Fire battalion commander addicting

by LTC Liam Walsh

“Sir, we just found live rounds on one of our trailers.  We are gathering more information now.”  I received this message from my Battalion Executive Officer at 4:30PM on our second day in “The Box.” The Box is an immersive training area, complete with cities, civilians, and enemy combatants, meant to provide U.S.

Army units with realistic combat training.

Weapons platoon commander

Battalion size

How many battalions in a regiment

“Being a leader in the Army is like being a drug addict.

The Support Company contains the heavy weapons the Battalion Commander needs to support the Rifle Companies and complete the Battalion mission.

  We had just transitioned from a live fire exercise into a force on force exercise at our Joint Readiness Training Center rotation, which required us to switch from live ammunition to blanks. Finding live rounds meant we hadn’t been thorough enough when making the switch, and that our soldiers were at risk of getting injured or killed during training.

Nothing was going right.  I had been sitting on a log with my commander when I got the news, and felt a lump in my throat as I prepared to tell them how we had messed up yet again.

It was the final straw in a series of events that, when comp