New training

Let me go a little deeper into what we did out in the field. We started the first day with a little orientation as to why we were out there training on tasks that normally would be considered outside of our lane as maintenance supervisors or motor sergeants.

All of us in this class are senior NCOs with 11 to 22 years of service. Average is probably about 16. So we have been around a while, almost all of us have been to war. But we were trained differently than Soldiers are trained now. When I started out the cold war was still going on. Reagan was president. A Soldier in a support role was expected to be able to man a fighting position on the perimeter of his base and shoot straight. He was also trained to deal with reacting to indirect fire (artillery), and Nuclear, Biological and Chemical (NBC) attacks. We spent a lot of time on NBC drills. The assumption at the time was that those were the kinds of things a Soldier in a support role, in the rear area of the battlefield would need to deal with. Made sense at the time.

The first Gulf War reinforced these assumptions. I was support during this time, an Army Photojournalist. I deployed to Israel, spent most of my time in a base camp of a Patriot unit and put my chemical protective mask on in record time whenever the "Scud" missle alarm went off. Then I was sent down to Operation Provide Comfort in northern Iraq and escorted civilian journalists around to the different refugee camps and checkpoints we had set up. Again, since Iraq was known to have chemical weapons and had used them in this very area (a fact we seem to have forgotten now), we always had our masks near.

I then changed my MOS to 19D, Cavalry Scout, and got to train as a combat arms Soldier, as opposed to the combat service support Soldier I had been. I loved it, it was worlds apart from what I had been doing. We rarely trained NBC, because we assumed we would be so close to the enemy that they would not risk using chemicals. We trained in hand-to-hand and I carried a pistol. Our job was to sneak and peek. Find the enemy, recon his positions and report. Only fight if we fucked up and got caught. Most fun I've ever had and got paid to do it. But I never saw my kids so I had to make a choice and I left. Came into the Reserves as a combat support Soldier again and am back on active duty supporting the Reserves.

So along comes the next war, as is inevitable. The training we had been doing up to the start of the Iraq War wasn't wrong, it was just based on wrong assumptions. The combat arms Soldiers I've talked to haven't really complained about the training they had, they knew they would be mixing it up. It's the support Soldiers who really were not equipped to deal with random IED attacks and ambushes. Our Vietnam era flak vests seemed plenty good to us, based on what we expected to encounter. I really don't see any reason to get all pissed off over not having equipment to deal with a threat that no one saw coming and was dealt with as quickly as possible once it was identified. It's not reasonable to think we could forsee every possible problem before it came up every single time. If you could you would make a fortune in the stock market. Maybe we could get Warren Buffet to work plans and ops in the Pentagon.

Which brings us to SGT Riley. SGT Riley was a member of the 507th Maintence Company, the company that got lost and separated at the beginning of the war and was ambushed in Ramadi. PFC Jessica Lynch is the most famous member of this company. SGT Riley is now an instructor at the Warrior Training Center here at Aberdeen Proving Ground. He spoke on the first day about how things were in his unit prior to their being sent to Iraq, and the events leading up to the day of the ambush, the ambush and his captivity by the Iraqis.

Much of what he said was very familiar to anyone who has served in a support unit. There was no emphasis on combat tasks, weapons maintenance, commo training, etc... The focus was always on mission, in the case of the 507th it was keeping equipment up and running. Don't get me wrong, combat oriented training was conducted at times in all units including mine, but it was really "check the block" type training to get it over with so we could get to the real work of turning wrenches.

Consequently when the 507th found itself in the wrong place at the wrong time, they were not trained or equipped to deal with the situation they were in. Jammed weapons and no communications were a huge part of the problem. They fought hard and have nothing of which to be ashamed. Over the past five years the Army has changed quite a bit. We are now emphasising a Warrior Ethos, which never existed before.

And every Soldier knows that they can find themselves in a firefight at any time in Iraq. My very first convoy in Iraq in 2003 we were engaged by small arms fire that hit around our vehicles and popped the tire of the vehicle in front of mine. We couldn't identify the source and I'm proud of my Soldiers for not randomly spraying fire into civilian homes and risking killing innocent people. The point being that young Soldiers are having to make life or death decisions like that every day in Iraq.

The new training emphasis in the Army is to make every Soldier combat capable. Every Soldier is now trained in Combatives, urban combat, checkpoints including searching people and vehicles and dealing with enemy prisioners and detaining civilians.

So we, old Soldiers that we are, showed up here expecting the same old classroom instruction and multiple-choice tests of the past; and found ourselves facing a whole new ballgame. Anyone who complained was basically told "the Army has changed, change with it or get out." Rightly so, in my opinion.

I've already mentioned some of the training we did, I won't dwell on it. But I have some pictures and I'll post some of them up. And I have more to say about the Combatives training, but I'll save that for next time.