The Night Rider
Professional
Trip7? They didn't have those when I was in.
I was trained on an M109A1 at Fort Sill. My first duty station in Germany was M110A2s. At Fort Lewis it was M198A2s and I did a rotation as an ROTC instructor on M102s.
In 1999 I fired the last 8 inch round that ever went down range in the United States Army at Fort Carson.
I was in a National Guard unit and they had a ceremony because we were retiring the M110A2s and our Battery Commander came down and officially fired the last round for the newspapers.
When it happened I thought it was some big honor for our unit. It occurred to me later that since we were the very last unit in the Army
that even had the M110A2s that meant that we were so low on the priority list that they didn't think we were worthy of M109s.
Anyway, the BC came down and shot his little last round ceremony and then our ammo guy realized that we had one round left.
They were just about to call the range cold. And FDC told us to get that round down range ASAP.
So FDC repeated the same fire mission and I shot the last round.
I still have the lanyard somewhere.