GWOT V - Crew Drills

GWOT V - Crew Drills

"Training must be constant and rigorous." - Rule 5, Admiral Hyman G. Rickover

Every military unit has a TO&E. This is the Table of Organization & Equipment. A list of how the unit is organized and what it owns.

Our TO&E was on the whiteboard in my office.

It changed that often.

I also could occasionally borrow other people's assets. But I didn't own them. Their care, feeding and training was not my problem.

What I did own was four platoons, loosely organized.

Alpha Platoon was our mortars section. It ran as a self contained shop. Aside from contributing soldiers to the innumerable details (chores) necessary to run a forward operating base, Alpha's job was to staff four to six 81mm and two 120mm mortars. The former were carried in the backs of their six pickup and three full size trucks. The l20s were towable. They also had 60mm or 'knee' mortars, as seen in a plastic toy I remembered from my childhood. I had procured them four additional 120mm mortars. Two of them were permanently installed at McNasty in bunkers. One was permanently installed at the Campos overlook. One was in warm storage for emergencies. They could fire high explosive, incendiaries, smoke rounds ... but their purpose was to fire nerve gas. They trained with tear gas for the use of nerve gas. The formal term is "Weapons of Mass Destruction Capable." Deterrence, of an invasion. The Mexican Army was strong on a lot of things, but not CBRNE or B-NICE or NBC or the other acronyms of horror.

Bravo Platoon was organized as a scout troop. Only about half the soldiers were actually 'scout soldiers,' a difficult to earn and highly prized designation earned after a lot of hard work. The rest merely aspired to be. Scouting on foot in the desert is a quick path to death, from dehydration if nothing else, so they lived in their vehicles. As roads are fatal funnels and intersections are death traps, they did a lot of off road driving. They owned about twenty vehicles but were expected on demand to staff eight, as our reaction force.

Charlie Platoon was organized as a Military Police unit. Most of them were not scout soldiers. Instead, they studied the mechanics of being a military police officer. This involves prosaic things such as traffic control and detainee processing, but also very hard things like battlefield management, crime scene forensics and executing military justice. The latter involves tying a noose with rope. THey also needed vehicles and needed to do off road driving. They owned about a dozen vehicles, but all were marked as Military Police vehicles.

Dirty Delta was everyone else. The clerks, the jocks, the supports, the bunker ducks, the cooks, the mumblers, the ball scratchers, the pill pushers. Also all the new meat, who had to do their time in Delta before being considered for filling a slot in one of the other three. They took care of all the other vehicles but any movement by them in vehicles was very carefully controlled and only during the day.

I wore a lot of hats. The most annoying one was Delta platoon leader. I was that short of qualified NCOs and officers.

Alpha Platoon's CO and XO were as close to long service professionals as the California Military Department could muster. They were both pre-War military. The NCO had even been through the US Army's pre-Firecracker chemical warfare course. I gave them what they asked for and left them alone. Alpha Platoon ran itself. I occasionally required them to demonstrated their skills. This was most often through the mechanism of a "hip shoot." I declared a target. They took their vehicles, drove out there, set up, fired the mission, broke down and returned. On a timer, because enemy artillery would be shooting back.

Bravo Platoon was under a newly minted Lieutenant whose welcome to the Border had been a complex ambush that left her curled in a ball around a pistol all night, wondering if she would shoot the scavengers or herself. Things did not get better from there. Only harder. She was backstopped by six veteran NCOs, four of whom had actually graduated the scout-soldier challenge course taught at Ishi. The other two were former US Army Rangers. They trained everyone, and also her.

Charlie Platoon had a nice round of bad cop worse cop going. McNasty had not enjoyed a pick of personnel. So I had a pregnant MP Lieutenant and detention specialist supervising a burned out senior NCO who hated my guts. I carefully did not notice that they had started fucking. It was a fickle command team, but the daddy-mommy dynamic can be used to supervise a unit just as it can be used to supervise a family. They didn't have any other NCOs and were trying to grow their own. But we didn't have years, nor even months.

