ROTC cadets conduct wartime simulation

The country of Atropia is in jeopardy. Its southern border is teeming with insurgents dead set on destabilizing the local government. But U.S. military forces have intervened and are trying to secure the southern border.

Atropia may not sound familiar. That’s because it doesn’t actually exist — at least not outside the confines of Camp Williams, a National Guard training site in nearby Riverton.

For two and a half days recently, BYU’s ROTC program was at Camp Williams taking part in a field training exercise, or FTX, meant to simulate actual combat conditions. Conducted once a semester, the FTX assesses cadets and prepares them for future, more extensive training scenarios and actual deployment. Hence the Atropia scenario.

The Daily Universe spent a few hours with the cadets at Camp Williams, getting a glimpse into their training.

Weather-wise, cadets got more than they bargained for this time around. Considerable snowfall turned the camp’s dirt roads to mud pools once it melted, leaving certain vehicles stuck. Snow on the hillsides, however, didn’t melt, making the white-flagged checkpoints on the navigation course practically invisible. Despite these challenges, cadets adapted and pressed on.

“Plans never go as you planned, of course, so it’s been frustrating,” said Cadet Samuel Taylor, a UVU student taking part in the training. “The snow is really hitting them. Most of them don’t have a second pair of boots. They’re all waterlogged, so we’re working with that. Everything kind of got scrapped and redone, [but] when these tough situations happen you don’t quit, you just keep going.”

The excursion is not intended to be easy, however, said Captain Dave Jungheim.

“We want it to be stressful,” Jungheim said. “We put them into leadership positions which they don’t feel comfortable in, in conditions they don’t feel comfortable with, to stress them out and see how they do.”

One of the training’s intended stresses is simulated chaos. Cadet Command Sergeant Major Derek Rose, 23, from Goodlettsville, Tenn., explained that in these scenarios, 12-men squads are attacked by three enemies while they try to handle civilians in harm’s way. Rose said these situations force cadets to think on their feet and make quick decisions.

“It becomes a big question of — are they going to let the civilians die? Are they going to protect the civilians? Are they going to attack the enemy? Is the enemy going to start killing them?” Rose said. “So all these things start happening. It becomes chaos very, very quickly.”

Rose also pointed out their training is becoming less about violence and more about negotiation.

Now, he said, cadets are trained on dealing with civilians and village elders, since these elements play a major part in service in the Middle East. Cadets play all the parts in the simulation — from soldiers to civilians to insurgents.

Cadet Dan Warner, a Middle East studies and Arabic major from Westminster, Md., has completed two tours of duty in Iraq. He said the field trainings go better when cadets use their imaginations and treat it like the real thing, and when those playing the role of bad guys have actually served in the Middle East.

“The real difficulty lies in who’s playing the bad guy — that’s what really determines the realism,” Warner said. “If those playing the bad guys don’t know what it’s like, then it’s hard for them to accurately simulate being a bad guy.”

Warner said one of FTX’s biggest benefits is how it builds unit cohesion and trust — elements he found crucial during his tours of duty.

“While your own personal skills impact your own ability to survive, really it’s your unit’s skill that [determines] your survivability,” Warner said. “So the more proficient you are and the more unified you are with the guys you serve with, the better able you are to work together and keep each other alive and bring everybody home.”

This article was originally publshed in the Daily Universe on April 12, 2011.