Range Day

December 19, 2007

We spent the last two days doing some training. I think I explained that the prison is across the road from the FOB…if I didn’t, well, it is. On the prison site they have the “Academy” for the Iraq Correctional Officers. They are referred to as ICO’s…(pronounced “Eye-Ko”.) So walking all over the prison grounds are men in street clothes, (they have to bring their uniforms to work in a bag and change there because they’ll be killed if the wrong people find out they are working for the American’s), who are actually students at the academy training to be C/O’s. They are trained by their own with the guidance of our staff. So we are in one of the classrooms watching a power point and getting filled in on what expectations are, etc. Our teacher for the class is telling us about IED’s and he’s being real animated and doing his best to be ominous for our sake. He’s literally talking about bombs going off and all of a sudden…BOOM…a car bomb blows up about 300 yards or so outside the back perimeter of the prison. It sounded like it was right outside our door…and this tough guy, who’s trying to tell us seriously how IED’s are bad juju and spooky, etc, jumps right out of his skin! It was funny because all of a sudden he wasn’t so tough and all-knowing. Anyway, we could see the billow of black smoke rising in the not so distant distance and it was, frankly…cool as shit. I guess I’m stupid, or a reality junkie, or just like to see things go BOOM…but I was wide eyed and wanting to see more. Silly-ass me. (No one was hurt that we’ve heard about, and I haven’t seen anything on the news.)

So day 2 of training was spent on the range qualifying. They only shoot once a year, which I thought was strange for a group of people who go around daily, armed to the teeth. I will say, though, that these guys run a much better range than I’m used to. There’s no 2 hour class to sit through telling us which end of the gun the bullet comes out of, or being treated like every time on the range is your very first time…even though we’d done it a million times over during our long careers. Out here it was, “Here are bullets…you all know what the hell your doing…so load up, charge up, and lets get to shooting.” We qualified using the US Marshall’s course, M4 and M9, standing, kneeling, prone, moving, etc. It was very fun, to say the least. I didn’t even have to throw a few rounds and fail just to be able to shoot 25 more times, like I’ve heard is done on other shooting ranges…

The range itself is on the Baghdad Police College grounds, which is right next to the FOB. All during the shoot Blackhawk and Apache helicopters were flying over on patrol around the area, (remember I said we’re right next to Sadre City…) I even looked up and saw an Apache pop off 2 flares. Apparently they do that to thwart off a potential stinger missile lock. It was very cool in a GI Joe kinda way. So, the sounds of the helo’s mixed with the shooting made for a very nice adrenaline cocktail. This was the best afternoon at work I think I’ve ever had. And to think they are paying me truck loads of money to do this!

-Jim Franks