Spent saturday on the range in Meaford, firing a fixed machine gun. It was pretty fun shooting, but like any other time in the army, fun has a price. after lunch on saturday, we spent about 2 hours under the blazing hot sun stripping tracer rounds from belts of ammunition, because the fire index was high, and the army was afraid we'd start a fire, not unlike the one in Christian's little brother's course. That one covered 7 square kilometres. See, the tracer round is mostly composed of phosphorus which burns a bright red as it flies through the air. It helps us aim.
Anyway, maybe you don't get how tedious this task is. Allow me to clarify for you. We had a total of 40,000 rounds (39,820 actually, by Christian's count). The rounds are linked together in belts of 220. Every fifth round is a tracer. Essentially, we have to break the belt into 44x 4-round belts and 44x tracers, and then reassemble the belt, sans tracers. A little off topic, but y'know when you watch those army movies and you see the streaks of bullets flying by? Those would be the tracers. What you don't see are the 4 other rounds following right behind it.
So now we have 181 belts of 176 rounds. Each person got 8 belts of ammunition to fire off. tons of fun. 31,856 rounds fired. Anybody who has ever fired on the army's ranges before knows what's next. We pick up 31,856 empty casings and 31,856 link, and then proceed to hand-sort through it, separating the casings and link into separate bags, free of grass, dirt, and the occasional stray unfired live round. And of course, we clean the guns, which are so dirty and oily that my cuticles and fingernails are still black. I'll just keep my hands buried in my pockets for the next few days, I guess.
