As time passes by it becomes more and more difficult to find the kind of brave fellows who stood up to be counted in conflicts from days gone by and did that exact thing. What was it like to actually pick up a rifle and point it at a fellow human being and pull the trigger in the full knowledge that the direct result of your actions would be the immediate or even painful end to a life filled with promise and expectation. Today we can if we wish, and thats an important point, “if we wish” join a club for recreational purposes and posses and old service rifle for the purposes of target shooting. Then, before too long we can find ourselves handling the very same weapon that some brave or scared witless soul has had to that same thing, but, when “we have a go” the most damgerous thing we have to contimplate is the actual gun in OUR hands, Not the one in the other fellows hands, pointing at us at the same time. Skill? Sheer guts? Determination? Fear? Which acts first? At the target range we have all the time in the world to pull the trigger, this would have not been so in the past, split second decisions from very ordinary people plucked from the ranks of Joe Public and put in an extrodinary situation where they experience life, death, elation, sadness & releif all packed into a few moments or days all behind the sights of an Enfield or a Mauser for example. I have nothing but respect for these fellows on both sides of the field of battle. I’ve tried it – its not easy – even when nobody is shooting back! You may not beleive in the whole activity and wonder why anyone should dabble in such things, I say because it has given us ALL the choice to have an opinion and take a stand one way or another. Many old chaps that were there will not talk about it, that gives us a clue as to what it was like and probably says more than many words. Respect.

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