http://www.dailypress.com/news/dp-84805 ... idget-news
Two days of basic training in Hampton means trading in wings for guns and ground combat - just in case.
BY JIM HODGES
247-4633
July 27, 2006
LANGLEY AIR FORCE BASE -- It's a this-is-a-Humvee lesson, given because the Air Force doesn't have them, and the students are getting down to the basics.
You don't get much more basic than changing a tire.
Shots ring out.
Ambush!
Everyone freezes. Adrenaline rushes.
"C'mon!" yells Tech. Sgt. Jeremy Cassady, "let's get the tire changed!"
Hands tremble. A wheel lug becomes a moving target. "Let's go! Let's go!"
LANGLEY AIR FORCE BASE
It was Wednesday at Langley Air Force Base, and if the 38 students' attention spans had been flagging in the heat, they were piqued in a hurry.
War is like that, and this was an object lesson, one of many compressed into 16 hours of instruction mandated by Air Combat Command. Two years ago, ACC began to understand that some airmen and women were finding themselves in Iraq, wondering what all the shooting was about.
From that sprang Expeditionary Combat Skills, a two-day basic training that has at its core an understanding that the war in Iraq is one that has no front or rear and that computer technicians or supply clerks can wind up shooting at people.
And being shot at.
"The Army has done this all along: 'I'm an infantryman first, and I have technical expertise second,' " said Tech. Sgt. Matt Barresi, the noncommissioned officer in charge of the school. " 'I'm a trigger-puller first, and everything comes second.' That mindset is one we've had to adopt."
It's a matter of self-defense but also one of understanding that job definitions blur in this war.
On the north side of the base, where Langley's firefighters normally practice, a group of 10 men and two women in green uniforms and vests, carrying rifles with red flash-suppressors clipped to their barrels, hit the ground on command, then rolled.
Then they split, and a group of five on the right side got up and started to move. They were practicing sweeping an area, a move more in the job description of a Marine or an Army infantryman.
Hardly an airman.
"Searching and clearing buildings, I don't know that any of us are doing that over there right now," Barresi said. "But I do know that we got thrown into the whole convoy mission, and there are solid Air Force folks doing convoys there now."
The prospect of convoy duty and providing security in gun trucks in Iraq has changed the mindset of the Air Force.
"This is Army training," said Master Sgt. Charles Dickens from Shelter Island, N.Y., standing in the shade of a tree during a break. "We're training to be ground troops, I guess, and it's new to us old-timers."
He has 21 years in the service.
"Twenty-one years ago, we had a Warrior Day," he said. "One day you're crawling in the dirt, firing the weapon and all of that stuff."
Now he has two more days of it and understands why.
"Any one of us could be doing it," said Dickens, who works in logistics. "We could be going to the rear. We could be driving a vehicle, marching along with a convoy."
Weapons training, including the AK-47 most popular with insurgents the world over, is handled in an hour. Students are shown how to load a weapon and take the safety cap off.
"The idea isn't to make you expert at the 240, the 249 and the 203," Barresi said, rattling off a list of weapons. "But if this is the only thing standing between you getting killed or getting captured, and your primary weapon isn't functioning or you're out of ammo, you can at least take that weapon and employ it."
Improvised explosive devices - roadside bombs - are explained in an hour. A military lawyer tells them how far they can go if they have a prisoner. They are taught how to crawl under fire and learn that the canteen goes on the side or on the back, not on the front.
"Some students come into this because it's something to be checked off on their deployment checklist," Barresi said of Page 2, Item 9 on a form he has signed hundreds of times.
"But this knowledge can be the difference in your getting killed."
That's repeated over and over again, but it probably doesn't have to be. The students' attention is focused in the first few minutes of the first day when they see a slide show of a young woman smiling, playing with a child and her friends and family, playing with a softball team.
Airman Elizabeth N. Jacobson of Riviera Beach, Fla., was killed in a convoy on Sept. 28, 2005.
"It's been a real eye-opener the last two days," said Staff Sgt. Rachel Gray.
"I teared up. She was holding what looked like her son, and I'm a single parent. I have a 2-year-old daughter, Kaylie."
Paying attention for two days for her was certainly no problem.
The Second Amendment: America's original homeland security.
Ya just can’t take life too seriously, because you aren’t going to get out of it alive anyway.
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