Delta had no formal leadership other than myself. Informal authority was the head cook, who doubled as the base security NCO, and the Doc, who knew me well from a prior life. I'd instituted a number of controls, but most notably a rotating Duty Sentry and Duty Clerk. The Sentry owned the front gate and did the rounds; the Clerk kept the records and answered the phone and staffed what some military units would call a TOC (Tactical Operations Center) and I chose to call the Clerk Desk. Even the most junior personnel in A, B and C had to take a turn in both positions on rotation. Dirty Deltas did what they were told.

I spent about three hours a day writing SOPs and setting expectations. The platoon leaders had to deal with those.

Individual skills were practiced two hours a day. For the scout-soldiers this was driving, sometimes static (which meant sitting in the seat and pretending), and rifle. For the MPs this was rifle, and also pistol, and also grenades, and arrest and control tactics. Dirty Delta practiced in hand to hand, and mopping floors. They could train on firearms only under the strictest supervision.

Crew skills were trained for three hours twice a day, unless other operations forbade. They usually did. I tried not to go more than a day without a training session. Some days were two; some days were none. But the 'other operations' were generally real, and therefore practice with added risk of death and dismemberment, because there is no range safety officer on the two way range.

Every vehicle crew had three positions, just as I had during that first horrible ambush. Driver, gunner, vehicle commander. Everyone cross trained constantly. If a vehicle carried extra bodies, which was great when it happened, they could do other mission tasks as appropriate. But the unholy trinity of move shoot communicate kept everyone on that vehicle alive. That meant constant practice.

SOP could only do so much. It could let different people work together and speak the same language. But it couldn't build the close cohesion, the subtle reading of body language and head movements, that allowed a crew to respond to a deadly threat like a well tuned machine.

Obviously I could do any of those tasks personally. But I had a unit to run and/or incidents to command. So I typically rode as a fifth body. The fourth was assigned to bodyguard me. That way I didn't have to pay attention to all the things that were trying to kill me, so I could instead pay attention to all the things that were trying to kill all of us.

Some of the drills were really annoying. Vehicle repair drills were a great example. I would tell the VC to pull a card. The card would tell them what casualty the vehicle had just experienced. Mobility - coolant leak, flat tire, air leak (the brakes!) on our larger vehicles. Fix a flat is annoying. Fix a flat at the side of the freeway with passing traffic is very annoying. Fix a flat while being shot at is just not right.

Casualty drills were worse. A random member of the crew would be "wounded" or "dead" and the other two would have to take over in a hurry. Put the driver in the back, VC or gunner takes over, and a hard choice whether to do first aid or keep the guns hot. Someone gonna die either way.

The least enjoyable and most vicious drill was the disablement drill. The vehicle is the kaput. Therefore, switch to being infantry. Secure the special equipment - such as the MDT, radios and sights - grab the dismount bags and tools, simulate throwing a grenade in the former vehicle if conditions warranted, and hike to a vantage point. Usually the top of a hill. Lay out a panel and set up an LZ, spot for air support, and/or dig trenches. Be ready to get a ride out, by ground or air, or to fight it out, or to dump almost all gear and attempt to hike out.

All of this had happened to us already, before the drills. We just hadn't been able to react as well as we could have, and people had died.

Alpha Platoon had instituted a system of permanent staffing. Alpha One, Two, Three and Four had a designated driver, mortarman (shortened to 'mortar' because not all were men), gunner and vehicle commander who doubled as gunlayer. Alpha Eleven and Twelve had a driver, backup driver, Mortars 1 and 2, sighter, tail gunner and vehicle commander. This was because of the crew needs of the 120s. But they could practice their individual role, over and over again, and get really good at the quirks of their team and their vehicle.

Bravo chose standardization. Every driver was an interchangeable part. Every gunner as well. VCs owned 'their' vehicles but often were placed on other people's vehicles and had to make it work.

Charlie couldn't train to anywhere near that standard, and didn't have enough drivers to boot. So MP-drivers were designated, the rest were MPs who could either run the guns or run the radio, and vehicle commander wasn't a phrase they used.

