14
Wednesday, August 17, 2016 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
The Bunkhouse
Chronicle
Craig Rullman
Columnist
Dispatches from
Bavaria
There is a grim certainty
of purpose among the 30-odd
professional military officers
gathered in the room.
We are at the orders brief-
ing, in a non-descript hut
among a village of huts,
berms and concrete forti-
fications built into a forest
straight from the pages of
“Hansel & Gretel.” It’s late,
and after days of continu-
ous and tough rehearsals —
involving scenarios from
mounted vehicle patrols to
complex IED attacks — even
the air feels tired.
This camp is meant to
represent Bagram Air Base
in Afghanistan, where men
of the Georgian 32nd Light
Infantry Brigade, along with
their U.S. Marine liaisons,
will deploy at the end of this
training. They started back in
February, in the small nation
of Georgia. There is one
week remaining, and every-
thing they have learned is
about to be sorely tested in
a grueling, non-stop, seven-
day final exercise.
This briefing is part of
the overall performance and
readiness evaluation, and
everyone knows it.
The men here are a direct
reflection of the building
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itself, built for function
over form. On the far wall
the five-cross Georgian flag
hangs next to Old Glory,
and a sign says “Strength in
Unity.” The ancient Georgian
script looks like grapevines.
Perhaps the toughest job
here belongs to the interpret-
ers, known by their moni-
kers “Fish” and “Coach.”
Nobody knows where Fish
got his name. One presumes
“Coach” comes from the
40-year-old Georgian’s pro-
clivity for wearing track-suit
hoodies. The “terps” must
translate the briefings from
Georgian into English and
back again. Proper under-
standing can hinge on the
interpretation of a single
word. It has to be right.
The pressure is palpable,
and the Georgians mean to
impress. Georgia wants into
NATO — there are Russian
tanks and mobile artillery 30
kilometers from their capital
of Tblisi — and after the U.S.
they are the largest contribu-
tor of troops to the effort in
Afghanistan. Fish says they
have been fighting off the
designs of foreign empires
for thousands of years. Now,
he says, they want to be left
alone.
The officers don’t slow
down. The terps struggle to
keep up and remain accurate
and clear. The exchanges are
often complex. The terps
spell each other after particu-
larly long sessions, which
have a visibly deleterious
effect — it’s like watching a
wax candle gutter.
It is hard to know it,
but we are at the Joint
Multinational Readiness
Center, or JMRC, near
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Hohenfels, Germany. This
region of Bavaria has known
the presence of professional
warfighters since the Roman
Emperor Augustus, who sent
his legions here to stop the
southward advance of Celts
and Gauls. There is a castle
on the base dating from the
year 1000. In 1641 it was
nearly destroyed by lightning
that struck the gunpowder
tower.
Napoleon was here. The
Nazi’s housed prisoners of
war from Poland, Russia,
Belgium, France, Britain, and
America here. The U.S. 3rd
Armored Cavalry Regiment
liberated the camp in 1945.
It still belongs to the U.S.
Army, and in this most recent
incarnation serves as a host
for combat units from around
the world, who receive some
of the most advanced pre-
deployment training avail-
able anywhere.
I am with the U.S.
Marines of the Georgia
Deployment Program, who
for the last six months have
been training the Georgians
to NATO standards for their
downrange deployment to
Bagram. This program, in
various forms, has existed
since May 2002, when U.S.
Special Operations Forces
were given $64 million to
spin up four battalions in sup-
port of Operation Enduring
Freedom. In August 2009 the
Marines took over.
The briefing is com-
prehensive, and endless.
Military briefings at this
level are worse than watch-
ing concrete dry through a
microscope. Nothing is left
out. The various section
leaders must cover every
Year-round
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photo by craiG rullMan
Georgian troops are training in Germany in an elaborate mock-up
simulating conditions in Afghanistan.
conceivable contingency,
from relations with local
Afghan mullahs and police
to suicide prevention, from
VIP visits to pre-combat
inspections, from the rules
of engagement to how many
rolls of toilet paper a battal-
ion of soldiers will use.
But there is a certain
unreality to it all. Everyone
knows the maxim: no plan
survives the first contact with
the enemy.
Still, it’s better to have
one.
The Marines love work-
ing with the Georgians.
They are gritty, professional,
highly motivated, and smart.
They don’t drink water and
they smoke constantly. They
learn fast. They are fighters.
Still, some cultural differ-
ences remain. Marines never
break training for meals; for
them, “chow is continuous.”
The Georgians insist on it.
Meals might last an hour or
more in the middle of peak
training time.
These are among a thou-
sand small frustrations
the ha
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for Marine liaison teams
who will deploy with the
Georgians.
Somewhere in the middle
of the intelligence portion of
the brief, where we learn that
there is a lot we don’t know,
Coach melts all the way
down. He is fatigued to the
point of collapse. He inter-
rupts his own translation,
looks at the Georgian colonel
and the mixed bank of senior
officers at the head of the
table. He says, in English, “I
beg your pardon,” and leaves
the room. Fish immediately
steps up and replaces him.
During a break I find
Coach. He’s been doing this
non-stop for 10 years, he
tells me. He’s in a state of
raw exhaustion. He has two
young boys and a wife back
home in Georgia, where
the specter of a belligerent
Russia looms large and peace
is far from certain.
“It’s my blood pressure,”
he says, looking into the
medieval Bavarian night and
lighting a smoke. “Not the
best.”
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