Photo By Sgt. Derek Kuhn | A combat engineer with Company A, 3rd Brigade Special Troops Battalion, 82nd Airborne...... read more read more
Subscribe
FORT BRAGG, N.C. -- Life as a combat engineer isn’t always simple. Some days they string concertina wire and construct counter-mobility structures, while other days combat engineers are tasked with improving routes and lines of communication. Occasionally, they even get to use explosives to breach buildings.
With so many skills at their disposal, combat engineers shape the battle field or, as in the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division’s recent Joint Operation Access Exercise, part of Fort Bragg’s training ground.
Originally, the combat engineers of Company A, 3rd Brigade Special Troops Battalion, 82nd ABN Div., participated in the JOAX like every other unit out there. However, their mission expanded when Range Control contacted them about a structure that was hindering troop movement near Sicily Drop Zone.
“We got a secondary mission of improving a route from Sicily Drop Zone to Falcon DZ during the exercise,” said Capt. Mike Kendall, Company Commander for Company A, 3rd BSTB, 82nd ABN Div., “which involved removing an uninhabited beaver dam.”
The dam had been there for a while and caused problems for Range Control and units using the training ground, Kendall said.
“It was causing water to divert around the bridge,” Kendall, a native of Lindsey, Texas, said. “The dam made water wash over the road instead of the bridge, which is why range control asked us to take care of it. We wanted to restore the natural channel of this body of water, so we had to blow the uninhabited beaver dam.”
However, removing the beaver dam wasn’t a straight forward mission.
A combat engineer for Company A, 3rd BSTB, 82nd ABN Div., Staff Sgt. Timothy Shay said, because of the dam’s proximity to a nearby bridge, they had to really think about how to approach the mission and get the desired results without damaging the bridge.
The bridge is essential for troop movement from Sicily Drop Zone to Deep Creek, Shay said.
Kendall who said the dam created a five acre lake, agreed with Shay about difficulties of the mission.
“It is a little bit non-standard, but we used the same principles we have for creating and removing obstacles and breaching in order to remove the dam,” Kendall said. “The trick with this mission was the bridge is so close to the target. If we wanted to remove a beaver dam, it wouldn’t be a problem. But because a bridge is there, we don’t want to blow it up in the process. So the bridge made it a little tricky.”
To get the desired effect, the combat engineers approached their mission with planning, patience and restraint.
“We had our light equipment operators to come out a few days before we blew the dam,” Shay, a native of Charlotte, N.C., said. “They moved a portion of the dam out, so it would drain kind of like a blister.”
After the water subsided, “we dug seven holes in the dam and then placed explosives in each hole, one at a time and then blew each charge,” Shay said.
They repeated that seven times until the dam was completely removed, Shay said.
With the dam removed and the natural channel restored, the Paratroopers of Company A, 3rd BSTB, 82nd ABN Div., reflected on their unusual mission.
“We were fired up about it [the mission],” Kendall said. “It’s nice to be out here accomplishing a mission that isn’t strictly notional, especially because it’s going to make a difference in mobility and training out here.”
Perhaps Shay put it more simply, “anytime we get to blow stuff up, we are happy about it.”
| Date Taken: | 02.15.2011 |
| Date Posted: | 02.22.2011 16:23 |
| Story ID: | 65901 |
| Location: | FORT BRAGG, NORTH CAROLINA, US |
| Web Views: | 206 |
| Downloads: | 1 |
This work, Dam beavers: Combat Engineers complete real mission during JOAX, by SGT Derek Kuhn, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
No keywords found.
