SHOT Show

Last week I attended the annual SHOT (Shooting, Hunting, Outdoor Trades) Show in Las Vegas.  This is the pre-eminent show in this field in the U.S., as witnessed by a 60,000 person first day attendance, 14 miles of aisles each jam-packed with exhibitors, and products ranging from $95,000 Perazzi shotguns to five buck knife sharpeners.  Increasingly, exhibitors have been paying attention to the police/military market, for obvious reasons.
While there was a very great deal of more of the same, some new developments caught my eye.  Kestrel, which makes the hand-held weather station that is an essential piece of kit for snipers everywhere, has teamed up with Horus, who designed a digitized ballistics chart, eliminating the need for two separate kits.  There is a common misconception about precision long distance shooting, that being that all you need is a good rifle equipped with a good scope and good ammunition, wielded by a person with steady hands.  Movies and TV, as well as any number of novels, would have you believe that virtually anyone can make a reasonably long distance shot.  The truth is far from that.  Any number of factors can and will make a difference between a successful shot and a clear miss.  First of all, different bullet weights of the same caliber will have different flight characteristics.  Different velocities even of the same bullet weight will also affect flight.  The same bullet weight and velocity will fly differently out of different rifles, sometimes even of the same model.  And of course, different calibers are a whole other story.  The 7.62 Nato (.308) currently used by most military snipers is good, despite wildly exaggerated stories, out to about 600 meters in tactical use.  Of course you can hit past that, but bullet drop is so excessive you'll have to crank your elevation so far up you'll spend more time doing that than you will tracking your target.  That's why the U.S. military is changing all its M-24 systems over to the .300 Winchester Magnum.  All this to say, that's why you need a good ballistic chart.  As to the weather station, probably most people know what winds will push the bullet one way or the other.  To figure out how much wind drift you will have, you have to know how much wind there is.  Such factors as humidity, temperature can also affect the bullet.  The Kestrel will tell you all that.  Finally, range to target is also critical.  Right now the snipers use laser range finders, which also measure declination (slope).  At the moment that calls for a different instrument, but I'm sure that sooner or later someone will put it together in a small, easy-to-carry package.  In the old days, when we had virtually none of this, figuring all these factors in order to adjust your point of aim was a pencil drill, and you'd better be pretty good at mathematics.  The idea that a sniper could be just some grunt with a rifle and telescope was laughable.  It still is.
More about this and other subjects in future posts, but I've been prevailed upon to relate how I once became an unwilling (or unwitting) bigamist.

In 1966 I was a lieutenant in a Special Forces "A" Team in a fighting camp in the Central Highlands of Vietnam.  We'd just received intel that the camp was to be attacked by the "Yellow Star" Division of the North Vietnamese Army.  The First Cavalry Division, after first discounting the intel, ascribing it as regular army often did to sky-is-falling claims from the S.F., finally sent in a company on an L.Z. on one of the mountains surrounding the camp, whereupon it got virtually wiped out.  You can read the full acount of it in S.L.A. Marshall's book, "Battles in the Monsoon".  Anyway, this convinced the Cav that perhaps there was a problem, they committed the division as well as various other U.S., Vietnamese, and Korean units in an operation called Crazy Horse.

Finally they decided they had the Yellow Star surrounded in the mountains, and directed the Special Forces to send in reconnaissance and fighting units to "find, fix and engage" the enemy, whereupon we would be supported by air and artillery and reinforced by conventional units.  I led one of those units.  To make a long story much shorter and get to the main point of this, we found a North Vietnames battalion well-entrenched on a hillside.  We became decisively engaged, pinned down, in fact.  At that point my choices were to stay where we were and die piecemeal, run back down the mountain and get shot in the back, or attack.  We attacked.  Afterward there seemed to be some discussion as to whether to court-martial me for gross stupidity or decorate me.  Someone decided that if they court-martialed all second lieutenants for stupidity there wouldn't be any left, so they gave me a Silver Star.

