Gearing up for next mission
4th Brigade Combat Team hits Fort Carson firing line to prepare for duty in Afghanistan
By Julie Hutchinson, Special to the Rocky
Published February 25, 2009 at 12:05 a.m.

The young corporal standing chest-deep in the foxhole grips his machine gun, aims and fires.

The sound is harsh, the air smells of gunpowder, and the shiny brass shell casings pile up around the tripod that holds Cpl. Matt Moser's weapon.

Moser, 27, shows no sign of fatigue after two hours. Neither does his teammate, 22-year-old Cpl. Kyle Schaibley, scanning targets with binoculars and regularly ducking to retrieve belts of ammo.

Three hundred soldiers manned positions Tuesday at Range 141 Alpha, a khaki-colored swath of prairie on the south edge of Fort Carson.

For these troops, the exercise represents their last chance to test their weapons and themselves before they and the rest of the 3,200-member 4th Brigade Combat Team are sent to northeastern Afghanistan in early May to cover a piece of territory as big as Massachusetts.

The Army calls this live-fire exercise Operation Gunsmoke and it is serious business.

And timely, as well. In mid-February, President Barack Obama announced plans to send 17,000 more soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan, adding to the 38,000 already fighting a strengthening insurgency.

The soldiers of the 4th BCT had known since January 2008 that they would be going to Afghanistan this spring. All this week, twice a day, batches of soldiers are repeating this exercise to hone their skills. They know too well that the next time they do this will be in Afghanistan. And it will not be practice.

"That foxhole right there could be transplanted to Afghanistan," said Maj. T.G. Taylor, an Iraq veteran who heads with the brigade to Afghanistan in May.

"But this is not really what we do when we're over there," Taylor said. "This is only in emergency situations."

Separating the bad guys

What these soldiers will do most of the time in Afghanistan, Taylor said, is "separate the bad guys from the good citizens and then connect the good citizens with their government by helping to provide an environment where the bad guys can't flourish."

"The good citizens aren't going to turn to the bad guys if the bad guys aren't giving them what they need."

And what the people of Afghanistan need - and what these Fort Carson soldiers will help them develop during a 12-month deployment - are schools, safe cities and villages, and clean water.

But war cannot be scheduled, so the Army schedules exercises like this.

"What this exercise is about," Taylor said, "is building confidence in the weapons systems, building confidence in the leaders, building confidence in the soldiers' own personal skills."

Sgt. Christopher Klapp, a 31-year- old career soldier, watched the action from behind a pile of sandbags four deep. He said the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have changed the way things work in the Army.

"Everyone goes on patrol now," Klapp said. "Even the mechanics. Instead of focusing on our jobs, we're all infantrymen."

Good morning for the team

A mortar shell - the real thing - hits a half-mile beyond the foxhole where Moser and Schaibley are standing. First they see the flash, then the smoke, then the cloud of dirt.

Cheers erupt from dozens of other troops: It's a bull's eye.

The soldiers know this has been a good morning for their team. Later, commanders will ask the troops to critique their performance.

Moser and Schaibley, both of whom served as gunners in Iraq, are resolute about the mission that awaits them in eight weeks.

"I look forward to it," said Moser, a graduate of Penn State University in mechanical engineering who joined the Army about three years ago because he was bored.

"If I can stop younger guys from coming up and having to see this, I'll do it all day long," Moser said, referring to his hope that others won't have to go to war.

Schaibley, a native of Bloomington, Ill., who joined the Army in 2006, echoes his teammate's unsentimental take.

"It needs to be done," he said. "Sure, it takes strength, but if you dwell on getting hurt, you're not going to be able to do your job."

As the exercise wraps up, mortars, machine guns, M4s all begin firing; loud waves of chest-thudding sound, with little time in between.

"The last 15 minutes are like Armageddon," Klapp said.

A fitting analogy for soldiers preparing for war.

Ellie