Go straight to Iraq: New basic training aims to prepare soldiers
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This drill in the wooded hills of Fort Knox in the past would have been saved for later in the soldiers’ careers. But now nearly half of all new soldiers go straight to Afghanistan or Iraq, or to units preparing to deploy to war within 30 days of completing basic training.
Basic training is being overhauled for the first time in decades to immerse soldiers more quickly into the realities of modern warfare, such as fighting in city streets, detaining hostile civilians and dealing with the threat of suicide bombers.
“This could be their only combat experience before they are in combat for real,” said Lt. Col. Jim Larsen of the 1st Battalion, 46th Infantry, at Fort Knox, 40 miles southwest of Louisville.
The changes being tested in pilot programs at Fort Knox, Fort Benning, Ga., and Fort Jackson, S.C., are part of a major shift taking place to update an Army basic training regimen based largely on World War II and Vietnam.
“f you don’t train him in the correct tasks, he won’t react correctly and he’ll die, and that’s why we’ve got to shift in basic training to do that,” said Capt. Stu James of Wheeling, W.Va., who fought in Iraq with the 3rd Infantry Division and now trains new recruits at Fort Knox.
In the pilot program, recruits spend 23 days living in the field battling obstacles such as suicide bombers and roadside bombs in a mock operating base like those used in Iraq. That compares to being bussed out to the field for three days in traditional basic training.
The new training regime adds rigor to basic training with additional obstacles trainees must accomplish such as fighting while wearing body armor, going 24 hours without sleep, using heavy weapons, and lessons in the rules of engagement.
“Not that they’re going to be experts, but they’re inoculated to the sights and the sounds of combat, to the myriad of change that they are going to face,” said Col. James Greer, commander of the 1st Armor Training Brigade at Fort Knox.
The changes will likely most affect new soldiers in support areas, such as cooks and mechanics, who might not have received as much combat training before deploying as their infantryman counterparts, said Greer, who collected the Army’s lessons learned early on in the Iraq war.
In a conventional war, they would be far from the front lines, but that is not true in Iraq where a supply clerk is just as likely as an infantryman to face a roadside bomb.
“Those soldiers really will be far more prepared than they are to execute their task and fight and survive,” Greer said.
Because of that, all soldiers are taking it seriously, said Capt. Theo Clemons, 32, of Canton, Miss.
“Now, it’s let me learn survival skills, this is what is going to keep me alive,” Clemons said.
Wilson, the private, said he watched a year’s worth of war coverage on television, and joined the Army aware he would likely go to war. That’s enough to make him and the others pay attention, he said.
“What we’re learning here is going to save our lives, most definitely, and more important, the lives of our buddies out there,” said Wilson, from Los Angeles.
Out in the backwoods at Fort Knox, Larsen observed as new recruits talked to “enemy combatants” tied together in a holding area. The soldiers were surrounded by trees, not desert sand, but the lessons could one day help them thousands of miles away.
“Let them make the mistakes and then show them what the right way looks like,” Larsen said to a drill sergeant. “Let them learn.”
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Fort Knox: http://www.knox.army.mil/