M14 and Army basic training manual 1968

[Niner]

I picked up this training manual at a flea market years ago. It was an official handout to trainees in basic training back when the US was up to it's eyeballs in the Vietnam war. However, basic training was being conducted with the M14 rifle rather than the M16. Two reasons.... more troops would be funneled into some support role than a combat role and didn't need to draw on the M16 supply needed in Vietnam for both American and Vietnamese troops. When it came to Advanced Individual Training the infantry inductees would learn about the M16 at most Army posts. However, this wasn't always the case. I know one former 11B who did AIT at one of the lessor short stream training installations who had never fired an M16 until he ended up as a rifleman in an infantry company. I ended up in the field with the infantry as arty support I hadn't been trained with an M16 either. I qualified with an M16 before AIT on the one and only day I had laid hands on one before finding myself in Vietnam. Artillery "Intelligence and Security" school, where I went next after basic, taught how computing data for firing worked and how the direction of artillery in general worked. No more range firing of rifles at all.

The manual shows one page a picture and external parts nomenclature to the M16. Then it proceeds over several pages to explain how the M14 works in several diagrams. The M14 was the training rifle all inductees were issued for range firing and firing for record. Eventually the M14 was relegated to use with scope modifications for snipers only in Vietnam. Close quarter fighting didn't need as heavy a round as it wasn't an aim and shoot at hundreds of yards war. The M16 was much better in a fire fight war situation.