Photo By Master Sgt. Jeff Lowry | Command Sgt. Maj. Steven Bishop, Command Sergeant Major of the 76th Infantry Brigade...... read more read more
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FORT POLK, La. – The Indiana National Guard’s 76th Infantry Brigade Combat Team is spending the latter part of July and first part of August at the Joint Readiness Training Center in central Louisiana.
More than 6,000 personnel make up the training contingency that Col. Robert D. Burke, commander of the 76th, and Command Sgt. Major Steven J. Bishop are responsible for. The 38th Infantry Division public affairs team sat down with them in a small one-room chapel on Forward Operating Base Warrior to talk about what it’s taken to get the Indiana-based unit to this point in their training.
Q: What is it that the 76th is doing here at Fort Polk, Louisiana?
BURKE: The Joint Readiness Training Center is the world premier light-infantry training facility that the Army has to train its infantry combat teams. Just to be selected to attend this with the 20 infantry brigades across the National Guard … only one gets to come a year. This place is the premier training environment to allow a brigade to get after all of its collective training objectives in order to meet its mission essential training tasks that it needs to accomplish to be ready to go to war if the nation calls upon us. So, we’re here to put all of that to a test and get better at our jobs. That’s really what we’re doing here.
Q: What is it you’re hoping to accomplish? What do you want to see out of your Soldiers?
BURKE: To build that team. To build those relationships, bring together all of those components of putting together an effective, reliable combat team that can accomplish whatever mission we’re given in support of combat operations, that’s what this is all about. We’re an Army force, and we need to be able to do our job and do it well. And this environment is going to forge us to be that brigade combat team … and I stress the team on this. I want all of us to come into it at whatever level we’re at and leave at a higher level of proficiency and competence and confidence in us being able to do what we’re asked to do. I’m already seeing it, and I have been seeing it over the last two years that we’ve been prepping for this day. You know, we got notified back in March of 2015 and here we are now in July of 2017, almost two and a half years later, and I can’t believe where we’re at. To see us come together with over 20 states of Soldiers from the Guard, the Reserve, the Air Force, our active-duty folks … to bring it all together in an exercise like this is just an incredible thing to see with more than 6,000 Soldiers. I am just amazed with what we’re doing to this point. I know it’s going to be an incredible two weeks, we’re going to do well.
Q: Now talk to me about that for a second, interoperability …
BURKE: Yeah.
Q: You have Air Force out here, you have Guard, Reserve, full-timers … how important is it to bring all of those elements together in this training environment?
BURKE: It’s extremely important because realistically, if we were to go to war, all of these enablers that you’re really talking about here would go with us in whatever shape, form, or fashion that higher headquarters says they want to give us. So, to be able to do this in a training environment that is as close to fighting a war as possible, it’s really an awesome thing because it allows to build that, that relationship, that interoperability, that team. We will be coming out of this combat training center at the top of the list of all the Guard brigades for mobilization if our country needs us. To be able to have these folks that we don’t normally work with now and see what they bring to the fight and how we embrace them and take them into our operations is phenomenal. I love the whole scenario and the collective training environment. This allows us to bring it all together.
Q: What’s been your learning curve trying to take care of everybody, not just the 76th?
BURKE: My learning curve has been learning how to deploy all these different assets. Let’s talk aviation, for example. We don’t get to incorporate, as a Guard brigade, all of this air support. And how do you employ it? And how do you plan for air assaults and air movements and sling loads and attack helicopters and actually have them in the fight to use in your scheme of maneuver? So, working with an aviation battalion commander, you normally don’t get to do in most of our training events, has been a huge learning curve for me. Just how you backwards plan and have to off-cycle your crew to fly at night and support a mission so many days out and what that impact is on your aviation support during that time period when you’re prepping for that big air assault. So, my learning curve has just absolutely sky-rocketed every day. Learning a lot.
Q: Seargent Major, as the senior-enlisted adviser, how many Soldiers, Airmen … how many folks do you have under you at this time?
BISHOP: More than 6,000 Soldiers on the ground are participating in this exercise in some form or fashion.
Q: And what’s been your learning curve with all of these folks out here?
