Bayonet Training "What is the Purpose of the Bayonet?" "To KILL KILL KILL with the Cold Blue Steel!" "What makes the Green Grass Grow?" "Blood, Blood, Bright Red Blood!" Ok, so what is the bayonet? It is the little knife like thingee that goes on the end of your M16 that makes your M16 a jabbie tool instead of just a shootie tool. Because guess what? In a combat situation there may come a time when your ammo is all gone. And your lucky enough that your enemy's ammo is all gone too. So basically, you fix bayonets and gouge the enemy with them. To tell you the honest truth, the bayonet is a worst case scenerio, becuase frankly, if you are resorting to striking your enemy with a bayonet, it means you are out of ammo. Which also means you're pretty screwed. But that doesn't mean that the Bayonet isn't fun! Quite the contrary, the Bayonet course was among my favorites. Well, actually, we were originally issued Bayonets and placed them on our m16s and all and practiced the different stances and what not with them. Basically, you hold the weapon at the ready and practice moves like the jab, thrust, butt stroke and various other excercises. During this entire excercise, you are to lower yourself to the depths of a savage and rabid killer that spurts off sonnets on blood and killing, basically whenever your told to relax you scream "NEVER!" and when placed in the ready position everyone screams "I wanna KILL SOMEBODY!!!" Remember, this is the army, and the army's goal in life is defense, which sometimes resorts to killing. And Maiming. An gouging. And crippling. And whatever else. Well, we went over the different movements, thrusts and strokes, meanwhile grunting and screaming ourselves hoarse. We were paired off with a battle buddy and stood facing them, staring them in the eyes and steadily moving towards them with each movement. Finally when we got close enough we had to change over (or else actually jab each other and that wasn't our intention really) As we passed each other, we were then instructed to brush shoulders with your 'opponent' hard. My partner was a soldier named Private Law, a girl whom I got along with at this time but later couldn't stand. My shoulder was black and blue from this excercise. She eventually asked me not to brush against her so hard. But I am an aggressive person. Later we were paired with a dummy opponent made up over old tires with a rather flimsy spear that we pushed to the side and jabbed repeatedly. A drill sergeant over the intercom would give us various instructions on what to do with this enemy, which included various movements with the bayonet, "Butt Stroke to the Head", calling it names, spitting on it, kicking it, and of course thrusting and jabbing it repeatedly over and over again. Did I mention the Bayonet course was fun? I mean, what a great way to exert your anger out on whoever you wished this dummy could be. I think some soldiers pictured them as old boyfriends/girlfriends, etc. I don't remember who I pictured mine to be. I just had a really good time screaming at it. Well, that wasn't everything, by the way. On top of practicing repeatedly with the bayonet on various dummies and so on, we had to run a course (that basically winded the living daylights out of you) where you ran into these little dummies everyonce in a while and you were given a task of Thrust, Perry, buttstroke to the groin or whatever. It was timed and everyone who wasn't on profile (pity the profiles) had to do it. If you did it in a certain times and performed each event at each station properly with the suitable enthusiasm, you scored expert. If you didn't, well, you didn't. I kicked ass on the Bayonet Course. And because I'm a high speed gung-ho hooah soldier, i got a badge for it! Yes, Bayonet Course was a blast. If I could, I'd do it again in a heartbeat. It was things like this that made me want to be a drill sergeant. -Risawn: # 4:09 PM 4:09 PM