Photo By Sgt. 1st Class Tony Lindback | Army Reserve Sgt. Rian Short, resident of Broken Arrow, Okla., and military police...... read more read more
FORT SILL, Okla. – Heat is used to melt things down to their basic elements, to forge steel, to create culinary delicacies, to mold plastics and many other productive tasks. Heat on its own has matter changing ability, but applying heat and pressure is also how diamonds are formed.
"Storm, norm and form,” Rattan said. “When you first bring a group together they’re a storm. Then they start establishing norms and they form together.”
Rattan focused on unifying the working elements of his Army Reserve MP company that has 1st and 2nd Platoons doing battle assembly at the unit’s headquarters in Stillwater, Okla., while 3rd Platoon soldiers report for duty in Huntsville, Texas. The three platoons and their support personnel were formed into two operational platoons and a unified support staff during annual training – bringing people who rarely see each other to work together.
This melding of platoons was necessary for the field training exercise at Little Chicago, a cinderblock village of 13 buildings that resembles nothing of “The Windy City”, is a training lane on Fort Sill, Okla. Plans were for two platoons to perform the cordon and search of Little Chicago. Therefore, three platoons needed to become two so all soldiers could be part of the operation. Getting platoons already set in their ways to adapt to new members, however, can be challenging.
“It was intense,” Rattan said. “We did the readiness stuff right away like weapons (qualification) so we can get our numbers up on that. We also did the obstacle course – the command confidence course. They also had to rappel together. Those things we did before the FTX were to build that team cohesion and get them ready to operate as teams. We designed this on purpose so they’d have to do some team events together.”
Rattan was a teacher before joining the Active Guard and Reserve program, which now has him serving as the commander of the 366th. Being an AGR and a commander gives Rattan an advantage that not all Army Reserve unit commanders have; living his unit’s readiness issues minute-by-minute. He said that lets him not only focus on the Army Reserve’s biggest priority – readiness – but he can also keep close watch over of the unit’s training.
“When I first got to the unit I saw soldiers teaching other soldiers out of manuals instead of getting out of the drill hall and executing the tasks. That wasn’t acceptable to me,” Rattan said.
Because of the yearly training briefs and conferences where commanders are forced to present their training plans 12-18 months ahead, units know what training they are expected to perform moving forward. Rattan used that knowledge to empower his subordinate platoon leaders to conduct collective task training that supports his unit’s Mission Essential Tasks List. Though effective, this is not a new idea.
Army doctrine puts the commander as the solely responsible person for training a unit. However, after the METL is decided by the commander, it is encouraged that he or she puts the responsibility of training METL-supporting collective and individual tasks on the shoulders of subordinate leaders. This practice keeps the commander free to manage, supervise and evaluate, as well as perform other required tasks of a commander.
“I gave my platoon leaders the METL and said, ‘You know your people better than I do. What collective tasks are you going to train to support this METL?’” Rattan said.
It had been exactly one year and a day since Rattan took command and pushed the ownership of training to his platoon leaders when the 366th MP Company. Soldiers broke the stillness of the morning with gunfire as they stormed Little Chicago with mounted and dismounted troops June 27.
As the two platoons practiced providing perimeter security, reacting to an ambush, reacting to improvised explosive devices, reacting to direct fire, performing searches and clearing buildings; many soldiers of the unit, who do not hold the MP military occupational specialty, got to act as opposing forces and noncombatants on the battlefield. Some OPFOR walked the streets, some were positioned on rooftops, and others were waiting in cinderblock buildings with little airflow to ambush their comrades.
Spc. Michele Thornlow, a Dallas resident and MP with 3rd Platoon, was nursing a sore knee which kept her out of a combat role.
Instead, she acted as an Iraqi police officer walking a beat on the streets of Little Chicago. Being an MP, the role of an IP was not a far stretch, but it was vastly different than her civilian job as a barista at a popular coffee shop in Dallas.
“In this scenario I’m a noncombatant. But, I’m supposed to walk up and down the street talking to the soldiers and try to distract them so my friends here (the OPFOR) can shoot them,” Thornlow said.
Soldiers with the attacking elements of the 366th and the OPFOR were outfitted with gear for the Multiple Integrated Laser Engagement System that they wear and attach to their weapons.
MILES gear shoots a laser from the end of any weapon it is mounted to when a blank round is fired. MILES gear sensors worn on the outer garment detect those lasers and emit an audible signal to the wearer if there was a near miss or a hit.
As Thornlow harassed soldiers trying to perform searches of buildings, the tell-tale-tone of MILES gear was letting many know they were being engaged.
As with most training, there were strengths and weaknesses discovered throughout the assault.
“Being OPFOR, I can see where we have some holes and areas what we could work on in our future training,” Thornlow said.
“You definitely learn from your weaknesses,” said Sgt. Bradley Ward, an Edmond, Okla., resident and MP with 1st Platoon. “I feel that in all fields and aspects of life, you learn from your weaknesses. If you straight-ace everything all the way through you never learn how to build on those foundations – and you have to in order to get better.
“Everyone who is an expert in anything was once a beginner. They got there because they failed, failed, failed and tried again,” Ward said.
Trying to improve as a noncommissioned officer in the MPs, Ward said he enjoys getting experience in the field but has bolstered his knowledge with a liberal arts degree in criminal justice, police, from the University of Central Oklahoma.
With the Iraq war over and Afghanistan winding down, Ward said he feels there is going to be a bigger need for soldiers to have the education on how to be a garrison MP – something that has been less trained because of the need for combat support MPs throughout the last 12 years. With his degree and experience as a combat support MP, Ward feels he is well situated for the Army’s future MP needs.
Not having a monopoly on civilian education or experience, Ward is only one of many in the 366th who have a background of law enforcement from the civilian sector.
“We actually have a ton of law enforcement in our unit,” Rattan said. “A couple guys are border patrol, a couple are law enforcement guys in Tulsa – down in Dallas I believe as well. We have a plethora of backgrounds and experience.
“We even have a few infantry guys coming into the unit now to be MPs because being an MP is the closest thing you get to infantry in the Army Reserve (other than the infantry battalion in Hawaii).
They bring a bunch of skill sets on crew drills and weapons systems that we don’t get to practice all the time. It’s a good experience of sharing knowledge,” he said.
Sharing of knowledge is something that goes both ways. Since the Army recently lifted gender restrictions for combat arms positions, and women have been performing military police duties since the early 1940s, MPs have some knowledge to share with infantry about serving alongside women.
“Now that the infantry is starting to allow women into the combat arms field,” Ward said, “I think they should look at the MP Corps as to how we implemented women into our firing teams, what positions, how it was done …. I think the MP Corps is a great representation of how to implement women into the combat field.”
Working side-by-side, men and women soldiers of the 366th MP Company work together to get the mission done. Rattan said, however, that is all part of the plan.
“People do bad things when they’re bored or have too much time on their hands,” Rattan said. “I keep my soldiers busy. We’ve been averaging 18-20 hour work days to get the mission done. When you’re stretched that thin it doesn’t matter what skin, what color, what race or what gender you are; you’re going to make it happen to make the mission happen. So, you’re bound together and it forces that cohesion ... Focus on the mission and driving hard training – they’ll band together.”
| Date Taken: | 06.27.2013 |
| Date Posted: | 07.19.2013 13:51 |
| Story ID: | 110487 |
| Location: | FORT SILL, OK; STILLWATER, OK; HUNTSVILLE, TX, OK, US |
| Hometown: | DALLAS, TX, US |
| Hometown: | EDMOND, OK, US |
| Web Views: | 536 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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