Senior Sergeants

[Pete]

Guys;

I have no wish to hijack a thread in another section of this site some I will post this event here.

Senior Sergeants coming into SF should use the events around this story as a teaching point. I had been in SF over 13 years, 3 1/2 as the team sergeant when this FTX took place.

One of the "Down the hall" teams had a team sergeant, senior SFC, just out of the Q course. The team leader was fairly new also. The team had a mix of team members, but mostly young also.

My team was a SCUBA team and while fairly young in age most had been in SF a number of years.

The battalion was going to run an FTX at Ft Hauchuca. Our team was picked to be the only UW team and the new team sergeant's team was picked to be the FID/Counter UW team running a platoon's worth of conventional guys chasing us. With the Company Commander wearing both hats and having access to the FOB you can see where this is going real quick.

Anyway, in training I like a little stiff compitition. It keeps you on your toes. I went up to the team sergeant and said something along the lines that I could give him some pointers on how we could make the FTX a bit more competitive for both sides. His reply was "If I want any advice from you Sarge, I'll ask for it". The Sarge part was that insulting drawn out one. I just said "HoooOK, see ya at the end of the FTX."

They never touched us during the FTX. We did the training, resupply and missions with ease. Our OPs watched them search our reported base camp locations a number of times but they never found the real one. Now remember, this was in a high desert. Lots of open areas, sand for tracks, limited water and few good hiding places. We were also moving around alot while we were doing our missions. A well run team should have been smoking out our base camp about every four days or so.

The second to last night the team leader got a order in a radio message to report our exact location. The team leader showed it to me and I said go ahead and do it. The message was written, given to the commo guy and he went out to send it. I then told the team leader we had been in one spot too long and we needed to move to a new camp location. The commo guy got back and we moved about 2 Ks. Of course we watched the pre-dawn convoy of trucks running through the desert and up to our old camp.

The last night's operation was a farce. We were givin a house with a small guard detail to hit in a fairly exposed location. Since it was the last night we knew the OPFOR was going to pull out all stops to try and regain a little honor from this mess they were in.

We picked a squad size element to hit the building and put the bulk of our forces in one security position down the road from the building and another larger ambush position further out in the desert on the only road leading into that section of the valley.

As with all training ambushs its location, location, location. The boys knew the trucks would be coming in the dark and they picked a spot where the trucks would be almost at a stop as they rounded a corner. They blocked the road and sat up in the rocks above and waited. Sure as shit the truck rounded the corner and stopped right below the boys. They unloaded with everything they had to include a ton of red smoke. The OPFOR cursed but moved the obstruction and drove on. They got close to our location and dismounted and moved up the road on foot only to get ambushed again by our security force, who chunked more red smoke in addition to everything else. The OPFOR ignored the ambush and was now hot footing it up the road to our location and we just moved away from the building and up into the brush. We could see the red smoke powder drifting out of their cloths as they ran by the fires. At the end of all that they only got their hands on our Medic and a couple of the Gs.

The other teams gave the FID team tons of shit for their poor showing and the team sergeant soon moved up and on to some staff position.

Pete
A picture of the UW team is posted in the teamhouse scrap book. There was only six of us but that's all it took.

[Pete]

Guys;
I was lucky during my time in SF in that I learned "the trade" from some of the finest team sergeants that ever took to the field. What I did was based on what I was taught by the older, more experienced people in SF.
In the early 80s MSG C. Wesley, "Wes", was our team sergeant. We had just finished another boring field problem at Ft Irwin and were back in our barracks. The OPFOR team never touched us.
The company still had three teams in the field and that night Wes told the company commander that our team could hit all three teams within 24 hours. The commander wanted to know if the time started in the morning and Wes said no right now. The commander said go ahead and we started planning. The teams were all located somewhere north of the compound. We had no inside information just that all three were in an area about 20k x 30K.
We went over the maps, came up with a plan and hit the road well before first light in one 2 1/2 ton truck. Nothing fancy. Find the first team, fire it up with a few blanks and move on to the next and so on.
We hit the first team by 0900, the second around noon but the third was alittle harder and it took us to around 1700 to find them.
Wes is still kickin' and just got back from the sand box a few months ago.

Pete

[Roguish Lawyer]

One of the "Down the hall" teams had a team sergeant, senior SFC, just out of the Q course. The team leader was fairly new also. The team had a mix of team members, but mostly young also.

My team was a SCUBA team and while fairly young in age most had been in SF a number of years.


Great stories, Pete!

I am surprised that someone can become an SF team sergeant based on prior Big Army experience alone. And also that a team would be put together with so little SF experience. It would seem prudent to ensure that all teams have at least one experienced SF guy.

[Pete]

I am surprised that someone can become an SF team sergeant based on prior Big Army experience alone.

That was a specific time and place situation, 1987. The battalion had just re-shuffled a bunch of teams when we did away with the water ops company (real bad execution of a "could have been" good idea). Company C had a bunch of the more experienced people working out at Mott lake. Due to slotting, warm bodies, the re-shuffle, etc Company C was kinda' in a rebuilding mode during that year.

In the 80s rank was rank. With NCOERs, slots and the paper shuffle, top rank held the top job. But never say never, I did have an E-7 senior to me assigned to the team once. He was the intel sergeant and did a great job with no problems.

While the two stories above only take a few minutes to read both required hard work by a number of individuals to complete. Of all my time in SF I was never "Ordered" to do anything and I never had to "Order" anyone to do anything. After the planning phase of any operation, where everybody had their input, the team leader and team sergeant put out the way it was going to be. After that everybody on the team gave 110% to get it done. Things might change during the execution phase but everybody kept their eyes on the final goal and kept on working to get there.

I got where I did in SF only by the hard work of those around me. With people like that its easy to look good.

Pete

[Martin]

Thank you, a lot, Pete! ('course you are Pete! ;))

[Pete]

Thank you, a lot, Sir!

Now Martin, you must be talking to RL. The whole time I was in, except for the last two years, I was just called Pete. The last two years the guys called me SGM but that was just to keep the brass happy. Now, once again, I'm just Pete.

[BMT (RIP)]

I can relate to alot of these comments.
I went to "B" Co. 3d Gp (B-4 A-??) ' 65. Our first FTX to Eglin was made up of teams from B-4 thru B-6. We didn't have a full team in the Co.
My Tm. Sgt. at Eglin was a great guy but the team had never trained a day together.
We did a round robin training thingy, UW,air ops, patrolling etc.

When we hit the UW station, we were sat on a log and the team was asked UW question's, being the FNG on the team I tried not to show off. Most of the guys on the team couldn't answer any of the questions.

The way I handled this was to ask the TS a question using the correct answer.

Later I heard my TS ask someone WTF is my intel sgt. Oh he is an FNG right out of SFTG. TS said if it wasn't for him at the UW station,we would of fell flat on our ass.
:)

BMT

[aricbcool]

Thanks very much for the post, Pete. I really enjoyed it. :)

--Aric