I saw a piece in the Army/Navy News online about a 84 year old WW2 sniper, who while visiting Ft. Benning's new memorial, shot a 5 inch grouping at 1000 yds unaided by the Army Marksman Unit members around him. That article reminded me of the last time my Grandfather and I had a chance to spend time together at the deer land before he became too sick to come with us anymore.

A little about my grandfather, I'll keep it quick. Before he left the Army for an administrative job at the Blue Bell plant in Commerce, he had a very successful career as a squad leader. His was assigned as his unit's designated marksman during WW2 in the European theater and eventually went on to teach marksman ship at Camp Toccoa here in Ga. I remember him telling me that the only reason that he had fought for the position was because of the extra pay.He and I would sit up at night while I was living with them for a while when my parents were working on a problem. We would sit at the kitchen table late into the night, he would sit and smoke his Winston 100's while drinking coffee as I would do my homework and drink home made cherry cokes. This was the man that really taught me to shoot. He taught me a great deal more. Some nights when he and my father were drinking, he would sometimes slip up while talking me to and call me David. I know it was a simple mistake, but it made me feel good at the time that he thought of me as if I were his son. 

The last time we were together in the field, I was 13. We were shooting my .22 rifle that I had gotten for Christmas. He had set up a series of targets ranging from 50 to 200 yards down the power line clearing which passed through the hunting land we were renting at the time.  He had brought out some lumber and build a bench for the group to sight in their rifles sometime in the past couple weeks.  He set up next to me on the firing line and as I started getting set up, he was puttering around behind me just watching me to make sure that I was being safe and doing everything correctly. Finally when he was ready, he sat down, looked through the scope, took a breath, and took a shot. He looked through the spotting scope then started packing up his rifle. I asked him if everything is okay and what was wrong. He told me that he was done and that he was just going to watch me. "I'm good. I just wanted to watch you shoot for a while. Let me know when you want to go check the targets." 

As we went down the lane a little while later to change the targets out, I grabbed mine off of the stakes and walked through the weeds over to retrieve his where he didn't have to negotiate the brush again. On the 200 yard range target, the only one he had shot, there was a single tiny hole about a half inch above and just to the left of the X. I looked back at him on the three wheeler, he was just smiling from ear to ear at me. 

I miss the hell out of him.