Sorry, ramblings and musing from the old days

[leaky5]

At around 14-15, my first experience of full bore shooting was pistols at Middlewick ranges in Colchester. One of my best friends dads had pistols and semi auto rifles.
Got to fire S&W .357, Luger & P38 9mm. Even watched my friends dad clear a muzzle loader that the projectile had not rammed fully home on. The owner, rightly so did not want to fire it.

Then with Air Cadets I used .303 and had my first taste of the L1A1.

TA years

I shoot at , Middlewick, Fingerinhoe, Bassingbourne, Warcop, Otterburn, Purfleet & Thetford.

As we had a platoon based in Colchester, we spent a lot of time at either Middlewick or Fingerinhoe.

We must have really peed off the range officer at Middlewick, when some of us fired the GPMG we did not have to obtain a score, we just had to fire the weapon. So we just aimed for the wooden struts of the target to see if we could break it in two.
I was in the team that won the divisional skill at arms platoon trophy there one year. Up against TA and regular teams. If I remember correctly, we started out at 800m. This was just with L1A1’s, have not got a clue if we hit anything at that range, I think they just to make us run more !

Bassingbourne was a bit surreal, I did my basic training there not long after they had filmed parts of Full Metal Jacket there. The road that ran along the back of the camp still had palm trees lining it. For those of you who don’t know, they also used Docklands for the city fighting and I think they even used recruits from Bassingbourne as extras.

I did a snipers course at Warcop, using the L42A1 out to 600m IIRC.

Thetford, nothing exciting happened here, oh sorry, forgot, I nearly became a live target on the battle range.
We had a complete arse of a regular W02 attached to use, he obviously thought he had been punished being sent to the TA.
Our group had just finished a go down the battle range, about half way down I was handed the 84mm. When we got back to the start, the W02 notice the stand was missing from it, don’t know when it fell off, but he sent me back down the range to look for it. I spent a little while looking for it and then headed back up the range.
When I got to about 200m from the start I heard the W02 shout, ‘with a magazine of xx rounds, load’ followed by ‘Ready’. At this point I shouted ‘Stop’ at the top of my voice. He had completely forgotten that he had sent me down the range.

My favorite range was Fingerinhoe, lovely place on a nice day. You could sit and look over the river whilst waiting to shoot.

[Ovenpaa]

Great ramblings! So did the frame break in two? I was on target 12 at Barton Road one morning when one of the uprights of the frame was all but blown in half, certainly a significant lump had been shot off and splinters were showered in all directions. I politely radioed back WTF (What on earth) was the being shot on 12 when another huge lump of wood disappeared. Turned out it was a black powder shooter who needed to correct for windage.

I was a bit hacked off about the whole thing as it was another clubs frame..

Bassingbourne always seemed windy when I was on the range but is/was a nice location.

[leaky5]

Don't think we ever did break one, GPMG was my favorite gun. Did get to use a Sterling once down at Fingerinhoe, but could not hit a barn door with it.