I mentioned that I had attended this course in another thread. 4V50Gary suggested that I contact the Chandlers regarding my experiences. I don't feel that my limited experience would contribute much to their excellent series of books on sniping, but I will share my thoughts with everyone here who is interested.
The Army had mothballed their sniper programs after Vietnam. They didn't start talking about them again until the mid 1980s as they were developing the doctrine and capabilities of the new Light Infantry Divisions. There were still sniper rifles in storage all over the Army. Mostly M1Ds left over from Korea, but there were some M21s still around. The actual sniper school at Ft Benning hadn't opened yet and there were a few unit schools out there and some units sent soldiers to the USMC Scout/Sniper course. Work was being done on developing the M24 Sniper Weapon System to arm the snipers in the new light divisions.
Two Majors in the 47th Infantry Division (a National Guard Division composed of soldiers from Minnesota, Iowa and Illinois and some ADA from New Mexico) approached the Adjutant General of Minnesota and the CG of the 47th ID with an idea to create a sniper school for soldiers of the division. These two officers were MAJ Gary C. Schraml and MAJ John L. Plaster (yes the same John Plaster who later wrote The Ultimate Sniper). They pulled resources from all over the Army. Sniper rifles, spotting scopes, night vision devices, match ammunition, blank ammunition, everything they needed to run a sniper school. Many of the rifles, M1Ds and M21s had been in storage and had to be gone over by good competent armorers before they were ready for the course. The Adjutant General of Minnesota provided the excellent range facilities at Camp Ripley along with training areas, barracks and enough support staff so that the students could concentrate on learning to be snipers.
Candidates were selected from Infantry and Military Police units within the division. You had to be within the grades of E4-E7 and must have already qualified as an Expert with the M16A1. In keeping with the Guard's dual role of state and federal support, police officers from St. Paul PD CERT Team and the Minneapolis Airport Police Tactical Unit also attended the course with us.
We reported in on a Sunday afternoon and were in processed. Part of the equipment we were issued upon inprocessing was one live round of ammunition for our weapon. This was to be our graduation round. The writers of the program of instruction had come up with a novel way to impart the stress of having to make one cold shot count. We were to carry this round in our right BDU trouser pocket throughout the course. When asked by any of the staff to "Show me your round?!" we were to pull the round from our pocket, hold it above our head and shout the school motto, ONE SHOT, ONE KILL! During the final qualification shoot, we would be told by an instructor "Show me your round!" at which point he would say "load it". We then would load our round, and if we missed that shot, no diploma. Anyone who has been in the Army knows what a chance they took by doing this, we carried the round everywhere for the duration of the course, on and off duty. If there had been a negligent discharge, I'm sure more then one career would have ended on the spot.
Most of us were issued an M1D. That was the most plentiful sniper rifle in Army inventories at that time. The few M21s they managed to find went to the left handed shooters, because due to the offset scope mount it is impossible to shoot the M1D left handed. The first day started in the classroom with mechanical training on these weapons. Then it was off to the range to zero. Zeroing took much longer then programmed because of difficulites with the Korean War vintage M84 telescopes. We were unable to zero many of them and it was fortunate that they had managed to secure more weapons then they needed for the course. The telescope on the first one I had was shooting two target frames to the left at 300 meters, this was with the windage adjusted all the way right. The weapon was exchanged for another that I was able to zero.
The days were full and the time was about equally divided between the range and fieldcraft. Tactics, camouflage, movement, stalking were all covered well. There was an Olympic shooter on the marksmanship staff. We didn't fire a set number of rounds during our practice time on the range, there was unlimited ammuntion. The only disadvantage was that they had no .30 match ammo loaded in enbloc clips. Those of us with M1Ds single loaded every round we fired.
Days were long, going from breakfast before sunup to about 9 pm or later (if we were night firing) every night. We fired the standard telescopes at night under flare illumination and fired M16A1s with PVS-4s during the night exercises.
Many innovative ways to employ precision rifle fire were taught. One of the neat tricks they taught was the sniper initiated mechanical ambush. This was a standard mechanical ambush with the M18A1 Claymore mines, but instead of using a tripwire with a clothes pin to complete the firing circuit, you used two pieces of metal window screen in a frame about 1/4 inch apart. When the enemy patrol came into the kill zone, you fired into the window screen. The bullet completed the circuit and fired off the mechanical ambush as it penetrated through the screen.
We learned to use a count to use multiple snipers to take down more then one target simultaniously.
Now there is an official DA approved Sniper School at Ft Benning GA. There is the Special Operations Target Interdiction Course at Ft Bragg NC. Before these schools existed, there were just unit schools and not many of them. It looks like sniper training has finally won a permanent place in US Army Doctrine.
