I have been extremely remiss in keeping up with this blog, especially in light of some of the more momentous events and fantastic training events that have occurred in my life since my last post. For those who were holding their breaths, I graduated ABOLC in the top 20% of my class, took Christmas off and returned to Benning for the Army Reconnaissance Course (ARC). This was a month long, extremely demanding course that challenged me physically and mentally. It aims to teach students how to be scout leaders in the Army, with techniques such as selecting and occupying observation posts to silent patrolling. It was by far the best course I’ve ever been through and my cadre was beyond superb… and I can now land navigate through thick vegetation with no map or compass for kilometers and lead a scout Stryker platoon! It was incredibly stressful and exhausting, but very rewarding and I was pleased to once again graduate in the top 20%.

From there I made the long journey south west to the heart of Texas. Fort Hood, Texas to be exact. Home to III Corps, who’s units include the storied 1st Cavalry Division and the 3rd Armored Combat Regiment, this is a MASSIVE post with over 50,000 soldiers stationed here. Let’s put it this way: there’s two full size commissaries and PXs. Enough said. Despite my initial horror at the frightshow that is Killeen, TX, I found a lovely little place in the next town and I’m now a proud home-renter in Harker Heights, TX. My two would be part time co-renters (who rather crucially made this place affordable) both found out they’re off to Kuwait in a couple weeks so I’m still working through that…

The big news, (despite all that) is that as of today, I am now a platoon leader for 2nd Platoon, Dragon Company, 3/8 Cavalry, 3rd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division. When I put it that way, I realize just how low on the totem pole I am… And I didn’t even add all the commands above 1st Cav… When everything is reset following this units recent return from being the last combat unit out of Iraq I will be the proud leader of 15 soldiers and four M1A2 SEP Version 2 Main Battle Tanks. Pretty cool… I’ll be updating this periodically in the future I’m sure, but that’s the news. It’s good to be back!

Christopher Hawkins
2LT, AR
PL, 2/D/3-8 CAV

Part of the "Two Crew" 2LT Gary Divito of Ohio mans the Tank Commander's .50 Caliber

The 'low water crossing' where so much water poured into our driver's hole that he panicked, thought he was drowning, and let go of the controls while we were partially submerged. Never a dull moment.

The view from the periscope in the driver's hole. Not the kind of visibility I'm used to in a motor vehicle. Note all the water from our near drowning experience in the water crossing above.

The "Two Crew" doing what tankers do best: eating. Eating a lot. 2LT Divito on the left and 2LT Estep on the right on the front slope of the tank with some Lil' Caesar's Hot n' Ready pizza before a mission.

Another massively long and exhausting week over with, but, the end is finally in sight! This next week and a half is our 10 day final Field Training Exercise, also known as Gauntlet, and after that we have out processing and graduation! It has definitely snuck up on all of us. But that’s the subject of a future post (mostly because it hasn’t happened yet). This week, I’ll be writing about the joys of the Tank side of Armor BOLC, albeit briefly because I’ve been putting this off all weekend and now I need to go to sleep so I can wake up again in just 5 hours (and it’s only 10pm…).

First of all, tank side is an absolute joy for me. Whatever the surprises, pleasant and otherwise, from Scout side, I joined the Armor branch because the M1A2 Abrams is gorgeous. So, naturally, the chance to learn how to fight individual tanks and then a whole tank platoon was truly delightful. Again, can’t believe I’m getting paid for this…

The tactics phase for tanks starts in the simulators in an accurate, scale model of the National Training Center in the deserts of Fort Irwin, California. We learned the fundamentals of the offense and defense and ran a series of missions both attacking and defending that once again highlighted our very incomplete mastery of the art of tanking. While most missions started with crisp formations, good communication, and accurate reporting to the commander, they generally devolved into running gun battles with tanks with tracks blown off desperately fighting off Soviet hordes while their comrades fought to get to them, or tanks, having expended all their ammunition driving in circles and firing at armored vehicles with the tank commander’s .50 Caliber machine gun. It was a lot of fun, but it was also clear that we all needed a lot of work, from the driver to the gunner to the tank commander, PL and PSG.

One of the days we did a ‘force on force’ which pitted each platoon against another in a narrow valley. Our Platoon fought Phil Baki’s platoon in the first mission of the day. At this point, we’d been in the simulators almost a week so we were much improved from the crazy first days of running and gunning. However, this mission didn’t go according to plan, which was unfortunate, because we are fiercely proud of our status as the best platoon in Hawk Troop.

