Page 40 - The Bugle 2018

Exercise RATTLESNAKE,
United States of America
In January 2018, C Company deployed to celebrate the 11th birthday of The Rifles with
the Joint Readiness Training Centre in Fort Polk, Louisiana to conduct training alongside the United States Army 3-25 Brigade (‘The Broncos’) on Exercise RATTLESNAKE. The company had only recently reformed upon its return from South Sudan on Operation TRENTON 2, however wasted no time in coming together and training in preparation for the exercise. They left Lisburn augmented by snipers, machine guns, assault pioneers and anti-tank (AT) Riflemen from I Company, making up a potent force.
The arrival was typically delayed by the RAF (suiting one officer who had mislaid his passport!) but when C Company did eventually make it to the huge United States Army base, they discovered that they had beaten most of the United States brigade there! Arriving early allowed the Riflemen time to acclimatise and see what few local attractions there were. Fort Polk is famous as being the major training centre for troops who were on their way to Vietnam War; it is dense forest and swampy terrain, being a good representation of the jungle encountered in South East Asia.
The exercise is designed to test mobilisation and deployment of the brigade into a theatre of war. Friendly forces
then fight a near-peer
enemy, with
good knowledge of the
ground and a full under-
standing of US doctrine and
tactics. This involved flying
over four thousand soldiers and
sailing over a thousand vehicles
on cargo ships from Hawaii,
where 3-25 Brigade are based. The entire vehicle fleet nearly failed to make it after a small insect (which quickly became known as the ‘freedom bug’) was found on board a ship meaning it was not permitted to dock until thoroughly cleaned.
As the brigade trickled in, relationships were built with US Army Battlegroup (2-27 ‘The Wolfhounds’) that C Company would
be working with. These relationships were key in sorting out the ever-present frictions between armies of different nations. After a few long days, C Coy were equipped with radios and Humvee vehicles ready to roll out into ‘The Box’ (the nickname for the training area). Just before deployment however, there was time to
some inter-platoon and inter-rank sports, with the Riflemen coming out on top.
The exercise itself got off to a rocky start, with the helicopter-insertion on D-Day being cancelled due to poor weather. This delayed the brigade move by approximately 36 hours and 8 Platoon under Second Lieutenant Hudson even more; they did not make it into the box for a further three days. Once on the ground, C Coy acquitted themselves well, fighting hard against Geronimo, the free-play enemy complete with tanks and helicopters. The scenario was one we are used to: fighting the fictional Arianan Armed Forces, though in this particular context the story seemed to have a (38th) parallel in the far East. After the initial surge, the
exercise slowed and moved into a defensive phase with C Company’s position holding
one of the key enemy routes of
FORT POLK IS FAMOUS AS BEING THE MAJOR TRAINING CENTRE FOR TROOPS WHO WERE ON THEIR WAY TO VIETNAM WAR
Ready for clearance on Exercise RATTLESNAKE