The road to becoming expert infantrymen

By Sgt. Jon HeinrichDecember 5, 2013

The road to becoming expert infantrymen
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The road to becoming expert infantrymen
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The road to becoming expert infantrymen
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FORT CAMPBELL, Ky. - If you drove past Johnson Field here anytime from Dec. 2-5, you may have noticed several hundred soldiers in full gear conducting different forms of training.

"It's something that every infantry guy is striving to achieve," said Sgt. 1st Class Donald H. Spencer, the intelligence noncommissioned officer in charge with 1st Battalion, 327th Infantry Regiment, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division. "It's a mark of expertise in their field of infantry."

Sgt. 1st Class Adam Ospina, a platoon sergeant with Company C, 2nd Battalion, 327th Infantry Regiment, 1st BCT, said the units participating in the EIB are 1st and 2nd Battalions, 327th Infantry Regiments and 1st Squadron, 32nd Cavalry Regiment, but that 1-32 would not be able to officially wear the badge.

The training was separated into three lanes controlled by each battalion: 1-327 ran the Red Lane, 2-327 had the White Lane and 1-32 controlled the Blue Lane.

"All this is all train-up for EIB," said Ospina. "Here they will actually be going station-by-station so they get the motion of what they're supposed to do at each station for each part of the lane. So when it comes down to the actual testing they can just go right through it."

Each lane had its own training stations.

Red Lane covered identifying different types of grenades and throwing a grenade, identifying major and minor terrain features on a map, movement techniques using low-crawl, high-crawl and three-five second rush, emplacing and recovering a claymore mine, assemble, disassemble and functions check of the M4 and M249 and load and unload a MK-19 automatic grenade launcher.

White Lane trained on clearing and functions check with a M240B light machine gun, M240B range card, estimate range, convert the FGM-148 Javelin to carry configuration, operate a radio and a DAGR and conduct a SPOT report.

Blue Lane covered the M136 AT4, M2 .50 cal., M320 grenade launcher, putting a radio into operation, map reading, Improvised Explosive Device detection and using the chemical protective mask.

"Basically they're all pretty simple stations," said Ospina. "Nothing hard. They're Skill Level 1 tasks, but they are important."

The soldiers will begin testing for the EIB Dec. 9 and finish Dec. 13.