Navy Story #12
Marksmanship Medal
Part of the background for this story is that my brother, John, and I used to do a lot of shooting with our BB guns. We first got a BB gun when we lived on Poplar Ridge Drive in Penn
Hills, Pennsylvania. We used to shoot those guns, Winchester lever-action replicas, in the game room (at a canvas-backed target) of our house; out of the window of the small bathroom that was connected to our bedroom, at
stuff on the hill behind the house; behind the cabin that we had in the mountains east of Pittsburgh, at tin cans and weeds and flies and such; and even when we moved to Virginia, in the back yard. Then in Virginia, we also
got CO2 BB pistols, which we shot a lot in the back yard.
What I'm getting at with this background is that we got very comfortable, and pretty good, with guns during our growing up years. We even got some formal teaching on using rifles
during our Boy Scout years in Pennsylvania, at a .22 range that I remember well.
Anyway, at OCS, part of our training was to know how to shoot the Navy's Colt .45 auto-loader pistol. When we went to the range one day, our instructor gave us the basics and the
range rules, and then we had to shoot the standard Navy qualification series of rounds. I don't remember how many rounds we shot, but I clearly remember thinking that I needed to relax and do what I knew how to do, which
was to aim well, even though this gun did kick a lot more than the BB guns. And did it ever kick more! That's a heavy round that the .45 puts out, so the kick is hard.
I got used to the kick very quickly, and proceeded to fire off my rounds well enough to earn the Navy's Marksmanship medal that afternoon! The rest of the guys in Echo Company were
very impressed, and I was glad that my experience had held me in such good stead, even with a more powerful pistol.
So, all during my 3 years of active duty, I got to wear 2 ribbons on my uniform: The standard active duty service ribbon that everyone wears, plus my Marksmanship ribbon! It's
a very pretty ribbon: a solid, deep blue with a thin, vertical emerald green stripe on each end. I like it.