"Welcome to the firing range, before I split you back up into your platoons I will first have Lieutenant Edward demonstrate how to use the rifle you have been given." Major Terkand started to explain after they arrived at the firing range. Having said this Major Terkand stepped to the side allowing Lieutenant Edward to move to the centre most position in front of the company. "As you heard the Major say, I will now be demonstrating how you use this rifle" At this Lieutenant Edward lifted the rifle in his hands up in front of himself showing it of to the company. "The first thing you want to note about this rifle is the firing mechanism, to fire the rifle you must first pull back this hammer before you can squeeze the trigger for the hammer to strike." He demonstrated by pulling back the hammer and squeezing the trigger, slamming the hammer down. "The next feature that is important to note about these rifles, especially if you have handled, or seen, any rifles before, is that we use a breech-loading mechanism instead of the older muzzle load." This he demonstrated by pulling back on a piece of metal sticking out of the right side of the rifle revealing an opening just in front of the hammer.
"In addition to this innovation of breech-loading we also have what we have determined to call bullets, which are point shaped, rifled pieces of metal. These bullets are loaded into a casing containing gunpowder. To use this ammunition you simply load the casing with a bullet into the breech of the rifle and close the breech" Lieutenant Edward continued to explain whilst showing the bullet and casing, and how to load them. "Now it is important to remember that the only thing stopping me from firing this rifle right now is that I have not pulled back the hammer, so at this point we consider the rifle to be 'live'. What do I mean by that you might wonder. BY THAT I MEAN DON'T FUCKING POINT IT AT ANYONE YOU DON'T INTEND TO KILL" Lieutenant Edward finished shouting.
Lieutenant Edward then turned around facing the firing range itself before continuing "Now, I will demonstrate the firing of the rifle itself once, as I expect that all of you paid attention and will be able to do so yourselves when I have finished". He then raised the rifle to his shoulder, taking aim along the top of the rifle towards the row of targets at the end of the range. He pulled back the hammer of the rifle with a smooth motion, before slowly squeezing the trigger letting the bullet fly towards the target he had aimed at. "And there we have it, now I want one platoon per range, sergeants please make sure the men under you learn and are able to at least fire the rifles within two glasses. At which point me and Lieutenant Edward will be back and we will proceed with the rest of the regiment for the day" Major Terkand said following Lieutenant Edwards demonstration before he and Lieutenant Edward made their way back towards the barracks.
3rd platoon quickly made their way towards their firing range following the departure of the Major and Lieutenant. All the men lined up facing Sergeant Porrex "You all heard what the Major said, and hopefully you paid attention to the Lieutenant, if not I will make sure that you wish you had. Corporals, I want each squad to line up in front of a target each, five abreast, make sure that everyone is ready to fire on my command" he said.
The squads quickly moved to obey the order of the sergeant as they moved in front of the different targets. Once lined up Corporal William went around and gave each of the five members of the squad one cartridge each before lining up besides them and saying "load cartridge and take aim". The men of the squad quickly tried to follow the command, all managed to open the breech of the rifle without problem but some struggled to get the cartridge into the rifle itself. Waiting for what might have been upwards of a minute the final man of the squad managed to fit the cartridge, close the breech and aim down his rifle.
Corporal William shook his head slightly, though to be fair he didn't expect much from the first time the recruits did this. "Cock your rifles" Corporal William said when all had taken aim, before turning towards Sergeant Porrex and saying "Sergeant, William squad is ready to fire Sir!" about the same time as the other corporals did the same. Sergeant Porrex nodded at this and shouted "FIRE!" leading to a few seconds of rifle fire as the recruits squeezed their triggers at different times and almost none did so in unison.
"Next round I want all of you to fire AT THE SAME TIME!" Sergeant Porrex shouted as the sound of rifles going off died down. "I can also assure all of you that it is not worth my time, or any of the corporals time, to go look at the targets because all of you MISSED!" he continued. "Now get ready to fire again… Reload rifles… Take aim… FIRE!" Sergeant Porrex shouted, followed this time by rifle fire that sounded more like five-six larger rifles instead of the 20 individual rifles last round.
"That was much better, I am even going to be so kind as to have one recruit from each squad run to the target and see if anyone hit." Each corporal picked out one recruit from their squads to run to the targets. Upon returning two of the recruits shook their heads to indicate that their squads missed the targets entirely. The other two recruits held up one and two fingers, the first of which was the recruit sent by Corporal William. "I see we seem to have someone with luck in one squad, and maybe someone that actually knows how to aim in another, much better than what I had expected" Sergeant Porrex said seeing the fingers held up by the returning recruits.
Sergeant Porrex started walking back and fort in front of the squads whilst thinking for a short while before saying "seeing that all of you have gotten to fire the rifle twice now, I think we should at least try once to do a proper platoon firing line, though why we still do firing lines I am not entierly sure. So all of you line up, two squads form the first line, and take the knee, the other two squads form the second line behind the first standing." The squads quickly followed the order given to them by the sergeant and lined up. "Before anyone loads their rifles I want the corporals to move the targets together to form a line so that we can have a representative of an enemy line." The corporals quickly followed order and ran to the end of the firing range moving the targets together at the centre.
After the corporals returned to the platoon, they joined their respective squads. "Good, now everyone load rifles… Take aim… FIRE!" Sergeant Porrex shouted. This time the rifle fire had gotten even more into sync, sounding the be about three or maybe four different rifles. "Fantastic, now I want you to split back up into squads, one person from each squad move the targets back to their original positions, then I want the corporals to take command of squad firing". Again all the squads quickly followed order, sending one man each to move the targets and getting into position where they had been earlier.
The training continued then with the individual squads doing both squad fire, as they had started with, though now under the command of the corporal instead of collectively under the sergeant. Before they started to have more individual firing sessions, where each recruit got a chance to shoot alone, whilst the rest of the squad watched, thus making sure that each recruit did everything correctly. This also ment that the recruits got a better chance to see how their aim was, as well as getting more direct input from the corporal, and at times the sergeant, as to how their shooting was.
They continued with this kind of individual squad training for the rest of the two glasses they had been given to use the firing range. During this time most of the recruits improved significantly, though some didn't improve much if at all. However those that didn't improve were for the most part recruits whom had been lucky enough to have shot a rifle before enlisting. And some of them were just naturally talented, such as the recruit who hit the target twice in 3rd platoon. Of course there were also one or two recruits who somehow didn't hit the target once, and didn't improve.