Photo By Lance Cpl. Suzanna Lapi | Marines with 2nd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment, conduct an ice breaching exercise on...... read more read more
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MOUNTAIN WARFARE TRAINING CENTER, BRIDGEPORT, Calif. –– Marines with Echo Company, 2nd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment, transitioned from sand to snow and took to the slopes during ski tour training at Mountain Warfare Training Center Bridgeport, Calif., April 3.
The Marines worked together to breach the ice as part of a new course at MWTC. The purpose of the course is to train in cold weather conditions, conduct ice reconnaissance and create obstacles for the enemy in similar terrain.
Lance Cpl. William Jenkins, an assault man and section leader with Echo Company and native of Bremerton, Wash., said they implemented three different types of charges to conduct the ice
breaching training.
“We used surface, mid and below-the-ice charges to create ice obstacles,” Jenkins said. “Because there are different types of ice, it’s important to know what explosives we need.”
Master Sgt. Joseph Gilliland, the engineer operations chief for CLB-3 and a native of Grand Bay, Ala., said the course, which was approved last month, is very significant for the engineering community.
“This is the only cold weather mountain engineering course in the Department of Defense,” Gilliland said. “The Army has some cold weather heavy equipment training in Alaska, but not with explosives like combat engineering. This course’s approval was a pretty big deal for us. Now Headquarters Marine Corps recognizes it as a formal school, and will always be conducted in Bridgeport.”
Gilliland said while collecting data for the course, he and several mountain leader engineers took history into consideration.
“We started looking into historical facts on wars that took place in cold weather fronts, like the Finnish War,” Gilliland said. “Either the good guys or the bad guys would utilize frozen lakes or rivers to store vehicles or implement the area as a helicopter landing zone. With ice breaching, you disrupt the ice as a means of counter-mobility, so the enemy can’t utilize that terrain.”
Gilliland said they opened the course for any Marine who deals with explosives.
“We looked directly at assault men because they have some demolition knowledge,” Gilliland said. “Assault men have a different role from combat engineers, but now they have the opportunity to conduct breaching like we do. It works for both fields.”
Lance Cpl. James Harshberger, an assault man and squad leader with Echo Company and native of Overland Park, Kan., said the training they conducted is beneficial for future use.
“If we set up a forward operating base on deployment in a cold environment with frozen lakes, the enemy could use it to advance upon us,” Harshberger said. “But we could mitigate them by using explosives to disrupt the ice, and therefore hinder the enemy.”
Gilliland said the statistics they collect will benefit any unit with future deployments.
“Cold weather and elevation have different effects on explosives,” Gilliland said. “We were able to collect that data and anyone who trains in this course will have the necessary knowledge. Hitler would create rockslides and dirt avalanches to block roads, which was very effective. We do that here to get the training in the event of deployment or conflict, in order to block the enemy.”
| Date Taken: | 04.03.2013 |
| Date Posted: | 05.02.2013 16:28 |
| Story ID: | 106241 |
| Location: | BRIDGEPORT, CA, US |
| Hometown: | BREMERTON, WA, US |
| Hometown: | GRAND BAY, AL, US |
| Hometown: | OVERLAND PARK, KS, US |
| Web Views: | 87 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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