PRESIDIO OF MONTEREY, Calif. Aca,!" "You never know who will emerge as a leader," said Capt. Christopher Green, commander of Co. B, 229th Military Intelligence Battalion Company.
Green and his cadre challenged students assigned to Co. B with a litter-obstacle course and a leaders-reaction course on Camp Parks, near Oakland, Feb. 27. Both courses were designed for leaders to make quick decisions, effectively give orders and accomplish their missions.
Participating as squads, the Soldiers began with casualty evacuation after meeting with a contact, who, in the scenario, was subsequently "shot" by an enemy sniper.
After calling in a medical evacuation and receiving new orders, the squad had to evacuate not only the injured contact person, but they also split up four jugs of water that represented fuel. Green said the additional weight was important in ensuring every person bore a little bit of the additional burden, just as they would in an actual mission.
"The Soldiers had to go through realistic, scenario-driven, team exercises that utilized medical tasks with linguistic application," Green said.
In the scenario, each squad carried a casualty and the "fuel" through several different obstacles, which included going over walls, navigating trip wires and low-crawling through mud.
"The course was designed to push the students," Green said.
And push they did. After finally getting the casualty and fuel to the hospital, the squad members found themselves performing triage on a host of wounded "foreign" patients who were screaming in Russian or French.
The language barrier made triage considerably tougher, because not only were the casualties speaking in a foreign language, but the languages the casualties were speaking were not necessarily the languages the Soldiers were learning at the Defense Language School Foreign Language Center here.
The language confusion and stressful environment caused the Soldiers to not focus on translating the needs of the wounded, but rather treating the needs of wounded.
For Pvt. Wendy Teuchtler, making the transition while performing first aid from trying to understand what the casualties were actually saying to simply understanding what they meant was tough.
"That was crazy and really hard," Teuchtler said after Green ended that portion of the exercise. Teuchtler also said the exercise helped her see what took priority, despite the fact that her main mission at the school is to learn a foreign language.
The stress and confusion was just a part of the plan for Green and the cadre. He said that the exercise was used to help the students learn to substitute other words or actions when they don't know the correct words "and not get lost in the conversation."
By including not only the target language, but an additional language they may not understand, Green emphasized the importance of not getting stuck on the vocabulary and that accomplishing the mission comes first.
"I remember when I deployed for the first time in Afghanistan, I was way out there with the Romanians and I didn't speak Romanian," he said. "So I had to learn to communicate regardless of this and not get stuck on the vocabulary."
Teuchtler said she was grateful for the opportunity to train outside of her classroom environment, which Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center students have to attend on a daily basis. "Being active; being dirty, it makes me feel like I'm in the Army and not at school," she said.
Afterward, the Soldiers negotiated a leadership-reaction course, a course designed to combine leadership and problem-solving skills with team work.
"It was their chance to be creative," Green said. "It also shows you who will really emerge as a leader."
During the exercise, a squad member who was picked to be leader was given a mission, time limits and a few materials to use to lead the squad in negotiating different stations to accomplish the mission, such as getting across dangerous terrain while transporting ammunition.
"The LRC is good for privates to build up leadership experience and learn how a team works, because everybody in the Army is a leader," said Staff Sgt. Conrad Picofsky, Co. B squad leader.
"It helps build the train-as-you-fight, fight-as-you-train mentality," he added.
Green agreed, giving the example that a captain could walk into a situation and do nothing; a private could step up and lead. "It just depends on who is going to talk or who is just going to sit and do nothing," he said.
Picofsky said he saw his younger Soldiers in action and was impressed with what he saw, albeit with few mistakes.
"They were successful," he said. "They just need to get used to it and practice."
Picofsky praised the Co. B cadre with preparing the exercise and said he was appreciative of the exercise's "real world" application.
"I think the training the unit is giving is great," he said. "The realistic, hostile situations will allow the privates to get used to it and not go into shock."
For Teuchtler, the day's exercises were more than just training.
She said, "I was more appreciative of my sergeants and leadership, because you can see how much they care about us. They are helping us become better Soldiers."
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