At the range and Medal of Honor

One advantage of carrying a weapon around all the time and being in a war zone, is that you get to go shoot it fairly often for "proficiency". So when we get the urge, we just ask Master Guns (Marine Corps for Master Gunnery Sergeant, or E-9) to get us some range time. We went to the range late this afternoon and worked through about 60 rounds. Of course, now I have to clean my weapon, but it is a small price to pay. While we were on the range, the Marines were also playing with some of their robots, including an experimental one with a small machine gun mounted. Those were pretty cool.

On the way back, we stopped to do a GeoCache. One of the Medal of Honor sites in Iraq just happens to be on Camp Victory, beside the road to the Baghdad International Airport. Sergeant First Class Paul R. Smith, 3rd Infantry Division, gave his life to save his soldiers during the initial combat operations back in April 2003. He fought off over 100 enemy soldiers, defeating an attack and allowing the safe withdrawal of numerous wounded soldiers. You can read about it all at this great web multimedia presentation from the St. Petersburg Times. The historical site we actually explored is a tower surrounded by some walls forming courtyards and has become an informal soldier's memorial. Many soldiers have honored SFC Smith's sacrifice with their words on the walls of the tower. Someone was also dedicated enough to place a GeoCache here. Inside the cache is much of the information from the web presentation I linked above. SFC Smith was definitely deserving of the Medal of Honor. A great and worthwhile stop.