Delta didn't staff vehicles on the Border or the highway. But that didn't mean Delta was off the hook. We had two utility vehicles used for training that could be staffed as part of the defense of McNasty. Graduates of that training could then practice driving on the ambulance or the casevac. (The only difference was whether we put the Velcro cover with the Red Cross on all five sides that day). Neither had a gunner. We paired a trainee driver with a skilled driver, the trainee did all the normal driving, and the skilled driver took over if there was actually a need for emergency driving. Gunners were trained with the bunkers.

Instead of crew drills, Delta had PT. Everyone did PT, but Delta's was organized and led by the Delta platoon leader. Other platoons were welcome to join, if ordered or if individuals wished.

Ow.

I cheated just that little bit. I wore armor and load bearing vest with my survival load, but I carried no mission or sustainment load. This gave me a forty pound advantage over the trainees. At my age and in my condition, I needed that edge.

But they hiked what I hiked.

I'd done some research. I'd found out what the old McNasty folks, in the pre-Firecracker days, had used for a firefighter crew hike. This was our morning PT hike, in the morning before the sun was too bad. Sometimes before breakfast because I'm a jerk. Sometimes after, because I'm a jerk that doesn't mind running past vomit.

Just basic conditioning.

Until the day that I had a trainee collapse on the hike.

###

"Sir, soldier down."

No one likes hearing those words.

I doubled back. I could see, from a distance, two soldiers bending over a third flaked out on the ground.

Our SOP called for two medic bags to be carried with us on the morning PT hike. One was carried by one of our gazelle athletes, who was way far ahead. The other was nearby but not close.

I radioed the camp.

"We need a vehicle and the Doc. Possible heat exhaustion."

Then I made my way back. By the time I got there, the other two soldiers had gotten the casualty's armor and rucksack off.

His skin was hot to the touch.

His skin was hot to the touch.

I took my own canteen and poured it over his head and newly bare chest.

Then I stepped aside and changed nets.

"Rampart, Campos Sector Actual at McNasty. Emergency traffic. Acknowledge at once."

They did.

"Dustoff for heat stroke casualty, to McNasty. Patient is a soldier in mid twenties with signs of heat stroke, during PT. Patient is semiconscious and an EMT is with the patient. ALS en route. Dustoff to McNasty helipad."

They acknowledged.

The ambulance (in casevac configuration, so no crosses) came roaring up the single-track. By then we had already taken the folding canvas stretcher out of the medic bag and bundled the patient into it. Two more soldiers were holding up a reflective metallic blanket - what had once been called a Space Blanket - so that the patient lay in its shade.

This is the first aid for heat exhaustion. Rest in the shade and drink fluids. All three are required.

A heat stroke casualty is overheating. Their brain is cooking in their head. They need to be in an air conditioned environment, if they can drink water it should only be small sips, but often they cannot even do that and need IV fluid access to reverse dehydration. Other metabolic changes are occuring as well. They can block their own kidneys with spilled muscle proteins. They can have arrythmias and suffer heart failure. Or just stop breathing and die.

We loaded into the ambulance and I stayed with it.

The Doc was in the back and stuck the IV while it bounced back down the single track. Don't try this at home. It's like threading a needle while riding a roller coaster, except you're doing it into someone's blood vessels.

The AC was already roaring. The ambulance had not been skimped on cooling capacity. I now felt chill. The casualty's skin was still hot.

Another medic was shoving ice packs under the armpits and into the groin. The patient did not notice the ice against his balls. More ice, against the back of the neck, at the wrists and along the sides of the neck.

"Red Lion 14 has accepted the mission and is en route from Irvine Air Base."

Dammit. That was too long an ETA.

Ten minutes later, we drove into the open gate of McNasty and pulled up next the infirmary.

A former cattle trough full of water was seeded with ice out front, in the shade, and we lowered the casualty slowly into it. The medics protected the full open IV lines in case the patient started seizing.

He woke up instead. But unlike say me if you dunked me in an ice bath, he did not shoot out of the ice cold water. He relaxed into it.

"What happened?" he asked blearily.

A very good sign.

