July 14, 1999, 0330 hrs.

I stand in the Tank Commander's hatch of my M1A1 tank, fighting off a lethargic drowsiness. Well, damn, it is 0330 in the morning. The desert air is cool, a change from the 110 degree plus temperatures we have been experiencing for the last few days. The rest of my crew, a driver, gunner and loader are dozing, but are under orders not to fall asleep. The enemy is out there, and we are tasked to locate and destroy him.

Seven other tanks, four Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicles, and a handful of other assorted vehicles are also alert. We are waiting for the order from the Company Commander to move to our battle posittions; some ten-feet deep holes about a kilometer and a half away.

The battle positions are dug in such a way as to allow us to observe a critical part of the battlefield and defend it from an OPFOR (Opposing Force) attack. My company has the responsibilty of defending the Whale, a huge, black, lava rock-covered hill that stretches almost three miles.

HMMWV

At 0530 we get the order to move from our hide site, a location on the battlefield that is supposed to prevent enemy recon teams from spotting us, to our battle positions. We have rehearsed this move yesterday, so even in the dim morning light I know where to go. Suddenly, from the hill to our right there are several puffs of smoke.

Three tanks from the right-most platoon are immediately hit by infantry firing AT-5 Spandrel anti-tank missiles. I grab the TC's over-ride handle and slew the turret to the right, barking at my gunner to scan for enemy dismounts. The thermal sight might be able to pick up hot spots on the hillside, but it is too late; the OPFOR has drawn first blood and gotten away clean. The crews of the destroyed tanks immediately begin performing first aid and vehicle recovery.

I move to my battle position and the tank coasts down into the hole. Now the only visible part of my tank is the antenna, the M2HB Machine gun, and my head and torso. I scan our area of responsibility with binoculars, my gunner doing the same with his sights. It is 0545.

The Scouts

We occasionally get reports from scout vehicles, armored Hummvee's, hidden from one to five klicks to our front. Their job is not to engage the enemy, but to stay out of site and report on his actions. Around 0630, I receive a report from the company commander saying that the scouts have spotted a large dust cloud to the northeast, in the direction of the John Wayne Foothills. Apparently the enemy is on the move.

At around 0730 my gunner reports that he has spotted a vehicle beyond the Whale gap; range approximately 6000 meters. As this is well outside our effective range, we do not open fire but report the contact to our platoon leader. He immediately marks the location on his map, and likewise reports the sighting to our company commander. In this way, all the vehicles and soldiers in the company know of the location of the contact. The vehicle is too far away to identify as a friend or enemy.

At 0745 more vehicles move into visual range. They seem to be taking their time. They are definitely not acting like friendly vehicles; they are probably enemy scouts, tasked to locate our positions. Sure enough, five minutes later, enemy artillery begins to fall about 300 meters to our front. My crew immediately don our gas masks. We are already wearing our NBC (Nuclear - Biological - Chemical) Suits and boots.

Equipment from Hell

These items are a special kind of hell; hot and very encumbering. As I am the tank in the platoon whose responsibility it is to determine wether chemical weapons are being used, I break open a chemical detection kit that samples the air. Even if chemical weapons are used, my tank crew is relatively safe; the M1A1 is equipped with an overpressure system that prevents outside air from entering the interior of the vehicle. Unfortunately, I have to open my hatch to test the air. It sucks to be the NBC tank.

Fortunately the test is negative. I report the results to my platoon leader, and after a few more minutes we receive the "ALL CLEAR" , allowing us to unmask. However, while we have been protecting ourselves from the unseen hazards of chemical agents, the enemy has been busy.

M1A1 loading on C17

We get a call that an enemy armored force is within three clicks of our position. Oh boy, that's pretty close in the desert. My crew is alert and ready. Five minutes later, we get a frantic report that there are enemy helicopters behind us, to the southeast. I spin around in my hatch and scan the sky for aircraft. Sure enough, two Hind-D's are skirting the Whale and approaching our position.

