Grunt Talk - Issue 3 Volume 10

[Coffman]

Fort Campbell KY, United States


With the holidays quickly coming to an end, the men and women of the 506th were mustered Sunday evening to receive vital information of their future deployment. Much like the brave men that preceded them in World War II in Britan, the 506th will be deploying to an intermediate training stop. The Island of Sahrani will be the units home for the coming months as they begin a series of war games called Field Training Exercises, where they get to work with their supporting assets and with their teams to get their routines nailed down before heading in to battle. These large scale fake battles give the young leadership time to understand and work with each other as well as give a small taste of the confusion of warfare. As many have said before; "When the bullets start flying, you just go back on your training, there's nothing else to think about." This is about as close as it gets to the war, without actually being in it. For some like Captain Fraser, the commander of the aviation element attached to the 506th, these exercises are the closest thing to putting "Warheads to Foreheads" and jumping out of blackhawks, as it gets before the deployment. All of these units need to get ample time to work and fine tune the support that the ground needs, and the FTX is the best way to practice.

When asked about the readyness of his detatchment Captain Fraser puts his guys at a solid nine out of ten saying that "I would like to focus on preserving aircraft this deployment, and thats something we have really focused on in training. My job as a detatchment commander is to not only keep my guys flight ready, but also to keep them out of danger."
"Some things that need to get done this FTX is the ground interaction with the helicopters, its always a little daunting to jump into a helicopter and expecting to take fire once you get off. We need to work on getting on and off quickly and especially focus on just getting comfortable with working together with the guys on the ground." Captain Fraser is really looking forward to getting
the extra training time with ground forces, and expects lots of work to get done. When asked about the upcoming deployment the Captain refused to coment. "I like to stay out of politics and conspiracies, all I need to know is that my guys are ready."


It is clear that the US command has something in mind for the 506th but what that is, is still very unclear. Many rumors have begun to spread as to the final deployment location. On the list of the soldiers minds are areas including; Syria, Iraq, Ukraine, China, some conspiracy theories even include an invasion of Mexico. Usually its all in good fun, and the 506th as it has said many times will be ready for whatever the president has in mind. Training will continue, and the world moves on! The 506th would like to wish everyone a happy new year and rest of the holidays.