Adventures of a Fobbit - Part II

It’s hard to keep track of time out here, as one day runs into another. We’ve been training long hours, seven days a week. If I didn’t have meetings to attend as the senior Navy officer, I’d be hard-pressed to pinpoint the day of the week.

Today is Saturday. I know that because I was hoping to finish up my training in time to catch the Steve Miller Band concert that was scheduled to be held on base. I made it off in time, but I was too exhausted. It looks like it will be rained out anyway.

But let’s back up to where I left y’all off last time. Even though my last email was a few days ago, I was a little behind then, so I’ve got a lot of ground to cover.

After qualifying on our M-16s last week, we had one day of classroom instruction prior to going out into the field for three days. The class was a crew-served weapons familiarization class. The idea is to teach the basics of very heavy weapons to people who don’t normally use them. Then, if the worst happens, we can jump on them and fire away – like U.S. Navy cook Dorie Miller did at Pearl Harbor.

I brought him up to our guys during a unit meeting, just to remind guys that you never know when this training will come in handy. And being a Navy example, it hit home well with them.

As I said, I’m the only officer in our unit, and am therefore in charge. A friend on the phone the other day asked what it meant to be an officer. I’ve been giving thought to that a lot. It means leading, of course, but it also means developing leaders below you. It means going to boring meetings with higher-ranking officers and staying up late at night to fill in paperwork. But it also means going through every last crap-filled bit of training as your subordinates. If they crawl through the mud, you crawl through the mud. If they sweat out a quart of water through their body armor, you do too.

Being an officer – being a good officer – means never pulling your rank to get special privileges. But it also means pulling your rank to make sure some Army Sergeant stops training when one of your sailors is showing signs of heat stroke. It means taking the advice when an Army instructor below your rank is telling you what your team did wrong, and it means standing up and telling an officer above you that the equipment you were issued is unacceptable – because your life and those of your sailors may depend on that equipment one day. It means doing all the grunt work to make those below you respect you, and then doing all the other crap as well.

The other day, an Army Corporal (enlisted) was chatting with myself and some of my enlisted sailors, and laid out exactly what he thought made a good officer. The first thing, he said, was to be in shape. He pointed to me, and said, “Like you, sir. Soldiers will follow folks who are in shape, and look like they can do everything they can.” A simple thing, but as a metaphor or symbol of leadership, it’s big. An officer who is not in shape conveys the impression of someone who is enjoying luxury, getting out of duties, and getting away with things – while ordering others to live up to the standards they themselves cannot match.

All these things and more make a good officer. Certainly, I’m not an expert. Frankly, it scares me to half to death sometimes, knowing that I could conceivably be in a position of deciding which one of these kids lives or dies. Making that decision with yourself is relatively simple, when the stakes are high enough. But when “dying” means sending out a 21-year-old kid who’s shown you photos of his wife of seven months? That’s another story entirely.

Anyway, back to my story. After qualifying on our rifles, we went out to another FOB here at Fort McCoy. There, we had our IED (Improvised Explosive Device) recognition class, complete with insurgent videos. It was the most sobering thing imaginable. Here we are watching American troops get blown up in Iraq. Troops dressed identical to ourselves, wearing the same body armor and carrying the same equipment. But it was very practical. We could break them down like some macabre version of John Madden and find out what those soldiers did wrong, and how to avoid doing the same mistakes. We then spent some time outside at the IED “petting zoo.”

Later that day, we went through some basic infantry training, including fire and maneuver exercises, live fire (with blanks) and throwing practice grenades. In the latter portion, we had to crawl on our bellies, dragging our M-16s, and throw some grenades in a bunker. We waited and they went off. (Practice grenades don’t explode, they just shoot flames out of the bottom and make a very loud boom. You could only injure yourself if you were actually holding it when it goes off.)

We then moved to an area at the top of a hill and began a series of maneuver exercises. We went in teams, and as one team cleared the area, and moved down the hill, the next would take its place. It reminded me very much of field day in 1st Grade. Back then, myself and Jimmy Rodriguez won the three-legged race because we made up a plan, and kept our legs in sync, whereas everybody else just started off with no idea what they were doing and fell on their faces.

In much the same way, we made a plan here too. Part of this was dictated by the Army tactics – one group fires while another moves closer. The details, we worked out in our group of about six people.

As we rushed from one sandbag barrier to another, we were covered. When we jumped down behind cover, we raised our rifles and began to fire (with our blanks) at a series of dummies propped up at another position. In one spot, there was a box of grenades, and I threw a few of these. In all, I threw five grenades that day. All went boom, which was pretty exhilarating.

Returning to our home on the FOB, we then geared up for the most demanding part of our month-long training – the STX lanes. Pronounced “Stix”, these are essentially some land navigation routes with various scenarios thrown in.

On Day Two (the obstacle course being technically the first day), we started out mid morning, and it was already in the lower 90s, and very humid. Even though I’m the officer in command of our unit, I turn command over to some of our petty officers for various tasks as a leadership training exercise. I gave the reins here to Petty Officer McGuire, and took my spot as a mere soldier – though as a forward rifleman, I was to see a lot of action. We formed up in a wedge formation and moved out.

The first scenario was incoming mortar fire. This was simulated very accurately by loud explosive noisemakers that created a whine like an incoming shell, then a very loud “boom.” We had to hit the deck (as we Navy folks say) and then get up and run for cover.