I hear the whine and grind of a tank to my right pull out of its fighting position; it's the company Executive Officer's tank. His turret spins to his right rear. A deafening boom, and one of the helicopters goes down in flames, the other one turns and drops to the desert floor, trying to escape destruction. It retreats safely.

"Top-Hat!"

Suddenly, I hear my platoon leader give a platoon fire command over the net. "Red, this is Red One, Tanks, two rounds Sabot . . . Top Hat, Top Hat. . . . . . . . .Fire!" At the hearing of "Top Hat" my driver moves forward to the firing step of the fighting position.

The turret slews to the right, my gunner scanning the gap for targets. He identifies a group of BMP's and T-80's moving over the northeast side of the whale. He picks out a T-80, and thumbs the laser range finder button, Range 1700 meters. The loader already has a sabot round in the breech. He flips the arming lever upwards, and yells "UP!" The gun is ready to fire. At the word "Fire" I repeat the command to my gunner, and he squeezes the trigger.

A huge explosion spouts from the muzzle of our gun, and I see our round streak away towards the enemy tank. The T-80 is struck at the junction of the turret and the hull. The tank shudders to a stop. An instant later, we are rewarded with a huge explosion as the internally stowed ammunition in the enemy vehicle cooks off, and the twenty-two ton turret flies off the hull and lands ten meters away.

My loader is already in action. His knee presses on the ammo door switch, and the thick aluminum door rolls open to reveal several 120mm rounds in their storage tubes. He grabs a round and spins it to place it in the smoking breech. Behind him, the ammo door slides closed . . .

We're Hit!

WHAM! The entire tank shakes from a 125mm sabot round, fired by another T-80. The round penetrates the rear of the turret, and seconds later all of the ammunition in our semi-ready rack explodes with a violent crash. I am stunned by the noise, as the semi-ready racks "blow-out panels" are right behind my hatch.

My nose is bleeding, and my gunner and loader are both dazed as well. The Halon fire extinguishers kick in, and fill the turret with the fire-retardant chemical. I attempt to take stock of the situation; no turret power, the engine has died, and there is a merry column of smoke and flame erupting from a foot behind me. The heat is almost unbearable.

I look around the battlefield; our tank is not the only one to suffer the same fate. I see several burning vehicles. All this has taken the space of thirty seconds. I see dozens and dozens of enemy vehicles moving at high speed behind our positions, firing machine guns and tank cannon as they move. It doesn't take Patton to see that we are screwed . . . .

NTC

No, this is not World War III, this is the Army's National Training Center at Fort Irwin California. What I have just described actually happened, albeit with pyrotechnic simulators and laser engagement systems.

NTC is the premiere center for training today's soldiers in maneuver warfare. Myself and the tankers, infantry and artillerymen of the Texas Army National Guard underwent a month long training rotation at NTC, and I am going to attempt to describe our experiences, and to give a gamers perspective.

I have been a soldier for over ten years. I first began as a Combat Engineer, and then transitioned to tanks two years later. I was initially trained on the M60A3 tank, and then the M1 and M1A1 series of main battle tanks.

One of my most memorable experiences as a mechanized infantry soldier came at the National Training Center at Ft. Irwin, CA in July of 1992. I had been assigned to the 3rd Brigade, 1st Battalion, 8th Infantry Regiment stationed at Ft. Carson, CO and I was on my first tour at the infamous NTC.

We had laaggered the vehicles for the night following the live fire exercise we had executed earlier that day. All brass and ammo had been accounted for and we were some of the most tired soldiers anywhere on the planet.

Later into the evening we received a warning order that we were going to serve as the reserve element for our sister task force that night. They were executing a movement to contact and their attack had been bumped up due to a scheduling conflict arising out of the live fire. The original reserve force would have been made up out of several scout and slice elements that were assigned to us for the purpose of real world TO&E.

You see…when you go to war, you don't go as an Infantry Battalion. You go as a task force. That means you integrate Armor, Infantry, Artillery, Cavalry, and slice elements from Division Support Command consisting of Military Intelligence, Military Police, Medical, Signal, and various and sundry other animals of military life even down to a delegate from the JAG corps to ensure that international law is being adhered to.

