FORT CARSON, Colo.—With days flying by before their deployment to Afghanistan, commanders of Fort Carson’s 4th Brigade Combat Team must improvise to get their soldiers ready.
Companies, normally 120-soldier formations, went to field exercises last month at about half-strength, often with new leaders finding their bearings in a new command.
With the Army stretched thin by combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, leaders here must do more with less to prepare soldiers for the unforgiving mountain fighting ahead in what has become one of the most dangerous places on Earth.
“We may not have the numbers we need, but we do have the best training,” said Lt. Col. Brian Pearl, commander of the brigade’s 2nd Battalion of the 12th Infantry Regiment.
Pearl’s battalion can field about two-thirds of the soldiers it would normally have in its ranks. After the unit returned from fighting in Iraq late last year, its soldiers began moving to new Army jobs or leaving the service. Others who would normally round out the battalion can’t train with the unit because they’re still recovering from combat injuries.
The Army will eventually fill the battalion with new soldiers. But that will come next year as its spring deployment to Afghanistan comes closer.
The Army’s priority now is filling out other units that are closer to their combat deployments and replacing soldiers who have been injured in Iraq and Afghanistan.
At Fort Carson, training can’t wait for additional troops to arrive. The new soldiers will get a truncated version of training when they arrive.
“We’re building the base,” Pearl said.
Pearl’s soldiers have seen combat. But their education has been in the urban street fights that have characterized Iraq. Afghanistan, where they will be in a few months, is a place of trails rather than roads where soldiers will fight on rocky mountainsides rather than in slums.
“We recognize that some of the things that apply in Iraq don’t apply,” said 2nd Lt. John Childs.
Getting ready for Afghanistan means learning how to move through rough, steep terrain with heavy loads of gear while maintaining enough strength to attack the enemy or defend against ambush.
Pvt. Lance Lee, a new soldier in the brigade, admits he fears the task ahead, which is likely to include confronting Taliban and al-Qaida fighters in the mountains near Afghanistan’s border with Pakistan.
Lee spent the recent training week lugging a 7.62 mm machine gun and its ammunition through the brush, and up and down hundreds of feet of ridges. He knew the landscape at Fort Carson is just a small-scale model of the Afghan terrain.
“It’s intimidating,” Lee said.
During the week’s training at Fort Carson, soldiers marched for miles between mud-hut objectives and makeshift towns where they learned to fight and how to relate to the Afghans they’ll meet.
“The culture is very important,” said Anwar Noori, an Afghan contractor who, along with dozens of his countrymen, helped make the training more realistic by populating the villages. “You can’t go into a village just shooting. When you walk into a village, they will offer you tea.”
Getting to the villages proved difficult. The southern side of Fort Carson is made up of rocky ridges and mesas separated by deep valleys. Troops had to stay off trails, an exercise in endurance and, sometimes, frustration that left most of the soldiers pulling cactus spines from their boots, clothing and skin.
“As for the movement, we need help,” Capt. Kevin Hutcheson said during a group self-critique that followed his company’s successes and failures on one of the grueling exercises.
Hutcheson’s Gator Company was lackadaisical on the first day of training and earned the ire of Pearl, who chewed them out in blunt language.
Mistakes are fine in training, Pearl said. But failure to learn gets men killed in Afghanistan.
“We’re not going to feel sorry for ourselves,” the colonel said during a scathing assessment of the company’s performance.
The next morning, Sgt. 1st Class Michael Pak said the dismal day before was in the history books.
“Yesterday was a rough day, but nothing we can’t get over,” said Pak, who was acting as the company’s senior sergeant. “Today is going to be a 180-degree change from yesterday. You’ll see a whole new Gator Company.”
After a long march, Gator’s soldiers shook off the mistakes and hit a village objective with the fury of wounded pride, blazing blank ammunition at other soldiers posing as Taliban in a lightning raid. Hutcheson later reflected on how Pearl’s pep talk influenced the day.
“He wasn’t mad, he forced his will upon them,” he said. “The turnaround came from the (sergeants). It motivates them.”
The soldiers will have to stay motivated. They have more field training at Fort Carson this month and will tackle the swamps of Fort Polk, La., in January as a graduation exercise.
Then, as the deployment draws closer, they’ll have to do it all over to train the new soldiers filling out their ranks.
“We have to incorporate them into platoons and squads as quickly as possible and make them as proficient as possible” Pearl said.
Pearl and his men will make the newcomers ready for war, but the calendar isn’t their ally.
“Time is counting down,” he said.
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