The Navy IS fun!!

I know that I have written some pretty down posts lately. I am sorry about that, but, I have to write what my memory gives me. Today, I was thinking about some of the great FUN I had in my Navy career. That's right, the Navy is FUN. I remember deploying for the Med on USS Caron in 1985. We were making the transit across the Atlantic, in company with the USS Garcia, and doing plenty of training. Gun shoots on a minutes notice, ship handling drills, fire drills, anything to hone our edge. One day, we were shooting .50 caliber machine guns at a sled being towed by the USS Garcia. I was on the starboard bridge wing with Captain Polk, watching our Gunner's Mates fire the .50 caliber, M2 Heavy Barrel machine gun. They were having great fun and great success hitting the target. We were about 1200 yards away from the target on a parallel course. All of the sudden, Captain Polk asks me, Master Chief, do we still have M79 grenade launchers? My answer was a simple yes. He said, let's shoot them at the target. Sounded like a good idea to me, so I went and got an M79 and a case of ammo. He and I were on the bridge wing, shooting 40 millimeter grenades at this towed sled. The first couple of rounds missed until we got the range, then, we started to pepper the target with grenade after grenade. We were having a great time. The .50 caliber machine gun was singing it's song and the Captain an I were taking turns playing the base note of the M79. Wow!

When the grading of our firing came back from the Garcia, we scored well on our .50 caliber firing and commended on our M79 accuracy. The DESRON Commodore really got a kick out of our extended training idea. You can never be too well trained or have too much fun!