Members of 173rd Airborne Brigade's "assault and barrier" platoon, Company A, 54th Brigade Engineer Battalion, partnered with approximately 40 members of the Italian Army May 9-12, for the combined exercise Wild Boar 2016.
The platoon and 8⁰ Reggimento Genio Guastatori Paracadutisti of the "Folgore" Airborne Brigade trained in Trecenta on the outskirts of Rovigo, about 60 miles southeast of Vicenza.
"Trecenta is a former Italian artillery base currently used as a training area by the 8th Engineer Combat Regiment," explained Italian army Maj. Michele Testa, who works in U.S. Army Africa Headquarters G-3 and helped coordinate the exercise.
The 8th Regiment belongs to the Folgore Brigade. They are the engineer unit for the Folgore [Bde.] in charge of mobility, countermobility and protection," he said.
Testa has been stationed in Vicenza since September 2015 and has coordinated approximately 20 training exercises in several locations in Italy, but, this time, he asked and quickly received a special authorization from his chain of command to make this exercise possible.
"This time was the first time we managed to have Italian trailers transporting the U.S. high-mobility engineer excavators (HMEE)," he said.
After the transportation of engineer heavy equipment, participants focused on demonstrating and practicing flight landing strip clearance and repair. The soldiers also worked on executing mechanical breaching and cross training with HMEEs and Italian loaders by constructing trenches and fighting positions.
"The key for this exercise was exchanging ideas and ways to do things," said 1st Lt. Taylor Olson, A & B platoon leader, 54th BEB.
"We demonstrated our tactical technical procedures and standard operating procedures on FLS clearance and repair and they [Italian soldiers] taught us what they did in their recent deployment to Libya, demonstrating their TTPs for mechanical breaching. In both cases, we taught them something and then they practiced it, and they taught us something and then we practiced," Olson said.
Despite inclement weather throughout the four-day training, soldiers from both nations had a very positive experience while training with each other, according to Olson and Testa.
Capt. Marco Falchi, commander of the Italian 23rd Parachute Assault Engineer Company (Cinghiali -- Wild Boars), 8th Rgt. Genio Guastatori, Folgore (A) highlighted the positive aspects of combined training.
"Wild Boar 2016 has been a great opportunity to cooperate with the engineers of assault and barrier platoon. We were able to foster our interoperability by practicing with engineer machinery and equipment and achieving a complete understanding of each other's TTPs."
Falchi also thanked Olson for his commitment and Testa "for having made all this possible."
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