Jeff
Edited to correct poor typing...
The Army had mothballed their sniper programs after Vietnam. They didn't start talking about them again until the mid 1980s as they were developing the doctrine and capabilities of the new Light Infantry Divisions. There were still sniper rifles in storage all over the Army. Mostly M1Ds left over from Korea, but there were some M21s still around. The actual sniper school at Ft Benning hadn't opened yet and there were a few unit schools out there and some units sent soldiers to the USMC Scout/Sniper course. Work was being done on developing the M24 Sniper Weapon System to arm the snipers in the new light divisions.
Two Majors in the 47th Infantry Division (a National Guard Division composed of soldiers from Minnesota, Iowa and Illinois and some ADA from New Mexico) approached the Adjutant General of Minnesota and the CG of the 47th ID with an idea to create a sniper school for soldiers of the division. These two officers were MAJ Gary C. Schraml and MAJ John L. Plaster (yes the same John Plaster who later wrote The Ultimate Sniper). They pulled resources from all over the Army. Sniper rifles, spotting scopes, night vision devices, match ammunition, blank ammunition, everything they needed to run a sniper school. Many of the rifles, M1Ds and M21s had been in storage and had to be gone over by good competent armorers before they were ready for the course. The Adjutant General of Minnesota provided the excellent range facilities at Camp Ripley along with training areas, barracks and enough support staff so that the students could concentrate on learning to be snipers.
Candidates were selected from Infantry and Military Police units within the division. You had to be within the grades of E4-E7 and must have already qualified as an Expert with the M16A1. In keeping with the Guard's dual role of state and federal support, police officers from St. Paul PD CERT Team and the Minneapolis Airport Police Tactical Unit also attended the course with us.
We reported in on a Sunday afternoon and were in processed. Part of the equipment we were issued upon inprocessing was one live round of ammunition for our weapon. This was to be our graduation round. The writers of the program of instruction had come up with a novel way to impart the stress of having to make one cold shot count. We were to carry this round in our right BDU trouser pocket throughout the course. When asked by any of the staff to "Show me your round?!" we were to pull the round from our pocket, hold it above our head and shout the school motto, ONE SHOT, ONE KILL! During the final qualification shoot, we would be told by an instructor "Show me your round!" at which point he would say "load it". We then would load our round, and if we missed that shot, no diploma. Anyone who has been in the Army knows what a chance they took by doing this, we carried the round everywhere for the duration of the course, on and off duty. If there had been a negligent discharge, I'm sure more then one career would have ended on the spot.
Most of us were issued an M1D. That was the most plentiful sniper rifle in Army inventories at that time. The few M21s they managed to find went to the left handed shooters, because due to the offset scope mount it is impossible to shoot the M1D left handed. The first day started in the classroom with mechanical training on these weapons. Then it was off to the range to zero. Zeroing took much longer then programmed because of difficulites with the Korean War vintage M84 telescopes. We were unable to zero many of them and it was fortunate that they had managed to secure more weapons then they needed for the course. The telescope on the first one I had was shooting two target frames to the left at 300 meters, this was with the windage adjusted all the way right. The weapon was exchanged for another that I was able to zero.
The days were full and the time was about equally divided between the range and fieldcraft. Tactics, camouflage, movement, stalking were all covered well. There was an Olympic shooter on the marksmanship staff. We didn't fire a set number of rounds during our practice time on the range, there was unlimited ammuntion. The only disadvantage was that they had no .30 match ammo loaded in enbloc clips. Those of us with M1Ds single loaded every round we fired.
Days were long, going from breakfast before sunup to about 9 pm or later (if we were night firing) every night. We fired the standard telescopes at night under flare illumination and fired M16A1s with PVS-4s during the night exercises.
Many innovative ways to employ precision rifle fire were taught. One of the neat tricks they taught was the sniper initiated mechanical ambush. This was a standard mechanical ambush with the M18A1 Claymore mines, but instead of using a tripwire with a clothes pin to complete the firing circuit, you used two pieces of metal window screen in a frame about 1/4 inch apart. When the enemy patrol came into the kill zone, you fired into the window screen. The bullet completed the circuit and fired off the mechanical ambush as it penetrated through the screen.
We learned to use a count to use multiple snipers to take down more then one target simultaniously.
Now there is an official DA approved Sniper School at Ft Benning GA. There is the Special Operations Target Interdiction Course at Ft Bragg NC. Before these schools existed, there were just unit schools and not many of them. It looks like sniper training has finally won a permanent place in US Army Doctrine.
Jeff
Edited to correct poor typing...
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We learned years later that they were concerned about workman's comp in case we got injured. Administrators. 
