Soldiers from the 631st Maintenance Company knew their sunny mid-August cruise through the Fort McCoy countryside wouldn't be particularly quiet and peaceful.
The 631st, a Florida Army National Guard unit from Starke, Fla., got a taste of Iraq during mobilization training at Fort McCoy.
Machine-gun fire directed on them from dense woods and small-arms fire from the second-story windows of a village building got their immediate attention.
How fast and how well the Soldiers reacted to those threats was their mission for the day. They were on several of Fort McCoy's training lanes, on mounted combat patrol training, reacting to two-dozen different threats.
The threats included improvised explosive devices; villagers, some friendly, some not, waving and yelling at the Soldiers; visits to a village mayor about possible threat forces in the area; or how and when a water well will be dug and installed at the village.
Along with the regular mobilization training of weapons qualification, Soldiers learned about the culture and customs of the country they are headed to, vehicle maintenance and operations, detainee operations, combat life-saving, and contingency operating location operations with entry control points.
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