A few weeks ago, though, we did something out of the routine--we went out the field! Kinda. Alpha Company had their Culminating Exercise, which is when they go to a simulated village, in this case in Mali, and demonstrate that they learned something in all of their training.
In theory, anyway.
The week started with the firing range and mass casualty situations, which were to assess how well the medics could triage and determine who to treat first. Overall, they didn't do too well. One medic spent all of her time on a head casualty that should have been triaged as "expectant" (as in, expectant to die). Another went straight to the first casualty and didn't look any further. In other words, we have some work to do.
On days 2-4, they were out in the simulated village in "Mali" (really a remote corner of Ft. Stewart). I got to play a doctor with MSF (Medecines Sans Frontieres, or Doctors Without Borders), which has a very strict "we don't work with the military--any military" policy, so I played that to the best of my abilities. This is me yelling at one of the team leaders (my friend Dan) for their actions throughout the village and how we just wanted them to leave.
The other two officers in my office, MAJ Greifenstein, the environmental science officer (in red) and CPT Avriette, the veterinarian (the girl) also got to play parts, both as USAID scientists (he a soil science, she a vet... we were really imaginative). In the course of playing a soil scientist, Griff was digging holes, and instead of the teams asking him what he was doing (which they were supposed to do), they reported him for burying land mines and declared entire roads off-limits. Not quite the reaction we were going for.
In all, it was a fun week in the field (because, well, we weren't in the office), but the teams have a lot to learn about operating in Africa. Maybe I have an advantage, because I've only been on "peacetime missions" and no deployments to Iraq or Afghanistan. I don't really have a combat mindset, but all the team members have been deployed in combat situations, and that's what they revert to when they think of going overseas. As I've said in multiple conversations to multiple people, Africa is not Iraq or Afghanistan. Not only that, but civil affairs shouldn't be about combat. It's not about going into a village with weapons, ready to shoot the bad guys. It's about getting to know people and winning trust, and not assuming that there's a bad guy behind every door.
It's a work in progress, I guess.
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