Myself and the other two members of my crew, Corey Estep and Gary Divito, had been the crew of the #2 tank (the Platoon Leader’s wingman) for nearly a week and we had perfected the roles each of us played. We were widely recognized as the best tank in the platoon and we certainly helped our reputation this mission. Our plan was to take the high ground and wait for 3rd Platoon (the enemy) to come down the valley and use our artillery and long range fires to destroy them before they could hit us. However, we took too long setting up our defensive positions and before we knew it, our 3 and 4 tanks were both smoking wrecks somewhere to our rear. The Platoon leader called for our section to move to their last known location and prepare for contact. That was the PLs last transmission because he went over the wrong side of the hill and was knocked out immediately. So, within 15 minutes, it was 3 on 1 (one of their tanks had flipped in a wadi) and we were surrounded by enemies as far as I could tell. As we came up to our burning 3 and 4, our crew coordination really came into play. While I was talking to the commander (as the only surviving tank commander, I became the Platoon Leader) the gunner (Divito) was giving directions to the driver (Estep) and we were staying almost fully hidden while being able to see. When we popped over the last hill, we spotted our two dead tanks and two of 3rd Platoon’s tanks, lying in wait. We used the hill for cover and my crew did a fantastic job of popping over the hill, getting a shot off and reversing before they could react. We finished off both their tanks and immediately started looking for the last one.

As fate would have it, their last tank was Phil’s, so it was roommate v. roommate although we didn’t know it at the time. Little did we know, he’d been lying in wait just around the corner from his other two tanks the whole time. He’d watched them both burst into flame from our accurate fire, had determined there were certainly more than two tanks coming his way, and he turned tail and ran, trying to find another way to engage us. At that point, the cadre spared his blushes (in our opinion, of course) and called an end to the mission. It was all great fun and a great learning experience. We were justifiably proud.
After the simulators, we went out to the field for a few days. Now, one of the many negatives of moving to Ft. Benning from Ft. Knox is that there is no such thing as a tank maneuver area here. In fact, the EPA is so strict here, we are not even allowed to drive on the grass. I understand that tank treads do some serious damage, but it comes at the cost of training, plain and simple. Probably worth the lives of a few blades of grass… So, we were stuck on the roads. Our missions were fairly straightforward, such as IED clearance (which I got to drive for- let me tell you, driving a 70 ton tank is AWESOME. You can’t see hardly anything from the reclining seat in the driver’s hole so you just follow directions, and every time you stop, you immediately fall asleep in the dark, warm, comfortable compartment that is completely separate from the hectic activity in the turret.).

The other tank mission we did, as a whole company, was a cordon and search. This is a very common mission, especially in Iraq, where one force blocks the area around a few houses or a village while the other force comes in fast, raids a building, takes a high value target or looks for weapons, and then leaves. We had tanks doing the inner and outer cordon and the third platoon came in with Humvees and conducted the raid. It was pretty stressful, especially because the ‘enemy’ was very energetic, trying to climb on our tanks, shooting at us from the roofs, etc. We had one guy on the front slope of the tank trying to shoot our driver. So we did the only thing we could do. We swung the gun tube across the slope and knocked the guy off. Afterwards, I felt kind of bad about it, but hey, if you’re going to fight dirty…

It was all pretty good and realistic training, complete with non-combatants and angry villagers getting in the way, and our last mission provides a nice contrast with our last Scout mission, detailed in the previous post.

We were the outer cordon, controlling access into and out of the training area (mostly just annoying the civilian dump trucks who had to weave through our barbed wire while we glared at them for interrupting our training) when we got the call that the raid team had taken high casualties. They needed us to go into the town. Now, during scout side, as you’ll recall, our last mission ended with us spotting enemy from 3 km away, then driving home. On tank side, we got this call over the radio: “Blue 1 (our PL), this is Hawk 6 (the Troop Commander). The raid element has sustained heavy casualties, the whole village is resisting and has been all day. We need you to assault the town and lay waste.”

Seriously. He said ‘lay waste’ to the town. So we did! Four tanks, rolling down main street in the fairly large town and firing every weapon we had (all four that is) at every building, window, shadow, and enemy we saw. By the time we left, the whole area was shrouded in smoke and was certainly (though notionally) leveled. It was a complete thrill to be up in the hatch of a 70 ton tank as it rolled down a town street firing main gun rounds and machine gun rounds with abandon. It was a heart stopping moment and one where I decided that I loved my job.

This is ABOLC in a photo.

All of the doctrinal disorganization of ABOLC explained...

