Volunteer soldiers train in jungle warfare
The duties of the Belize Defence Force Volunteer Battalion include supporting the regular force and aiding civil authorities when necessary, which means they have to be ready at all times. That is why since July sixth, the soldiers comprising the volunteer element have been sharpening their skills in the Mountain Pine Ridge. On Thursday, Kendra Griffith made the trek to the training camp and found out how they were coping.
Kendra Griffith, Reporting
Four hundred and fourteen soldiers are participating in the 2008 Volunteer Battle Camp, a new record for the annual two-week exercise.
Lt. Col. Edmund Zuniga, Commander, B.D.F. Volunteer Battalion
“This year is jungle warfare focus. That means that we are practicing, at least this second week, how to live in and fight in the jungle. In the first week we were revising those tactics that we needed to learn to prepare us for the second week, the second phase of the training.”
This year’s training brought out the big guns.
Sgt. Ismael Camara, Facilitator, Battle Camp
“This weapon is the eighty-one millimetre mortars and it could provide a battalion commander with the heaviest firepower. It could fire from one to twelve rounds and up to twenty rounds a minute and the weapon itself is designed to have a danger area or rather a lethal area of forty metres from the point of impact.”
In today’s simulation, the soldiers were practicing how to handle a misfire.
Sgt. Ismael Camara
“The forward troops request for indirect fire support and the mortars were deployed. The forward observer calls on the command post operators to deploy the mortars in which they were deployed and the first round that they were trying to fire they had a misfire of rounds, meaning that the rounds did not leave the barrel.”
This weapon is known as the General Purpose Machine Gun.
Sgt. Miguel Cano
“C-Snare, the support company, they are known as Specialist Company. The reason we are teaching the GPMG is because them being the specialist, they will be tasked to move anywhere in the country.”
Omar Sosa, Officer Cadet
“We displayed the loading, unloading, making it safe, as well as the stoppages, some of the common problems that may occur during battle and how to remedy these problems.”
Sgt. Miguel Cano
“I am really impressed with how they are doing now because they only started this drill two weeks. They are very far ahead of the training.”
Cpl. Francisco Yaxcal, Volunteer
“Mostly what we come and learn here is discipline and it comes with a lot of discipline when dealing with the jungles, especially with these guns and all of that. We have to have full discipline.”
Kendra Griffith
“What was your favourite part of it?”
Omar Sosa
“My favourite part would be as soon as we hit the jungle.”
And while Officer Cadet Sosa went into the Chiquibul on Thursday night, another batch of soldiers have been roughing it in the jungle since Sunday for an exercise called Xatero’s Teeth.
Maj. Felix Enriquez, Operations Cmdr., Volunteer Battalion
“We started up at Augustine Pine Ridge and we’ve advanced this way. We’ve trekked as far as Maria Camp and the intention is to go down to as far as Old San pastor, which is all inclusive of vintage Xatero land. So it’s a double hatch exercise where we get to practice our jungle skills and we also maintain a military presence.”
We found the group of soldiers after a twenty minute trek into the forest … preparing for a live fire exercise.
Staff Sgt. John Romero, Head, Live Firing Exercise
“What will happen here, we will do a live camp attack. We have a platoon strength, which is twenty-six; eight men per section and we have a gun group. The gun group with consist of eight with two assaulting sections on the enemy camp itself.”
The enemy are plywood cut-outs housed in these miniature huts.
Staff Sgt. John Romero
“The purpose of this camp attack is to train this platoon in doing a live camp attack should in case we have incursions and we’ll need to do such an event.”
Maj. Felix Enriquez
“We have to be ready to respond should the regular force call us to assist them in the jungle and so our soldiers must get used to surviving in the jungle, fighting in the jungle, living in the jungle, so that’s what the exercise is about.”
Lance Cpl. Dona Castillo, Volunteer
“We just did stuff that we have been practising throughout the year, we just put it into effect. That is what we have been doing daily. Each day we do a different activity.”
For most of the soldiers, it is their first time handling some of the weapons.
Lance Cpl. Philip Jones, Volunteer
“It’s my first time firing the squad assault weapon. It was very, very exciting definitely because normally we use M-16 and like I said, my first experience, I enjoyed it to the fullest.”
Lance Cpl. Dona Castillo
“It’s louder than the blanks we are used to, but it’s nothing unfamiliar to us, being on the force six years now.”
This year, almost a hundred recruits are taking part in the battle camp exercise. The men and women began their training in November and will conclude on Saturday.
Capt. Edmund Zuniga
“Training company is going through their final exercise. We have some ninety-six troops on the ground. They are soldier recruits going through basic soldiering skills to certify them as senior soldiers.”
One of those soon-to-be seniors is Roselyn Reed of Belmopan.
Roselyn Reed, Recruit
“It has been going good, a little bit of ups and downs, but other than that, I still survived it.”
Kendra Griffith
“What has been the roughest?”
Roselyn Reed
“Sleeping out in dew. That was the roughest part.”
According to Reed, she does let the ratio of boys to girls affect her.
Roselyn Reed
“It’s kind of a motivation for us because we show them that not because they are males that they can do it, better than us. We try as hard as we could.”
Kendra Griffith
“Beat them?”
Roselyn Reed
“Some of them.”
Eight of the recruits are women. Kendra Griffith reporting for News Five.
The Volunteer Battalion’s latest responsibility is a B.D.F. Youth Cadet Corps launched earlier this year. The program targets youths between ten and sixteen years old and teaches them life skills, drills, map reading, and most importantly, discipline. Over five hundred youths countrywide have signed up.
