When Legends Die: the M1 Grand Rifle
When I was drafted in 1960 and shipped off to basic training, I discovered what could be called the “old army.” The origins of this term are obscure, but may it have been coined to refer to the Indian fighting U.S. Army of the post-Civil War 1870’s because so many of its officers and NCOs were veterans of the Civil War. In the same manner the U.S. Army of 1960 contained many officers and NCOs who were veterans of WWII and the Korean War (1950-1953). Indeed as I discovered the 1960 Army was training to re-fight the Korean War.
The two principal lessons of the Korean War were that the U.S. forces were physically weak (i.e. unable to march long distances on foot) and were inept rifleman (unwilling to fire their weapons and poor shots). So basic training had lots of road marches and a good deal of rifle training using what was then called ‘train fire’. This was a training exercise whereby after several weeks on the ranges firing at conventional bulls eye targets, we were taken to live firing ranges consisting of lanes dotted with pop-up man-sized targets at distances of 50 to 360 meters. As we walked along the lane followed by an NCO scorekeeper the targets would pop-up at different ranges and using so-called Kentucky wind age and Tennessee elevation (guess work) we would try and knock enough targets down to qualify. Incidentally this was a lot of fun.
The rifle that I was issued was the M1 Grand Rifle, a nine pound, semi-automatic 30 caliber, gas operated weapon of wood and steel. In my experience it was a marvelous weapon easy to shoot and extremely accurate up to about 400 meters. (It probably was accurate beyond that, but even in my youth I had crummy eyesight). Its 30 caliber armor piercing bullet (the anti-personnel round of choice) carried a good deal of authority when it hit and would penetrate light armor. The M1 could also launch rifle grenades (even though they fouled its barrel), incendiary rounds, and tracer ammunition. It was a reliable, easy to maintain weapon, that as we were repeatedly told, would be our best friend in combat.
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