The link to WORLD PRESS PHOTOS OF THE YEAR

John Farmer is 49. How the hell did he survive THIS long? The World Wonders…

Below is an excerpt regarding the actions of one Cpl Clifford Wooldridge:

On 18 June 2010, CAAT White Bravo was screening in the Musa Qal’eh Wadi when it came under intense and accurate machine gun fire. After the vehicles returned fire, dismounts were pushed out to close with the enemy. Once the dismounts moved away from the vehicles, the company began receiving indications and warnings that the enemy was preparing an ambush for the dismounted squad. Corporal Wooldridge took his fire team and pushed around the suspected enemy flank. During the movement, Corporal Wooldridge’s fire team received fire from a tree line 100 meters away. Corporal Wooldridge directed his Marines to return fire and close on the tree line.

Once Corporal Wooldridge arrived at the tree line, his Marines noticed approximately 15 enemy fighters carrying machine guns, Rocket Propelled Grenades (RPG) and rifles. The fighters were gathering in preparation to ambush the other portion of the dismounted squad. Corporal Wooldridge emplaced his Marines and proceeded to engage the enemy fighters. During the engagement, Corporal Wooldridge and his Marines killed five enemy fighters, wounded three, and forced the others to break contact and run away behind the compound. While his Marines held observation on the downed enemy fighters and waited to link up with the rest of the squad, Corporal Wooldridge picked up flank security. While on flank security, he heard voices around the corner of an adjacent wall.

Corporal Wooldridge then pushed around the corner and saw two enemy fighters moving into an ambush position less than 25 meters away. He immediately engaged with two bursts from his M-249 Squad Automatic Weapon, killing both fighters. Immediately after killing the fighters, he began to re-load his weapon and noticed the barrel of a medium machine gun appear around the corner of a wall less than five feet away from him. Knowing his weapon was out of ammunition, Corporal Wooldridge grabbed the barrel of the enemy’s weapon, threw the fighter to the ground, and became engaged in hand to hand combat. During the fighting, Corporal Wooldridge made multiple attempts to subdue the fighter. When the fighter made an attempt to grab one of his hand grenades Corporal Wooldridge grabbed the enemy’s machine gun and butt stroked the fighter, killing him instantly. Corporal Wooldridge’s bravery and aggression saved the lives of his fellow Marines by forcing the enemy to withdraw from the ambush and dealt the enemy a tremendous defeat and instilled fear in the remaining fighters.

Sgt Grit,

I subscribe to a weekly email from Military.com which includes links to interesting videos. One recent link was to a video called “One Mile Kill Shot” taken from History Channel. In it, the Marine Corps sniper uses a .50 cal single shot rifle to take out insurgents during an operation in Iraq

I forwarded this to my dad, retired Marine Colonel Barkley “BB” Yarborough (Enlisted as E1 1943, Retired as O6 1988). He enjoyed watching it and replied as follows:

Reminds me that in 1951 we used the older .50 cal machine gun, sandbagged with a scope sight, for a sniper weapon. It worked long range too!”

Well, that intrigued me and I asked him to elaborate a little and this is what he wrote:

“The gun was mounted on a tripod, with scope sight on top. Placed on ground and moved to get the sight set on the target spot. The target spot was one which had been observed with binoculars as a place where enemy soldiers were seen frequently. The sight could be changed every few days to pick a more likely traffic spot.

Once the sight was set on the spot, the tripod was anchored with sand bags to it would not move. Then a gunner would stand watch on the gun, and a second Marine would use binoculars and tell the gunner when a person had entered, or was about to enter the target spot. When the gunner had a target in the sight, he would squeeze off one round. Gotcha!

Our gun was set at the ridge line just over the left shoulder of the XO in this photo, taken in front of Charlie Co. CP. I have attached the image my dad referred to above. I hope the readers enjoy the story.