Issue date: 4/30/08 Section: News

Media Credit: Andrew Nixon Third-year cadet Emmanuel Batara looks down his rifle while in a defensive position during the spring field training exercises. [Click to enlarge]

Media Credit: Andrew Nixon Sac State criminal justice major Chance Hoggle carries "wounded" international relations major Jack Zwald during a combat simulation at the ROTC field training exercises in Spenceville on Saturday. [Click to enlarge]

Squad leader Emmanuel Batara has received his mission: Make contact and engage a two-man enemy patrol operating in the area. He has briefed and prepared the nine soldiers under his command and orders them to "move out."

The plan: The squad of 10 soldiers is divided into two fire teams, Alpha and Bravo. Alpha will take the lead, and Bravo will take up the rear. The team will travel 250 meters over a hill into a small valley where the enemy patrol is believed to be. Rally points will be established every 50 meters in case the squad needs to fall back and regroup.

As the point man signals where the first rally point will be and begins moving up the hill, automatic weapons fire begins to ring out.

"Get down!" Batara yells. His troops fall to a prone position on the ground and return fire up the hill. The smell of gunpowder fills the air. The shooting stops; one second, two seconds, three seconds.

"Anybody got eyes on?" Batara asks his troops.

"Negative," comes the reply from the point man.

"We need a different avenue of approach," Batara says. "It would be suicide to continue up this hill."

"Alpha team, fall back. Bravo, cover Alpha then follow," Batara yells.

Alpha team quickly retreats 50 meters and regroups with Bravo team close behind. Batara decides to take his squad around the backside of the hill and approach the enemy on its right flank.

The enemy has fallen back also. As Batara's squad walks in a wedge formation along the backside of the hill, an enemy soldier jumps from his cover behind a tree in the valley on the squad's right flank and begins firing at the troops. The squad quickly reacts, dropping to the ground and bringing fire to bear on the enemy, who is out in the open. The enemy is killed.

Before any further orders are issued or questions asked, a soldier motions to Batara and then points to the ridge of a second hill where he spotted the second enemy soldier taking cover in the trees.

"Get out of the open, get out of the open," Batara yells and leads his squad to cover in a copse of tress at the bottom of the second hill.

As Batara's squad leaves the cover of the trees and begins scaling the hill in crouched positions, M-16 A2 assault rifles at the ready, the second enemy soldier breaks from his cover and begins firing on the troops.

Again the squad falls to a prone position and begins unloading its rifles at the enemy, who continues to fire his own weapon.

"I'm throwing a grenade," Batara yells, as he tosses a small grenade in a high arc toward the enemy. The grenade lands five feet in front of the enemy soldier and he finally goes down.

The squad scrambles to the crest of the hill, Batara barking out orders: "Establish a 360-degree security ring on top of this hill! Somebody check that dead body to see what he has on him!"

One of Batara's squad members approaches the fallen enemy, his rifle slung over his shoulder, to perform a search of the body. As he approaches, he realizes that the enemy is not dead, just wounded. He does not have time to get his rifle into a firing position as the enemy raises his gun and fires at nearly point-blank range. The soldier falls in a hail of bullets. The squad immediately begins firing on the enemy, finally killing him. The troops begin establishing their security perimeter on the top of the hill.

"Chang's dead," Batara yells. "Morse, you are now Alpha team leader!"

Chang is not really dead. The bullets are not real; the M-16s fire blanks. The grenade Batara has thrown is only a tennis ball.

Batara, junior business major, is a third-year cadet, or MS3, taking part in Sacramento State's Army Reserve Officer Training Corps program's annual field training exercises at the Spenceville Wildlife and Recreation Area just east of Beale Air Force Base and the city of Marysville held over the weekend.

The field training exercises, which combine the cadets from the Army ROTC programs at Sac State, UC Davis and UC Berkeley, are designed to evaluate the MS3s' leadership skills and prepare them for their intensive 33-day leadership development course at Fort Lewis, Wash., this summer.

Fourth-year cadets handle the logistics of the field training exercises and evaluate the MS3s. First-and second-year cadets make up the squads led by the MS3s.

Third-year cadets are not evaluated on whether or not they successfully complete the mission, but on whether they can make and execute decisions in combat situations, said Lt. Col. Mark Connelly, who heads the UC Davis and Sac State Army ROTC programs.

Following each mission and scenario a squad faces over the weekend, the squad meets and discusses what happened during the exercise and the leader is given a private evaluation by the fourth-year cadet in charge of the exercise.

Following an earlier exercise than the one Batara led, Master Sgt. Nathaniel Allen, who works with Sac State's ROTC program, tells the squad, "You have to make decisions out there when things are happening. If you just stand there in real life, like you did in this exercise, you and your squad will be dead. We will bring you home, put you in a little box with a nice flag draped over it, bury you in the ground and say 'thank you.' That's it."

After his mission, Batara met with Daniel Winistorfer, a fourth-year cadet and international relations major at UC Davis, to receive his evaluation.

Batara received an overall evaluation of S, satisfactory, for the mission. He has received E, exceeds expectations, ratings in the conceptual and physical dimensions of the exercise. Winistorfer tells Batara that he was competent, but took too long to complete the mission.

"You made a decision and everybody followed you," Winistorfer said. "That's a good sign."

The field training exercises are another opportunity to train and improve his skills, Batara said following his evaluation.

"There is always room for improvement is the mentality I take," Batara said. "I am more pleased with negative comments because that tells me what I need to work on."

Daren Luevano, fourth-year cadet and senior economics major at Sac State, said he remembers being confused and doubting himself and his ability to direct subordinates when he took part in the field training exercises as an MS3 last year.

"I knew what I wanted to do, but I had a hard time communicating it," Luevano said. "One word - frustration."

Following the summer program at Fort Lewis, MS3 cadets' evaluations from the leadership development course are combined with their grade point averages in order to rank them on a list that includes all of the cadets who have completed their third year across the nation, said Maj. Jason Hioco of Sac State's Army ROTC program.

After they are ranked, cadets submit their first, second and third choices for assignment in the Army once they complete their officer's training program and are commissioned as second lieutenants. The top one-third of cadets on the list usually receive their first choice for placement, Hioco said.

Batara, who said he is joining the Army because it is a family tradition - he has a sister in an ROTC program in Tennessee, a brother in the Navy, his father served in 24 years in the Army and his uncle is in the Air Force - plans to request an infantry or combat engineer assignment as his first and second choices.

"I know that will get me deployed into combat," Batara said. "But somebody's got to do it, right?"

Todd Wilson can be reached at twilson@statehornet.com.

Click here to read about an on-campus exercise on Friday in which ROTC students pretended to be gunmen on the loose and victims.

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