CAMP BUEHRING, KUWAIT - Three weeks after casing their colors on Fort Hood, Texas', Cooper Field, nearly 400 Soldiers from the Special Troops Battalion, 15th Sustainment Brigade, 13th Sustainment Command (Expeditionary) arrived at Camp Buehring, Kuwait, Sept. 10-11 in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
The Soldiers will be conducting their final round of predeployment training before moving north into Iraq to accomplish their mission, said Lt. Col. Paula Lodi, the STB commander.
Lodi explained that there are two types of training that the unit has been able to take advantage of in Kuwait - mandatory and focused.
The mandatory training consists of events such as a weapons test fire, close quarters marksmanship, vehicle rollover training and counter improvised explosive device training, Lodi said.
"[The] mandatory training makes up the core foundation of our mission," she said.
The focused training is more specific, consisting of classes on counter insurgency, staff enabler training and medical training for the unit's medics.
Lodi said the training was important because it gives the Soldiers an opportunity to "get their heads in the game" and focus on the training and mission without the distractions of home.
The training in Kuwait also gives Soldiers time to adjust to the heat, with temperatures over 100 degrees.
"We've tried to stress hygiene, nutrition, and physical endurance as ways to push Soldiers and get them to understand that they can survive in this heat," Lodi said.
For one Soldier, the heat didn't quite live up to the pre-deployment hype.
Spc. Latchmi Mooteram, a supply clerk with the Headquarters and Headquarters Company of the STB, was told by her peers that Kuwait would be extremely hot.
"It's a lot like Texas," Mooteram, a New York, native, said.
Mooteram said her favorite part of the training so far has been close quarters marksmanship - training in which Soldiers engage targets in all directions, while both standing still and moving.
"It was fun, and it was a little bit scary," she said, because Soldiers must engage targets behind them, and Soldiers are often firing really close to each other.
Aside from the training, Mooteram expressed trouble adjusting to the time difference, Kuwait is eight hours ahead of Texas, and misses some of the comforts of home.
"I miss home cooked food and civilian clothes," she said.
With the unit's time in Kuwait winding down, Mooteram is ready to complete the training in Kuwait and move north to Iraq.
"I'm excited," she said. "I just want to go there, get settled, do my job, and get the deployment over with."
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