Photo By Spc. Nathan Goodall | Soldiers with Headquarters and Headquarters Battery, 5th Battalion, 3rd Field...... read more read more
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YAKIMA, Wash. – At 10 a.m. the sky is a pure blue; it’s more like a man-made painting than a fickle design of nature.
Running at full-speed through a field are six soldiers— clad in body armor with assault rifles and protective gas masks hanging at their hips. Their muscles are strained, and their bodies are reaching near exhaustion. But these Soldiers don’t waver.
They breathe a sigh of relief once they hit the road they’ve been struggling to get to, but it’s in vain. Almost instantly a bomb goes off and that once pure blue sky is now polluted with deep, rich black smoke. One member of their team goes down, but he’s still alive.
The soldiers load him on a stretcher and carry him to an ambulance nearby,. But there are enemy forces spotted just beyond it. With no time to rest, the team load their rifles.
Out of breath and overwhelmed with adrenaline, they ready their guns— aim, steady, fire. All threats were destroyed. They take a sip of water before moving out toward their next location. Their simulated training exercise isn’t over just yet.
Soldiers with Headquarters and Headquarters Battery, 5th Battalion, 3rd Artillery Regiment, 17th Fires Brigade, conducted an extended training scenario at Yakima Training Center, Nov. 6.
The scenario started with soldiers rushing into an area where they were hit by a simulated improvised explosive device, that produced an audible explosion and copious amounts of smoke.
At that point, one soldier replicated an injury and the rest of his team carried him on a stretcher to a medical evacuation vehicle. Directly after, the team lined up at a firing lane where they were instructed by lane safety personnel to fire a certain amount of rounds in different firing positions at targets.
The idea of the “quick fire stress shoot” was to simulate an actual attack so soldiers could get used to firing their rifles in a high-stress setting.
Realistically, soldiers may find themselves in a situation where they are worn out and panicked but still need to focus enough to deter an oncoming enemy threat, said Staff Sgt. David A. Delgado, an Anaheim, Calif., native, and the assistant digital master gunner with Headquarters and Headquarters Bn., and lane safety noncommissioned officer in charge for the exercise.
“It’s always good to know that you’re going to the range,” said Spc. Dejurnett A. Conyer, a San Diego native, and a team chief with Headquarters and Headquarters Bn. “We don’t get enough of that as field artillery because we always shoot rockets or artillery.”
Conyer and his team work in fire directions, a job where they help identify coordinates and location for artillery targets. While his team would most likely never be intentionally placed on an infantry mission, he understands that anything can happen and it’s important to be prepared for the worst.
All soldiers that participated in the training usually operate behind the scenes. The teams were made up of fire directions controllers and human resource specialists that normally don’t go into direct combat.
That is what made the training so important. Unlike infantrymen, these soldiers don’t regularly practice combat tactics but need to stay trained and ready should they find themselves in a bad situation, said Delgado.
After the stress shoot lane, soldiers began a tactical march. On the road they walked in different formations, constantly scanning the area, looking for any potential threats in their path.
“We weren’t prepared for the march,” said Conyer. “Not meaning we haven’t marched before, but we didn’t know we were going to do it.”
The unexpected road march didn’t throw off Conyer’s team though, nor did any of the mishaps along the way.
“A couple of us broke our [rifle] slings, one guy’s camelback [water hydration system] broke, but we still rolled with it,” Conyer said with a shrug. “As a Soldier, I just roll with the punches. If something comes down for us to do, we do it.”
They walked approximately three and one-half miles to their last section of the training exercise: the gas chamber.
“The gas chamber, well I’m not really a friend of it, but I guess it’s fun training,” Conyer said with a grin.
At the gas chamber site the Soldiers were met with a new challenge. The chamber could be seen as a small dot on top of a steep hill, an arduous climb for soldiers who’ve expended so much energy already.
At the top of the hill the teams were taken through the gas chamber where they performed various exercises like push-ups and squats to increase their rate of breath.
After milling around the tear gas-filled tent for a while, the soldiers removed their protective masks to test their will against the chemicals and were permitted to exit into the fresh air after a minute.
They came out gagging and coughing, faces red and veins popping on their foreheads, but none of them were incapacitated by the effects. After a few minutes they were breathing normally again.
At the bottom of the hill the soldiers grabbed some food and enjoyed a well deserved lunch. They had left their support roles behind for a day and conducted combat operations without complaint.
While every support-oriented soldier is part of a team, training scenarios like this one give them a chance to break outside their normal element and work together to achieve something different.
“[It promotes] camaraderie, it brings everybody together, brings everybody from all the different work atmospheres together and they can work as a team to accomplish the mission,” Delgado said.
Spc. Lauri Weathers, a Corpus Christi, Texas native and a water treatment specialist attested to the camaraderie element.
Weathers is a water treatment specialist that got moved into HHB to work in the human resources department. Because of that she was able to take part in the combat training, something she signed up to do in the first place.
“For a lot of us, our dreams of being a soldier was about this stuff, and I think it ends up being a culture shock when we work in the [support] side of operations,” Weathers said.
For her, getting out of the office and running tactical ground training was a gift.
Her favorite part of the operation was the camaraderie of working with a team of male soldiers that treated her as an equal.
“As a female soldier in the United States Army, this is an honor for me and an honor to work and train with my male peers and learn from them,” said Weathers.
“Getting here with the guys, letting them know as a female soldier who is fit and trained and ready to defend my country, to let them know they don’t have to pick up my slack or look behind to make sure I’m okay, that was great,” she said. “I have their back and they have mine.”
| Date Taken: | 11.06.2012 |
| Date Posted: | 11.15.2012 14:40 |
| Story ID: | 97858 |
| Location: | YAKIMA TRAINING CENTER, WASHINGTON, US |
| Hometown: | ANAHEIM, CALIFORNIA, US |
| Hometown: | CORPUS CHRISTI, TEXAS, US |
| Hometown: | SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA, US |
| Web Views: | 124 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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