When I fired the M-1 Garand I scored Expert. I've always been a pretty good shot, probably all the shooting I did as a kid with the Jr. NRA in school. Not any more though, it's politically incorrect. No wonder the kids going into the services today are such lousey shots.
82 Rigger....I remember that solvent well, if you didn't clean that stuff out as well it would corrode the bore. It got rid of all the mercuric salts from the old corrosive primers but the stuff must have had a weak acid solution in it to get rid of the primer salts.
Do you remember how the bullets would "Crack" as they went over the target pits? Then a few seconds later you'd hear the sound of the shot from the firing line. Yeah, I remember how little that bullseye looked at 600 yards.......it was like shooting at the head of a nail at a hundred feet. Breath control and squeeze were big items to have under control in those days. I also remember that the M-1 gained weight throughout the day, finally weighing around 70 pounds when all the marching was over and you could take it off your shoulder. For some arcane reason, wherever we went, we carried at right shoulder arms and sometimes alternating with left shoulder arms, but never sling arms and never at the ready as if we were going to be in a firefight. Do you remember guys wondering why the follower was nicknamed the "airplane" and finding out why if they re-installed it upside down?
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