.
Williams at once began weapons
training for his sailors. With no rifle range available, the
blue-jackets used floating debris in Manila Bay as targets on which
to sight in their rifles. Some of the Navy personnel had not fired a
weapon in almost 20 years. Training proceeded with cover and
concealment, and small unit tactics. Evening lectures were given by
men experienced in combat on Bataan. The accelerated infantry
training by the battalion was punctuated by the daily shelling and
the fact that each man felt "that this battalion would be used where
the going was the roughest . . . . The chips were down and there was
no horseplay". |