Courtesy Photo | A Cougar mine resistant ambush protected vehicle from Marine Wing Support Squadron 271...... read more read more
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AL ASAD AIR BASE, Iraq — For a small team of 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing (Forward) Marines, the roadside bomb is just a regular feature of their job.
About twenty Marines from Marine Wing Support Squadron 271's Combat Engineers will soon begin their new job as a route clearance team in Iraq's Al Anbar province.
This mission is unlike any other for which these Marines have trained. As combat engineers, their role is to build and destroy as a situation may need. In their new assignment, the Marines will operate heavy, armored vehicles while they search for and identify roadside bombs, or improvised explosive devices, along the streets and highways of Anbar province.
To prepare this team for their new mission, a cadre of instructors and student-instructors from the Engineer Center of Excellence in Camp Lejeune, N.C., came to Iraq to teach them the tactics, techniques, and procedures for using their new equipment.
Gunnery Sgt. Erik Chism, one of the lead instructors from the ECOE Mobile Training Team, spent time familiarizing the Marines with their new vehicles, which include the "Husky" Towing Mine Detection Vehicle, the "Buffalo" Mine Protected Clearance Vehicle, and the "Cougar" Medium Mine-Protected Vehicle. Each vehicle type has its own unique handling characteristics and mission the Marines must become comfortable with to safely execute their mission, especially the mammoth 23-ton Buffalo.
"Once you get in the vehicles, the biggest thing is the size of the Buffalo. It's so big, it intimidates some of the Marines. Once they get used to it though, it's just like a Cadillac," said Chism. "And the Husky is a true engineering vehicle. You have to learn the signals its systems give when it detects possible targets."
Throughout the course of instruction, the students reinforced their classroom learning by going out and practicing the techniques firsthand. Lance Cpl. Patrick Brown, an engineer with Co. C, 4th Combat Engineer Battalion and a recent graduate of the same course taught in Camp Lejeune, came out to Iraq to assist the senior instructors in educating the Workhorse route clearance team.
According to Brown, the course is very hands-on and all-encompassing. The students learn to operate and maintain their vehicles and equipment, practice and refine their tactics, techniques, and procedures, and learn the techniques likely to be employed by their insurgent opponents. The instructors regularly emplace mock IEDs along the practice routes that the team travels for rehearsals and instruction. "Playing the other side helps you to see what they might be doing," said Brown.
This dangerous and tedious job creates a two-way relationship between the aircraft of 2nd MAW (Fwd) and the MWSS route clearance team. Route clearance operations are important to the Wing because they assure mobility along supply routes. This makes for safer operations for logistics, the lifeblood of maintaining an aviation combat element that directly supports the troops on the ground.
The pilots and aircrew of the Wing's aircraft in turn keep the route clearance Marines aware of areas of interest so the team can add the locations to their search route.
The team's Marines will begin to develop their own intimate knowledge of the roads along their search routes, but the proper mindset comes only after miles and hours spent on the roads doing the mission, according to Chism. The relationship formed between the ECOE and the Marines from the route clearance course is maintained and cultivated so that both sides can be kept up-to-date on IED emplacement tactics.
If the enthusiastic expressions shown by the Workhorse route clearance team are any indication, their collaborative training effort with the ECOE will make for a smooth turnover with the 937th Engineer Company, the Army unit currently responsible for the safety of the road warriors in Al Anbar province.
"I had hopes and dreams," said Cpl. Dacia Worley, an MRAP driver on the team, when asked if she ever expected to do this job. "This is the experience of a lifetime. Females in my military occupational specialty don't really get to do stuff like this. It's something new and I'm really excited to get started."
As long as the American and Iraqi security forces use ground routes for logistics, transportation, and overall operations, the Marines of MWSS-271's route clearance team will give their maximum effort to ensure that Anbar's roads remain safe.
| Date Taken: | 06.07.2009 |
| Date Posted: | 06.07.2009 11:25 |
| Story ID: | 34668 |
| Location: | AL ASAD, IQ |
| Web Views: | 969 |
| Downloads: | 646 |
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