Under Enemy Fire

  • Published
  • By Airman 1st Class Sergio A. Gamboa
  • 325th Fighter Wing Public Affairs
TYNDALL AIR FORCE BASE, Fla. --  Within the words of the Airman's Creed are words that every Airman should live by. "I will never leave an Airman behind." That phrase invokes a sense of brotherhood amongst security forces members--and recently, they trained the way they fight.

Two teams of five faced off against each other. Deep in the woods shots were fired. Simulated ammunition in the form of plastic bullets that marked a pink or blue spot on a target streaked through the air. The shots were fired from M4 Carbine's and Beretta M9's, from opposite ends of the heavily-wooded training area. In the midst of this all happening, both teams had one mission; to retrieve and perform self-aid buddy care while taking live fire.

Twice a year the 325th Security Forces Squadron conducts a Shoot, Move and Communicate exercise having to do with a theme. This time it was 'Care under Fire,' which focuses on team-building.

"This is a team-building exercise," said Senior Airman Dasmine Terry, 325th SFS trainer. "It teaches Airmen the fundamentals of working as a team, and they need to know how to work as a team in the case of a real-life enemy fire situation. We need to be one team to get the mission done.

"This also gives security forces Airmen the mindset that anything can happen and they don't know what they will encounter from day-to-day," she added.

Though it may seem like fun, personnel who participated in this three-hour-long training had to battle the obstacles of nature while caring for each other. Airmen were shot while others provided cover to those performing self-aid buddy care to mannequins simulating seriously wounded Airmen.

With temperatures of approximately 90 degrees, humidity that felt like 110 percent and spiders the size of a fist, the main concern was safety.

"We have high temperatures here, and our main concern here is Airmen safety," said Terry.

Throughout the morning "Make sure you keep yourself hydrated!" was yelled out.

Wherever you looked Airmen drenched in sweat were all around, but smiles, laughter and a lot of "good jobs" accompanied that.

"It's exhausting, tiring and it takes a while, but it's very beneficial," said Senior Airman Spencer Nguyen, 325th SFS response force leader. "This gives us that extra muscle-memory of what to do in these types of scenarios. It's easy to forget this especially when you are always checking ID's at the gate. A lot of people don't understand that security forces are a big mixture of all kinds of base security."