[Noslack71]

Recently, I had a conversation with a fellow who is a retired Army 1st Sgt. The story he told was that back in the 70's he was in basic training and stood out to the cadre of his BCT company because of his marksmanship. Sometime around the 6th week, he was taken to a range where he was dropped off with a small group of men in civilian clothes. He was directed to work with them and follow their instructions.
The civilians produced a civilian version of the Browning Automatic Rifle. The civilians wanted him to shoot the rifle which had some modifications, and a scope he had never seen. He was told that that the steel used for the rifle had be had undergone some special metallurgical processes so that it stand up under the extreme stresses that military/sniper ammunition would put on the weapon. Initially, the civilians had him shoot open sights and when he consistently was hitting the targets at 900 "yards" ( his term, not mine) they had him shoot using the unusual scope. Later on, he was sent US Army Sniper school and after graduation he was assigned the weapon, and they customized the scope for him. He was in a combat support MOS and was assigned to CS units. The rifle and scope went with him whenever he changed units. I have a couple of questions if anyone has any information they would be willing to share, I would appreciate it.
First off, I don't know what I don't know. Did the Army use the civilian BAR as a sniper rifle? It seems entirely plausible that snipers would be assigned their rifle and take it from unit to unit. Was it policy or practice that CS units have organic snipers? We had designated marksmen with M-14's but the only folks I saw with modified civilian weapons were Special Operations folks, dedicated Army snipers and Marines. Again, there is a whole universe of things in our military I am not aware of. Finally, he implied that from time to time civilians would come and get him to go to work somewhere the, he went back to his CS unit. Of course no one in his chain was cleared to know anything. That part of the story I take with a grain of salt but, I am curious about the BAR.
Thank you

Noslack