Photo By Sgt. Marcus Floyd | Mortarmen with Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 2nd Battalion, 7th Infantry...... read more read more
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CAMP KONOTOP, Poland - Spread out across eastern Europe, the Soldiers of 2nd Battalion, 7th Infantry Regiment, 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division are playing a lead role in Atlantic Resolve, an ongoing multinational partnership between NATO allies, whose mission is the continued peace and stability of Europe.
These soldiers work together like a well-oiled machine, with each cog and gear playing an important role in strengthening the alliance. It's not only the senior leaders involved in these international efforts – this partnership also reaches down to the soldiers on the ground.
“It's been a different experience,” said Pfc. Seth Rachuy, a mortarman with Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 2nd Bn., 7th Inf. Reg. “It's definitely fun to get out of your normal work environment when you're back at Fort Stewart, see the culture and see a different area of the world you wouldn't ordinarily get to see without being in the Army.”
With increased U.S.-European military training and security cooperation as part of Atlantic Resolve, Rachuy and his fellow mortarmen from Fort Stewart, Georgia, are benefiting from the abundant opportunities to get down to business, train in the field and work with their allies overseas.
“It's really good for the lower enlisted guys who haven't been out to (the National Training Center) or an actual deployment,” said Sgt. Jeremy Gowing, a fellow mortarman in the company. “Once you get up to the higher echelons, that's when the communication with the foreign nations comes in.”
However, for soldiers like Rachuy, who have previously trained at NTC, what really sets this mission apart from others is that it allows them to work in smaller units.
“We're not with a whole battalion of people, like it was at NTC,” said Rachuy, who's been a mortarman for almost two years. “We get to do a lot more of the training we want to do, platoon internal training, and I think that's why it's better over here.”
For Rachuy and his platoon, the opportunity to explore the infantry side of being a mortar man ranks just as highly as “hanging a bunch of rounds,” or launching indirect fire.
Getting the chance to walk through the woods and shoot pop-up targets “always gets your blood pumping,” he said.
As Gowing stated, Atlantic Resolve presents a unique opportunity for these Soldiers as they work with their fellow mortarmen from the Polish army.
“It's very different because they get their mortar systems from older Russian mortar systems, so we're trying to teach them everything we know, and obviously they’re some of the top-dogs at degraded mortar systems so we learn a lot from them as well,” said Gowing. “In Georgia, we can go out into the field and shoot the same missions over and over, but when we intertwine with another nation, like today, we all shot at the exact same time to get maximum fire on the same target. Back in the rear (at Fort Stewart) we'd have never done that.”
The chance to combine forces with allies and interchange seamlessly is a major objective of Atlantic Resolve and something the mortarmen strive for.
“Nations come together, forces come together, training like that is really priceless because our tactics are completely different,” said Gowing. “We can just take their pieces and put them together with ours and come up with a better overall tactic to accomplish the mission. Everybody can gain from brotherhood. That's what we're here for in the first place.”
| Date Taken: | 05.26.2015 |
| Date Posted: | 05.26.2015 13:56 |
| Story ID: | 164553 |
| Location: | CAMP KONOTOP, PL |
| Hometown: | FORT STEWART, GA, US |
| Web Views: | 416 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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