Reporters’ notebook: A taste of Fort Johnson’s challenges
In heavy body armor that can make you feel like a life-sized Lego character, my colleague Parker Seibold and I got a very small taste of some of the physical challenges facing the Fort Carson soldiers training in Louisiana at the Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Johnson. My shoulders were screaming at me by the third day of wearing the heavy bulky vest, without any of the additional gear soldiers must carry.
In the intense humidity, clothes were drenched in minutes, and the warm rain didn’t cool off the intensely green landscape.
When the training with live ammunition started, it was like being a ghost because we did not exist in the scenario and so soldiers firing off machine guns a few feet from us did not acknowledge us or the senior training officers escorting us.
We stood in a town under “attack” as troops ran by us and explosions went off, leaving behind the scent of mothballs, and were perfectly safe among a perfectly choreographed exercise.
The wild horses and an array of butterflies also seemed largely unbothered by the furious training. However, soldiers training on the base are asked to stop firing if the should horses wander through.
Over about a week, we hustled from site to site and saw perhaps more than most — since few infantrymen take a break from the field to visit helicopter pilots and intelligence specialists.
But there was much we did not see — the thundering artillery clearing the way for the ground troops, the snipers stalking enemies through the woods and the medics coming in by helicopter to practice on casualties.
While we tried to capture and distill some important trends and moments, we know it is a small slice of the overall experience and mental challenge of the field, as soldiers prepare for a potential large-scale ground war.
What we can recommend, should you ever find yourself on Fort Johnson, is Get2Crackin’ Seafood and More, a locally owned restaurant, in the Exchange on base. While you may still be hot, tired and lonely for your family, butter-coated shrimp and crab for a fraction of Colorado’s pricing, can make you feel better.
