Military police to assist Iraqi counterparts

Photo By Sgt. 1st Class Elizabeth Houx | Indiana Soldiers from the 384th Military Police Company make sure their gunner is properly strapped and ready to go during Humvee egress assistance trainer/rollover training. This exercise was part of the company's pre-mobilization training at Camp Atterbury before deploying to Iraq.  

CAMP ATTERBURY, IN, UNITED STATES

09.25.2008

Story by Spc. Elizabeth Houx 

Camp Atterbury Indiana

By Spc. Elizabeth Gorenc
Camp Atterbury Public Affairs

CAMP ATTERBURY, Ind. – Military police companies in the Indiana National Guard are banding together to assist Iraqi police in becoming self sufficient and successful.

Units from Evansville, New Albany, Plymouth and Michigan City have all attached to the 384th Military Police Company, from Bloomington, in order to deploy to Iraq and work with the Iraqi police. While in country, the company will be conducting police transition training.

In order to prepare for their upcoming missions, the 384th has been conducting pre-mobilization training at Camp Atterbury.

Spc. Craig VanDuke, a gunner for the 384th, said his unit is completing the first part of the crawl, walk run process.

"We are doing a lot of in-depth training that we are going to be able to use later when we complete our missions."

Some of the training VanDuke referred to that the company has completed so far includes combat lifesaver courses, convoy training, land navigation, combatives training, military operations in urban terrain training and Humvee egress assistance trainer, which is a Humvee rollover reaction training.

Pfc. Leighanna Torres, a member of the 384th, said that the training at Camp Atterbury has been fun and diverse.

"It's been good training," said Torres. "They have worked all aspects of being an MP. On one side, we have worked on searching and detaining and the on the other side we have done general warrior task training."

Sgt. 1st Class Gerardo Gonzalez, an operations sergeant for the company, said that even though he has 19 years of service and two previous deployments under his belt, pre-mobilization training here and working with new and younger Soldiers from all around the state has been a good challenge.

"We are all learning how to work with each other and are completing a lot of hands on training right now at individual levels. It is a good overview of everyone's personal skills and will help us gauge what to work on when we get to squad and platoon level training," he said.

The first part of the 384th's pre-mobilization training ended, Sept. 28, 2008. The company is scheduled to complete next part of their training when they return to Camp Atterbury in October during their second stage of pre-mobilization training.

1st Sgt. Scott MacGregor, first sergeant for the 384th, said that the company has been motivated and hard working throughout the training.

"The hard work and long hours that is being put into training shows that Soldiers have a real interest in heart about the outcome," he said.

MacGregor added that he hopes the teamwork and skills that have been developing since training started will continue to grow and ultimately help establish and maintain good relationships not only between Soldiers within the company, but also with Iraqi police they are training.

Along with maintaining relationships with Iraqis, the company has made sure to maintain good relationships with families and employers at home. In order to do so and encourage community involvement in their training and deployment, the 384th held a family day in August and family briefings concerning the deployment in September. The company is scheduled to host an employers appreciation day, Oct. 23, 2008.

"Hopefully this day will connect employers to the training that their employees are doing as Soldiers by seeing first hand what they are doing at Camp Atterbury," said MacGregor. "We want them to understand what we are going through to help make the transition back to civilian life and work easier for everybody when we return."

MacGregor said that the unit members are doing everything they can to incorporate families and employers in their deployment preparation.

"[We want] to thank them for their sacrifices of temporarily separating from family members and employees during training and mobilization time."

• Date Taken: 09.25.2008
• Date Posted: 09.30.2008 14:09
• Story ID: 24338
• Location: CAMP ATTERBURY, IN, US