Pfc. Callie Williams, 142nd Field Artillery Brigade, combat medic specialist, walks the gun line during a training exercise at Operation Western Strike in Camp Guernsey, Wyoming, to check artillery crews for signs of dehydration and field related injuries June 8, 2018.
Once all equipment and Soldiers were accounted for onsite at Camp Guernsey, the brigade began the core work of the operation. Live-fire exercises dominated the two-week exercise, with all five battalions completing Table XVIII artillery certifications. The Arkansas Army National Guard’s 217th Brigade Support Battalion participated in the training, providing transport fuel and ammunition. To bring a level of realism to the exercise, Arkansas Army National Guard’s Delta Company, 2nd Battalion, 153rd Infantry Regiment, played the role of the opposition force during Western Strike; and the 213th Medical Company provided medical support. Operation Western Strike would be the 213th’s last operation before being disbanded.
2LT Ottenbacher noted that much of the operation’s benefit came from the opportunity to perform live-fire exercises in a new location. The units of the 142nd have executed live fire at Fort Chaffee so many times that the repetition of doing the same tasks in the same places has begun to create complacency within troops, she explained.
“When we train at Fort Chaffee, we’ve been out there for so long, it’s just a matter of saying ‘Hey we’re going to fire port 13,’ and people already know automatically how to get out there,” 2LT Ottenbacher commented. “We’ve been out there so often, we already know where all the fire ports are.”
She continued, “[We didn’t have] that at Guernsey. It forced us to break that level of comfort. It forced us to do prior planning. I loved it. It was a really good experience and we were very successful, which put us into high morale. We had a good time with it.”
