newsminer.com

Chris Freiberg/News-Miner

Chris Freiberg

FORT IRWIN, Calif. — In the past few years, a saying has developed among the soldiers at the National Training Center in California.

“If you can do a month at NTC, you can do a year in Iraq.”

The missions at NTC are more difficult, the insurgent attacks come with more regularity and the enemy is better trained. These facts were especially apparent Thursday afternoon as units from Fort Wainwright’s 1st Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry prepared for a training assault on two terrorist training camps.

Each camp housed about 30 terrorists with weaponry comparable to what soldiers in other industrialized nation’s have, as opposed to the older or homemade equipment most insurgents in Iraq or Afghanistan use. Usually, soldiers in Iraq run into no more than about 10 insurgents at a time.

“We’re going to assault the most sophisticated terrorist training camp in the history of the world,” said Capt. Jeremiah Hurley, commander of the 1st battalion, 24th infantry regiment’s Charlie Company.

Keeping with the fast-pace of schedule of NTC, commanders began receiving intelligence about camps about 9 p.m. the night before. Many stayed up all night coordinating a plan for the next day that allowed two infantry units to assault the camps while also maintaining security in nearby villages. Often, there would be several days of planning for such a mission in Iraq.

As the impending assault drew nearer Thursday, the 1-25th’s command post was a flurry of activity. Overseeing it all were two giant white boards, one a map of the units and their routes of attack, the other a lengthy list of objectives written in tiny print to keep it all in one place.

“From a capability standpoint, it’s hard to match what a Stryker brigade brings to a fight,” said Maj. Steve Marr, one of the top coordinators of the attack.

The afternoon was especially quiet Thursday around noon as the men of the 1/24th infantry awaited their orders. With some men on patrol for more than 24 straight hours in recent days, most took the opportunity to grab some rest before being called into action.

They passed the time, reading, sleeping or eating meals ready to eat, known around camp as MREs.

After some delay, two Chinook helicopters and several Blackhawk choppers arrived to take the infantry to the targets. Sometimes, there’s a lot of waiting at NTC — a calm before the storm. This one of those times. Even after the choppers arrived, there was more waiting, checking to see who was on which helicopter and brief training for those who had never ridden on one before.

But after what seemed like an eternity, the pilot of one Chinook gave his own unique signal that the flight time was almost upon Charlie Company.

“Smoke ’em if you got ’em,” he said.

But after a month in the middle of the Mojave Desert, far from any convenience stores, cigarettes had become scarce among the men. Noone had any to smoke.

As a Chinook waits to take off, it sounds a lot like an old lawnmower. There’s the constant sound of the rear blades whirring, but also a lot of screeching and revving, sounds that might come from an old low-power engine, and not a multi-million dollar state-of-the-art military chopper. But those noises soon give way when the powerful front blades go on, louder and faster. Suddenly it sounds more like the chopper could go into space and not just the air.

And then there’s lift-off — a rush of sand into the hull through the open window and a cool breeze that brings relief to soldiers who have spent the past few weeks in a place where 90 degrees in the afternoon is considered a cold snap.

The trip to the fictional terrorist training camp of Kut Adeera from the base is only about 15 minutes by chopper when flying directly. But this being an air assault, it was not a direct flight. Instead, the chopper circled again, and again, finally settling on a hill a little ways from the battlefield. It was at least a quarter-mile over rugged desert terrain to get to a hilltop where the company could provide support for the Stryker units below.

And though NTC is a training exercise where soldiers use a laser-tag like system called MILES as opposed to real bullets, you wouldn’t know it from listening to the sounds of battle, the whining of gears, the booms of explosions and a constant cacophony of gunfire that slowed to an occasional burst as the battle raged on.

Then, after about an hour there were no more sounds but the chatter of Charlie Company.

“We were on an extremely condensed timeline for planning,” Hurley said. “We basically planned this entire operation without a higher order. We had some guidance, but it was exploratory learning, but that’s what we do. You’ve got to be able to operate in the fog of war.”

Soldiers on the ground continued to go door-to-door in Kut Adeera looking for insurgents who hadn’t been eliminated, but there was no more shooting and no more explosions. NTC threw the greatest terrorists they could put together at the brigade, and the 1-25th rolled over them in a little over an hour.

The 1/24th suffered only one “casualty” and a handful of injuries, according to the operator controllers, called the OCs by soldiers, they act as the sort of referees of NTC. It was a similar story at the second target of Avawatz.

“The OCs were completely amazed,” Hurley said. “They thought it was going to be a bloodbath.”