Air Force Blue, Army Green, and Simunition Black & Purple
I was lucky during my time in the military. Although I was in several combat zones, I never had to fire live ammunition from my weapon … and more importantly, I never had live rounds shot at me.
That doesn’t mean we didn’t get to have some fun in training though.
(All pictures in this post were taken by me)
Over the course of 24 years I attended many exercises and training events.
One of my favorites was BWMQT (Basic Weather Military Qualification Training) at Camp Blanding, Florida. In a nutshell, they sent a bunch of Air Force Weather guys who were assigned to Army units (the Army doesn’t have weather people) to be trained by Army Infantry guys, under the theory that if we came under attack downrange we might not get in their way (and/or need rescuing) if we had a bit more idea about what we were doing.
We got to do a lot of cool stuff like blow up C4 and live hand grenades, and shoot 50 cal rifles.
But the best time was when we were out at the MOUT (Military Operations in Urban Terrain) site. Note: it was not as much fun when I was a trainee. But I got to go back a couple of times later as facilitator. It was during these trips that I got to play OP4 (Opposition Force) during the MOUT days.
They Don’t Teach Air Force Guys This Part Anymore
The times I went to Camp Blanding were between 2009 and 2012. I realized at the time that while the training was fun, and we actually learned a lot, it wasn’t terribly useful for its stated purpose of preparing us to deploy; particularly the MOUT site days.
Let me give you an example:
The Infantry guys were basically training us Air Force guys as if we Infantry. They had us walking through the village in formation, and even meeting with village elders. One of our “platoon” was assigned to carry an M249 SAW (more about that weapon later). When we were inevitably attacked, we had to take cover and conduct a counter attack against the enemy fighters.
It was totally unrealistic.
If they wanted to prepare a bunch of Air Force weather guys for the real world, they would have driven us in on HMWVV, set off a roadside IED, had us scramble for cover and wait to be rescued. I suppose knowing how to operate the machine gun might have been useful … but only if the Army guy who it was assigned to got shot and killed first.
Anyway, I digress …
I don’t know if you’ve ever seen or shot simunition. Well, we had it for M9 pistols, M4 rifles, and even that M249 machine gun. Imagine paint balls, but it hurts like 50 times worse if you’re hit in an unprotected area.
Part of the MOUT training was building clearing.
Well one day one of our trainees decided to cop a very bad attitude while we were out at the MOUT site. We (facilitators) tried at first to just let his leadership handle things. But he persisted, loudly and obviously.
We decided the best way to handle the attitude was a heavy dose of tactical reality. My buddy set up the SAW to cover the ‘fatal funnel’ (the doorway) at thigh level (a classic defensive tactic). Mr. Attitude,was somehow volunteered (or more likely was voluntold) to lead the stack through the door.
Aside: Simuntion doesn’t hurt at all if you get hit in the vest. As a result we (OP4) tended to aim for the trainee’s thighs (they were still supposed to aim center mass at us … train as you fight and all).
The first guy in pretty much always took fire; just not always with the SAW.
Needless to say, it was a painful learning experience.
But I’ll you what …
That guy didn’t give anybody any attitude for the rest of the training exercise.
Before anyone accuses us of cruel and unusual punishment, we all (including OP4) came away with bumps and bruises by the time it was done. In these building clearing exercises, OP4 pretty much always got killed eventually (we were always way outnumbered). Several times, while laying in a concealed prone position, when they finally overran me, I was “killed” by point blank shots to my unprotected buttocks. Ouch.
While I’m glad I got to participate in this kind of training, I am profoundly thankful that I was never in a position while deployed to have to use it.
For all three of my combat zone deployments I was a happy and content FOBBIT (Often pejorative term used by Army and Marines to describe military members who never go outside the wire of the relatively secure Forward or larger Contingency Operating Bases).
I still work with the military. But as a civilian, if I want to play with guns (and for the most part I usually don’t) I have to go buy my own … and I don’t even know if it’s legal to have simunition. So these trips to Blanding were pretty much a once in a lifetime experience.
Do you have fun paintball (or simunition) stories? Do tell …
Every photo tells a story, and stories are better with company. If you enjoyed this post, please pass it along to a fellow explorer. Thank you!
My training was so long ago that I can’t even remember the acronyms, but a couple of the experiences are still loud and clear.
