Friday, August 3, 2012

Another Perry report

The Raggedy Assed Marines gave me a t-shirt which I am wearing as I type now and they were good enough to schlep my battery pack into the barracks for a deep charging with the AC charger. While I didn't really need the charging, I did it anyway because the next two days are going to be pretty hard on them with all the transmitting I am going to be doing. I have done pretty well going the solar route and I am reasonably sure my system is good to go.

I call the Marine team the Raggedy Assed Marines because they realy do not have much money to work with. The Army does, they have a dedicated marksmanship unit full time under the recruiting command and are stationed at Ft. Benning. They have several career shooters in it that have been doing nothing but shooting for years..

The Marines field a pickup team and genearlly give the Army a pretty good run for their money.

Come September when the season is over most of the Marines will be quietly returned to thair outfits where the will return to their old jobs as grunts, cooks, mechanics, or whatever they did before they got plucked out to represent the Corps at Camp Perry

The army team reports back to Benning to polish their skills.

This year the Army Marksmanship Unit showed a rotten display of sportsmanship at the President's 100 match. They walked out on the shoot-out.

The old format used since the days of Teddy Roosevelt were that it was a simple  300 point match at 2, 3, and 600 yards. The top 100 shooters are then the President's 100.

The past couple of years the CMP decided to add something to it and after the basic match they take the top 20 and have them shoot 10 more rounds at the 600 yard line. They add the shootout score to the score they just shot and determine places 1-20 on this.

This actually means that you can shoot a perfect 300 in the match and come in 20th if you consider the numbers.

While the idea is that the top 20 are supposidly so close that the shoot out is to see who is actually top gun, it is generally considered to be another bright idea that screws things up, sort of like reinventing the P-38 can opener with 47 moving parts.

I guess someone won the first part with either a perfect score or a near perfect score and the army team thought that it should stand and to protest the shoot-out that sometimes screws things up they walked out of the shoot-out.

I spoke with a Marine Gunny that took 10th a couple of years back in the first part and got bumped back to 14th after the shootout and while he doesn't like it, he simply told me that he doesn't make the rules.

Truth is it does suck. The match should return to the original format of a simple 30 shot match and leave it at that. Still, it is bad juju for a service team to walk out and to tell you the truth it makes them look like the prima donnas that a lot of people already think they are.

I have been coming out here for years and while the AMU (Army Marksmanship Unit) generally wins it, there are an awful lot of people like me that root for the Raggedy assed Marines because they are the underdogs.

The Marines are also the geniuses of public relations.

While the guys of the AMU generally are no slouches, the walk-out really gave them a black eye as far as I can see.

During the past umpteen years I have been coming out here I have never seen a single serving Marine, active or reserve display anything remotely resembling an act of bad sportsmanship in public. While I have heard some grousing in the barracks over the years, not once have I seen a public display or even ever heard a muttered comment from a Marine. They are the masters of PR.

I once asked a Master Gunnery Sergeant what was required to get on the team, and the first words out of his team were "Squared away Marine is a given." and then he explained the selection process.

These guys have been trained and trained well. They will accept just about any slight and let it roll off their backs cheerfully because they know they are in the limelight.

A Gunny once said, "We would rather lose gracefully than give the Corps a black eye."

A few years back the guys were discussing a guy that they did NOT take to Perry even though he was possibly the best shot in the entire Corps simply because he had problems controlling his mouth.

You enter a match here knowing the rules well in advance. If you are not willing to abide by them, you simply do not enter the match. It is as simple as that.

As has been the case before, the AMU comes out of this mess looking like a bunch of prima donnas and the Marines come out of this looking like a team of polished gentlemen.




my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/

3 comments:

  1. I work for the Army and this is embarrassing.

    P

    ReplyDelete
  2. I'm not Emil, but you need to read this. Maybe now you'll understand.

    Originally Posted By Epraslick:
    I hesitate to reply to this at all, but you couldn't be more incorrect, wrongheaded, or ignorant about this.

    The decision to not shoot the shoot off, was not a protest, boycott, or a "walk out". Two shooters fired a match record of a perfect 300 in that match, separated by "X's", only. Army shooters have participated in the shoot off since it's inception in 2007, regardless of our opinions. Additionally, shooters in the past have not participated in the event.

    Select members of the team, joined by 3 other shooters from other services, elected to simply not shoot. The reason for this? They wanted to see the two competitors who fired perfect, record setting scores do battle for the trophy. The nature of the shoot off is that a cross-fire, ammunition malfunction, etc., could cause the winner of the preliminary (and historically the champion outright) 30 shot match to lose in the final. The way the final is conducted and it's format sets the conditions for this. Many competitors don't feel it's "right" to have to win the match twice.

    The shoot off was instituted by CMP management to increase spectator involvement. It is wildly unpopular with the people who actually shoot in the match.

    So, what happened was that some competitors who made the final 20 chose to simply lie in position without firing a shot during the final. after the match was complete, they walked over and shook the hand of the record breaking competitor, Jared Perry of California. It was not a protest but a token of respect for the 2 shooters who, they felt, really deserved to win the trophy.

    Unfortunately, it was not perceived that way by the CMP management. What was really a nod of sportsmanship was misinterpreted. The decision to do it was theirs and I supported their right to make it. In the past, those who didn't fure in the shoot off simply recieved a zero. This time, they were DQ'd and had their scores rempved from the list of top 100.

    This is the truth about the matter. Judge their actions fairly. I know some disagree with the method they chose, but it certainly wasn't being how you are portraying it. Maybe you have to have been a champion and been at that level to understand their motivation to do the right thing by the two men who made history during that match.

    Emil

    ReplyDelete
  3. Actually when you get right down to it the two top shooters had a difference in the X count, IRC. That would have settled it right then and there as X-count is used to break ties.

    ReplyDelete