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.

Adventures of a Fobbit, Part I

Late Tuesday, we got all our gear, left our barracks, and taking the bare necessities, moved into a Forward Operating Base, FOB Freedom.

A FOB, as its name implies, is a forward base, often in hostile or questionable territory. Ours, of course, is just for training purposes. FOBs are well-secured compounds enclosed in razor wire and protective berms, with guard towers and other security measures. Inside a FOB, it’s a MASH-like setup, with portable tent buildings, some trailers, and few luxuries (there’s a small store, but I never had the time to use it). The restrooms are Port-A-Johns and the showers are in tents.

The inhabitants of a FOB call themselves Fobbits, and have grown accustomed to doing everything from going to the showers to going to dinner, wearing their full body armor and weapons. Depending on the security posture at the moment, body armor may not be required, but in the training environment, it is required for most daylight hours. It’s certainly a different existence, standing in the shower tent, brushing your teeth, trying not to get toothpaste on your assault rifle, which is hanging across your body. I never seemed to have that problem at home, but then, I’m from South Texas, not East Texas.

The Camp Freedom Fobbits are an interesting group, constantly rotating through training, as opposed to the in-theater Fobbits, who stay there as long as their unit is at the location. Most are Army, a few Air Force. Again, we were the only Navy people there. Some of my enlisted guys got saluted by a few confused members of the Louisiana National Guard, who had never seen Navy rank insignias before. Of course, wearing my body armor, no one salutes me because it covers up my rank insignia and I don’t have any ACU cammo markings yet.

I guess I just assumed that everybody knew that we had all services on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan. A lot of my navy friends – particularly in the field of Intelligence – have already gone over. However, even some of the army guys were surprised to see Navy personnel on base and training alongside them. Of course, we, like the Air Force folks who share most of our classes, are primarily there in support roles. We’re not trained as infantry, and though we’re getting some infantry-like training here, it’s only the bare minimum we need, not extensive classes.

Nonetheless, the training is fairly comprehensive. Wednesday and Thursday were very long days of training on our M-16 rifles. Wednesday was mostly classroom instruction, with a few practical exercises, including time in an indoor simulator. However, the majority of the day was spent in classrooms set up in old garages, with no A/C, plywood on the broken windows and small gopher-like rodents zipping through the room in the middle of class.

The heat was fairly intense, particularly once you put your body armor on, which you had to do when doing practice exercises on your weapon. It was over 90 degrees, with about 70 percent humidity – and they say that the body armor raises your core body temperature by five degrees. At one point, one of my sailors got up from a shooting position, his face almost purple. I pulled him out of the exercise and started going into our heat injury prevention routine, which we had learned the previous week. We had him remove his body armor and his uniform blouse. We then placed him in front of the one fan and started cooling him down with cold water, and asked him questions:
“Where are you?”
“Fort McCoy, Sir.”
“What is your name?”
“My name is ---”
The medic in our class then asked him the square root of some very large number, to which he said, “The hell if I know.” But it startled him out of his rote memory stage of answering and brought a little humor to the situation. I was about to send him to the sick bay for observation, but the Medic said he was responding well and we had gotten him cooled down before any serious symptoms showed up.

Instead, we sent him back to the barracks for the evening, instead of the hot tent out at the FOB. Not just him, of course, but also his battle buddy.

What’s a battle buddy? A battle buddy is an army idea, and it’s a good thing. Each soldier has a partner who does virtually everything with him, eats with him, goes virtually everywhere with him, and in stressful situations, has his back. This is an excellent way of making sure no one is left out, left alone, or left behind.

Myself and the Chiefs were very judicious about who we assigned as battle buddies. Mine is Chief Keefover, the next-highest ranking member of the unit. Because he and I frequently have to attend meetings apart from the rest of the team, we’re always together anyway. Chief Keefover, who’s a few years older than me, is a good ol’ boy from Alabama, and we get along real well.

The other two Chiefs in our unit, the third-and-fourth (respectively) ranking members, are also battle buddies. They have a lot of responsibilities which I have delegated, plus they oversee efforts to get our Petty Officers to take leadership roles in special tasks, from medical issues, to supply, to administration and physical fitness.

We have two loners in the group who always hung out with each other from day one. One, a very large African-American guy, and an Italian guy from New York. They were a slam dunk as buddies. The two females in the unit, who by necessity, live in separate quarters, were also obvious. We have two heavy smokers, so we put them together.

Battle buddies are there for their buddies, but they’re also there for us. When our heat casualty was asked how he was doing, he was reluctant to admit he was hurting. His buddy, however, could tell us a very good deal on how much he was drinking, how he had been doing throughout the day, and other things. And when we gave his buddy instructions on what to watch for, he became a valuable resource. Which was good, because the next day was even hotter, and even harder. And despite that, we didn’t have a repeat of that circumstance.

Thursday
Thursday, we got up at 4:15 a.m. and headed out to the shooting range. First task on top was to zero in our rifles. That meant shooting at a set of targets until we got at least five out of a six-round group inside a circle about 2 inches in diameter.

