OPERATION LONGBOW

Saturday, May 4th, 2002

Camp Stasa, Shiawassee County, MI

On May 4th, Militia persons from Wayne, Macomb, Eaton, and Calhoun Counties participated in a delightfully exhausting training session at Camp Stasa. The weather was perfect, nice and cool in the morning, and sunny and pleasant throughout the rest of the day. The bugs did not come out until later in the day. It will be time for bug repellant from here on out.

Our reporter friends from UPN50 were back again this morning, but they left before the masses all showed up. All in all, nearly 20 folks came and trained, and this was even with the Red Wing playoff game coming on at 1:00 in the afternoon. (Go Wings!)

After a very brief gear check, and some sighting in, we did the two mile walk, in formation, led by Hagen Daz. The roads were mostly dry, but in the muddy spots, it was rough going. For the second half of the walk, the formation opened up into two large fire teams in wedge formations. This covered a large part of the marching area, and it looked spectacular. We even ran a bit of the way, which is always oh-so-fun!

Following this, we had a brief break to snack and rehydrate, and then took up a travelling formation out across the field. We had a lead fire team, a trail fire team, and a small headquarters section in the middle, complete with attached flare launcher and heavy gunner. This was absolute militia bliss! It was thrilling to see a nice, large squad sized element, plus attachments, moving tactically across a field. The lead team crossed into a planted section of the field, and had to carefully back out (we identified this as a simulated mine filed) while the rest of the squad covered them.

We then reversed the direction of travel, and switched teams, with Bravo Team taking the point. Bravo team took up a support position, while Alpha Team bounded around to the right. I moved the HQ section with flare launcher and heavy gunner up with B team for support, but we experienced a casualty, which the heavy gunner fell back to assist. (Probably wouldn't want to drop a heavy weapon like that back, but the guy was really hurt, and Thumper was closest.)

After A team was in position, B team picked up and swept across the objective. A team then also moved up to secure the objective. Once in place, we dropped teams back to search and check the vehicles that we had captured. A team also secured the tent. Several other areas were checked as well, including a UN blue vehicle. We then did an "ACE" report. An ACE report is a status check on AMMO, CASUALTIES, and EQUIPMENT. The quick way to do this is by colors. Green means good, yellow means there is a minor problem with something, and red means something is in a bad state. So, if everything is okay with you or your team, your report is green, green, green. So, in our case, since we hadn't really used up any ammo, all the ammo reports were green, but B team had a minor injury, so the "C" was yellow, and all equipment seemed to be accounted for, so the "E" part was green also.

We then found a prisoner in the new outhouse (the nerve of this guy!), so we went over some prisoner search operations. The prisoner had extra weapons hidden in his boot, in his belt, in his upper pocket, he was a veritable smorgasbord of hidden weapons. These are things that you must always be extra sure of checking for. We also did some classes on rolling over a enemy casualty, to check for grenades or other booby traps.

Whew... Then, after a water break, it was time for Ambush drills. After a very brief (probably too brief. My bad. I will need to do a whole ambush write-up for you guys to study...) class on simple linear ambushes, we sent one team into the woods to set up the ambush, and took volunteers to be the "victims". We did this three times, with different ambushers and ambushees each time. The ambushees were never very cooperative, and always tried to mess up the ambush. This is good training. A lot of lessons were learned in this training, about movement, security, cover, and camouflage. The only way to pick this up is to come out and do it, so come out and do it.

Then, the burgers were done (Oh yeah, we barbecued, too. Darn if you missed it, maybe next time...), so we called a brief burger break. Some of the folks were starting to get a bit run down. Training will do that. Two three-man teams then headed out into the woods and the rest of us tried to detect their movements and their locations. This was not easy, as they were quiet and stealthy enough to almost completely avoid detection. Movement was good. Better camouflage would have helped, but they did well, anyway. You only learn this by doing it, and by practice.

Some of the folks left, and others did some more zeroing and sighting in. This almost became a riflery question and answer session, with folks asking each other about certain weapons or ammo. We even got a class on bore-sighting a newly scoped AK type rifle.

All in all, it was a complete day, with a whole lot of stuff to digest, and everybody leaving very tired. At least one person stayed the night. Lucky him. One aspect of this training that I loved, was that we designated different folks to be team leaders, patrol leaders, and range officers. Everybody just about got to be in charge of some thing or other. If the militia is to grow, and ever eventually be effective, then we have to train everyone that is involved right now to assume leadership positions. Everyone that comes to training is a potential team leader or squad leader, or more.

Thanks to everyone who came out and participated. This is exactly the type of training that should be going on all the time. If we can keep this pace, and this momentum, then the future of the militia looks very bright, indeed.

I hope to see you next time.

-Lee