News Article

Reported by: Jim Ragonese, WBIR Reporter
Photo journalist: Tim Dale, Photographer
Last Updated: 8/3/2004 4:48:08 AM

Knoxville area members of the 278th Regimental Combat Team are suffering through extreme heat and physical training conditions, often times as objects are smoking or blowing up around them at Camp Shelby, Mississippi, as they train for a likely deployment to Iraq.

Roughly 4,000 members of the 278th Armored Cavalry Regiment have been called to active duty. The military reclassified the unit as a Regimental Combat Team shortly after members arrived in Mississippi.

"You know, most of the people don't do this all the time," explains Knoxville 278th member Sgt. Mitchell Howard, as he sits on his cot in a tent during a 48 hour field training exercise. "We're from the Tennessee Guard, so we've got to get it in where it's just natural."

By late afternoon the next day, instructors declare Sgt. Howard as Killed In Action for training purposes after the passenger of a vehicle threw a bomb within yards of where Howard stood at a security checkpoint.

"Like we tell 'em (other soldiers), you could what if all day," Sgt. Howard says. "What if this happens, what if this happens. So O.K., let's go over that. What if that did happen?"

Spc. Robert Hinkelman found out what happens when an artillery round hits a garbage can within feet of where he stood at that same checkpoint.

A loud whistling noise sounds and many of the soldiers hit the ground. Spc. Hinkelman crouches down. Seconds later, a loud explosion noise sounds, instantly propelling Spc. Hinkelman flat to his stomach on the gravel.

"While one of 'em distracted me," Spc. Hinkelman explains of the instructors, "it went off and technically, I'm dead by training purposes."

Suspicious people, car bombers and rioters come to and sometimes pass through the checkpoint scenario for the next several hours during the training exercise.

As more troops are declared Killed In Action for training purposes, the soldiers rely more and more on one another.

"If you don't take care of each other," explains Sgt. Bart Wilt of Knoxville, "Then you ain't got nobody out here."

Instructors say they want high tension during the training exercises.

"(We're) definitely trying to make it tough," says Cpt. Dererick Giles, army training instructor. "We'd rather for those guys to sweat over here than to bleed over there."

The soldiers seem to grasp that concept.

Many are aggravated at moments when things go wrong during different scenarios.

"It is eye opening," declares Spc. Wayne Peacock of Knoxville, moments after an instructor declares him Killed In Action by a sniper in the bushes. "People need to take this more serious."

In less than a minute, that frustration turns to experience, and a lesson learned.

"A learning experience," Spc. Peacock says in a soft tone. "But when we get over there it's not gonna be a learning experience, it's play for keeps."

Story Copyright to WBIR.Com