truck bomber is possible or not.
But now the time had come to transition to the “hot war” phase of the deployment, where the regular forces of a neighboring nation to the south and east were moving into the territory of the host nation for an invasion. The forces, built around a simulated Soviet-style motorized rifle regiment (much like the ones in use at the NTC), are supposed to smash into the lightly armed U.S. infantry units and try to push them off their objectives. Colonel Petreaus had other ideas, though. He is a big believer in winning the intelligence/counterintelligence battle before the big fight develops, and he was aggressively patrolling with his troopers to find the route of the enemy advance, due for the morning of D-Day+8 (October 19th).
That night, his patrols destroyed many of the enemy reconnaissance units, and had established the likely route of the enemy attack. He quickly put his two infantry battalions side by side along the route, laid a vicious string of mines and barricades, and chopped the enemy regiment to pieces with artillery and Hellfire missiles from the OH-58Ds, lending to a successful defense of their positions.
This was a stunning victory for 1st Brigade, and it set the OPFOR back on their heels a bit. They did ramp up the threat level a bit with more rebel activity, and even a chemical weapons attack on one of the forward infantry companies, but Devil-6 and his staff were getting stronger now, and their agility on the battlefield was starting to show.
JRTC/Fort Polk, Friday, October 18th, 1996
With their victory in the defensive fight, it was time for the 1st Brigade to set up for their final big fight of the deployment: the force-on-force battle for the Shughart-Gordon MOUT facility. As any good infantry leader will tell you, there is no faster way to suffer heavy casualties than to get into a slow urban assault. Nevertheless, Shughart-Gordon was one of the primary objectives that the brigade had to take, so Colonel Petraeus decided to find an indirect route to the objective. Most JRTC participants move to Shughart-Gordon via the east-west Artillery Road that runs from the main base at Fort Polk out to the DZ/airfield in the east. To this end, “Devil-1” decided to grease the wheels of the Shughart-Gordon assault with an indirect approach. To do this, he sent a “pinning” force of M551 Sheridans (the division still had these in late 1996) and Hummers loaded with infantry along the Artillery Road in front of Shughart-Gordon, to draw the attention of the OPFOR blocking force in front of the MOUT site. Then, once he knew that the OPFOR troops were solidly involved with the diversionary force, he force-marched the majority of his force in a wide arc to the south, around the old artillery impact zone that lies in the middle of the range area. Most folks don’t use this area, but Petraeus had checked with the O/Cs and they had ruled the movement legal. So, on the night of the 19th (D-Day+9), the bulk of the brigade moved to a position behind Shughart-Gordon to the northwest of the MOUT site. Then, putting four infantry companies on line together, they just rolled forward over the small security force that the OPFOR had left in the complex. His men just walked in, taking over like a “Big Dog” with a minimum of casualties. Suddenly, the game was all but over. There would be several other terrorist bombings, including a truck bombing of the FARP after it was moved to the north end of the DZ. However, only a couple of UH-60L Blackhawks were lost, and the rest were able to hold the load.
To try and put some further pressure on 1st Brigade, the O/Cs and OPFOR forces counterattacked, and staged a number of air attacks with the Russian attack helicopters as well as F-16s used to simulate Soviet Su- 22 Fitter fighter bombers. However, the brigade’s Avenger and MANPAD SAM systems gave as good as they got, and the attacks generally were blunted. By the time the “ENDEX Time” (End of Exercise signal) message was sent on D-Day+11 (October 23rd), the brigade had achieved virtually all of its pre-deployment objectives.
This is not to say that everything went perfectly. On the contrary, the delay in the setup of the Brigade TOC, the problems with the MEDEVAC system, and the failure to clear the Artillery Road out for the FARP early in the exercise were judged to have been things that required work. But in general, the troopers had learned a lot, and given the perfect October weather, it had been a glorious stay in the “Sportsman’s Paradise.” Oddly, the weather turned ugly and rainy after the ENDEX Time, when the brigade was policing up the battlefield (retrieving defensive wire and filling in excavations). Once this was done, the brigade was loaded up on buses for the twenty-four-hour ride back to Fort Bragg and home. Though JRTC deployments are not supposed to be about “winning” and “losing,” Colonel Petreaus and his 1st Brigade had clearly done well. Not perfectly, but exceptionally by JRTC standards. By the time they arrived home, they were tired but happy. They were now ready to go back onto DRB-1 alert status, which occurred on November 1st, 1996.
Good-to-Go: DRB-1 (November 1st to December 13th, 1996)
Following the end of JRTC 97-1, the brigade finished its preparations to take over as the DRB-1 Brigade. Despite having all three battalions at his disposal this time, Colonel Petraeus decided again to have only two of the three on DRF-1 status during the coming alert period. As planned, the 3/504 would take the alert spot for the first three weeks (November 1st to 22nd), and then 1/504, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Leo Brooks and Sergeant Major Curtis Walker, would go DRF for the final three weeks (November 22nd to December 13th) of the rotation. In reserve would be2/504, acting as the “push” battalion for the other two, should a deployment be needed. Fortunately, no such contingency arose.
However, the XVIII Airborne Corps leadership keeps a few surprises in their bag for the units on DRB-1 alert, and the 1st Brigade was about to be tested again. The test is known as an Emergency Deployment Readiness Exercise (EDRE), and these are some of the best evaluations of just how ready a unit is to go off to war should it be required. In this case, the EDRE began on December 3rd, 1996, when the alert order went out to the brigade (the 3/504 had the DRF-1 duty at this time). This was run exactly like a real emergency deployment (in fact, the troopers initially had no idea if it was real or an exercise), complete with a two-hour recall deadline and lock-down of the DRF in the CMA prior to heading over to the Green Ramp at Pope AFB. Less than eighteen hours after the alert was issued, the 3/504, along with the brigade headquarters, a special team of specialists from the 82nd, jumped into a simulated evacuation situation at 0210 hours/2:10 AM on December 4th at the Avon Park Airfield in Florida. Once on the ground, the special team from the division conducted a simulated Non-Combatant Evacuation Operation (NEO), to remove a number of simulated U.S. citizens from a crisis. In a little over twenty-four hours, the operation was finished, and the entire DRF re-embarked and flew back on December 6th. Once there, the force again jumped at night from their transports, having done so twice in just three days. Overall, it was an outstanding operation that showed just how sharp a combat edge Colonel Petraeus had given the 1st Brigade. By the time that the 1st Brigade handed off the DRB-1 alert status on Friday, the 13th of December, 1996, they were as taut and combat ready as they ever had been.