Halloween '11 a.k.a. Why we're the most feared Army in the world. LT 'the Count' Bone and LT 'Cookie Monster' Thomas play some Rock Band at the Platoon Halloween party.

Scouts out!

The view from the .50 Caliber while waiting for the rest of the Platoon to get back from a patrol. Definitely the best job to have on a fine Autumn day.

Loading up the Stryker for our final mission. This is our lead vehicle with the .50 Caliber on the right and the LRAS the big boxy thing to the left of it.

5th Platoon 'Attack Cats' looking cool. L-R: LTs Culver, Divito, Thomas, Mian, Smith, Condon, with Estep in the turret.

LT Vansyoc briefing his mission on the last night. LTs Smith and Shepard take notes.

I sit here at the end of another brutal 12 day week, looking back, glad that it’s done and simply amazed at the amount of information that I’ve crammed in my brain. Our instructors like to call it ‘drinking from the fire hose’ and the image that this phrase conjures up is entirely appropriate. Of course, once we’re done drinking from said fire hose, it often feels like we’re beaten with it; it’s amazing how much your body just aches after five days of running with body armor, weapon and gear, slamming into the ground, jumping across creeks, hitting your head on pointy pieces of vehicle, etc.

Anyway, in this week’s post, I’d like to give you, dearest reader, a little taste of what a scout mission is like. In our 5 days in the field, with rotating leadership, we planned, prepped and executed 8 scout missions. This left little time for sleep or recovery and it was pretty exhausting. Our days started at 5am and ended around 11pm which wouldn’t have been bad except we were sleeping in our Humvees (not as comfortable as the civilian version, especially with boxes of ammunition, rifles, machine guns, radios, everywhere that your feet could possibly go comfortably). On top of that, we had to pull guard all night, which, with only three of us in the Humvee, meant one hour up, two down, all night, all 5 days. Even more, it got down into the low 30s with a cold wind whipping down the road into our patrol base, so your face, torso, and hands absolutely froze while your legs were a toasty warm. It was unpleasant, and by the last night we were all hurting pretty badly. Of course, the last night we were out we had to do our one night mission of the week.

I’m going to go through the night mission for a few reasons. 1) All of our other missions were pretty ragged. We are all new to scouting and it didn’t help that SFC Maloy, our primary instructor, was liberal with the artillery simulators (loud fireworks that, well, simulate artillery fire). Each time one went off, the mission would be on hold while we pulled ‘wounded’ out of the hit Humvee, brought them to a clearing and called in a medical helicopter. Our last mission was therefore the culmination of all we’d learned on the previous missions. 2) This mission was at night, which is just cool. 3) We got to use Strykers for this mission, which was pretty awesome. And 4) we got to use lots of our cool scouting equipment, most notably the LRAS, a giant box with two handles sticking out of it. It can zoom up to 50x (or something like that) and use thermal sights. It’s a pretty amazing optic, and it’s a little like being able to see in the dark, but 50x times better than you would in the day.

The Platoon Leader for this mission was Todd Vansyoc, a National Guardsman from Iowa, and he received the mission around 4pm. The mission was to travel to and observe a village for signs of enemy presence. The village had been attacked and cleared earlier in the day by another ABOLC company, but we were going in to see if the enemy had come back or not. The mission was to begin at 10pm, and with sunset at around 7pm, it was going to be pitch dark. We were given 2 Strykers, one with the LRAS, and one Humvee and 12 hours to complete the mission. LT Vansyoc briefed the mission, assigned us to vehicles, made sure our weapons were prepped and we knew the route and mission.  We were to get within two kilometers of the village, then unload the majority of the platoon to sneak on foot to within eyesight and earshot of the village to see if we could see any enemy. At 9:30pm we headed out to test fire weapons and get on our way.

Now, this mission had been attempted by the other two scout Platoons each of the nights preceding ours. Neither of the Platoons had even reached the village, instead getting hit on the way and being forced to turn back with knocked out vehicles and casualties. Their mistake was taking a much shorter route, but one that passed close enough to the village for the enemy to hear the vehicles, at which point they attacked the scouts with all they had. We didn’t know this, but the PL correctly identified the short route as too dangerous and decided to send us the long way around. Going 15 kph this route took us almost an hour to negotiate and had far more turns to take, but we would be able to approach the village from as far out as we wanted without worrying about being heard or spotted. I was navigating the lead vehicle using night vision optics attached to my helmet (no mean feat considering our maps are terrible and there are no road signs, just dead reckoning and a little luck) and we inched forward on the road leading to village, waiting to crest a hill that I knew would be able to overlook the village. I wasn’t sure if it would be far enough away, so we took it nice and slow. Finally, we crested the hill, the vehicle commander, Kerry Mian, stopped the driver, and I crawled forward to look through the LRAS.