My company consisted of Montagnards from the Stieng tribe.  Great troops, incredibly brave.  We'd recruited them right out of their Stone Age society, trained and equipped them, and led them in operation after operation.  The loved the Americans and hated the Vietnamese, both sides of which had oppressed them for centuries, in equal order, but since we insisted they only fight the North Vietnamese they complied, albeit reluctantly.  After the operation the survivors insisted that I accompany them back to their tribe where they would induct me as an honorary member, for not getting more of them killed than I already had, perhaps.

Now, the Montagnard ceremonies for induction included a great deal of something called Num Pai.  They would soak rice in a giant clay pot, bury it underground for a number of days to let it ferment, and then dig it up.  You sat in a circle around the pot and the guest of honor was given the first drink.  You sucked it out of a bamboo straw until a float device they'd hung over the top of the pot got to a certain level, whereupon they refilled the pot with water and passed the straw to the next man.  Taking the straw out of your mouth before you drank your share was a big no-no.  My best guess is that each person got about a half quart of the mixture each time, and the straw passed again and again.  By putting water in, it got more and more diluted, until the chief of the tribe directed them to bring out another pot.  At some point in the evening there was a changing of clothes from tiger stripe fatigues to loin cloths, dancing around fire, and more num pai.  Finally, you were given a finely-worked copper bracelet, whereupon you became an official member of the tribe.  My memory goes away sometime shortly thereafter.

The next morning I woke up, sill in loincloth, on the floor of one of the Montagnard long houses.  Curled up next to me like a little cat was a Montagnard girl of, perhaps, fourteen.  Bare breasted, as all Montagnards were.  You can imagine my thoughts.  Primarily panic.  I softly, slowly, extracated myself, got out of the long house, and was searching for my fatigues when the rest of the camp woke up.  I was quickly surrounded by grinnining tribespeople, all of whom seemed to be in on the joke.  I found my interpreter and asked him what the hell was going on.

"You married," he said.
He went on to explain that the chief had given me his youngest daughter as a wife, there had been a ceremony, and I was now not only a member of the tribe, but his son-in-law.  And would I be taking my new wife back to the S.F. camp, or would I like for her to stay there where I could visit.

By then my new wife had woken up and was hanging on to me.  I was stumbling and sputtering and wondering what the hell I'd gotten myself into, which amused my ever-growing audience even more.  I tried to explain that I couldn't possibly accept the honor, if it was that, and that I had to get back to the camp as soon as possible.  The smiles went away and my interpreter told me that it would be a great dishonor to refuse the chief.  My new wife was now crying like her heart was broken.  I had only one consolation - I'd been far too drunk to consummate my marriage, even if I'd wanted to.  And since I'm not a pedophile, I'm certain that I hadn't wanted to.

Finally, after some negotiation and another jug of num pai, we worked out a deal.  I'd pay the chief enough to assuage the hurt feelings, the marriage would be dissolved, and I'd be allowed to go back to the camp a free man.  At that point I would have given a month's pay, but it turned out to be much less than that.  Cheap at the price, since I believed that the woman I was already married to (and still am) would not have been amused at me bringing my child bride back home.

My hearbroken new bride was smiling again, the chief was happy, and I was free.  No more num pai, I swore.  That lasted until the next celebration. 

First Post

Let me introduce myself.  I'm John F. Mullins.  Some of you may already know me as the model for the character in Soldier of Fortune I and II.  Perhaps you've read one of my books.  Maybe you've visited the Facebook site "John F.....g Mullins Rules!"  (I just found that one and am at the same time strangely flattered and horrified).

Anyway, I have a lot to say and suspect some of you out there are interested.  Subjects to be covered are military matters both current and past, developments in the field of weapons, ballistics, and tactics.  There will also be commentary on various current events (please be aware that under no circumstances will you find me bowing to political correctness).  Finally, I'll be mining my memory and that of my friends for stories that you might find interesting and humorous.  A future post will tell of the time I became an unwilling bigamist.

Why do I call myself an operator?  I spent twenty two years in the U.S. Army, most of it as a Special Forces NCO and officer.  I did three combat tours in Vietnam and operational tours in Africa, the Middle East, South and Central America.  After retirement I continued to work in the same field, only this time being a lot better paid.  I still keep my hand in, and know most of the players in the unconventional warfare arena.

I'll finish this up now.  If you're interested, feel free to follow.  I welcome comments.