It has been a little while since my last post, but I've been kind of busy traveling back and forth from the U.S. and preparing for my release from the army.The last week of our 4 month training session was spent learning various anti-guerilla warfare tactics, because this is the type of war that is fought in Lebanon.
The first two days were spent learning how to sneak around in the forest. Each night we practiced what we learned during the day. The first night was one of the tougher nights that week. We didn't actually walk very far, I think it may have been about 3 kilometers, but it took us close to two hours because of how thick the all of the trees and vines were (you can see the sort of vegetation we were walking in above in the picture). We climbed up a mountain with giant bags that would get stuck every time you tried to duck under a branch. I couldn't help but laugh when the guy in front of me would start yelling in frustration.
This particular type of warfare is extremely difficult. Once you encounter the enemy it is almost impossible to maintain any type of eye contact with your team. At any given moment you are separated by a tree or a bush that you can't see through. When the numbers increase it becomes even more difficult, if two teams attempt any sort of maneuver in the woods the chances of friendly fire are probably just as likely as killing the enemy.
On the third day we learned different tactics for fighting in bunkers. Apparently, in Lebanon, Hezbollah has built several underground bunkers that they use when fighting. They often pop up, fire, and go back down (the picture above is an entrance to one such bunker).
The last night the entire battalion participated in a mock anti-guerilla warfare exercise. My team led the our unit, because during wartime we are tasked with reconnaissance. My team was actually low on men (different people had been sent to different courses, and some were participating in an army wide shooting competition), so I was in charge of taking point as both the sharpshooter and technician (all that meant is that I walk in front and carry a big thermal night vision device). Our first mission of the night was to set up a reconnaissance post on top of a mountain. The only problem was that this mountain had more trees, thorns, and vines than any other mountain I had been on since our individual navigation week. It only took me about 10 minutes before my entire arm was burning from some plant I had touched (I later learned that it was a nettle, and even then didn't know what it was. I had to look it up on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nettle). Being the point man meant that I basically had to clear a path through the thorn bushes for everyone else. This was pretty brutal and meant a lot of turning back around when I came to bushes that were impassible. It was a pretty brutal night, when I finally got a chance to sit down at the recon post I was pulling thorns out of myself for about an hour. I literally had a thorn in my knee that I found two weeks later.
Through out the night we had some staged enemies. Giant phosfluorscent lights would be shot in to the air and we would have to "call in" their coordinates to the "air force." Which is what we would do in an actual war. That night and the next morning we practiced an encounter in the woods with guerilla forces. The one thing I learned from that experience is that if it ever really happens it is going to get ugly. I think we started the drill with close to 50 soldiers and ended it with something close to 15. There is just no way everyone is gonna make it.
