Subscribe
By Petty Officer 1st Class David M. Votroubek
CSTC-A Public Affairs
QALAT, Afghanistan – A smiling jester grins down from their ballcaps, but the Soldiers who wear them are all business. And when they go looking for a fight in Zabul province, the big guns that cover them are no joke either.
Formally, they're known as the 4-2 Embedded Training Team, but they started calling themselves the "Crazy 98s" during training as ETT class 9806 at Ft. Riley, Kan. And though the team has an easy demeanor, they're very serious about their job of training the 4th Kandak of the Afghan national army's 205th Corps.
When the Crazy 98s got to Afghanistan in February 2007, the 4th Kandak's Field Artillery Platoon was far less capable than it is now, according to FA enlisted mentor, Sgt. 1st Class David Trice. They had mortar skills, but they weren't able to use the howitzers for direct fire, let alone indirect fire (shooting at unseen targets).
Over the last 10 months, Trice and Army Capt. Dave Sadovy, the FA officer mentor, have trained the Afghans to do fire support with the D-30 howitzer, which can fire a 122 mm shell more than 15,000 meters.
The mentors also had to teach the artillerymen how to calculate range and deflection manually, because the ANA doesn't use many computers. Two officers in the kandak's FA platoon can now calculate fire missions.
One of them is Capt. Arzee Hussein, who has worked with artillery for three years now. Hussein thinks that his training has been good enough that he can now do fire missions without help from the mentors.
The Crazy 98s show their confidence in the gunners too. During one recent mission, team commander, Army Maj. Trent Darling, had shells landing within 1,500 meters of his position. Trice gives the Afghan soldiers a lot of credit.
"They have bright soldiers over there," Trice said of the 4th Kandak.
One of those soldiers is platoon sergeant Paywand Ali, who says that a previous American mentor named Dickinson taught him how to shoot the 82 mm mortar and the British 130 mm mortar. He likes being an artilleryman because of the advantage of high explosives during a battle.
"The enemy can shoot 100 bullets from an (AK-47 assault rifle), but I can win with one 122 mm shell," he grinned. "Artillery wins the firefight."
| Date Taken: | 12.30.2007 |
| Date Posted: | 12.31.2007 11:28 |
| Story ID: | 15086 |
| Location: | QALAT, AF |
| Web Views: | 89 |
| Downloads: | 54 |
No keywords found.
