In the box, part III: We’re watching them

Soldiers from the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment, a Fort Irwin-based Operations group, and Iraqi-Americans replicate the Iraqi environment in towns scattered across the desert at the post. They have created a provincial government, a police force and insurgents who try to blow it all up.

During a rotation in mid-October, the 11th ACR got a chance to train against themselves. Desert Dispatch City Editor Aaron Aupperlee embedded with Echo Troop from the 1st Squadron of the 11th ACR to see the training first-hand.

This is the last of three reports.

FORT IRWIN — They must have been watching CNN.

Not long after news reports of the 1990 Chevy Caprice with two holes in the trunk one for the barrel or a rifle and one for a high-powered scope — used by the Washington D.C. sniper team to pick off pedestrians in 2002 — circulated, United States officials in Iraq saw copycats. They found cars with similar setups and snipers with similar deadly aim.

“The Iraqi people had actually seen that on their news and used that against us,” Sgt. Thomas Marrs said.

And Fort Irwin was watching them.

Not long after the D.C. sniper copycat cars showed up in Iraq, they showed up in the training environment at the National Training Center. Within 72 hours of the first car-base sniper attack from Iraq, soldiers at Fort Irwin hauled cars out into the desert, cut holes into them and showed soldiers bound for Iraq the latest threat they would face, Marrs said.

In its 25-year history, the National Training Center has changed its posture to fit different enemies. During the 1980s, American tanks clashed with tanks modeled after a Soviet force. As the conflicts switched the desert of Iraq, so did the training environment. When the current Iraq war started, tanks still rolled across the desert in a Cold War fashion, but soon model Iraqi towns sprung up, signaling a shift in the war on the ground in Iraq.

Now, Col. Mark Calvert, commander of the 11th Armored Calvary Regiment, estimates aspects of the training environment change every six months at Fort Irwin. Calvert said Fort Irwin uses the fresh view of the conflict brought to the post by recent combat veterans. Recently, Brig. Gen. Dana J.H. Pittard returned from Iraq to take command of Fort Irwin, and Col. Randall Dragon assumed command of the Operations Group fresh from the fight. Commanders on the ground in Iraq also send intelligence to Fort Irwin so conditions can change almost in real-time. Since the war started, commanders at Fort Irwin have focused on house to house maneuvers, IED defeat tactics and, most recently, countering the threat from snipers.

“Counter-sniper operations have been something that we’ve focused on,” Calvert said. “The enemy has reverted to using snipers as a weapon. I say reverted because snipers have been around for a long time,”

Marrs has seen the fight change during his two deployments to Iraq and the training change during his time at Fort Irwin. He said when he first deployed in 2003, the Iraqis fought “gun to gun” with the Americans, firing from buildings and other strategic locations.

“And they realized that couldn’t work so they switched to roadside bombs,” he said. “Now they’ve gone back to that man-to-man stuff.”

When Marrs went to Iraq as a dismounted squad leader with the 11 ACR in 2005, the main threat was IEDs, and his squad suffered an attack almost every time they went out. To counter the IED threat, in part, Marrs and other soldiers in Iraq began soliciting information on IED networks and placements from Iraqis in towns. However, snipers eventually took advantage of that tactic.

“These kids come; you’re not paying attention,” Marrs said, “and you’re basically an open target.”

The National Training Center reacted to the surge of sniper attacks in Iraq by incorporating it into the training program. Marrs and other members of Echo Troop act as snipers, waiting in buildings and the hills for unassuming soldiers from visiting brigades walk by. Their shots alert the soldier to a threat Marrs said he had not seen in three years.

“A sniper really takes the advantage away from you on the ground,” he said. “It puts us on the defense as soon as we get out. It’s definitely not a good thing.”

In the box, Fort Irwin’s simulated war zone, the sniper tactic means more gun fights in the towns. Instead of focusing on setting and blowing up IEDs, opposing force soldiers such as Specialist Michael Roley fire directly on soldiers. In some respects, the focus on snipers has overshadowed the IED defeat work.

“Now we just got pretty much gun fights,” Roley said. “Your fight is on the ground; your fight is in the buildings. You see here what you see when you get there.”

Contact the writer:

(760) 256-4121 or aaron_aupperlee@link.freedom.com

Winning the war over tea

Sgt. Thomas Marrs remembers drinking a lot of tea during his previous deployments to Iraq. He doesn’t think tea will win the war, but he thinks it will help.

The 11th Armored Cavalry soldier has been to Iraq and speaks fluent Arabic, a skill he considers as equally valuable as his warfighting training. In reflecting on his past deployments, Marrs often spoke of the friendships he developed with Iraqis, friendships which provided him with untold amounts of intelligence that saved soldiers’ lives.

Arabic, he said, allowed the Iraqis to come to know him and trust him.

“It makes them say, ‘He’s a guy who actually wants to learn where I come from.’ I gained their pure respect,” Marrs said.

Trust, he said, is a major issue facing U.S. soldiers in Iraq. Historically, the U.S. and its military was demonized in Iraq. He said after Desert Storm, the U.S. left assuring the Iraqi people life would improve. It did not, and Iraqis still hold that against Americans, Marrs said. Now, soldiers must transform that demonic image into a friendly one, not an easy task for an 18-year-old carrying an M-16. Marrs said while the commanders spend much time with the Iraqi leadership working on ways to improve the quality of life for Iraqis, soldiers do not.

“It’s not the commanders who are making that impression,” Marrs said. “This is first war for a lot soldiers; they’re 18-year-olds.”

But that perception broke down the more Marrs got to know the people and the more Arabic he spoke. Col. Mark Calvert, commander of the 11th ACR, recognized the importance of Arabic as well. When 11th ACR’s training rotation ended at the end of October, Calvert said one area they found they could improve on was Arabic training at the soldier level and across the regiment.

Arabic might not win the war, but it will help win the Iraqis. Marrs said the people in Iraq disrupting the war are not Iraqis, and the main mission of the U.S. should be to convince the Iraqi people to fight against the insurgents and not with them. That persuasion, Marrs believes, might just have to happen over cups of tea.