Training at Ft. Stewart

The 3,200 soldiers of the Indiana Infantry Brigade Combat Team have been split up into special task forces with separate missions mostly centered around convoy security and base protection. It's part of the new Army philosophy of "warrior training" putting the priority on infantry missions and skills for every soldier.

Echo company were originally the cooks and maintenance people, but they've been reassigned to do recovery force protection. If any vehicle goes down outside the wire, an Echo team will provide the security for the recovery mission to repair or tow that vehicle back to base. They also will man entry checkpoints on the huge Forward Operating Bases in Iraq.

Currently they are in the middle of an eight-day, 24-hour training exercise here at Ft. Stewart. The idea is to put as much stress on the units, to overload them with more problems than they could possibly face in one day. Yesterday the situations included a suicide bomber, civilians trying to photograph the command center, mortar attacks, the planting of an IED in the road, and stopping a "known" insurgent car.

When I first walked into the command center one of the soldiers approached me suspiciously. I was dressed in civilian clothes, including a long coat. The "suicide" attack had happened just that morning and their ears were still ringing from the simulation blast. I could have been another insurgent "inject", but I was just a somewhat bewildered reporter.