Photo By Sgt. 1st Class Monte Swift | Florian Waitl, left, staff ride historian with the Combat Studies Institute at Fort...... read more read more
FORT LEAVENWORTH, Kan. - From our country’s war for independence to the recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq over the last decade, instructors of the Combat Studies Institute at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, are hard at work recreating the battles that define American military history.
Through virtual staff rides, one is allowed to get a glimpse of the layout and details of more than 50 different battles spanning nearly 240 years. By using three-dimensional digitized maps that zoom in as close as ground level and as far out as thousands of feet above the landscape, along with photographs, video and eye-witness testimony, military personnel get a virtual look, layout and feel of the battles.
For Soldiers of the U.S. Army Reserve 2nd Brigade, Pacific Division,75th Training Command, virtual staff rides for the Battle of Wanat in Afghanistan, 2008, and the Battle of Fallujah in Iraq, 2004, were on tap for a weekend drill.
Both were defining battles in each separate war presenting their combatants with a number of difficult challenges and limitations.
It’s CSI’s mission to ensure Soldiers learn from past successes and mistakes made by America’s military on the battlefield to further leadership development amongst personnel at all levels.
“The value is to bring them into a leadership situation that’s somewhat foreign to them and say, ‘what would you do?’” said virtual staff ride instructor and military historian Kurt Ebaugh. “There’s some very important leadership lessons and points to be distilled in this process by bringing the battle; it’s terrain, it’s problems and complexities right into the classroom to a group of Soldiers.”
Ebaugh – who retired from the Marines as a lieutenant colonel with 24 years of service –is passionate about military history and it shows in his teaching. Monotone he is not and staff ride instructors veer away from conventional lectures in an attempt to engage the class as much as possible.
Staff Sgt. Orval Emery, an observer controller trainer noncommissioned officer of the 75th, was one of the more engaged Soldiers during the Battle of Wanat’s class.
During the battle 200 Taliban and al-Qaida guerrillas broke through American lines and attacked 48 troops of the Army’s 173rd Airborne and 24 Afghan National Army soldiers in Afghanistan’s Nuristan province killing 9 U.S. Soldiers and wounding 31, to include ANA soldiers.
“This (battle) reinforces history,” Emery said. “It’s a perfect example of history repeating itself and as training NCOs we can bring up past mistakes and keep others aware.”
Ebaugh and two other instructors, AJ Besik – an armor officer in the USAR’s 100th Training Division, and Florian Waitl – who served 13 years combined service in three different branches of the military (Army, Air National Guard and Navy Reserve) – spent four in-depth hours on each battle delving into troop strength, planning, logistics, strategy, tactics, movement, engagements, failures and triumphs.
“Being a student of history – all this just helps us out in the end,” Staff Sgt. Lacy McDonald of the 75th said. “It’s all lessons you can take to the battlefield as a leader.”
| Date Taken: | 07.11.2015 |
| Date Posted: | 08.03.2015 09:38 |
| Story ID: | 171928 |
| Location: | FORT LEAVENWORTH, KS, US |
| Web Views: | 193 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Analyzing the fray: Virtual staff ride take military through battles of yesteryear, by SSG Aaron Rognstad, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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