Written by Spc. Patrick Kirby
40th Public Affairs Detachment
Fort Campbell, KY – The range comes on the heels of their recent Joint Regional Training Center mission as opposing forces.
“The training up to this event was pretty in-depth,” said 2nd Lt. Josh Hartwell, a native of Crete, Nebraska, and the officer-in-charge of the squad live-fire range. “After returning from JRTC we got right after it again with a team live-fire and now with the squad live-fire.”
The range integrated the crawl-walk-run methodology by starting with a blank-fire during the day, followed by an after action review. The soldiers then rehearsed their hand and arm signals, and their patrolling tactics more and went through the range again as a live-fire.
After all soldiers had successfully gone through the blank-fire and live-fire day portion, they began rehearsing for night fire, again starting with a blank-fire. The night live-fire was the culminating event for the soldiers, integrating everything they had learned during the day and night fire to run a successful squad attack.
“Sticking to the fundamentals will make us better,” said Sgt. Sa-Voughn Stephens, a native of Memphis, Tennessee, and a team leader from Company C., 3-187th Inf. Regt. “Going slow makes us more lethal on the battlefield. Overall, my soldiers were smoother and a lot more deliberate with listening to the commands. Especially at night, there’s a lot more to think about. You could tell they were well-rehearsed for the last iteration.”
The squad attack started with the soldiers patrolling through the woods and walking into a close ambush. After reacting to contact the soldiers pushed through and continued patrolling. They were then met with a bunkered position and heavy enemy fire.
“The training mission felt successful,” said Pfc. Matusz Krezwinski, a native of Bialsko-Bliala, Poland, infantrymen, Company C. 3-187th Inf. Regt. “I could see our squad working together better than we did at our last team live-fire range. It was successful because we shot, moved and communicated as a team.”
After the flanking team of the squad cleared the bunker and pushed through the objective they began their sweeps of the objective. While sweeping the objective they found a friendly casualty. The aide and litter team was sent in to begin administering aide and their team leader radioed in the nine-line medevac to begin the process of getting the casualty to the proper care.
“The training went well over all; had to ‘knock the rust off’ at first but the soldiers fell right back into place,” said Hartwell. “Next we head to platoon live-fire range.”
The company will be back in the field in the coming weeks for their platoon live-fire range.
