M-4 Meets Nose, M-4 Wins

Perhaps it's typical for former Marines to be firearms enthusiasts and to marry fellow firearms enthusiasts or perhaps we are just atypical. Either way, may husband and I are both exuberant enthusiasts. We have a gun collection to rival some police stations and are both certified instructors. I've worked in the gun industry for the last three years and my husband shoots in two leagues.

I say all of that to say that we have guns and know how to use them (or so I thought!).

As a hopeful recruit of the United States Marine Corps I decided it would be prudent to know everything I could before I left for Recruit Training. Though I am extremely familiar with the M16-A2 battle rifle I have never performed any sort of rifle drilling.

I asked my husband if he would teach me some of the rifle drills and he was happy to comply. We got our AR-15, M-4 type rifles out of the safe and went to work on Inspection Arms. Though a few inches short in barrel and lacking the option for 3-round burst, the rifles are similar enough to do a decent drill with.

Primarily, the drill consists of standing at attention with your rifle to your right side, bringing it up and across your chest at a forty-five degree angle, racking the bolt back to reveal an empty chamber, checking the chamber and then presenting the rifle for inspection.

Sounds simple, doesn't it?

After the first five times of doing it I discovered just how difficult it can be. By the tenth time I was getting the initial presentation down and started working on racking the bolt and checking the chamber.

I watched my husband rack the bolt on his M-4, racked the bolt on my own M-4, watched him check his chamber and did the same. He brought his rifle back down sharply in front of his chest and I said, "Okay, like this?"

With that I whipped my rifle down and to the right and instantly felt my nose explode in pain, the fierceness of it spreading across the entire front of my face. The front site hit me squarely on the side of the nose with all the force of an improperly wielded rifle.

I cupped my nose with my right hand, my eyes welling with tears of pain as I held out my rifle with the left and said, "Take it! Take it! Take it!"

My husband was attempting to sound compassionate through the peels of laughter as he took my rifle from me. I would be laughing myself were it not for the fact that I couldn't stop crying.

Fully expecting to find blood in my hands I still cupped my nose and sobbed, laughed, cursed while my husband just laughed and got out of few words along the lines of, "That was hilarious," and "Are you okay?"

Finally, he convinced me to let him look at my nose and he assured me it was still straight though I could have sworn it was missing all together.

It took me about ten minutes to fully recover my composure and my husband and I shared another good five minutes laughing and taking turns checking for broken bones.

"I wonder what my Drill Instructors would have done if that happened in Boot Camp?" I asked.

My husband sat on the floor and shook his head, "I don't know but I really hope you never find out."

With a massive headache and throbbing nose I picked up my M-4 and said, "Okay. Let's try that again."