You draw from support units and they are tasked out to a Battalion+ sized organization consisting of two Infantry and two Armor companies. That way, when you go into the fight, you have every available resource at the fingertips of the battalion commander so that he can properly array his forces to the best tactical and strategic advantage. Theoretically.

That evening, there was a "scheduling" difficulty with the original Cavalry support element (which closely resembles an hybrid infantry/armor battallion) so they were unable to come to the party. That put Task Force 1-8 in the driver's seat (literally) for the reserve element mission.

Guest of OPFOR

Now, I don't know if any of you have ever been guests of the Opposing Force resident at the National Training Center in Ft. Irwin, CA, but for those of you who have, you'll know what I mean when I say that the most devastating and dangerous eastern bloc Red Force element in the world did not reside within the borders of the USSR. They were permanent party at a US Army post in the middle of the high desert less than 80 miles away from the greatest tribute to Sodom and Gomorrha known to man (Las Vegas).

Going into this evening, our track record was just about as good as it gets for a Brigade who hadn't even completed transition to the Bradley Fighting vehicle from the M113. Which is to say that we hadn't been decimated to the point that we would have had to retire our colors had this been an actual ass-kicking. The score was 0 & 3. We were licking our wounds pretty bad.

As we mounted up, I remember the track commander telling us that it was going to be a long night, and sure enough it was the longest night I have ever had in my life.

Two hours into the fight it became apparent that Task Force 2-77 was taking it in the rear and they were in no shape to continue the fight in their present situation.

It was at this point that the Brigade Commander (who was a ballsy son of a bitch by the way, awesome guy) decided to execute a reverse in square and conduct a rearward passage of lines through the reserve element. This would allow TF 2-77 to gain some perspective and also give the commander a chance to put his Divisional Artillery slice elements to work if the Red Force saw fit to pursue the fleeing task force.

This meant two things to me. One, we were about to be in the hot seat after a long-ass day of live fire exercise, but good. And two, we were going to execute a rearward passage of lines between two task forces in the middle of the "Oh my God I can't see my frigging hand flapping in front of my face!" night. Strap in, right?

Pulling Out

As 2-77 began it's all out run like hell retreat in the jaws of the OPFOR, I prepared to dismount and meet up with the rest of the dismount element that would provide the combined briefing at the meeting point prior to the maneuver. This was to help minimize casualties during the crazy god-awful stunt we were about to pull out of our collective asses.

All I remember my squad leader telling me that night was that we all needed to remain inside the lane of passage by the compass reading regardless. As long as we stayed inside that lane of passage then the rest would work out just fine. It occurred to me that I was going to be running a hell of a lot on shifting sand while mammoth sized hard steel vehicles were doing their best not to run me the hell over in the demented ballet that was to be our maneuver plan that evening.

I remember hearing that the Red Force had not been informed of the operational change in reserve elements prior to the execution of the exercise. I know someone got an ass chewing for that little deception, but that wasn't my problem. After seeing their prey running like hell before them, the OPFOR lost all caution and gave pursuit to the rout that they had created. I don't think the OPFOR commander would have pursued that battle plan had he known the size of the reserve element waiting.

Once the O/Cs determined the amount of attrition caused by the artillery, the Red Force broke upon Task Force 1-8 in all their fury. We were dug in and ready. In the one and only victory of our rotation that year at the National Training Center, we walked out of our "reserve" battle with 2 APC's, 4 M1A1's, and the various surviving TOC and TAC vehicles that contained the command and control center. It wasn't pretty, but it was a by-god win and I'll be damned if we didn't strut for the next two days like we had an Anthrax shot go bad right in the center of our chests.

SGT Mark Martin is a member of the Minnesota Army National Guard. He was assigned to the 4th Infantry Division and 75th Ranger Regiment on active duty for 4 years prior. His awards and badges include the Expert Infantryman Badge, Parachutist Badge, The Army Achievement Medal, The Good Conduct Medal, National Defense Service Ribbon, Non-Commissioned Officer's Professional Development Ribbon and the Army Service Ribbon.