Chosen Soldier - Dick Couch [139]
“Now you have to get into the details. Think about every aspect of your mission: what you can do to make it succeed, and what might come up that’ll interfere with your mission. You have to think very hard about the unit you are going to train—get into that unit commander’s head. Remember that as advisers, you have to be able to conduct company- and battalion-size operations and assaults on a ‘by, with, and through’ basis, and you have to do this within their capability.” James clicks on the PowerPoint, and a series of items begins to slide onto the screen in the team room. “A couple of things for you to consider as you return to your planning sessions.”
• Match the training environment to the operational environment.
• Know as much as you can about the enemy they have to fight—in this case, the FARC.
• Be very careful how you train and offer to help. They may think they’re doing a pretty good job.
• You will be dealing closely with embassy personnel. Understand the attitude of the ambassador to your being there and the dynamics within the country team.
• How does the host-nation commander view the training you are bringing to him?
• Have previous ODAs been there? What did they do? How were they received?
• Your communications and medical planning have to be spot on.
• Think about what may happen if one of your men or the men you are training gets hurt. Game it out.
• Make a friend of the embassy liaison officer. Your rapport with him, or her, is very important.
• We plan using our military decision-making process—MDMP—but how do they do it?
• How do they train? Get a feeling for a day in their life—do they sleep late? Do they take siestas? Do they live in garrison or will you be training men who live with their families?
“This is a short list,” Major James tells them, “but you get the idea. You can’t plan enough, and you can’t think about these things enough. Look two or three moves ahead. An action on your part to solve the immediate problem may create multiple problems down the road.”
Prior to the deployment of an ODA, a delegation from the team, usually two men, will visit the host nation to conduct a predeployment site survey. Within the context of the JCET training exercise for this FID problem, this becomes a series of role-playing events. Captain Toohey and Miguel Santos “arrive” in the host nation and go to the embassy. Their first meeting is with the embassy liaison officer, who is played by Major Brooks. Brooks’s character is a lieutenant colonel who is a logistics specialist, new to the job, and knows little about the work of Special Forces. Brooks, seated behind the desk in his office, is dressed in a white shirt and tie as he would be in an embassy setting; the captains are dressed in slacks and open-collared shirts—they’re smooth. The venue, as with most role-play training that has limited student participants, has Captains Toohey and Santos conducting the interview with the rest of the team standing behind them along the wall to listen and learn. “Lieutenant Colonel” Brooks tries to ensnare Toohey with a Special Forces demonstration at the airport and to assist him with some embassy staff work. Captain Toohey neatly sidesteps these requests. Following the interview and critique, the site-survey team and their observers climb into vans and head out to the host-nation training area—in this case, the 82nd Airborne pre-Ranger training camp.
A civilian role player in the guise of an Ecuadoran corporal takes them around the camp where the ODA will train the Ecuadoran unit—a counterinsurgency battalion. Toohey and Santos ask questions, make notes, and take pictures. Then they are led to a building where they conduct a meeting with the host-nation battalion commander. The two ODA advance men know from his bio that this commander is wealthy by birth, well educated, may have higher political aspirations, and has earned a reputation as a good commander in the field. The commander wants to talk about politics and America. Toohey and Santos have to work hard to keep him on the subject