Iwakuni Marines aim high, hit mark during Interservice Rifle Championships

[thedrifter]

Whether they work in a warehouse, office or airplane hangar, all Marines are riflemen, trained killers ready to drop their pens and pick up an M-16 at a moment’s notice. Two Headquarters and Headquarters Squadron marksmen here proved this by representing the air station and Marine Corps during the Interservice Rifle Championships at Marine Corps Weapons Training Battalion, Quantico, Va., July 17-24.

Gunnery Sgt. Christopher J. Geraci, weather forecaster, and Cpl. Esteban M. Ramirez, air traffic controller, contributed to the Far East Team’s first place finish in the Commanding General and Marine Corps Infantry Trophy Team Matches.

“We didn’t win any individual awards, but we were shooting against the best,” said Geraci. “The competition is pretty high out there.”

Geraci was a natural fit for the position on the Far East Team. An avid hunter since he was a boy, the St. Louis native parlayed his love of shooting into a 16-year career in the Marine Corps.

“This is something I enjoy doing,” he said. “Competitive shooting is just a plus for me.”

Ramirez, who joined the Far East Team as a last-minute fill in, gained the vote of confidence of Capt. Mike J. McCoy, Indoor Small-Arms Range officer-in-charge and Salt Lake City native, who recommended the 20-year-old Marine take the empty seat.

“He’s a very good shot. He’s got a lot of potential as a shooter and he’s a good Marine,” McCoy said. “I knew I could send him to the hardest competition in the military and not have to worry about him.”

The Marines’ journey to the interservice matches began at the National Rifle Association’s Virginia State Regional Tournament. Here Geraci and Ramirez had a chance to get familiar with the match M-16s they would be using in Quantico.

According to Geraci, the match M-16 is about four pounds heavier than the regular service rifle and offers more sensitive trigger and sight settings, which allow shooters to achieve tighter shot groupings at greater distances.

“It’s equivalent to what you would find basically on a civilian M-16,” he said. “It’s much nicer, smoother.”

Although the match M-16 took some getting used to, shooting tournament first-timer Ramirez found himself hitting black in no time.

“We got lucky being able to shoot the NRA matches,” said Ramirez. “We’d never BZOed (battlefield zeroed, Marine jargon for sighting in a weapon), so we used that as an opportunity to BZO.”

“The cool thing was there were a lot of civilians there, and they’re really active. They like to help you out and give you pointers,” the Shidler, Okla., native added. “That’s what really helped me out. There was competitiveness, but they really like to share their knowledge. A lot of them were retired military, so I met some great shooters.”

With a better handle on their weapons the Marines headed to Quantico with victory in their sights. Throughout the seven-day championship, contestants shot from the 200, 300, 600 and 1,000 yard line while combating hot weather and some of the finest competition in the U.S. armed forces.

“When you’re laying there for a long time in the prone while the sun is beating down on you, man, you start sweating a lot,” said Ramirez. “We had (shooting) jackets on too, so it was pretty intense.”

For Geraci, a difficult but rewarding aspect of the competition was firing from double the longest distance of normal Marine Corps rifle qualification.

“One of the coolest things is shooting 1,000 yards with an iron sight on an M-16,” Geraci said. “You just don’t realize how far that is until you’re out there looking at it. You can barely read the number boards.”

Geraci and Ramirez’s placing in the tournament is testament to not only H&HS but the air station’s encouragement of retaining those skills invaluable to every Marine.

“We’re very fortunate because the command endorses this type of thing,” said McCoy.

“We don’t have a rifle range here, but it shows with the right amount of skill and the right perspective, a little training can go a long way,” he added.

Geraci, a two-time Operation Iraqi Freedom veteran, agrees, adding that the enemy doesn’t care about a Marine’s Military Occupational Specialty in combat.

“The case in point right now is in Iraq,” said Geraci. “It doesn’t matter what your MOS is. Whether you’re on a convoy or flying, every Marine has a rifle and the potential to use it at any time.”