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Civilians answer call

Feb-18-2004 » Filed Under: General Military

Here's an interesting article regarding the realistic training provided to troops preparing to deploy.

[Link to Full Article]

By Jeff Linkous
Associated Press

FORT DIX, N.J. — Ryan Szeczesniewski could have as easily been warring with friends on a paintball battlefield.

Instead, he found himself on a southern New Jersey Army base, playing the role of an irate Iraqi citizen, part of an angry crowd marching on U.S. soldiers who denied medical aid to a fictional, wounded villager.

Chanting in Arabic, the crowd swarmed an Army Reserve unit from New York in a mock confrontation that grew chaotic when a soldier reached for a protester. The crowd grabbed back, and within seconds the soldiers fired their rifles — loaded with blanks — into air, trying to disperse the mob.

At the end of the exercise, the soldiers learned a painful lesson: If such a melee really occurred, eight Iraqi civilians would have been dead and one soldier wounded.

Szeczesniewski, 32, a Navy veteran from the first Gulf War, is among hundreds of people across the nation hired for $8 or $9 an hour to play civilians whose lives are precariously close to the battlefield.

Make sure you read the end of the article.


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