Training Stop on the Way to Iraq: Fort Lewis Troops Practice in Calif.

By Scott Gutierrez, The Olympian, Olympia, Wash.

Feb. 26–FORT IRWIN, Calif. — Soldiers call it “The Box” or the “Dust Bowl.”

The Army National Training Center’s 1,100 square miles in the Mojave Desert is the closest thing to Iraq that soldiers will see before deploying to the Middle East.

Soldiers from the Army’s first Stryker Brigade Combat Team are preparing here for their second trip to Iraq in June.

“We’ve been so run ragged out here. It’s actually less stressful for us in Iraq, believe it or not,” Sgt. Hans Crawford, 20, of Olympia said after awakening from a few hours of sleep atop a ridge where his unit has set up several communications towers.

The 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, was the first Stryker Brigade to be tested in combat during a yearlong deployment that began in late 2003.

The brigade’s 4,800 soldiers, who arrived at Fort Irwin earlier this month, will spend two weeks in The Box as the last major training exercise before they replace their counterparts, the 172nd Stryker Brigade of Fort Wainwright, Alaska, now serving in Iraq.

The training environment has changed since the Stryker Brigade last visited Fort Irwin before its first stint in Iraq.

Lessons learned from the relentless insurgency soldiers face in Iraq are scripted — sometimes within days of action in the war zone — into the scenarios their replacements confront in the Mojave Desert.

The Army has gone to great lengths to make the terrain as realistic as possible. A dozen mock Iraqi towns have sprouted in the California desert, along with their own restive populations and insidious insurgent groups. Playing those roles are about 500 Nevada National Guard unit members and about 250 Iraqi nationals recruited from immigrant communities in Southern California.

Few details are overlooked.

Mortar fire keeps soldiers awake at night. Stragglers are taken hostage in the underground tunnel systems. Suicide bombers strike from any direction.

Role-players even portray television reporters from Al Jazeera and the fictitious International News Network. The broadcasts are, at times, unfavorable to the Army’s image.

The firing of weapons is done through laser systems fitted to soldiers’ rifles and body armor. Sensors beep when a soldier has been shot or killed.

During the first five days of the training exercises, soldiers saw continuous fighting with mock insurgents, who had seized control of several towns. By Saturday, the U.S. soldiers had retaken control and were trying to maintain order in the wooden facade-lined streets where role-players camp out overnight just like the troops in the field.

At Forward Operating Base Denver, which sits outside the makeshift town of Madina Jabal, soldiers kept an eye on simmering unrest. At 2:30 p.m. Saturday, a video went over the airwaves showing an insurgent pretending to behead a prisoner.

The experiences are designed to simulate the worst possible scenarios encountered in Iraq, said Maj. John Clearwater of the National Training Center’s public affairs office. “We stretch the unit out to the breaking point in two weeks.”

The brigade is expected to finish training early next month.

Scott Gutierrez can be reached at sgutierrez@theolympian.com.

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Copyright (c) 2006, The Olympian, Olympia, Wash.

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