On Sun, 30 Sep 2018 16:55:13 -0400, Wayne.B wrote:

On Sun, 30 Sep 2018 08:55:15 -0400, John H.
wrote:

On Sun, 30 Sep 2018 02:32:16 -0000 (UTC), Bill wrote:

John H. wrote:
On Sat, 29 Sep 2018 15:39:06 -0000 (UTC), Bill wrote:

wrote:
On Fri, 28 Sep 2018 20:08:35 -0000 (UTC), Bill
wrote:

wrote:


We didn't really have guard duty, we had fire watch.
I remember my first night there I saw a guy wearing a cartridge belt
walking around and thinking he was a guard. My first thought was "I
could take that guy".
A couple nights later I was wearing the cartridge belt and walking
around ;-)


Same thick with air force. They explained making you wear the cartridge
belt made you under arms and more liable if you screw up.

There were not any live rounds on our side of the base and our drill
rifles did not have firing pins in them. I am not quite sure what arms
we were under. ;-)


We had the belt. That was all.

We wore the belt, canteen, ammo pouches and toted a real M-14...but no ammo.


Air Force basic we only handled firearms on two days of 6 weeks. One day
of inside, raining, safety and dry fire. Next day at range. In pouring
rain.

I'm thinking we spent about 3 weeks on weapons training - assembly, disassembly, and cleaning; the
manual of arms; actual firing and qualifying with the weapon, bayonet drill...

===

So what's the spirit of the bayonet?

Even Google knows the answer to that one. :-)

Well, we damn sure did a bunch of yelling during bayonet drill. We started with pugil sticks and
worked our way up to straw-filled dummies mounted on poles. They didn't have bayonets!