‘Snapping in’ and ‘pulling butts’

After weeks of con­stant drilling, con­stant clean­ing, con­stant class­es, con­stant PT, and con­stant harass­ment from our D.I.s, it was time for the rifle range.

There was prob­a­bly not a sin­gle mem­ber of our pla­toon who had not looked for­ward to our time at the rifle range.  After all, we had been tot­ing our M‑1s around con­stant­ly dur­ing all of our time there, learn­ing how to dis­man­tle it, clean it, nour­ish it.  Now it was time to find out what this tout­ed weapon was capa­ble of.

We would be at the rifle range for three weeks, a large seg­ment of our train­ing — and an exam­ple of the impor­tance that the Marine Corps places on marksmanship.

We marched to the range and were to be housed in Quonset huts while there. Quonset huts are arched met­al build­ings, with small win­dows locat­ed along their length. End walls are ver­ti­cal, each with a sin­gle door.  It took four of the huts to house the platoon.

While at the range, we dis­cov­ered that our D.I.s became . . . well, less dis­agree­able.  We assumed that the change in atti­tude was an attempt to remove some of the pres­sure on us.  Platoons with high marks­man­ship lev­els pro­duced favor­able reports for D.I.s.

Most of our first week was spent “snap­ping in,” a process of learn­ing how to attach the rifle sling to one’s arm in order to pro­vide the most sta­ble plat­form for fir­ing.  In those days, rifle slings were all leather, punched with mul­ti­ple holes for adjust­ments, and the posi­tions from which we would be fir­ing were stand­ing, sit­ting, kneel­ing, and prone.

The front sight of the rifle is dulled with a car­bide lamp so that no glare inter­rupts aim­ing.  I think the D.I.s and instruc­tors delib­er­ate­ly left out instruc­tions about mak­ing sure one’s right hand thumb is curled around the stock rather than stuck up.  While most of us auto­mat­i­cal­ly knew where that thumb should be, there is always one or two who, the first time they fire a live round, find an uplift­ed thumb thrust back into their eye.

One day, dur­ing snap­ping in, I was told to report to the base optometrist.  My eye exam dur­ing our ini­tial phys­i­cals appar­ent­ly revealed that I need­ed some cor­rec­tions to my glasses.

After being fit­ted with my new glass­es, I returned to our assigned hut to get my rifle and then to report to the range. Upon arriv­ing, I found Sergeant Temple and report­ed to him as required.  He noticed that the bolt on my rifle was closed! Oh, shit!

Closed rifle bolts except on the fir­ing line are absolute­ly for­bid­den at the rifle range lest some errant live round be left in the rifle and dis­charged later.

Temple ordered me to open my bolt with my nose! I wasn’t even sure that this was pos­si­ble or had ever been accom­plished but set about to fol­low orders.

Miracle of mir­a­cles! I man­aged the task and I think Temple was as aston­ished as was I.  Without fur­ther ado he ordered me to join the oth­ers in snap­ping in.  Dutifully obey­ing, I assumed the posi­tion that oth­ers were already in even though the gun­sight was a bit blur­ry through my watery eyes for a while.

Snapping in is a gru­el­ing process. Long peri­ods hold­ing the same posi­tion, usu­al­ly one that one is not famil­iar with, while every mus­cle tries to adapt to these strange con­tor­tions, leav­ing the whole body sore until the posi­tions become sec­ond nature.

Before prac­tice-fir­ing our rifles we were pre­sent­ed with the oppor­tu­ni­ty to fire the .45 pis­tol at an adja­cent range.

The pis­tol has a bit of a kick, but we all enjoyed the fir­ing, and it gave us addi­tion­al time off from the hat­ed snap­ping in.  Finally came the day when we would get the chance to live fire from all the posi­tions we had been prac­tic­ing the pre­vi­ous days. Half the pla­toon would be fir­ing while half would be “pulling butts.”

Pulling butts is a wel­come relief because the D.I.s are nev­er there look­ing over your shoul­der.  It con­sists of watch­ing the tar­get and lis­ten­ing for the “pop” when a bul­let goes through it.

The butts is a shel­tered place behind a thick earth­en berm and con­crete wall.  Butt pullers are always safe behind the pro­tec­tion and below the tar­gets.  Targets are arranged two on each rack, one a stan­dard bulls­eye and one with a black upper tor­so out­line.  The lat­ter is only uti­lized for prone firing.

When a tar­get is hit it is pulled down­ward.  As it comes down the sec­ondary tar­get moves up but is not fired on.  The hole is locat­ed and a white disk with a small dow­el attached to it is insert­ed into the hole.  The tar­get is then run back up and a red 12” disk on a long wood­en pole is hoist­ed in front of the small­er white disk so that the shoot­er can see where he has hit and adjust his sights if he thinks it necessary.

Sometimes a shoot­er will miss the tar­get alto­geth­er or the hole may not be seen or the pop not heard.  At that point the fir­ing line calls the butts on a sim­ple phone line and asks for the tar­get to be pulled.  If no hole is found, the tar­get is run back up and a white pen­nant on a long pole is waved across the face of the raised tar­get indi­cat­ing a miss. This is called a “Maggie’s draw­ers” and alerts the entire fir­ing line that one of the fel­lows has total­ly missed the target.

Firing takes place at 200 yards (stand­ing), 300 yards (sit­ting and kneel­ing), and 500 yards (prone).

After sev­er­al days of prac­tice fir­ing and learn­ing sight adjust­ment comes “record day.”  This is the day when each recruit’s fir­ing score is kept. Depending on the total num­ber of points accu­mu­lat­ed a recruit can be clas­si­fied as “marks­man”, “sharp­shoot­er”, or “expert” and award­ed a met­al badge indi­cat­ing his lev­el.   We all strove for expert, but there were some who did not man­age even marks­man, the worst embar­rass­ment for a Marine.  I only man­aged marks­man myself, much to my disappointment.

One day dur­ing prac­tice, after com­plet­ing sit­ting or kneel­ing (I for­get which), LaCoursiere called me back from the fir­ing line.

“You goin’ over the hill tonight, Witt?”

“Sir? No, sir!” I respond­ed, quite aston­ished at the question.

“Might as well.  You can’t hit the side of a barn.”

I was hav­ing a poor day but stat­ed firm­ly (at least as firm­ly as one could get away with), “I’ll qual­i­fy sir.” He looked dubi­ous. I did.