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thedrifter
07-11-05, 08:12 PM
07.11.2005
IRR Callups See Much Paper and PowerPoint, Little Combat Training
By Nathaniel R. Helms

FORT BENNING, GA – Growing everywhere at the vaunted "Home of the Infantry" is the ubiquitous kudzu vine, which covers everything it touches in a shimmering mass of green vegetation.

The same description can be applied to the grandly named CONUS Replacement Center (CRC), the Army's training facility at Fort Benning for preparing the recalled Individual Ready Reserve soldiers sent here in preparation for immediate deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan. It is there all right, but it is not what it seems.

Recalled Army reservists practice probing for buried mines.

The CRC at Fort Benning is tucked away in modern, two-story barracks on Kelly Hill where the 3rd Brigade of the 3rd Infantry Division was stationed until it deployed to Iraq last year. Today, Kelly Hill is lonely quiet place where several acres of modern, multi-million dollar barracks, tank parks and maintenance facilities sit empty and idle. All around it are the martial trappings of the infantry: rifle ranges named for past heroes, parade fields where battle-ready formations once proudly marched, and monuments attesting to the past greatness of the American Army.

Conspicuously absent are any indications that there are troops there desperately preparing for the deadly enemy they will face in a few short weeks. During the middle of a duty day, the area appears virtually deserted. Except for a few construction workers maintaining roads and buildings in the area, nothing moves. The only indication that training was going on at all are the distant sounds of weapons popping and chattering at the "weapons familiarization" courses underway on the firing ranges at the bottom of the hill.

The CRC is run by Florida Army Reservists from the 641st Area Support Group whose peacetime home is near Tampa. Although there are a few combat veterans among them, most are not. The four training companies in the ad hoc battalion are commanded by officers with a variety of military occupations. Although the Florida reservists are hosted by Fort Benning, they actually are under the joint command of the 81st Regional Readiness Command based in Birmingham, Ala., TRADOC and the First U.S. Army in a complicated arrangement that has evolved since the Pentagon first announced IRR callups in July 2004. At each company's core are roughly 15 drill sergeants and other cadre responsible for motivating and training the often reluctant troops who once thought they had left the Army behind for good.

Sitting next door to the CRC is the so-called "retention" facility for wounded and injured National Guard and Reservists home from Iraq and Afghanistan who have been placed on medical hold. They are stationed there indefinitely to receive medical care and counseling while they impatiently wait for out-processing back into civilian life.

Army officials categorically refused to allow DefenseWatch to either visit the retention barracks or talk to any of its commanders or residents. The visit was requested because the IRR soldiers next door often speak with the holdovers after training hours to learn what they can about what they will soon face themselves.

"We asked," explained Fort Benning spokeswoman Monica Manganaro. "They had a meeting and nobody wanted to talk to a reporter."

Regardless, one soldier stuck there said he had been waiting for orders to go home for six weeks, another for two months. Neither was aware of the meeting that precluded this reporter's visit, they said. The pair didn't want to talk anyway, they said, because speaking to a reporter might jeopardize their chances of leaving Fort Benning as soon as possible.

"I would almost rather be back in Iraq than here," one of them said.

"Almost," his buddy agreed, "almost!"

The irony of their current situation is not lost to the strange mix of soldiers who are temporarily living on top of Kelly Hill. The waiting combat soldiers found it both amusing and somewhat outlandish that the Army would put "new meat" waiting to go to war next door to wounded and injured soldiers waiting to go home, but it somehow seems perfectly natural, they say, in the strange environment in which they all find themselves. Underscoring the entire scene is a closed Subway Sandwich Shop down the road that declares on a sign outside its locked glass doors that it "temporally closed" and will reopen when the soldiers come home.

"I guess we are not soldiers," one trooper observed.

Footnote: For more than a week before the Fourth of July holiday DefenseWatch negotiated with Fort Benning and Department of the Army officials for permission to observe the four-week long program to reindoctrinate former soldiers and supposedly prepare them for combat conditions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Ultimately the Army refused the request, citing a lack of planning time to prepare for this reporter's visit.

Despite the Army's refusal to cooperate, it was not difficult to learn why the service is unwilling to showcase how it prepares its hastily-recalled IRR soldiers who will be facing combat in only a few short weeks. The entire program has the air of a badly produced situation comedy. The only thing the IRR replacements are apparently prepared for when they leave Fort Benning is the reality of what is to come. Learning how they will survive must come from somewhere else, said one sergeant who works there.

The first thing an observer discovers at Kelly Hill is that nowhere is there a sense of urgency visible at the CRC. While it was impossible to establish precisely what goes on within the "training" day without direct access, some aspects of the program were readily identifiable.

About 80 to 90 IRR replacements arrive at CRC every two weeks, participants say. Some are infantrymen (the Army has called up more than 300 grunts since May) while others are combat engineers, truck drivers, military police, civil affairs specialists and support personnel, the sergeant explained.

A few of the arrivals are commissioned officers, including a retired lieutenant colonel from the combat engineer branch who is in training there, and an infantry captain who has been out of the Army for nine years. But soldiers say most of the replacements are enlisted men who served between two and four years of active duty and have been recalled to complete their obligation.

Usually the recalled reservists arrive on the Sunday before training begins with nothing more than the clothes on their backs, a small suitcase and a set of orders. The soldiers arrive in small groups throughout the day and evening from the nearby Columbus airport on a civilian shuttle bus. After receiving sheets and blankets they are assigned in pairs to the semi-private rooms in the CRC barracks and told to settle in.

Because they don't usually have any uniforms, they are told to fall out in their civilian clothes for the initial formation. It takes about a week to obtain new uniforms, which consists "forest" camouflaged BDUs and boots, and a gray and black nylon exercise suit. They are not issued the Army's "Class A" uniform during their stay. In the meantime, the uniform of the day is usually shorts, t-shirts and running shoes.

continued.....

thedrifter
07-11-05, 08:12 PM
One soldier who shared his experiences with DefenseWatch since getting called up last fall is a combat veteran and reserve drill sergeant who trains the IRR callups at Fort Benning. He described the...