Posted on 11/25/2003 2:58:37 PM PST by Cannoneer No. 4
CAMP UDAIRI, Kuwait - It won't be long before Pfc. Eddie Love will be doing the most dangerous job in Iraq.
The 22-year-old driver from Federal Way and his buddies with the Stryker brigade's distribution company will run convoys on supply routes, where U.S. troops are most vulnerable to ambushes, roadside bombs, land mines and accidents.
U.S. forces at first weren't completely prepared for this kind of war, where there are no front lines and support troops are as likely to have to fight as the infantry. The story of Pfc. Jessica Lynch and the ill-fated 507th Maintenance Company is the best-known case in point.
The Stryker brigade's support troops from Fort Lewis are going through training now to make sure they're ready for what's to come.
Troops from the brigade's 296th Brigade Support Battalion have spent the last several days in classroom and field training on Camp Udairi's barren ranges just south of the Iraqi border.
Instructors from a private military contractor, Military Professional Resources Inc., talk to soldiers about the most recent tactics employed by insurgents in Iraq. They suggest ways to respond. And the soldiers get live-fire training, in which they shoot on the move at targets that come at them from nearly all directions.
"It was an eye-opener," Love said. "I expected to see IEDs (improvised explosive devices) in piles of rocks, but I didn't expect MRE boxes, or soda cans, or some of the other things they were telling us."
What's toughest about waiting for the mission ahead, he said, "is probably the fear of the unknown, not knowing what's going to happen."
But he felt a little bit of security in the .50-caliber machine gun he manned during Friday's training, laying down heavy fire at target vehicles and buildings along a convoy route.
With what he's going to be doing in Iraq, "I'm almost infantry."
A mix of soldiers from the 296th rode in a convoy of about 20 trucks, Humvees, ambulances and tankers along the 18-kilometer route set up in the desert. Along the way they had to watch out for simulated roadside bombs, mines and ambushes.
Tom Pugh, an MPRI contract instructor, intervened during the hour-long training run to tag two vehicles as "destroyed," with two soldiers "killed" and others "wounded."
"It's just a taste of what you may encounter, but those little plastic guys don't shoot back," Pugh told the group afterward.
"And to be honest with you, if they did, a lot of you wouldn't be here."
He said the soldiers needed to work on the little things. There were no glaring deficiencies, he said, but the little things can become big problems if soldiers don't work on them.
Pugh said he's been working with the Army at Udairi for a few months. All units on their way to Iraq get the convoy training, and many units that have been in Iraq for months are being sent down for the sessions, too, he said.
"We've had a couple of Guard and Reserve units come through here who've lost a couple soldiers to IEDs. They say, 'Why didn't we get this training before we deployed?' and that's a good question," Pugh said.
He said soldiers typically are enthusiastic about what the trainers tell them. He said it's up to Army leaders to make this kind of training a priority.
Col. Mike Rounds, the Stryker brigade commander, said live-fire exercises are a must.
"We have no intention of repeating some of the things we've seen in the past," Rounds said, referring to deadly attacks on lightly defended supply convoys earlier in the war.
"In the last six weeks there are some folks in the 296th, including some senior folks, who've probably touched their weapons more often than they have in a long time," Rounds said.
By now the most infamous encounter of the war was the March 23 ambush of the 507th Maintenance Company in Nasiriyah. Eleven American soldiers were killed and six were captured after their convoy took a wrong route, split up and suffered multiple vehicle breakdowns.
Stryker brigade 2nd Lt. Daniel Finan said intensive training is one way to prevent such disasters.
"You can go to the classroom, and you can do exercises, but you can't ever do it with blanks," said Finan, who leads the transportation platoon in the 296th's distribution company. "You have to be training with live ammunition to see how they're really going to react."
The whole brigade will go through the convoy training before it heads north.
Soldiers are told that they'll discourage attacks just by their posture and demeanor out there on the Iraqi roads and highways.
"They seem to stay away from the guys who they know are going to shoot back. We want to stand up and be confident behind that .50-cal," Finan said.
"They haven't seen the Strykers, haven't seen the 2nd ID patch. We want to show them right off the bat that we're not here to be messed with."
Pvt. Thomas Foilefutu, a truck driver who will pack a light machine gun, said he's up for it. He said he's not nervous yet.
"Not now, but probably a couple days before we go on our mission, then I'll probably start to feel it," Foilefutu said. "But then I'll have adrenaline going, too."
Finan, his commander, is working on channeling that energy.
"We're trying to tell them to be positive. On the news you only see the bad stuff. They don't show you that for every convoy that was attacked there were probably 40 that nobody touched," the lieutenant said.
Of course, it doesn't hurt a soldier's confidence to be heavily armed.
"Those Guard and Reserve transportation companies coming out here, they'd kill to have the firepower you've got," Pugh told the troops. The brigade's convoys will roll with numerous .50-caliber machine guns and other heavy and light machine guns.
Pugh said he thinks the speedy Stryker vehicles will be excellent for convoy escort duty.
"If you go up there looking like you're ready to kick somebody's (butt), they won't mess with you," he said. "They look for weak convoys."
Above all he stressed rehearsals; he said soldiers need to walk through their convoy missions, talk them over, plot them out on a sand table, the works.
The 296th commander, Lt. Col. Dennis Thompson, told the soldiers afterward they'd be working at least an hour a day on rehearsals for their convoy runs in Iraq.
"You're going to be involved in some kind of incident" on a convoy, he told them. "It's going to happen."
Michael Gilbert: mjgilbert41@yahoo.com
• Staff writer Michael Gilbert is an embedded journalist with the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, the Army's first Stryker brigade.
(Published 12:01AM, November 25th, 2003)
Sounds like the old "frag in the C-rat can" trick to me. These young men never heard of Charlie Cong. Probably the MPRI instructors have.
"I'm almost infantry."
PFC Love, Starfish doesn't need tunas with good taste, and 3/2 needs grunts that can drive trucks. Every Arrowhead a rifleman.
'Why didn't we get this training before we deployed?' and that's a good question,"
The answer is not good.
Soldiers are told that they'll discourage attacks just by their posture and demeanor out there on the Iraqi roads and highways.
"Yea, though I walk through the valley of the Shadow of Death, I shall fear no evil, because I'M the . . . " (finish that sentence).
"Those Guard and Reserve transportation companies coming out here, they'd kill to have the firepower you've got,"
They must not know about the Remote Weapons Station or they wouldn't be so envious. There are ex-Soviet machine guns laying around in school basements and ammo dumps everywhere. There is absolutely no excuse for not being heavily armed. Why are available resources already in theater not being used?
If they break the Brigade up into MSR security and convoy escort detachments, that will be a clue.
If they head straight for Fallujah or Tikrit or the Syrian border and start disciplining the Hadjis, that'll be a clue, too.
Kentucky's MP company just got back in CONUS today - big party at the airfield when they flew in.
The AAR's from their missions are already starting to fill hard drives across the National Guard. We're taking furious notes.
With Afghan. and Iraq, we now have two excellent live-fire training sites to teach our people what they need to know.
Pugh said he's been working with the Army at Udairi for a few months. All units on their way to Iraq get the convoy training, and many units that have been in Iraq for months are being sent down for the sessions, too, he said.
"We've had a couple of Guard and Reserve units come through here who've lost a couple soldiers to IEDs. They say, 'Why didn't we get this training before we deployed?' and that's a good question," Pugh said.
... Col. Mike Rounds, the Stryker brigade commander, said live-fire exercises are a must.
"We have no intention of repeating some of the things we've seen in the past," Rounds said, referring to deadly attacks on lightly defended supply convoys earlier in the war.
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