NOWA DEBA TRAINING AREA, Poland -- Through rain, snow, sand and mud Soldiers of K Troop, 3rd Squadron, 2nd Cavalry Regiment have been training hard alongside Polish soldiers. Whether it's low crawling through sand, firing a Polish AK-74 on a range or running through the trees and dense shrubs, K Troop has been giving it there all, on Nowa Deba training area in Poland, since their convoy arrived on the Feb. 23.
The past three days has been a culmination of their training consisting of situational exercises, team-building events and even friendly competition between Polish and U.S. Soldiers, all leading up to a platoon live fire on March 4.
"It's been a lot of hard work, a lot of cold days out here just getting in the repetitions," said 1st Lt. Brian Elliott, native of Macomb, Illinois and platoon leader for 2nd platoon, K Troop, 3rd Squad, 2nd Cavalry Regiment. "We've been doing [basic-skill level] tasks during our troop situational exercises to make it perfect, building up from there to maneuver the squads, make sure that they're perfectly in sync with the fires and support by fires and really establish ourselves as a unit that can work in complicated scenarios."
While the goal of this training exercise has been honing Soldier skills and providing quality training, the keywords for K Troop's overall mission are rapid deployment.
"We're able to easily get a mission, react to the mission and execute under a short time line," said Elliott. "A lot of the times we don't have time to sit back and plan. It's a quick; we scratch some dirt out, get a couple sticks and create a hasty but effective type of attack and I think that we as an organization have shown that we are definitely able to rapidly deploy."
But the past few days have not just been solely work and no play. Polish and U.S. soldiers, on March 3, took a day to decompress and have some friendly competition with events such as mount-dismount drills of the armored vehicles, tire flip relays, buddy-carry relays, low crawl drills and tug-of-war. Both Polish and U.S. soldiers also got to familiarize and fire their allies' weapons, during a joint live-fire exercise.
"Yesterday was a really big moral booster for the men," Elliott said. "For the past few days we've been out here really training hard and for long hours, so yesterday we were able to go out there with the Polish and do something that was a little more laid back, including some competitive activities as well as some familiarization of fires. It allowed them to relax a little bit and get their minds right and refocused for the platoon live fire."
K Troop headed out to conduct their live-fire exercise on the misty morning of March 4. During the live-fire exercise, K Troop employed artillery and mortar assets, established fighting positions and breached obstacles. By the end, they held decisive terrain points in the exercise area which allowed follow-on forces the ability to freely maneuver.
The live fire was successful and Elliott commented that he thought the platoons performed quite well because of a combined effort from both platoon leaders and soldiers and their understanding of the importance of good training. Training that was made possible by the planning of both Polish and U.S. leadership.
"The Polish and the U.S. always link up in the morning at the motor pool and we conduct training together and we go back at night and set up meetings to conduct training the next day," Elliott described. "So that's where we really developed that shared understanding. And while our doctrine is different in some aspects, we're learning to take the good from each of us and improve ourselves and they are improving alongside us so I think that us working together day and day out is helping us dramatically. The Polish soldiers and U.S. soldiers get along great. They are finding a lot of common ground and a lot that they can agree on. I think that shared understanding between the soldiers is really posturing the environment for interoperability between us."
Getting to interact and work together with allied forces had a positive and unique impact for the Soldiers of K Troop.
"It means a lot to me to be able to be over here, working with the Polish army, to train with them, shoot their weapons and even play tug-of-war, it's pretty great," said Pfc. Shimieh Hazel, Soldier of 1st Platoon, K Troop, 3rd Squad, 2nd Cavalry Regiment. "It's not everyday you get to go across the country, go to Europe and train with a foreign army. I always get pumped up when I hear we're going to work with the Polish. It's always a new experience, something different everyday; it's a feeling of excitement and joy and at the same time you're learning something."
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