Chosen Soldier - Dick Couch [115]
Most U.S. mines—there are seventeen in inventory—have a direct tactical application, and some of them can almost think for themselves. Some can lie in wait for a period of time for a vehicle to come by. Others can cut a path in concertina wire or a path in a minefield. All U.S. mines currently have a “life,” which means they will explode or become inert after a period of time. The same is not true of foreign mines. The prospective 18 Charlies pay special attention to the twenty-five kinds of mines that can be found in Iraq and the fifty-nine kinds found in Afghanistan. Most found in Iraq and all but one found in Afghanistan are of foreign manufacture.
Eighteen Charlies learn basic render-safe procedures for mines and unexploded ordnance, but they are not military explosive ordnance disposal technicians. Most of what they do is to identify the mine or ordnance and explode it in place with a countercharge.
“We’ve been accumulating an impressive array of manuals and handbooks on mines,” Aaron Dunn explains. “There’s a lot we can do to help the locals deal with unexploded ordnance and to clear the area around their towns and villages of mines. Not only do we have the reference materials, but there are secure Web links we can access to learn more or to identify something we’ve not seen before. There’s a lot to being a good engineering sergeant, and you’re always learning.”
“It’s not all just putting up buildings and blowing things up,” Sergeant First Class Carl Pennington, one of the demolition instructors, tells me. Pennington is a veteran 18 Charlie engineer from 10th Group. “Engineering sergeants have other duties. On deployment, they usually have primary responsibility for maintaining the vehicles. They also serve as the team supply sergeants and accountants; they help the team leader with the money and dealing with receipts. When the detachment deploys and redeploys, they supervise the loading and packing. On the operational side, they work with the team leader and the Bravos on route planning, infiltration, and target analysis. They serve as the specialists on terrain features. The 18 Charlies handle issues relating to tactical resupply, including the air-dropping of bundles. If the mission calls for infiltration by air, the ODA’s Charlie is the primary jumper for demolitions. And along with the Bravo, they’re responsible for the storage and accountability for munitions and demolitions. He’s a very busy guy. If he’s the senior engineering sergeant, he also has to supervise the junior Charlie. If he’s the junior Charlie, he can get stuck with just about any job. Oh, and one more thing: He’s responsible for cross-training the other members of his team in engineering and demolitions.”
The final nine days of the 18 Charlie training are spent in the field. The class moves into the training base camp at Camp Mackall, but not into the buildings they constructed a few weeks earlier. They sleep in tent barracks and conduct their mission planning and briefings in tents erected within the camp. Over the course of the nine-day FTX, they will plan and conduct twenty-five to thirty missions in student ODAs.
“It’s like the final field exercise in Phase II,” Daniel Barstow tells me. I find him as he is gearing up in preparation for a training mission. “We usually conduct one daytime mission and two at night. The rest of the time we’re planning, rehearsing, or trying to grab a few hours of sleep. The big difference from the Phase II fieldwork is that we patrol back to the base camp after every mission to get ready for the next one.”
“Another difference,” Aaron Dunn says, “is that every mission is a demolition raid or a target that requires the application of explosives. We plant charges on bridges, buildings, tanks, towers, trucks, trains, artillery pieces,