PAKTYA PROVINCE, Afghanistan – Just outside the small village of Gardez, south of Kabul, sounds of gun fire echo off the mountains. In what normally would be cause for alarm, no one reacts.
To better strengthen their bond and skill, troops from the U.S. Army’s 1st Cavalry Division and the Polish 17th Mechanized Brigade, held a cross-training and weapons qualification event, Aug. 5, at a small range outside of Forward Operating Base Lightning.
“Two things soldiers have in common, worldwide, are standards of discipline and basic marksmanship and we wanted to embrace that with the Polish,” said U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Edward Duran, platoon sergeant for the 1st Cav. Div. Security Forces Platoon, Task Force Maverick.
Training for the event began several weeks earlier with preliminary marksmanship instruction and familiarization.
“Every two to three weeks we were doing something; whether we were going out to the range with the Polish and shooting, sitting down learning the basic fundamentals of their weapons and then going out and actually shooting the weapons for the first time,” he said.
The training afforded each soldier a chance to qualify on the other nation’s weapon system and to help build camaraderie and exchange marksmanship badges between the Polish and U.S. Army soldiers on FOB Lightning.
Polish soldiers zeroed and qualified on five 5.56 mm M16A2 rifles. American soldiers mastered four 5.56 mm Beryl AKs.
“It was a good competition and it was great fun,” said Polish army 2nd Lt. Krzysztof Mularonek. “It was a great way to build relationships between the Soldiers even with a language barrier.”
Very few of the Polish soldiers spoke English and only one American soldier spoke Polish.
“I am very impressed and proud the soldiers pushed through their barriers and found a means of communication with each other,” said U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Derrik Browne, section sergeant of the SecFor Plt.
At the end of the training, 21 U.S. soldiers qualified with Polish weapons and 16 Polish soldiers earned U.S. Army marksmanship badges.
| Date Taken: |
08.05.2011 |
| Date Posted: |
08.10.2011 14:08 |
| Story ID: |
75126 |
| Location: |
PAKTYA PROVINCE, AF |
| Web Views: |
216 |
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0 |
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This work, Cavalry, Polish troops swap rifles, cross train, by SGT Kimberly Browne, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
