Photo By D. Keith Johnson | Sgt. 1st Class Raymond Bunn runs to the next firing point during one of the pistol...... read more read more
FORT BENNING, Ga. - Army Reserve soldiers from the 84th Training Command’s 91st and 78th Training Divisions took home several of the top team and individual trophies from the 2011 ALLARMY Small Arms Championship held here. For the third year in a row, Master Sgt. Russell Moore, Detachment 1, Company A, 2nd Battalion (Small Arms Readiness), 91st Training Division, headquartered at Camp Bullis, Texas, won the overall individual championship.
“The ALLARMY has gotten bigger each year, and increasingly harder each year,” said Moore. “The caliber of soldiers, the accuracy of the soldiers, has been increasing with the ALLARMY. The soldiers are learning more and the competition is steadily getting better and better.” This was Moore’s third ALLARMY competition.
Moore emphasized that the competition is the secondary reason for being there.
“As a small arms instructor and an OCT for the 91st Training Division, it adds a relevance and depth to what we are supposed to be teaching the average soldier,” he added. “It enables us to be able to say with confidence, ‘I know the functionality of my weapon, I know what the capabilities of my weapon and myself are.’”
Capt. Chris Henderson, a member of the 78th Training Division’s Regional Training Center-East Red team, agreed.
“Coming down to the ALLARMY is a good training experience. A lot of good information is exchanged between the shooters here. Our Soldiers will be able to go back to their units and train the soldiers who weren’t able to come down.”
Hosted by the U.S. Army Marksmanship Unit based here, soldiers from active duty, Reserve, National Guard and cadets competed in rifle, pistol, and combined arms matches.
At the awards ceremony, Lt. Col. Daniel Hodne, commander of the Army Marksmanship Unit, addressed the crowd.
"Gen. Douglas MacArthur once said, 'Upon the fields of friendly strife are sown the seeds that on other fields, on other days, will bear the fruits of victory,'” Hodne said. “The seeds have been sewn here this week at the ALLARMY. My challenge to all of you is to take these lessons learned back to your units and raise the Army’s overall combat readiness.”
The field of soldiers was the highest in 18 years. Soldiers were split into four main categories. There were 206 Novice, or first time shooters. There were 64 in the Open class, shooters who have competed at least once prior. There were 34 in the Pro class, shooters who have earned the Distinguished Badge or the President’s Hundred Tab in either Rifle or Pistol, or been a member of one of the Service Teams. There were 34 Cadets competing from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point as well as from colleges and schools across the country. Winners received plaques, coins, guns and had their names permanently engraved on trophies.
Sgt. 1st Class Mark Ness was this year’s coach for Company D, 2nd Battalion (SAR), 91st Training Division, from Salt Lake City, Utah.
“We are a small arms instruction unit. Teaching soldiers how to shoot is what we do,” he said “In order to for our instructors to really comprehend the information I put out to them to become good instructors, in order to grasp that, they have to do it.”
“If it were up to me, I’d make it a requirement for all small arms instructors to attend this event,” Ness added.
The 84th Training Command brought in more than their share of the awards.
In addition to the 2011 Overall Champion, Moore was also the high shooter in the Individual Pistol category, Individual Combined Arms category, and in the Pistol Excellence in Competition match. He also led the team from Camp Bullis who finished in 1st Place as the US Army Pistol Team Champions, 1st Place as the Combined Arms Team Match Champions, 1st Place as the Combined Arms Overall Team Champions and 3rd Place as the Rifle Team Champions.
Except for Moore, all of the Camp Bullis team were Novices, shooting their first ALLARMY.
Sgt. Nicholas Johnson, from San Antonio, Texas, finished in 2nd place in the Novice category, and 5th Overall.
“I learned much from the other shooters, but the best lessons were learned through my own mistakes,” he said. Johnson is a marksmanship instructor with the Camp Bullis team.
The soldiers from Company D from Salt Lake City also finished in the running in several categories. According to Ness, the soldiers included two teams with five Open Class and four Novice Class shooters.
They took 4th Place in the Pistol Team Champion category, 5th Place in the Combined Arms Team Match category and the Combined Arms Overall Team category. Spc. Benson Munyan won the award for High Reserve Enlisted, and finished 11th in the Open class. Sgt. Mitchell Moody finished 3rd in the Open Class.
Sgt. Dustin Sanchez, a Delta Company soldier from Denver, finished 14th in the Novice Class.
“This will improve my experience and credibility and make me a better shooter overall,” he said.
The 78th training Command had two teams from RTC-East; the Red team and the Black Team. The Black Team finished in 2nd Place in the Rifle Team Championship. The Black Team finished in the top 10 in the Pistol Team Championship and Combined Arms Overall Team Championship.
Staff Sgt. Ramon Tejeda, from Middletown, N.J., took 1st Place as the Top Shooter in the Open Class, and 4th overall.
Sgt. 1st Class George Pickowicz, from Gilmanton, N.H., won the High Drill Sgt trophy.
The 2011 ALLARMY Small Arms Championship was a success for all involved. At the awards ceremony, Command Sgt. Maj. Chris Hardy, from the Maneuver Center of Excellence, was the guest speaker.
“The competition is designed to test the entire depth of a soldiers shooting ability,” he said. “No matter where you ended up, participation in this event makes the Army that much stronger. For a competitive marksman, consistently applying the fundamentals and achieving success on the range translate to achieving success on anything that you do, whether on the battlefield or other walks of life.”
“The ALLARMY isn’t an event that caters to shooting professionals. It is one of the best training events the Army has to offer,” Moore added. “There’s nothing advanced about what we are doing here, it’s just the proper application of the fundamentals.”
Ness emphasized the reason for this type of training. “The average Soldier in combat who hasn’t done this, doesn’t know how fast he can engage targets accurately. There’s a trade off; do I shoot as fast as I can because I want to kill them before they kill me, or do I fire as fast as I know I can accurately hit my target? Most soldiers don’t know fast they can accurately engage targets. The soldiers who have been here have a pretty good idea now.”
One of the missions of the 84th Training Command is to prepare and train soldiers to go to war. With the participation of 84th Training Command small arms instructors in competitions like the ALLARMY Small Arms Championship, the 84th is establishing itself as the premier source and enabler of weapons instructors and expert marksmen for the United States Army Reserve.
| Date Taken: | 03.26.2011 |
| Date Posted: | 03.31.2011 14:34 |
| Story ID: | 68053 |
| Location: | FORT BENNING, GA, US |
| Web Views: | 420 |
| Downloads: | 1 |
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