BISHOP: Understanding the complexities of the environment and getting all of our combat power here to JRTC and getting all of this equipment and Soldiers ready to get into the fight. Looking at that, especially coming from long distances across the country, getting all the things to Fort Polk has been a great learning experience for the brigade because, again, we’ll have to do that all over again in order to go overseas. That’s been extremely important. Just managing the size and scope of all of those attachments you don’t have habitual relationships with in order to get out there and make sure you understand what their role is and how you could best support them and get them into the fight to support the brigade and get after what we’re doing.
Q: Now, I hate to use the word “challenge” because it has negative connotations, so what’s been your biggest learning opportunity with this exercise?
BURKE: I think at this point in this whole process here at JRTC, it’s this whole RSOI … the reception, the staging, the onward movement, and the integration…that whole RSOI process. As the sergeant major was talking about, building that team. I back up to where we started planning all of this stuff and I know all of the hard work and level of fidelity that went into getting us to where we are today. So, now seeing that planning in action, and adjusting to, I would call, the challenges of the day and the friction that real-world stuff brings to your plan, and adjusting to it and being flexible … seeing that come to fruition and how everybody is absolutely getting after it, all the way down to the squad level, we see it. We see things that were going on that were part of this whole planning process and it’s just an amazing thing to see. I’m very happy with what we’ve done to get us to this point. They put a lot of time and effort into this preparation and now that we’re executing it, it’s pretty darn cool.
Q: Sergeant Major, what’s it been like on the Soldier level? They’ve been here for a good week and a half already, correct?
BISHOP: We’ve had some Soldiers on the ground about 10 days now. At the Soldier level, one of the things that’s the most impressive is that you feel the heat, you feel the humidity but the level of morale across the brigade right now is incredible considering coming from an Indiana mild summer into the heat and humidity of Louisiana right now, and they’re getting after it all over this installation. Everywhere you go, you see Soldiers doing the right thing at the right times and just doing everything they can to make sure that they and their unit is ready. I couldn’t be prouder of the performance of every Soldier in the brigade right now. They’re on task, they’re focused, they know what they need to get ready, they know what they want to do, and I think all of us are just itching to get out there and get in the fight.
Q: You brought up a great point. When we’re talking morale, we normally have our drill weekends where we go in and do our jobs. What does it do for the Soldiers’ morale to come down here and actually get in the field and do the job they signed up to do?
BURKE: I think you hit it on the head. That’s what they signed up to do. This is what Soldiering is all about. To go from a drill weekend status, maybe a home station with classes and things. To transition it to a forward operating base environment that we’re in now, and as our posture changes and we transition to combat operations, that’s what they signed up to do. But if you just did home station all the time or some kind of field exercise and not do what JRTC allows you to do and provides that collective training environment, I think Soldiers would be disenfranchised. “Hey, I signed up to be a field Soldier and go out and fight the enemy.” That’s what this environment provides, and I think that training opportunity will carry over and resonate throughout the formation as we go through this exercise.
Q: [to Bishop] Do you see the same on the moral side from your foxhole?
BISHOP: Absolutely. I think the two ways you’re going to build moral and esprit-de-corps and pride in the unit is, one, through tough, realistic, challenging training and then, also, deploying and going into combat. Right now, this is our opportunity with, I think you’re going to find no tougher training than what we’re getting ready to go do, so we’ve come into this with strong teams but I think they’re going to be even stronger by sharing this experience with each other. By getting out there in the fight, in the wet, in the rain, in the heat and all the other conditions that are going to be thrown at them, along with a live enemy that’s going to be challenging them daily. On the backend, I think they’re going to be that much stronger, and we’re going to be that much stronger as a brigade because of it.
Q: Gentlemen, with everything that’s going on ... with the heat, the humidity, everything they’re already had to do … are your Soldiers ready for this?
BURKE: Absolutely, we’re ready. There’s no doubt in my mind. I think we’re going to do very, very well and we’re going to take it to them as hard as we can and we’re going to win this fight.
BISHOP: I just echo what Colonel Burke said. We’ve been preparing, our heads are right, we’re physically ready and we’re going to get out there and get after it. I’m looking forward to it.
Q: Thank you very much, gentlemen.
BURKE: Thank you.
BISHOP: Thanks.
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| Date Taken: | 07.19.2017 |
| Date Posted: | 07.19.2017 19:51 |
| Story ID: | 241815 |
| Location: | INDIANAPOLIS, IN, US |
| Web Views: | 994 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, On the record with the 76th Infantry Brigade Combat Team at JRTC, by MSG Brad Staggs, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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