Sheepdog Tip of the Day, Before Combat tip 128
Instead of lying prone on a grassy field calmly shooting at a bull's eye target, the modern soldier spends many hours standing in a foxhole or crouching behind cover, with full combat equipment draped about his body, looking over an area of lightly wooded rolling terrain. At periodic intervals one or two olive drab, man shaped targets at varying ranges will pop up in front of him for a brief time, and the soldier must instantly aim and shoot at the target(s). When he hits a target it provides immediate feedback by instantly and very satisfyingly dropping backward just as a living target would. Soldiers are highly rewarded and recognized for success in this skill and suffer mild punishment (in the form of retraining, peer pressure, and failure to graduate from boot camp) for failure to quickly and accurately "engage" the targets - a standard euphemism for "kill".
Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, On Killing
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Additional Resources
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