Military Officer - February 2006 - (Page 54) With oversight from observer/controllers, 412th Engineer Detachment soldiers prepare to execute their missions. (right) Authentic touches such as this wanted poster help re-create the atmosphere soldiers will experience when they finally arrive in Iraq. That’s because Trebil is located not in Iraq, but at Camp Shelby, Miss. The troops are from the Wisconsin National Guard’s 2nd Battalion, 127th Infantry Regiment, and they’re here to learn tactics that they’ll need for their upcoming deployment overseas. Trebil is one manifestation of the Army’s Total Theater Immersion concept, which aims to make a soldier’s training experience as realistic as possible. Camp Shelby is one of just two facilities activated as National Guard mobilization centers in July 2004, the other being Camp Atterbury, Ind. (see page 56). “But Camp Shelby has the most capacity by far,” says camp commander Col. Earnie Shows, ARNG, an amiable man with a pronounced southern drawl, who assumed control of the base in July 2005. “We have the 54 MILITARY OFFICER FEBRUARY 2006 training lanes, forward operating bases [FOBs], theater-immersion package, and ranges the soldiers need, and we’ve adapted them to the current modality and methodology they’ll be using overseas.” The camp’s current role as a mobilization center may be fairly new, but the facility dates back to the early 20th century. “We were organized in 1917 as a post for World War I,” Shows explains. “The first unit stationed here … was the 38th Infantry Division out of Kentucky, known as the ‘Cyclone Division.’ They got that name when they were hit by tornadoes here during training. They had the honor of naming the camp and called it Camp Shelby after the first governor of the state of Kentucky, Isaac Shelby, who was a Revolutionary War general.” In July 2005, only one battalion was in training at Camp Shelby, but the facility has hosted many more, most notably in the fall of 2004. “We had the 278th Regimental Combat Team and the 158th Brigade Combat Team training here simultaneously,” says Shows. “We had about 8,000 people from the unit mobilizing, about 2,000 from the installation, counting the Training Support Brigade, and we had tenants on post. Right now we have about 850 — the 2-127th, which has about 600 soldiers in that battalion, and four other units we call itty-bitty units. We picked up that term from Lt. Gen. [Russel] Honoré.” The first thing soldiers notice on deplaning is the humidity. Here in the dead heat of a southern Mississippi summer, just a gull’s flight from the Gulf of Mexico, sweat rules. It pools under your helmet, soaks through the fatigues beneath your body armor, and trickles into your boots. “The thing I remember most about the day I got here was stepping off the plane and just being hit with the humidity and heat,” remembers Spc. James Boutott, ARNG, who resembles M*A*S*H’s Radar O’Reilly both in appearance and voice. “That’s probably one of the biggest shockers there is. With all the weight [soldiers carry], you really start to cook after a PHOTOS: TOP RIGHT AND IMMEDIATE RIGHT, MARK CANTRELL
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