Chosen Soldier - Dick Couch [87]
The day after the candidates move into their team barracks, the cadre sergeants take them out for a four-mile ruck march—a brisk shakedown walk to reacquaint them with moving under their rucks. Under Sergeant Stan Hall’s direction, the X-Rays carry the machine guns. Tom Kendall carries the big M240 while Roberto Pantella and Jamie Wagner carry the squad assault weapons, or SAWs. Tim Baker straps on the M240 tripod, which weighs as much as gun itself, to the top of his ruck. That afternoon, they shed their combat load and each man runs the obstacle course twice. The cadre sergeants are watching to see who is having trouble under their rucks and who lacks upper-body strength, which is a prerequisite to performing well on Nasty Nick. The X-Rays are all well conditioned to this, but a few of the veterans are found to have let their conditioning slip between their selection and coming back for Phase II.
The next day, between a 0500 reveille and breakfast, the class gets the first of four sessions in hand-to-hand fighting, or unarmed combat training. After breakfast in the facility chow hall, the rest of the day is taken with round-robin combat tactical training. As a student ODA, they spend an hour at each training station. There are nine of them: loading and firing the M240 and M249 SAW machine guns; arming and positioning of claymore mines; operating the PRC-119 radio; securing and searching an enemy prisoner of war—an EPW; using night-vision goggles (NVGs); using a laser target designator; calling for artillery fire; encrypting and operating the PRC-148 radio; and properly conducting a vehicle search. They work as a team except during the EPW and vehicle searches. At these two training stations, they work in pairs, one man covering while the other executes a phase of the search. For the vehicle searches, they use a Humvee configured as a pickup truck. For the EPWs, they use each other, and this requires some discomfort on the part of the EPW role players. There are too many stories coming back from Iraq about insurgents playing possum with a live grenade, waiting to be searched by Americans. The cadre sees that the training is realistic, and that means it’s a little rough on the men who serve as EPW training partners. Interestingly, the term “POW,” or “prisoner of war,” refers to Americans taken captive, but enemy prisoners are always referred to as EPWs.
The next day, the student ODAs head into the field for five days and four nights of training. Eight-one-one and its sister ODA, 812, bivouac in a wooded area near one of the many lakes in Camp Mackall. Individually, the two ODAs move under their rucks down a dirt road for a mile or more to their training area, a large meadow bordered by a stand of scrub oak and pine. One corner of the meadow serves as a classroom while the large, open area is suitable for walking through formations and battle drills. Once the teams become proficient in their movements in the open, they take the drills into the woods. Jan and Sergeant First Class Sid Warner, 812’s cadre sergeant, begin with the basics of individual movement before moving on to squad and fire-team movements.
For several hours, they run individual battle drills in the meadow and woods. Over a hundred-meter stretch of ground, they work in six- and seven-man squads to practice fire-and-maneuver drills. This calls for three or four of them to jump to their feet, sprint for ten or fifteen meters, and dive for cover—up, bound forward, and down. Once down,