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| A 503rd Infantry Regiment
(Airborne) Soldier learns how to repel down a cliff in Qalat.
Instructors from the Army Mountain Warfare School taught
Soldiers repelling, well clearing, cold weather dressing, and
other special techniques they would need in their missions. |
QALAT, Afghanistan - "Cold weather training is the weakest part of the
Army and therefore the most useful thing we teach. Soldiers don’t
understand the effects of altitude and cold weather on themselves or
their equipment," declared Staff Sgt.
Larry Garner, an Army Mountain Warfare School instructor. But that is about to change.
Instructors with the Army Mountain Warfare School
deployed to Afghanistan for the first time recently to share their expertise in mountaineering and survival at
various forward
operating bases around Afghanistan.
Teaching Soldiers that snow can actually stop
bullets, that curves of the land, such as a cliff, can be a benefit to
recovery operations rather than a menace, and that all tools have more
than one use - is all in a days work for these instructors.
More than 200 U.S. Soldiers, in country, have been
trained since February in skills including: dressing for cold weather and its effects on
equipment, mountaineering and survival skills, recovering caches from
wells and caves, patient evacuation, and stream crossings.
“One of the main focuses in the course is how to live
and survive in cold weather - seeing how harsh the winters get in some
places in Afghanistan,” said Garner, an instructor
since 1994 from N.C. “We teach them how to use the snow to their
advantage, as leverage in evacuating a casualty or anchor points for
repelling.”
Not only infantry Soldiers go through the training.
They train explosive ordnance personnel with emphasis on cache recovery
operations and techniques. Ranging from medics and cooks to front line
Soldiers and even mechanics, the instruction starts everyone with the
basics – knot tying. Knowing how to tie knots and understand what they
are used for is the basic necessity for any operation using ropes, said
Staff Sgt. Christopher Bushway, AMWS instructor since 1991 from Maine.
The 503rd Infantry Regiment Airborne has
been performing missions involving stream crossings, and in the States,
Soldiers were taught to use trees to assist in crossing. There is not
an abundance of trees in Afghanistan, so they learned how to use rocks
and other equipment to their advantage for crossing, explained Garner.
“We go to the units and ask them about their
concerns, their missions and the difficulties they have with the
environment they go up against,” said Bushway. “Then, we take
what they are concerned about and teach them how to perform the tasks
better and safer.”
The instruction was worked around the unit's high-tempo
training schedule, so Garner and Bushway maximized what the
Soldiers were taught into intensive instructional sessions focusing on the
units’ mission and needs. The longest training period with a unit was
seven days with a combination of the 3rd Battalion, 116th
Infantry Regiment and the 25th Infantry Division at Bagram
Airfield, whereas back at the Vermont schoolhouse courses are two weeks
long.
“The Soldiers don’t have a lot of gear on hand,”
explained Garner. “We teach them that every tool they have has more
than one use, how to be more effective with what they do have, and how
to do it safely.”
Although Garner and
Bushway have headed home, come September, five other instructors will be
deploying to continue training and giving Soldiers confidence needed in
a combat zone to survive if they ever found themselves in a harsh
environment or situation with limited equipment. |