We were about 2 kilometers from the village as it turned out. From our perch on the hill, we could see every inch of the village and, when zoomed in to 50 power, the detail was incredible. It was a pitch dark night, two kilometers away and I could see the cigarettes dangling from the villager’s hands in the thermal image. I began scanning the village, noting everthing I was seeing and relaying it to LT Mian who was calling it up to LT Vansyoc who was filtering it for critical information and sending it up to the Troop Commander. With such a good view of the village, it was possible that we might be able to determine if there were enemy in the village without sending out people on foot who are decidedly NOT stealthy in the pitch dark.

The view was amazing. There were three ‘villagers’ loafing by one of the buildings, smoking and occasionally dancing to Arabic music that we could, incredibly, hear faintly drifting over the long distance (we later learned that sound travels farther in the cool night air). It was apparent that these guys hadn’t heard us sneak up and it felt vaguely voyeuristic but distinctly thrilling to be watching their every move from such a long distance. We watched them for almost an hour, but we saw no weapons or any sign they were an overt threat and we were getting ready to send the dismounts in to get a closer look when the Troop Commander called LT Vansyoc and told him that a curfew was in effect and that anyone seen out past midnight was assumed hostile. It had just passed midnight and our mission was accomplished. We could then call to follow on forces who would raid the village again, no doubt surprising the enemy who hadn’t realized that we were watching their smallest movement from a long distance. Mission complete, we headed home to sleep well.

I later talked to one of the guys who’d been in the village (they were soldiers from our support unit in the 16^th Cav) and said they were shocked that we’d been able to see them and that they hadn’t heard anything. When they’d gotten the radio call to come back to the patrol base they’d been surprised considering the amount of action that had occurred on the other nights. It was a proud moment for all of us, and indicative of the professionalism and skill we are developing as a platoon.

They won't forget the night the 5th Platoon 'Attack Cats' went stalking in the woods of Georgia.

Into the Wild Green Yonder...

Off to the field until Sunday! We'll be performing scout missions one after another all day for several days, except we'll be using our fantastic gun trucks (HMMWVs with mounted .50 Calibers, some of which even have AC!). Looking forward to it would be a stretch simply because the knowledge that my next shower is a ways away isn't exactly wonderful. Plus the nighttime temperatures will be dropping into the low 30s so...

Either way! I'll survive, as will all of the members of our little band of brothers (5th Platoon) and hopefully we'll be savvier, more combat effective leaders on the other end. Motivation and focus shouldn't be a problem, especially after spending this morning watching Al Jazeera footage of our vehicles getting ripped up by IEDs and women and men blowing themselves up in public places all over Iraq and Afghanistan... It always reminds me of that mantra I heard so often at West Point and so often ignored. "Just remember, right now, the enemy is training to kill you. Train better."

Till next week!

Prepping for Iraq. Just a little too late...

While fighting the Red Horde tooth and nail in the forests of Fort Benning, it is easy to forget the real fight happening just around the corner. Today was one of those days when it came home to roost, academically perhaps, but it was there nonetheless.

We started the day with a brisk 8-mile ruck march starting at 0400, although to be perfectly honest, even the rapid 15 minute mile pace seemed a breeze due to the weather. All of my previous rucking experiences have taken place in warmer weather. Much warmer weather. Late fall in Columbus, GA in the early morning hours does not qualify as warmer weather. Thus, I've discovered that my ideal rucking temperature is about 45 degrees F. It was certainly chilly starting out, but walking 15 minute miles is no stroll so you heat up nicely and by the end of eight miles everyone was steaming nicely (literally). That excellent start to the day was followed by a selection of three eclectic, yet apropos, classes.

The first class was about Afghanistan, its culture, and people. I've done some reading, historical and current, and read the news over the past years so I have a pretty solid grasp of the basics of the Afghan state. However, our instructor, a professor of cultural anthropology with years working in Afghanistan, painted a very detailed and very disturbing picture of the people and the fight in that far corner of the world. We received a general overview of the Afghan people, the various ethnic groups and conflicting regional loyalties, but we centered in on the Pushtu people in the region the American armed forces operate in. The almost frightening web of conflicting loyalties, blood feuds, infant mortality, and ignorance left many of the LTs with a feeling of foreboding that the instructor did little to dispel. Without getting any further into that, this class brought to the forefront an issue that many of us have noticed since the first week.

