This is tragic. It apears that as for survival skills, they did not qualify.
Maybe the deputy wasn't clued in and didn't want to play dead.
It IS tragic. It's hard to blame either the students or the officer, since both were performing as they had been trained to conduct themselves and react acordingly. Somebody was definitely left out of the loop when it came to passing the word on to the civil authorities. On the whole, I think the Army will have a lot of explaining to do, sadly, since this happened off-post and it was their exercise. Could be the Sherrif's office was notified and forgot to pass the word along, though.
I can't disagree with you; however, I don't like seeing Americans die on their own soil in a mishap from another American. Me thinks that maybe these kids got a little cocky with the locals and... well, they got knocked. The CO is probably going to catch some flack on this one.
Question is: Where did Deputy Fife get those bullets, while Sheriff Taylor was out of town?