role in the army.
For instance the soldiers on motor carried a Clock. We as drivers of a Landrover had to carry a Uzi.
Every barrack had it's own weaponroom. A kind of safe where all the weapons were stored. The reason why it was in every barrack is (obvious) that in case of a emergency soldiers had to get to their gun's fast. At the beginning we all got our personal weapon, we had to turn in our military passport on which the serial number of the gun was written. So from that moment we all had our 'own' gun.
Of course no-one of our group had shot before with a Uzi so first we got lessons in how the gun works and how you can disassemble it for cleaning (and cleaning we did, I talk about that in a bit). When you look at a Uzi it is pretty straight forward technology, nothing real fancy but I guess it does the job. When the theory lessons where over we went to a field were we first had to try the gun with blanks. (you never know what will happen if we didn't tested our skills first ;) )
We had to put a big red knob on the barrel for safety (if by accident a real bullet was fired it stopped at the knob).
Everybody got two rounds of bullets, one round to shoot on the manual mode and one round to shoot full-automatic. On the last mode I can tell you that one round of bullets in a Uzi (I thought 52 pieces) are gone in a blink, I remember being quiet impressed by that.
The next step was to actually shoot with real bullets at the shooting range. It felt a bit like going to the fair and shoot for candy :). The range was a long stretched field with the targets at the end, above the field there were several wooden barricades. The were there to avoid shots being fired in the air by accident. I remember we had a big laugh about that because the first wooden barricade was full of bulletholes, we thought that you really didn't knew what you were doing if you shot in that wood by accident (almostr straight up in the air). In the next video you see a range quite the same as the one where we practiced.
Every now and then you read in the news that gun's were fired by accident, or that bullets or even weapons were missing after combattraining. That is something which I am always very surprised about because the safety measures where (at least at the training I joined) very high. It was always counted how many bullets you got, and after shooting you have to turn in the same amount of (empty) shells, before you turned your weapon in to store you have to do a check of the bullet chamber and shoot your weapon once to make sure there aren't any bullets left. So that those accidents do happen is a complete mystery to me.
Cleaning the gun
One of the things that gave us all nightmares was the cleaning ritual of the weapons. You had to disasemble the whole gun (and it are a lot of pieces) and brush of the dirt. Afterwards you had to oil and grease the darn thing untill it almost slipped out of your hand. Some made it a sport to make the gun as greasy as possible :)...
The reassemble took some time in the beginning because you didn't knew straight away which part went on wicht side etc.. always a fun thing to to (NOT). And when you put the thing together again you always hoped it functioned again...
At first the sergeant checked the guns after cleaning, when it wasn't cleaned well or assembled the correct way he took a part several guns and you could do them all over again... Lucky me, I never had to do that. But I do remember one of 'our'guys doing that almost every round... He wasn't that technical.... :)
The porn-slat
At our rooms you weren't supposed to put things on the wall directly to avoid damaging the walls. They had a great solution to save the walls but giving the oppertunity to post some pictures they. It was called "The Porn slat". It was a slat of 50 cm wide and 5 cm high where you could hang a poster or photo. The reason why it was called a "Porn slat" was because of the fact all guy's instantly put penthouse or playboy posters on them. The trick was to only pinn two posters on the slat and to connect other posters to that poster again so you can put a lot of posters on it without violating the rule of only connecting to the slat. So we all made a sport out of it to get as many posters as possible on the wall only by connecting them together. that was the first time I saw the seargeant really laugh because of the effort we putted in it. I remember having a chain of posters from the slat all the way to the ground with all kinds of compromising pictures..... Let's keep it at "we where young and needy' lol... Some guy's really put pornographic pictures on the slat but they had to cover the "open flesh wounds" like the sergeant called them :P
See also the other parts in this (true) story
Part one of this story
Part two of this story
Part three of this story
Thanks for reading,
Have a great day
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That's a whole different world! I'm really grateful that I never had to do that.
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Thank you very much, much appreciated
I was lucky there was no compulsory military service in the UK. I don't think I'd have enjoyed it. When I lived in Germany I knew a guy who chose to do public service instead. He worked in an old folks home, but didn't seem to like that much either.
Looking back to it it didn't harm me, but I didn't learn anything neither. It was a thrown away year....glad that they have abolished it, I don't think it will make the army stronger or better. They do have the national reserves , which means that you can be called to appear when a war of disaster strikes...
We are rather shielded from guns in the UK and I didn't really fire one until I lived in the US in the 90's. Some guy was firing an Uzi at a shooting range, I remember shells... lots of them.
Firing a 44 magnum almost took my shoulder off, but I needed to know how Dirty Harry felt... :)
Here in Holland it's the same, no guns (lucky) here. Some other in the states indeed. I have my doubts about that, they kill to many (innocent) people... But having fired one was cool for sure :)
That was a great read. Thank you for continuing to share about this time in your life. I wonder if some of the bullet holes in the wood above were from ricochets. I have never shot a fully automatic weapon, but it would be fun to try sometime.
I think they were, at least not intended I hope :). I remember one of my fellow soldiers didn't had the pin correct when he wanted to shoot Semi-automatic, his gun went automatic. In a blink his mag was empty, in seconds... Very impressive :)
Now thinking of those days many many memories comes in, so I have some great things to write about in this serie :)
Awesome! I look forward to reading the rest!
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Thank you very much !
Haha so the part of the weapons wasn't all that glorious to learn? Slippery parts etc haha. The funniest was reading about your creativity making the porn wall lol
That was the best part hahaha...
I've always wondered what the military was like,