What a coincidence! That was also my flight #, and we were also a honor flight. I had a lot of fun in basic. I was the oldest guy in the flight. The TIs spent more "quality" time with the younger, less mature guys and left me pretty much alone. For instance I had an old Case XX pocket knife when I got there. The TI picked it up off the bunk looked at it and gave it back with instructions to keep it locked up in my security drawer.
I was also the only southern country boy in a flight with a bunch of guys from Boston, New Jersey and New York. Most of those guys had never held any weapon besides maybe a Saturday night special. I'll never forget live fire. Ready on the left flank, ready on the right flank, CEASE FIRE! BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM. (HINT: it wasn't me.) Those firing range instructors have NO sense of humor!
We had an abbrieviated range, almost like shooting at my outhouse at home and when I went down for standing to prone rapid fire and the spotter put up a "descending balloon" pattern, I screamed bloody murder.
I looked down at my carbine's rear sight and saw that it had racheted with each shot squeezed off.
The range officer told me I still qualified with a low-expert but I begged him to hand me a different weapon, any one of those on range, give me four rounds to sight it in and I would tear the center out.
He thought about it awhile and decided to humor the "hillbilly" and grabbed a piece from the guy to my left.
I did as I said and when finished I asked for the cleaning supplies.
He just looked at me kind of funny and said, "We clean the weapons here, we don't want anyone messing them up."
The M16 I had to use was filthy. How often did they clean those things??