Growing up in Iowa I spent a lot of time in the woods usually with my trusty Crosman pump-up pellet rifle. I was a pretty good shot with it and it feed me many lunches out in the woods- anything from squirrels to a sparrow: Yes I said Sparrow. I only pumped it up twice (normal is ten pumps) and only wanted to hit it. I ended up killing it and felt so bad I knew I had to eat it so the life wouldn’t be wasted. It was pretty tasty-both bites of it. I killed a mouse that way too. I didn’t eat it though.
I guess all the time in the woods shooting helped me when I joined the Air Force as a young Security Policeman because every time I shot the M16 rifle I scored expert. So when the announcement came for tryouts for the 21st Security Police team, I jumped at the opportunity.
The shooting consisted of M16 and .38 pistol at various yards and positions- I had never shot a pistol in my life. After some excellent instruction from SSGT Mizelle http://www.odmp.org/officer/9453-patrol-officer-louie-gordon-mizelle (who later was killed on duty as an Anchorage Police Officer) and SSGT Kilgore I shot all the matches very well. I had to place in the top five for first term airman to be able to compete for a position on the Elmendorf AFB team and if I qualified I could try out for the Alaskan Air Command team. I placed third with both rifle and pistol. Not bad for my first time out.
A few weeks later I tried out for the Alaskan Air Command team and also placed third in rifle and pistol. This let me advance to the worldwide competition at Lackland AFB, Texas competing against all the various commands and even a Canadian team.
I felt like royalty because we were given new jackets and hat with the AAC (Alaskan Air Command) logos and the base commander had us flown to Eielson AFB, Fairbanks, Alaska in his private eight passenger plane to where we hopped on a KC-135 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_KC-135_Stratotanker that was flying straight to San Antonio on a mission.
The KC-135 is an in-flight refueling plane-basically a flying gas tank. It was cold and noisy in the body of the plane with the typical military decor, that being very basic...and green. About half way the in-flight refueling mission was cancelled so I got to lay down where the boom operator lies and view the earth as we flew over it. Later I was invited to the cockpit. That was cool. The odometer was like what we have in our cars but the miles rolled by instead of tenths of miles.
It was a long flight but I loved it. We arrived and settled into our quarters. The next few days were spent on the range in practice. What more does a guy need-shooting all day…for free, courtesy of the taxpayers, with his buddies. That was man heaven on earth.
On one particular shooting season we were in the prone position at 100 yards. My shots were all over the target, which was very unusually for me. They usually clustered tight at center mass. After viewing my target I figured out what happened. The guys on either side of me were shooting at my target on purpose. The next time I shot for the head instead of the chest and sure enough, upon checking my target I had a nice tight group in what would have been the forehead of a man. The rest of my target looked like it was shoot with a shotgun. We all got a good laugh out of that.
Later that evening I was initiated onto the team by glasses of beer being poured over my head. I don’t even drink! I felt accepted though so it was great. Even the Lieutenant was an active participant in that one.
Another bonus for me was that my mom drove from Tucson to watch me shoot. I was one of the only guys that had fans… well, a fan. She got to meet all my co-Security Policemen in Alaska and even spent evenings with us bowling or just going out to eat. She got close to SSGT Mizelle too and they both gave each other a hard time which was just like my mom and Louie. It was not embarrassing to have my mom there at all and in fact I think some of the other guys were jealous.
The competition lasted two days. The first day was M16 and the second, .38 special. Overall I did pretty good placing about 21st place for both rifle and pistol. I also beat both of the guys that messed with my target. He, he.
This was the last year for the Security Police marksmanship competitions. They changed it to a format that reflected more of what a Security Policeman does everyday. It was one of my greatest memories. My success on the marksmanship team led to being asked to be the number one marksman/sniper on the EST-Emergency Services Team http://www.americanspecialops.com/emergency-services-team/ that they were forming. It was a special operation unit similar to civilian SWAT. I had two jobs on the team. My main job being a sniper and secondary, when snipping was not practical, was in the number two positions on the entry team. The first guy went left; I went right to sweep the room.
Oh the memories.
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