Ready for anything

Soldiers from 8-1 Cav. test readiness for war

By Rachel Young, Northwest Guardian

Soldiers from 8th Squadron, 1st Cavalry Regiment completed their first troop-level live-fire exercise this week in Yakima Training Center.

One of the missions each troop had to complete was a cordon and search. On Tuesday morning it was A Troop’s turn to defeat the notional enemy.

With the Yakima shoot house as the back drop for the scenario, the troop suspected that an insurgent was making improvised explosive devices inside a flour factory.

From inside the make-believe factory, the hum of Stryker engines could be heard getting louder, and closer. The vehicles rolled onto the objective, all but obscured by thick clouds of dust. Soldiers dismounted from the vehicles and moved into a stack before entering the factory. With a crash, one Soldier kicked open the doors.

Suddenly the sounds of gunfire and people shouting in Arabic blared into the rooms. Two stacks moved from room to room, clearing the building, but not before suffering two casualties. One Soldier was shot in the chest and another had his leg blown off by an explosion in the back of the building.

Fellow Soldiers worked quickly and efficiently to staunch the flow of blood and evacuate both simulated casualties before leaving the building.

Captain Adam Latham, A Troop commander, and Sgt. 1st Class James Hanson, a platoon sergeant in B Troop who served as a safety during the exercise, were looking for the Soldiers to work as a well-oiled machine, from tactical movement to communication.

“For this particular field exercise, the squadron’s overall focus is troop level tactics,” Hanson said. “We’re looking at how the troop overall accomplished the mission.”

He was looking for good communication and how each element worked together to complete the task. Hanson saw a lot of improvement between the dry, blank and live-fire runs.

“I’m looking for flexibility in my guys, being able to adapt to missions while out there on the move,” Latham said. “I’m looking for their ability to isolate a building and then go in and destroy the enemy inside and find any sort of information that could be useful for follow-on operations.”

About 75 percent of the A Troop Soldiers have combat experience, according to Latham, giving the troop commander a wealth of valuable knowledge to draw on for his less experienced Soldiers.

“When we do the AAR process, when we talk to the guys about...what we can do better, that’s the forum where those guys can bring those lessons learned out,” Latham said.

The Soldiers of 8-1 Cav. have progressed from squad-level training at the beginning of the year to their first troop level exercises this summer, with dramatic progress among the Soldiers.

“We’re getting close to being ready for whatever mission the Army calls us to do,” Hanson said.