It all started with an innocent question during Week 1 of ABOLC when one of the 2LTs asked an NCO how a certain scenario he'd given from Iraq applied to the fighting in Afghanistan. The response was certainly surprising. He said, "Well, I don't know. I don't think any of the [roughly 30] NCOs or Officers in Hawk Troop have ever been to Afghanistan. I think SFC S------- over in Lightning Troop has been. I'll ask him." There it was. None of us are going to fight in Iraq. That fight is over for us. Those of us who are deploying are deploying to Afghanistan and that's all there is too it. But there's no one to tell us anything about it. I don't know how it happened and it certainly wasn't planned, but I had forgotten in the past months of Soviet mechanized formations and planning operations through Baghdad that none of that is likely to be of much help in a few months. Something to think about for all of us...

The last two classes were on convoy security operations, which is the lot that has fallen to many in the Armor community over the past years, and how to question locals and use interpreters. Both classes were intensely practical and correspondingly boring (I'm probably well on my way to seeing 10,000 PowerPoint slides during this course) but they reminded all of us of what our actual mission will be overseas despite the intensive classes and exercises in high intensity conflict that we've been immersed in these last three weeks. It's an uncertain world and an Army caught between two fights and two realities, and to be honest, it shows in our training. Time will tell if this is a bad thing or a good thing.

Battling the Reds, Two Decades On

Tactics phase is upon us! And by us, I mean me. And the other fellow ABOLC sufferers. For the last three weeks (I beg forgiveness for my lackadaisical updating of this blog, I have no excuse, really, but I promise it’s nothing personal!) we have been learning everything there is to know about the Soviet Army, Soviet doctrine, and how to defeat it. Every day seems like the day before the beginning of Tom Clancy’s thriller Red Storm Rising and will see our ABOLC class rushed to West Germany to stem the Warsaw Pact’s offensive through the Fulda Gap. 

I am embellishing, slightly of course, but my point isn’t very far from the truth. The Armor branch, which, as you know consists of Armor and Cavalry Scouts, was not designed for an insurgency. It was built for high intensity conflict, military speak for conventional warfare. So, in order to train for such a fight, we need an enemy to fight against. And the only enemy we’ve had with anything approaching a solid tactical doctrine is the Soviet Union (which is still used by Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, other fairly insignificant former Soviet countries, North Korea, China to a lesser extent, and Iran to an even lesser extent). The basic plan for the Armor branch is this. In the event of a pitched battle with Red forces, the Scouts operate forward and to the flanks of the Armor units. They, as their name implies, scout any number of things. They determine route trafficablility, the size and load capability of bridges, the width of tunnels, the size of overpasses, the slope of hills and the radius of curves. They’re also looking for the enemy, their size, strength, activity and location. Once they’ve seen what there is to see, and hopefully not been seen in return, they report up their findings. Then the tanks come in. As one of my classmates put it, “Tanks are too easy. On the scout side, when you get shot at, you have to think, what am I going to do? Should I withdraw? Attack? How many are there, what are they firing? Is that the main force or a forward element? On the tank side, when the shooting starts, you get in a line abreast facing the fire and you attack, attack, attack.” I couldn’t have said it better myself…

Also in these last three weeks, we have perfected the art of planning and giving a mission. As in everything the army does, from clearing a weapon to solving an ethical dilemma (seriously, on Friday I learned the 7-step process for solving an ethical dilemma, as well as an acronym to remember the values of the people of the United States {that seriously exists, I just don’t think the people of the United States know…}), the army insists on using easy steps that are the same every time. Thus, the 5 paragraph Operations Order. Although the names are relatively simple, Situation, Mission, Execution, Sustainment, Command and Signal, they are a seething mass of seemingly unrelated details that take many hours to figure out and almost an hour to brief. We’ve been given two of these missions, one scout and one tank (the tank one being far easier- go there and kill those BMPs and T-80s- Soviet armored vehicles of course) and briefed them both to highly critical cadre. I managed to do quite well on both, but even after 12+ hours of work on both, it was amazing how much I still found that needed work. The level of perfection demanded by our instructors can be frustrating, but it’s easy to remember that they’re the only ones who can ensure that we’re prepared to go to war as soon as we graduate in December. That’s a pretty heavy weight.

I have more to relate, I promise, and I’ll do my best to get another post in before Wednesday when I’m off to the field for another week. Until then, have a wonderful Monday!