When I was in Marine Corps basic we were at Camp Pendleton for marksmanship and infantry training. One evening our series (four platoons totaling about 240 recruits) was issued a box of tracers. The plan was to have all of us fire at a hill in the distance, so that all the tracers converged onto one point. Each platoon had three or four recruits selected to fire full auto and they were given extra rounds. I really wanted to fire full, but wasn’t selected. So I did the next best thing. The sun had already set and we each went to the ammo truck to get our box of tracers, but I kept getting back into line and got a whole bunch of boxes. Then I borrowed magazines from the other recruits and loaded them up. After all 240 of us were lined up and the order to commence fire was given, I unloaded all those magazines on full auto. What a blast! And the Drill Instructors never knew. To the guy handing out ammo, I was just another bald headed recruit in green utilities and the Drill Instructors couldn’t possibly keep track of things with 240 M-16s going off in the dark.
We did a similar exercise in Army basic training at Ft. Leonard Wood 53 years ago. Though not anywhere near the show you guys put on, we were firing .30 cal tracers from M1 Garand semi-auto rifles on a firing line of about 100 trainees to demonstrate the firepower of an infantry company at night. We were set up with each guy having a field of fire staked out and we were each issued several clips of ammo. NCOs were also setup at both ends of the line with .50 cal water cooled machine guns raking the target area with tracers. We thought it was pretty awesome back then. It looked like nothing would survive that wall of lead. Little did we know.