Troop Leading Procedures, A Key to Success

Abstract

In August of 1998, I was assigned to Eagle Troop, 2nd Squadron, 3Rd Armored Cavalry Regiment at Fort Carson, Colorado, as a mortar section sergeant. Prior to this assignment, I had always been in light airborne infantry units. I was somewhat surprised to find that the unit had a high degree of esprit de corps. I was to find out that they took being a cavalry trooper very seriously. Early in January of 1999 we received notification that we were going to be deploying to Bosina for SFOR 7 in support of peace keeping operations. We were going to be the first active Army unit to deploy with a National Guard Unit serving as our higher headquarters. Our division headquarters was the 49th Texas National Guard. There were some consolidations and reorganizations within our squadron as well. Typically each troop has a mortar section assigned, all the mortar sections moved to HHT, I was the platoon sergeant of the mortar platoon. 1LT Williams, a field artillery officer was our platoon leader. I looked forward to the opportunity of being the platoon sergeant. Due to personnel shortages I was directed to interview and select Soldiers, MOS immaterial, who volunteered to deploy from other squadrons in the regiment. In total, I had 32 Soldiers from across the regiment consisting of three different MOSs. Peace keeping operations, out of all our Soldiers, none of us had any prior experience in this kind of operation. In fact the majority had never deployed anywhere and those who had were veterans of Just Cause, Desert Shield, and Desert Storm these were totally the opposite of peacekeeping operations. Not the type of mission that we were going to be conducting. The main tasks that we were going to be conducting were presence patrols, convoy escort, traffic control points, and route recons. We quickly realized that we needed to learn as much as possible about peacekeeping operations. Understanding the rules of engagement (ROE) would be critical to our success or failure.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Sep 20, 2006
Accession Number
AD1112285

Entities

People

  • Victor E Fleek

Organizations

  • United States Army Sergeants Major Academy

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Ammunition
  • Army
  • Artillery
  • Command And Control
  • Inspection
  • Lessons Learned
  • National Guard
  • Noncommissioned Officers
  • Observers
  • Peacekeeping
  • Rules Of Engagement
  • Squadrons
  • Standards
  • Training
  • Warfare
  • Weapons

Readers

  • Maritime Combat Support and Expeditionary Logistics.
  • Military Science
  • Theoretical Analysis.