Press receives introduction to jungle training

When Belize Defence Force Sergeant Ramon Aguilar went missing and for the next nine days had an entire nation praying for his safety; the eyes of Belizeans were forced to focus clearly on the issue of jungle survival. But apart from his becoming lost and then found, we knew little about why Aguilar was out in the Chiquibul Forest in the first place. Tonight, at the invitation of the B.D.F., News Five’s Kendra Griffith offers some background.

Kendra Griffith, Reporting
They?ve come from Taiwan, Jamaica, El Salvador … and even the Belize Police Department. Their mission: to join soldiers of the Belize Defence Force in becoming masters of the jungle.

?The jungle warfare instructor course equips soldiers with skills such as jungle survival, jungle navigation, and living and fighting in the jungle. Today at the New Maria Camp the soldiers are practicing their jungle fighting skills using live rounds.?

Instructor
?Your task is to clear this lane from here up to two hundred metres, alright. You are to engage all enemy. However, the engagement is to break contact not to fight through. You break contact with each enemy you encounter. Any questions on that??

Soldiers
?No sir.?

After receiving their orders, the soldiers move out cautiously …

Suddenly the enemy is spotted and the firing starts.

The enemy, in the form of a plywood soldier cut-out, was unharmed.

Undeterred, the soldiers advance once again … making sure not to shoot at any civilians the area.

Soon another enemy is spotted and firing resumes … this time around the shots find their mark and the cut-out is mortally wounded with five bullets to the head and body.

Lt. Derrick Castillo, Officer in Charge, Jungle Instructor
?What they were doing over on the other side that we were looking at is reacting to an enemy contact. And that drill was progressive. What we want to do with them is have them getting used to working with each other in pairs, firing live ammunition inside the jungle.?

After the soldiers were through with their drill, it was now my turn to get schooled in marksmanship.

Commander
?Lift it up, lift it up.?

Lt. Derrick Castillo
?Put your cheek on this part right here and your eyes should be looking through here.?

Kendra Griffith
?Okay, what am I looking at? Okay, I see a tree. This thing wah knock me? This wah knock back my hand??

Lt. Derrick Castillo
?No, if you hold it firm enough it noh going nowhere.?

Kendra Griffith
?Okay.?

While my first experience with an M-16 may have startled me, the second time around I managed to hit my target and by shot number three I felt like G.I. Jane.

The soldiers are a month into the six week training and say the going has been rough.

Cpl. Lamar Fearon, Jamaica
?The training at times it seems very challenging. But it is a good training. This training basically I would put it in terms to say it builds warriors, it builds leaders, and it builds commanders.?

Lt. Jose Rivas, El Salvador
?Quite difficult, very difficult this environment, very hard for the foreign student and also for the national student I think.?

Kendra Griffith
?What is the most difficult thing??

Lt. Jose Rivas
?This most difficult thing? Just try to walk towards this direction it?s quite difficult. And can you imagine to try to maintain the command, the control of your classmates, of your platoon. It?s very difficult.?

Difficult because according to the foreigners, back home they don?t have jungles like the Chiquibul.

Capt. Chen Hung-Chen, Taiwan
?Taiwan don?t have this training. Taiwan just high mountain and forest, so this training very good.?

Sgt. Hsu Ting-Wet, Taiwan
?The jungle has lots of trees and the terrain, sometimes when you are navigating you could lost your way. We our classmate, he lost his way, but he survivor.?

Kendra Griffith
?If you got lost would you be able to find your way around??

Cpt. Chen Hung-Chen
?Yes, jungle navigation very important and so we master that really well.?

Lt. Jose Rivas
?When I hear that I was appointed to come and get this training I feel so good because it?s a excellent opportunity to get this training in the jungle, because we don?t have this environment in El Salvador.?

And that is exactly what the Belize Defence Force was thinking when it started offering the programme six years ago.

Brig. Gen. Lloyd Gillett, Commander, Belize Defence Force
?Previous to that we used to send our military personnel to Brunei to train with the British army, but then we decided that we needed to develop the skill in the B.D.F. as well and so that is when we started to do with this course.?

But now B.D.F. Commander Brigadier General Lloyd Gillett wants to take the initiative even further.

Brig. Gen. Lloyd Gillett
?We?re trying to establish a centre of excellence in jungle training in Belize. Throughout the other countries in the Caribbean, they?re also developing centres of excellence and so what we do is exchange students. We ask them to send their students here and in turn we are able to send out students to their country to do what ever training they are specialising in.?

And no one needs jungle training more than Belize?s own soldiers … and police officers. Corporal Basil Reyes is one of two cops from the Anti-Drug Unit taking the course.

Cpl. Basil Reyes, Anti-Drug Unit, Bz. Police
?Let?s say for example there is an incident where something drug related occurs in the bush or we are in search of a marijuana plantation or something like that. We would have to walk for hours in time, we would have to search for hours, cover great distances and use the skills exactly what are being taught here in this jungle warfare instructor?s course.?

And then there is the now famous Sgt. Ramon Aguilar, who has returned to the course after going missing for nine days.

Kendra Griffith
?Sergeant Aguilar, how does it feel to be back in the jungle??

Sgt. Ramon Aguilar, B.D.F.
?I feel at home. After nine days out there in the jungle by myself I learnt a lot of things. I have to call it my home now. I missed out a lot, so I find myself up at night most of the time, trying to catch up, especially when it comes to the tests them. I have to catch up on most of them.?

Kendra Griffith
?But you will be able to complete the course and graduate??

Sgt. Aguilar
?I?m still back by one test, a first aid test which I will take sometime this week before the week up and that should put me back on track.?

Back on track and just in time for the final exercise. According to officer in charge of jungle training, Lt. Derrick Castillo, during the six-day assessment the soldiers will be tested on how well they put what they learned into practice.

Lt. Derrick Castillo
?We look at these guys and see how they apply the tactics, the field craft skills, the issuing of orders, the reaction to orders given to them when they are in a condition where I haven?t sleep for the past two days and you are here telling me this and tell me that, working under stressful conditions.?

And while the conditions are stressful, the soldiers say they wouldn?t hesitate to recommend it to their peers.

Cpt. Chen Hung-Chen
?Maybe next year our army will send more soldiers to here for this training maybe. We will tell our commander this training good.?

Lt. Jose Rivas
?Yes of course, I would recommend that?I think that all the soldiers have to come here and get this training because it is the real life of the soldier here in the battlefield.?

Cpl. Lamar Fearon
?If there is any soldier out there who thinks they are worthy of being warriors and commanders, they should make every effort to come on this course and successfully pass it.?

Those who successfully complete the course will be recognised in a ceremony at Price Barracks on November third. Reporting from the Chiquibul Forest, I am Kendra Griffith for News Five.

While on the course in the Chiquibul the participants are housed at the Las Quevas Research Station.