"You collapsed on the hike. Try to rest," I said, with all the Old Man gravitas I could muster without choking.

Then he started to shiver a little. The medics took his temperature, reassured him, waited a minute, and then pulled him out. Carried him inside to a bed in the air conditioned infirmary. Covered him with a sheet that would make him feel better but not keep him warm.

Someone came in, dropped a gear bag next to the patient and went out again. Someone had thoughtfully packed for him.

His personal effects. One way or another, he might not be coming back, and would want his stuff at the hospital.

"Red Lion 14, new ETA forty minutes mark."

They took his vitals again. The Doc had a chart. She talked with her medics, then took me aside.

"He needs to go. There's labs and bloodwork I can't do here. It could just be simple overexertion and dehydration. But I can't tell."

I nodded.

"He's going," I assured her.

She could do meatball care, but this wasn't even as good as a pre-War emergency room. Odds were he'd be fine, but if not he'd be dead, and there was nothing here worth killing a California Republic soldier over.

We were, of course, risking an aircraft. This is a normal risk we accept as part of every flight, operational or training. Red Lion was careful and took good care of their birds. I vaguely heard the second PA announcement that a friendly aircraft was inbound, for the benefit of all personnel but especially perimeter guards and bunker gunners.

She oversaw another vitals check. No change. Not better, not worse. A high heart rate, despite no exertion. She used the EKG to run a strip. I motioned. She handed it to me. I read it and handed it back.

"McNasty, this is Red Lion 14, how do you copy?"

"McNasty copies loud and clear."

"New ETA 0945 hours. Patient age condition and weight?"

"Patient is a male in his early twenties, temporarily stable having suffered a heat stroke episode. Now alert and oriented. Last blood pressure 160 over 104, heart rate 140, throwing PVCs, core temperature one hundred point fiver. Three units normal saline administered. Weight approx 160 pounds."

"Confirm ground safety conditions?"

"This is an active military base. We have no security concerns and all personnel have been advised of your arrival."

Soon the Red Lion helicopter was on final approach, then landing, then a red helmeted Red Lion flight medic was in the room, conversing with the Doc in low tones. They briefly considered the EKG strip. Then my Doc set up the EKG and ran it again.

I could have blinked and missed it.

The patient was moved swiftly and smoothly to the helicopter which took off at once, roaring for altitude and banking north. Not for Orange County but for the comprehensive trauma center at Arrowhead in San Bernardino County.

His personal effects bag did not go with him. I had my orderly make up tags for it, an address here and the destination address of the hospital. We would mail it with the daily today, CA Post Express, military frankage privilege.

The Doc stripped off her gloves. Her team cleaned up the ice bath and changed the sheets on the bed.

"Well, fingers crossed."

Now I had to do my own work. Gather information for the investigation and the mandatory safety report. What went well, what could have been done better.

###

As young dumb kids will sometimes do, he'd not kept up with his hydration the night before. Then he'd slammed two energy drinks in the morning before PT. A brutal combination that had stressed and could have damaged his heart. I made sure the additional clinical information was sent ahead.

We would redo the heat illness prevention training for the entire unit.

Policy change. The energy drinks were now one at a time. You couldn't keep a stash in your locker. Vehicles, yes, but if you rendered yourself unfit for duty outside the wire, your crewmates would object before an officer had the chance.

We got the word ninety minutes later. Helicopter landed, patient transferred, preliminary emergency lab results and clinical EKG results read by a duty cardiologist. He'd probably be fine. A day or two in hospital, a week or two of rest.

But he wouldn't be coming back to McNasty. The Republic could find another place to use him.

A casualty, as certain if not as final as being shot in the head.

But also good training. My Dirty Deltas, my weak links, had responded seamlessly to a real world emergency and could be proud of their performance.

We had to work in the heat. We had to do hard physical labor in the heat. There was no other way. PT established the baseline capability to do that work, which kept the California Republic's borders secure and our people safe.

Tomorrow I would lead PT again.

But I would be hydrating carefully tonight, because I would carry a forty pound mission load.

I told myself it was good training.

It was penance.