U.S. Army veteran Dwight Gray writes of fear and bravado on the shooting range.
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D. A. Gray. WRT Infantry, I agree. Thing is, if you had a nasty, grubby little technical specialty as a civilian, the Army had a nasty, grubby little technical version of the same thing. Somebody’s got to take out the trash and get the troops paid. But if you had no useful skill, you got into the Infantry, which had no civilian counterpart. So in my company at Chattahoochee High, we had a psych/philosphy double major, a MS in econ, a professional photographer, an Alaskan version of DNR guy who had spent his honeymoon doing parasite counts on elk or… Read more »
Possibly I chose Infantry due to lack of imagination.
In British and German society, many of their wealthy, nobility, landed gentry, upper-class people were bred into them that being an officer in the infantry was a noble thing compare to American society, where our best and brightest people and the upper and wealthy class avoided the infantry like the black plague.
Back in the day, I was a second lieutenant in an Infantry Advanced Individual Training company at Ft. Dix.
Supervising a machine gun range was kind of like supervising a row of lawnmowers. that didn’t move. Noisy but dull. Had to make sure the guys were getting better, of course, and that the weapons were unloaded when we were through.
Possibly I chose Infantry due to lack of imagination.
Richard, I always felt any time we ran a range and it was a dull experience – we were successful. Thanks for reading, and for the response. And some of the most creative/imaginative folk I knew were infantry – you can read that either way but I mean it in a good way.
I’m laughing here, because I get you so much (former marine).
Great poem.
DJ, Thanks for reading and for your words. Glad this spoke to you.
dg