I shot six rounds and was done: My rifle was already set up well for me. This was pure luck, as every shooter is different. But some of our other sailors couldn’t get good enough groupings to even know how their rifle was set up. Many took four, five, even six tries to get zeroed in. This was hard for the Army folks to understand, but unlike them, most of our guys have never fired an M-16, and a few have never fired a rifle at all before.

We then moved on to another range, where we spent the rest of the day. We weren’t alone, as there was a crowd of Army soldiers and a covey of Air Force folks. Generally, we get along well with both services, but the Air Force people are a bit pampered and stuck up, so we have jokes at their expense about how they start building a new base by building the golf course, then complaining to Congress that they don’t have enough money for an airfield.
“Of course,” one of them said. “That’s the smart way to do it.”

I stopped calling them the Air Force and now simply call them the Air Fore!

So our group, mixed in with these folks, went up to shoot our qualification rounds. The area we were shooting into was about the size of three football fields, side by side. Small earthen mounds were raised up throughout the field, and large retaining berms surrounded it on four sides. On one side, a small gravel path was laid out, with square shooting stations – 13 in all.

As the round of shooting began, small green dummies would pop up behind the earthen mounds. Your job as shooter, is to shoot as many dummies in your lane as possible. Forty dummies popped up, and you had forty rounds to shoot at them. A passing score is 23. You shoot 20 rounds from the prone (lying down), supported (rifle resting on sandbags) position, 10 rounds from the prone, unsupported position and 10 rounds from the kneeling position.

The M-16 rifle is difficult for me, as it uses a peep site, as opposed to the open sites of all the other rifles I’ve shot. It’s easy enough for shooting at stationary targets, but for moving and pop-up targets, it’s tricky at first.

And here’s the other catch. You’re not just shooting like you do back home – you’re shooting in full body armor. It’s like dressing up in a turtle outfit to go deer hunting. Not exactly easy.
The first time I shot, I got a 22 – one short of what I needed. I soon made up for it, shooting a disappointing 24, but that was enough. Most of our guys took much longer to qualify. A couple of our people never got it, and we’re going to work with them to try to get them over the hump.
It was a long day, exhausting, standing in the sun out at the range, where one had to wear full body armor almost the entire time.

When the sunlight faded, we lined up for the next portion – our night firing qualification.
This was fairly similar, only the pop-ups were closer, and they were lit with a dim light. It was easy – I shot a 13 out of 15.

It was nearly 11 p.m. when we got home – a 19 hour day. I was exhausted. I’d worked hours like that before – on the Hutchison campaign, for example. But that wasn’t in 40 lbs of body armor. Nonetheless, as the next few days would soon prove, 19 hours at the range was a cakewalk. Because the next thing on tap was the real no sh-- Army Training. But I’ll save that for the next email.

Your tax dollars at work

Still here at Fort McCoy, Wisconsin, doing my Army training, even though I’m in the Navy. Early last week, we went and got all our equipment. If you remember from my previous email, I already got a bunch of stuff in Gulfport. That was mostly Uniforms, because that was stuff the Navy gave me.
This week, we got all our “Army” stuff. Here’s a rundown:

Items issued:

Weapons
M-16 Rifle (I will also get a 9 mm pistol, but that’s been delayed because of bureaucratic issues.)

Uniform
4 sets, Desert camouflage uniform - Gulfport
3 camouflage uniform caps - Gulfport
2 camouflage boonie caps – Gulfport

Additional uniform items from the Army
3 pair T-shirts (expensive sweat-removing synthetic kind)
1 black belt with buckle
1 desert tan belt with buckle
2 pair boot blousing straps
3 pair hot weather desert tan boots
1 pair cold weather desert tan boots
3 pairs Army green socks

Other Clothing
1 Wet weather poncho
1 Wet weather poncho liner
1 Desert camouflage cold/wet weather parka
1 Desert camouflage cold/wet weather trousers
1 ACU camouflage cold/wet weather parka
1 ACU camouflage cold/wet weather trousers
1 cold weather fleece sweatshirt
1 cold weather fleece bottom
1 pair thermal underwear
1 pair working gloves
1 pair cold weather gloves

Bags
1 Large backpack
1 Medium backpack
3 large duffel bags
2 large regular bags
1 laundry bag
1 Waist pack
2 Waterproof clothing bags

Body Armor/vests
1 body armor vest (This is the Army ACU color, which doesn’t match my uniform, but is still camouflaged.)
2 side armor plates
2 under arm plates
2 shoulder plates
1 Kevlar Helmet (Also ACU camouflage)
1 tactical vest
1 pair sand goggles

Other
1 pair sunglasses
1 Entrenching tool (collapsible shovel) with case
1 Camelback water container
2 One-quart canteens with cases
1 Two-quart canteen with case
1 sleeping mat
1 Modular Sleep System (sleeping bag)
1 Mosquito Tent
1 Gerber Multi-Tool
1 strap cutter
First Aid Kit