We used BB guns in a couple of training exercises, including “quickfire” reactions for situations with no time to aim. Not sure how many dead or maimed drill sergeants and trainees we would have had should those have been done with live stuff.
Initial jungle training (not called that, but at Fort Polk, it was a jungle) included BB gun ambushes. No padding, but we did have sort of a mosquito net thing over our faces to protect the eyes…which with the steam of a Southwestern Louisiana July meant we might as well have been blindfolded. Had those little bee stings been real bullets, my platoon would have fared much like Custer’s.
But the most vivid “attitude adjuster” of early training was throwing hand grenades.
Everybody had seen a movie in which somebody casually rolls one of these things around a corner then sort of flinches when it makes a popping sound and some smoke comes out. In the comic books and John Wayne movies they were firecrackers.
The real deal was a little more intense.
First off, we had to qualify by throwing a hand-grenade shaped and sized thing over a wire. This had to be done several times to ensure that the trainee had sufficient arm and was sufficiently aware of the intention. It seemed silly and there was considerable “grab assing” and joking around with the dummies.
When it came time for a “live fire exercise” we were given two grenades each, delivered in small cylindrical containers, which, to our amazement we were instructed to hold to our chests — sort of like a bizarre bra. The drill sergeants were not taking any shit off anybody at this point, because, as I was to learn shortly, they were earning their pay that day.
Moving to the grenade-throwing area we found concrete open-ended “pens,” not unlike office cubicles except for having walls a few feet thick and about chest high. I believe these were called “sumps.” The trainee gave the grenades to the trainer and was told to kneel and wait.
Is still seemed like much ado about very little until the first grenade was thrown. For a horrifying moment, I thought the son-of-a-bitch had thrown it at me. This was no pop-and-puff-of-smoke, this was a freakin’ explosion — as attention-getting as a nearby lightning strike.
Through the ringing of your ears, you could almost hear gasps along the line.
Now, if you have done this, you know the technique as taught is a little unnerving, too. Both hands meet at midchest, left index finger is inserted in the pin. Right hand grips the grenade, curled around the safety mechanism that keeps it from going off before it is thrown. You don’t just yank the pin out with the left finger, it is a two-handed process. The pin is pulled leftward and dropped while the left hand continues out to point toward your target (this is much like that archer pose football players strike when they think they are hot shit).
Meanwhile the grenade is pulled back to the right and upward to a ready-to-throw position. Now, put yourself in the boots of the young trainee for a moment — a 19- or 20-year-old who was just a handful of weeks earlier hanging out at the malt shop and asking daddy if he can use the car. You are not used to blowing things up and have just heard an explosion that lets you know what one of these little steel baseballs can do.
AND NOW YOU ARE HOLDING ONE UP AGAINST YOUR EAR!
It is one of those moments that you tend to remember while also not being totally sure it actually happened.
As for the attitude adjusting, I heard of some pretty loudmouthed, gung-ho types whimpering, “I can’t do this.”
And that’s when those drill sergeants earned their pay… and my respect.
PERSONAL POSTSCRIPT: Like many others, I was a scrawny post-adolescent who wasn’t in nearly as good a shape as he thought he was, and while I didn’t have any real difficulty clearing the wire with my practice throws, I was no Roberto Clemente. A couple were just barely far enough and one might have been short. When I threw the real thing, I think it would have cleared the Chrysler Building.
Chair Force? Are you f*cking kidding me? I thought you were a badass! ONLY KIDDING. I'm just jealous because the USAF and USN looked at my ASVAB scores and said not interested. For real. But I grew up in the Rambo and Red Dawn era - WOLVERINES! - so the Army was it.
Anyhow.
I love these stories and photos! I, too, have some fond memories of boot camp and training. Like camouflaging myself with poison ivy, setting an ambush while lying in a fire ant nest, getting punched by Drill Sergeant, and almost getting court-martialed for pissing off the brass.
MOUT training was cool, but we had the blanks and an adapter, never simulation ammo. That shit would have been fun. All the ambushes I set and had to go bang bang on could've been better with that.
Agreed that some of the Army training is stupid and not real. It has changed a lot since the days I was at Fort Benning (even got interviewed by Stars and Stripes about our current milquetoast training), but even then it wasn't good enough for real combat ... which I never experienced.
You've got to do some really cool stuff. I wish I had been deployed, but I was destined to be in the rear with the gear. Thanks for sharing these memories.