Killing the "Paper Taliban"

The past Friday to Friday we've been at the range shooting. I can't remember how many rounds we shot in all it had to be somehwere in the range of 200 rounds. I didn't think shooting could get tiring but it does! It could've been because we had to wake up at 3am everyday and we were outside in the heat all day. All we ate were MRE's all week except for a few times when we made it back to our barracks in time to get to the chow hall to have a hot meal. It was tough b/c of our schedule we were up at 3 and then we had to meet outside in the dark together around 4 - 430 and that was our "breakfast" time, who eats that early? I certainly couldn't, especially a heavy MRE. I usually had a piece of fruit and another light snack from the MRE's like the bread and cheese or a fig bar or cookie. Its a treat when you get peanut M&M's or a fruit and nut mix in your MRE, it provides precious energy for the long day ahead when you're crashing and you need a jolt of energy. What kept most of us up through the day were the ol sunflower seeds! I'm a new fan of jalapeno salsa flavored seeds.
One thing we did like about being away from our base camp was our barracks had air condition! back at our usual barracks the a/c is broke and we literally sweat anytime we're in there, especially with 50 other guys!
As for my shooting I did pretty good! we shot from 200 yards, and 300 yards the first couple of days. Then we had a day of class to help us refine our technique and then we moved to rapid fire and learned where to hit a guy to stop him dead in his tracks. We also practiced on moving targets. We didn't do any qualifications, it was mostly for familiarization. It was good training.
One of the toughest parts of the entire training was operating the targets. The targets themselves were huge, probably 5ft x 6ft that were tied on to some wooden posts on a metal railing system that fit two targets. when one target was up the other was down, which were operated by pure Navy muscle! We literally had to pull them up when they were shooting and then pull them down to score the hits and show the shooters where they hit. We all became very familiar with the sound of rounds flying past over our heads breaking the speed of sound and cracking through the paper...it was beautiful music! We were all protected by a big burm and a concrete wall and concrete overhead, incase you were wondering. It was kinda scary at first but if you did what you were told and obeyed all the rules you wouldn't get hurt. We were told stories of guys who were messing around and got injured. One put his hand up over the edge and got his hand shot off! dummy!
As for the Paper Taliban...dead.