Training in the Desert

I’m on my own now, as all the Navy folks I trained with back in the states are still there doing more training on their own. My orders, however, move me forward a bit sooner. Here in Kuwait, I ran across a couple of acquaintances and made a few new friends, but for training purposes, I’m on my own – or more accurately, I’m thrown in on my own with other groups for training purposes.

Late last week, I arrived at a desolate outpost in the Northern Kuwaiti desert for training. I was fortunate enoughto meet several soldiers from the 82nd Airborne who I had met on the flight over from the U.S. As I walked up, one of them recognized me right away.
“You’re that guitar player,” he said.

In the Atlanta airport, I had sat in for a song or two with a Zydeco band from Louisiana, which was doing an impromptu concert as they waited for their flight to California. After 20 years of playing blues and rock, I had hoped to do well, but Zydeco is a whole other animal. Either way, I had impressed PFC Burton, the young kid who now recognized me, and now re-introduced me to all the 82nd soldiers.

The majority of the unit involved in this training – about 60 in all – were from the California National Guard. Added to that were the five guys from the 82nd and me. Whenever they forgot my name, they all just called me “Navy.”

The base we were at was very small and had few facilities. No showers, no dining hall, only tents and port-a-johns. For two days, we slept in sleeping bags on the hard floors of the tents or outdoors on benches.

We ate MREs – the pre-packaged military meals – for breakfast lunch and dinner. Or, more accurately, we ate them on the fly or whenever we had down time, as there were no official meal breaks. We didn't have to heat them, as it was well past 100 most of the day, and our bags were stored outdside.

We were told not to eat inside the tents because "crumbs attract mice and mice attract things that eat mice." In this case, adders and vipers – of several highly poisonous varieties. I never saw any of these, but one night, as I was heading across the sand to the port-a-john half asleep, a freshly-molted snake skin rolled across my path in the light breeze.

We spent much of the hot part of the day inside, suffering from death by powerpoint.

The next day, we rose at 3:45 a.m. and strapped on our body armor – "full battle rattle" as it is often referred to. Then we walked out to the range and lined up in ranks. It was still dark out as we stood there in the sand beneath a crescent moon and a few stars. But as we moved out to the range, it grew lighter. By 5 a.m., it was daylight.

We trained on and executed several tactical firing drills. We fired in close quarters, literally lined up at arm's length and firing at targets. Firing at a target while another soldier is firing just to your right and your left is a new way of shooting for me. I would hear the bang (loud despite my earplugs) and feel the concussion of the shot.

Occasionally, hot brass – the shell casing from your neighbor's rifle – would hit you. If you weren't careful about tightening up your collar, it could slip in and get between your body armor neck plate and your neck. This happened to one of my neighbors, Sgt. Hernandez, and it burned enough to peel the skin off. As a soldier feels this intense pain, he's trained to be careful in how he reacts. On more than one occasion in the past, a soldier has reacted too panicky, and still holdiding his weapon, grabbed at his neck, violently swinging his muzzle. Every now and then, the soldier inadvertently shoots, and occasionally, another soldier can be struck with the bullet.

We fired at targets in front, did exercises where we had to turn and engage targets at our rear (swinging the muzzle low to avoid "flagging" our neighbors), and fired at lateral targets as we moved. We had drills where we walked and fired, and drills where we ran and fired. All in formation.

There's always one person, it seems, who just doesn't get it. Whether in the military or civilian world, there's always one who just seems to stumble, fumble and fail. One who doesn't hear the important instrution, doesn't have competence with his tools, and who becomes a victim of dozens of gremlins of fate. Of course, someone who is perpetually victimized by fate can usually find the source of his troubles in his own actions – lack of attention to detail, improper preparation, and poor focus.

Of course, on this day, that person happened to be standing right next to me. At the last minute, a group of Army officers, new to our training group, arrived to shoot. one of them was placed on the line at my left.

On the first exercise, his rifle jammed. The whole group was halted for safety. He cleared his weapon and chambered a new round.

Click.

Again, nothing. Finally, afer the instructor helped him with his jam, he fired his two shots, and we moved on.

This happened again and again. Always the same guy. Always, he nervously laughed it off, or blamed the sand in his weapon – as if the rest of us had some magical sand-proof force field. We all stood patiently waiting, feeling the full weight of our body armor, and watching the sun – and with it, the temperature – climb.

And of course, when his weapon malfunctioned, he turned it to check the chamber. Proper protocol is to keep the muzzle pointed down range. But on several occasions, I heard the instructors shouting at him. He was pointing forward, in relation to his body – which meant directly at my back.

I have no intention or desire to be shot in this war, but at least if the enemy shoots you, you get a medal to go along with the hole in your side. If someone on your own team shoots you, all you get is the hole.

Fortunately, the range officers stayed on this guy like glue for the rest of the exercise and no other safety violations occurred.

"Don't worry," one of the Army sergeants told me. "He probably won't ever leave the headquarters."

That may be true, but the Army being the Army, he'll probably get a Bronze Star for his service while all these other guys who kick in doors and ride in gun trucks for a year will get nothing.

Make no doubt about it. We officers are necessary, and leadership is a trait distinctly different from (but not exclusive of) personal courage. That being said, when the rubber meets the road and the "shit starts flying" it is the enlisted folks, the average soldiers, upon whom all depends. And among these, it is the senior enlisted men who make the most difference.

You learn who they are right away. They aren't gung-ho, but neither are they afraid. When they speak, they speak from experience. They've been there. They've done that. They know.

One of these people is Staff Sgt. Thrasher, from Arlington, Texas – a tough, grizzled veteran who has done a couple of tours in Iraq and is headed back for more.

(SGT Thrasher, right)

As the fresh guys coming out of training expound on their new-found theoies on how to defeat IEDs and arrange convoys, he corrects them.

"Y'all that's not how it's going to work over there," he says. "You try that shit and you'll wind up dead."

And then, without condescention, but with deliberate words, he tells them how it really happens. In theater, not in theory.

The remaining time out there, we did more convoy training. This is basically a refresher class for most of us, but this time it's in a much more realistic environment, with all the hazards, including the brutal desert heat, which saps you and leaves you tired – at the same time that you need to be alert and ready.

Unlike Fort McCoy, whre I got to see all the action from the lead Humvee, I was in the middle of the column here, serving as the truck commander in a Five-Ton truck. High up and big, the five-ton is a totally different animal than the Humvee.

(In the picture to the right, my truck is Number 5 - the first large truck in the formation).

I won't go into the operational exercises we did, but you can imagine them. Driving through the desert, facing a variety of scenarios, and getting the convoy through with the least possible damage.

* * *

It was an exhausting two days in the desert, despite the fairly mild temperature – 105 degrees. Returing back to Camp Virginia, I was hoping for some down time to relax, but it was not to be.

As it turns out, I would get only a day, for today, I leave for Baghdad.

Soldiers in the Northern Kuwaiti Desert