The next obstacle was an IED – in this case, a rocket tied to the side of a tree. We cleared the area, evacuating our squad to 100 meters – in the real world, you’d seal off up to 300 meters, depending on the size of the IED. Once our instructor came out and “detonated” the device with a flash-bang grenade, we were free to move on.

We then did so, and before long, a machine gun opened up on our column. We ducked down for cover. After crawling for about 20 feet on the ground, I spied the spot from which the fire was coming (The “gun” is in fact a dummy hooked up to an acetylene-based noisemaking device, with an Army instructor behind it).

I provided covering fire for IS2 Rogers, who was on my right, and he swung around and “killed” the position. As we moved out, I spied a dummy propped up in the trees, and I shot it. The instructor said, “Darn, you got my buddy, who was going to sneak up behind you.”

After lunch, we went through the same course again, with some additional lanes and scenarios. At one point, we came across a guy in Arab dress carrying an AK-47 rifle (rubber). We took up positions and began calling out to him “Ogaf tara armee!” (Stop or I’ll shoot) and “Thib SlaHak!” (Put down your weapon). He more or less ignored us. Finally, he lowered his weapon in a sudden manner and IS2 Merck took a shot. The Insurgent (An Army Sergeant wearing the garb) crumpled to the ground.

Turns out, according to the instructors, the Insurgent was putting his weapon down, but Merck (hence forth called “Trigger Happy Merck”) thought he was going to shoot.

What this episode points out is the almost impossible-to-perfect concept of “Escalation of Force.” In a country in which everybody is armed, and only some of whom are hostile, you can’t just shoot anybody who’s carrying a weapon. You have to make snap decisions of life and death. The very next day, we had an almost identical scenario. This time, however, the Insurgent was going to shoot at us. We shot him down then too.

Moving on, we then had our first real event of the day. As we stopped to check our position on the map and prepare our next move, I noticed one of my sailors was turning very red. This is the same person who became overheated the previous week. I immediately called a halt (even though I’m not commanding the actual exercise, I am still in command of the unit) and myself, our instructor, and our combat life saver (CLS – like a medic) evaluated him.

My briefing before the exercise was that if there was any doubt about heat exhaustion, heat cramps, or such, it was better safe than sorry. So I called over our radio man and had him call in an ambulance Humvee. We kept our sailor cool until it arrived, and they took him off. He was fine later on that day when we returned to the starting point.

The next scenario was an attack from the side. A sniper waited until half of our column passed, then opened fire. This effectively split our column in two. However, we reacted well, as both the front (the sniper’s right) and the back (the sniper’s left) flanked the position. Working with two other riflemen, I moved from the front position in short runs, taking cover, then firing to cover the others. Finally, I ran in my short burst and came up directly behind an army sergeant concealed in brush with a few fake guns and an RPG. I shot him down, and then called out to him to tell him he was dead, in case he didn’t hear my gun over his.

We proceed through numerous more obstacles throughout the rest of the day, and the next day. I took out a group of three insurgents with a grenade at one point, and then did the same with a group of five. Being up at the front, I was involved in all of the ambush scenarios, and provided cover during the insurgent/detainee encounters.

In the end, it turned out to be three of the most physically exhausting days of my life. Underneath my 40-lbs body armor, I was completely soaked in my own sweat. But I had not a single scratch on my body, despite all the abuse I gave it. Running in body armor is not like normal running. It’s like driving a truck after driving a car – and then expecting it to have the same breaking distance. Once you start to fall in body armor, you’re going to fall. It’s very difficult to keep your balance because of all the weight and consequent momentum. At one point, I came down a hill and landed on my shoulder. I thought for sure I would injure something, but that was four days ago, and I’m perfectly fine. Another time, sprinting over what was once a tank training ground (while under fire), I dove for cover and landed on my head. However, my Kevlar helmet meant that there was almost no sensation. My first thought, as I pulled my face out of the dirt was, “That was fun, let’s do that again!”

It was just like being a kid again, to a point. Running around with real guns instead of wooden ones, with body armor and 35-year-old bones instead of a t-shirt and 13-year-old bones. But on top of that, the reality that these skills could make a difference in whether I – or the 17 sailors under me – return home alive or not, makes it incredibly more real, intense, and sobering. So does realizing that being able to pick out a small red wire sticking out of a pile of trash – indicating a hidden IED – can mean the difference between living and dying. That wakes you up like nothing else.

A few day after coming back from STX training and moving off of the FOB back to our barracks, we got another surprise to bring home the reality of where we are. A young army soldier – who both lived with us at the FOB and was in one of our language classes alongside us – died of Meningitis.

I won’t go into the details here, as I really don’t know all that much. They told us he was in our class, but all the Army guys looked the same – literally, in their uniforms – and nobody in my unit remembers him. But since a large number of my sailors have come down with flu-like symptoms (Chief Keefover calls it “The FOB Crud”), I don’t take any chances. Fortunately, at this point, it appears the event was isolated, and most of my sailors are fine. Still, all the more reason to be vigilant.

We’ve all learned a lot more about health. In fact, I just finished a four-day CLS (Combat Life Saver) class that really made me look at health, the body, and how to treat it, in a whole new way. But I’ll save that for the next email.

James

P.S. Nobody here calls me James, Jim or anything like that. I am “LT” or “Lieutenant”, or “Sir.” That’s it. I usually address my sailors by their ranks, or more commonly, since several have the same rank and rating, by their last names.