The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1916-06-16
TO LEARN TO KILL
 IS MAIN THING!
Deadly Rifle More Import ant Than a Man-Instruc- tors at Plattsburgh Lay Emphasis On the Grim Savagery of War.

Plattsburgh, June 16-The tale of t"The Rookie and His Rife'' should be told in the epic manner. Capt. Hal stead Dorey- Major-Gen. Leonard Woods personal representative over seeing the camp, has complained that there is too much tendency by the newspapers to treat this like an old time militia camp, instead of as the deadly earnest war machine that it is intended to be-. Therefore it seems most fitting at this time to tell about the rookie and his rifle, for that is the grimrnest phase of his Plstts- burgh experience, this rifle business.
 Take al a starting point the fact that some of them have never pulled a trigger that those who have did it as a sport, and it is safe to say that none of them ever pulled a trigger in anger, much less to kill a man. At Plattsburgh the whole objective of his training, his drilling, his discom- forts and hardships and even suffer ings, in some instances, is to teach the rookie to be able so to handle himself that he kill his man un- der all sorts of conditions, exigencies, and settlements, and to be an accur- | ate/~ destroyer of his country's ene- mics, whether lying down, knee1ing, standing up, or on the run.
 The rifle and it's power to kill or main are the focus of all this sum- mer training. Said the rockies in structors when they gave them their rifles: '"The rifle is more important than you are. Learn to take care of 1 your rifle. It is useful only so long as it is in perfect working order. A man without good rifle is simply an 1 incumbrance in an army. Don't let | it get wet. If you get wet and catch 9 cold, you can get over it. But if a rifle gets wet and grows rusty, it's useless A rifle has to have better care than man. The rifle comes first, man comes second
 1 Profoundly impressed with these words was E. N. Jones, a, prominent attorney -at-law of Boston, in Com pany E. On one of these inexcrably stormy days of last week he rushed l into his tent at dusk in great worri- I ment. His rifle had been rained on. With trembling hands and humping heart, he grabbed some of the softest of rags and nursed it back to dryness Then he seized a bottle out of his kit and dosed it well; he had been in structed to Keep his piece we'll oiled to fend off carkir1g. moisture. "Hf! What are you doing-has your rifle got a sore throat?" a tent mate shouted as he saw a guIp of liquid go down the rifles throat
 'tNo, I'm just oiIing it up to keep it dry MT. Jones explained seriously.
 You mean you are cumming it up with cough medicine the other said, and Jones spent the rest of the even ing getting a particularly cIinging brand of proprietary remedy out of the rif1ing of his gun.
 There is a camp pubIicati ton, a workman1ike little twice-weezly paper, edited by Capt. w. H. Waldron of the Twenty-ninth Infantry, U. S. A. In these days of keynoting, Captain WaIdron has voiced the keynote of the purpose of the camp in articles prepared by army rifle experts for | the instruction of the rockies. Here is a 1aconic paragraph from a leading article, that has served to impress, the rockies with the grirnness of this rifle business:
 In Deadly Earnest.
 "One hundredth of an inch is the smallest space that the eye can ap- preciate. An error, of this small l amount in aiming will cause you to | completely miss a man at 500 yards and over, so you see how careful you must be with your aim.''
 Speaking of aiming, the first day the rifles were handed out to the men, in fact within three hours after they got to camp the first day, a group of men were busy getting the guns free
 
 had been stored.
 "I wonder if these guns shoot straight a f1rst-year rookie said.
 They shoot too darned straight" a second-year man replied. They won't hit the target unless you point them right at it.''
 After the Homeric laughter died away, he went on to explain courag- ously the philosophy of his remark; for Captain Waldron writes in his paper, ttThe soldier must train him self to be calm in an emergency, sar- donic in the face of hardships, and unperturbed in the face of danger'' All the rookie really meant was that the extreme accuracy of Uncle Sans eneny-killers demands the develop ment by the men of extreme accur- acy of aim, and that they couldn't depend on chance shots or gun inac- curacy to make up for their own deficiencies of sighting ..
 That job of getting the guns freed from their integument of storage oil was days job, the whole of the first day almost. To the men it seemed that there was more oil than gun in the sliny feeling thing that was handed them with their equipment Along with it they were given a handful of cotton waste, a long, slim rag, and instructions to clean the guns up.
 Learning the Weapon.
 They wiped and rubbed. they clean ed and they scrubbed all day long, until their elbows ached. At first it seemed simply a matter of running the absorbing material over the visi- the oil. but, the more they worked the more oil seemed O come oozi1o