1st Lt. Hayden Fancher, a platoon leader with the 3rd Assault Helicopter Battalion, 1st Aviation Regiment, discusses the ongoing personnel recovery training taking place August 25th-27th, 2019, at Novo Selo Training Area, Bulgaria.
Transcript
So, we are applying the online and classroom training that our soldiers receive in personal recovery and survival to a real world training environment where they can actually apply what they’ve learned already. It is important because it not only builds the confidence of each soldier, but it maintains their readiness if something like this were to ever happen, or they were ever actually required to utilize the training that we’re doing. Because it is one thing to show them, hey this is how you make a fire, in the classroom, but it’s another thing for them to actually go and build one themselves. There’s different factors that one may not take into consideration if you aren’t actually practicing it. So, what we have set up for today is one culminating event where we’re taking not just one of the different subjects, but we’re taking all of them and applying them in somehow, some way throughout the entire training event. That way they’re getting exposure to a little bit of everything, but also enough repetitions where they can actually have a lasting, it’s a lasting impact on their preparedness for goin’ in the future. The most challenging part is the translation of being taught it over a PowerPoint, or having it explained to you and then actually doing that with your hands, for each of the soldiers. Some of them may not have done it before, some of them haven’t done it in awhile, and so for them to just take that knowledge, dig it out of their brains and try to apply it, is the most challenging portion that we have seen so far. It’s rewarding, primarily again, because of it builds the soldiers’ confidence in their own abilities. It’s all stuff they’re capable of, it’s all stuff they’re trained on, it’s just getting the repetitions and the practice that helps them become more aware of what they can actually do as an individual. So it makes them aware of not only their own abilities, but the abilities of the organization that they are part of. You know, we’ve talked about confidence, but the morale and the understanding that, hey this is what we’re capable of, this is what the Army can do for us if we are ever here. So that way if they ever are in that kind of scenario, they know that they have the skills and that their organization is gonna look out for them and get them taken care of.