Range Time at Camp Bullis '77-'72 with the Army, USAF, and USMCR
AS USUAL I GOOFED THE DATE ABOVE SHOULD READ 1967-1971.
Camp Bullis had wonderful monthlies sponsored by the San Antonio Big Bore Rifle Club. It's a large training base once north of San Antonio but now kind of surrounded by it. In 1967-71 it was pretty much out in the country. Senior USAF NCO's, usually Harley Hefner, ran the matches. The loudspeakers always blared honky tonk country music and monthly matches drew a handful of civilians and 50 to 75 military shooters. One nice thing was that they had an excellent Boy Scout troop as target pullers, so we did not have to "pull butts." The Army was represented by the Fort Sam Houston Team as the Fourth Army had been disestablished, there was a plethora of Air Force teams from Lackland and Kelly as well as the Security Service. The Marines had a team from the 4th Recon Battalion in San Antonio. Captain Bischoff was the OIC of the Fort Sam Team and he allowed me to ride out and back on the Fort Sam short bus as Trinity University did not allow freshmen to have cars (being a land grant college we had compulsory ROTC for the first two years). I normally kept my match M-1 in the Trinity rifle range arms room but in those days it was no big deal keeping it in my room over the weekend. Sarge Sewell was the retired NCO who ran the mens' dorms and he knew I kept the rifle there.
As the school had only a small bore team I usually just shot on pickup teams on Saturday. Individual day was Sunday. Occasional ammo support was possible although the Air Force was not forthcoming with '06. Later I had an M-1 converted to 7.62 and that helped. The marine reservists were very friendly and always trying to talk me into applying for the PLC program but I had serious doubts about my ability to get through that. I was invited to do land navigation with them and bring other Army ROTC cadets when the sniper platoon was in the field. Once a year they went on a private ranch and were allowed to kill a deer and any javelinas they desired. Col. Dickman, a naval aviator ex-enlisted with more war stories than I could count, was in charge and he was very specific: "If anyone gets shot it better be with a 173 grain GI match bullet." I borrowed my uncle's Remington bolt gun and guess who shot the only Javalina. I was invited to shoot with them at 1,000 one day when the Assistant Commandant, Lew Walt, was inspecting. I was shooting my match M-1 and hitting mostly in the black but doing OK and here came General Walt. I told the coach I thought since I was a lowly army Rotsee (in my dorky little baseball cap) that I should get off the line. "Keep shootin', Doc...." he said, "...he'll think you are a Marine." Naturally that made me feel very proud and it still does to remember it.
Staff Sergeant John Stanfield was the Sniper Platoon Sergeant and Captain Ed Bremner was the commander. Staff Sergeant Stanfield introduced me to some establishments other than the rifle range which were educational for a young man.
One of the best scores I ever fired at 600 was when I was being coached by Master Sergeant Lou Willing of the Air Force. Man, could he read the wind. It was like magic.
There was a major match I attended - it may have been a leg match or a regional in about 1969 and an army team showed up equipped completely with M-16s. They had all been worked on and had holes drilled in the lowers for trigger adjustments. I was told this was an effort to get the actual rifle being used in the war into match service. It was an inauspicious beginning as the performance of these rifles was very poor and the team complained about them. The ascendency of the AR-15 platform in competition lay many years in the future.
It was just a great group of shooters and it really helped my marksmanship a lot. They had NRA Regionals (Carlos Hathcock's attempt to shoot there in the Spring of 1969 is covered in Charles Henderson's book on him and Staff Stanfield introduced me to him. He was under stress as he had just been ordered to quit the match and return to Viet Nam but I did not know it then), almost always the Texas State High Power Championship, and DCM sponsored military Leg Matches. Unfortunately there was later an incident in which some police department left some shotgun ammo (LIVE!) in trash cans... the trash caught on fire in a garbage truck and caused some excitement. It was not the fault of the rifle club or any of the other non military users of the ranges but it was used as justification, in the 1990's, to close the Camp Bullis ranges to civilians' use. Very sad, we are down to one National Guard range in Texas that allows the Texas State Rifle Association to shoot a state match.
