Today we were getting to do what I hoped would be one of the more fun parts of training: the MOUT site. Mobile Operations in Urban Terrain. Basically it was the non-Infantry version of the training the Army did for bashing in doors and clearing houses. Theoretically, it wasn’t something I would be doing as I had joined to be Signal Corps - a glorified Army computer nerd. That being said, you were a soldier first, a technician later. A low chance of being in combat wasn’t zero chance, we all knew that coming into the Army.

Getting to the training site was the same as with any Army training: the Drill Sergeants covered the tasks, conditions, and standards. Wearing 35 pounds of body armor and ammunition - blanks - we would be carrying our M-16 rifles and clearing through several buildings. The idea behind it is violent chaos. Your breacher clears the door for visible booby traps and then will kick the door in. The three behind the breacher then rush into the room calling out what you see: “Door right, window left”, etc. Each person receiving a section of responsibility to clear. The breacher is then the last person in and makes sure to keep our entrance clear so we don’t get attacked from someone coming in behind us.

Those of you who have been in the service were probably trained differently. That’s one thing the Army does: adapt. Different training styles for different time periods and for different jobs (MOS). Infantry do their initial training as a combined basic training and AIT, where as “non-combat” jobs did basic training together and then went our seperate ways for individual job training (AIT). The previous paragraph is a rough summary of my training.

Once the overall briefing was done our company split down into the four seperate platoons. The Drill Sergeants went into more detail before separating us down to our 4 squads. Each squad was 8 people total, 2 teams of 4 (almost like the Army arranged it on purpose that way, right?) While I wasn’t infantry and hadn’t done legitimate training before this I had hunted and gone over things with family on tactics. It was one of the benefits of having an uncle who was a cop and both uncles being gun nuts.

The explanation of roles went smoothly and it seemed my team each knew there roles. breacher would kick the door in and then step away, staying outside at first. First person would go in and move left, clearing that side. I would go right and clear that side, third would cover middle area and anything we didn’t see initially. Breacher would then enter but facing our exit to keep it secure while we cleared the rest. With violence of action and moving quickly the whole process to clear a 1 level house shouldn’t take more than a couple minutes maximum.

One nice thing for me as this kicked off, time seemed to slow down a little. Upon the breacher’s kick the door hinges opened on the right. I noticed however that the door seemed to stop abruptly but still not the full 180 opening I expected. As I moved right I lowered my shoulder and drove it into the door, forcing the door to open further. As I did my eyes scanned my section and saw nothing as a threat. But my ears heard the “whoosh” of air escaping lungs that were in the other side of the door. Once the third person moved in to cover the middle I yelled “contact right behind the door!”

My next move was only maybe 2 seconds after first coming in. I hit the door again with my shoulder then moved forward and spun right to face it, rifle up and pointing at the ‘enemy’ who was now hunched over holding his side in pain. Unfortunately for him he had chosen not to wear his body armor. It was probably to help him hide behind the door easier. Instead though it had allowed the door knob to catch him under the ribs, knocking the air out of him in the process. As I moved forward to grab our now prisoner I pulled him to the center of the room. Seeing that he was still hunched over the Drill Sergeant who had been watching our entrance from the landing above called out “Endex! Cease fire cease fire cease fire!”