Best of the MPs

716th Battalion Soldiers train to be SRT elite

By Sergeant 1st Class Pete Mayes
101st Sustainment Brigade

Sergeant Jeremiah Smith is trying to become part of a very elite unit within Fort Campbell’s Military Police community.
He and members of the 716th Military Police Battalion, 101st Sustainment Brigade, 101st Airborne Division, took part in a three -week long Special Reaction Team training. It afforded the Soldiers a chance to enhance their skills, as well as gave them a chance to be chosen to become part of the post’s military-style Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) unit.
It’s an experience the sergeant says he hopes his fellow classmates truly appreciate.
“This is a very special unit,” he said. “We are the last resort when all other means failed. I hope they take to heart that this type of training is meant to be last chance, and that we need to try other means to resolve a conflict before coming to these kind of special tactics.”
The training utilizes the standard crawl-walk-run approach: intense classroom teaching and slide show presentation, followed by hands-on field exercises, and finally, testing on what they’ve learned.
One particular exercise, Live Fire Room Entry Evaluation, proves challenging to the MP’s as they learn not only to rely on their own skills and teamwork, but to also focus on the details.
“Any of the big things, like safety violations, missing targets, moving with the weapon on safe … that cannot be tolerated,” said Craig Sachau, one of the instructors from the U.S. Army Military Police School, based out of Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. “You want to ensure that small things don’t snowball into bigger things and somebody getting seriously hurt.”
Sachau and his partner, Scott Langley, said roughly 29 MP’s from the ranks of private to captain began the course two weeks ago. Many of them have returned from combat deployment, and will be heading out again.
At the time of this writing, five of them had been dropped from the training.
Langley said the instructors stress safety without going overboard.
“We try not to make safety rules that apply just to shoot-house, but in the real world also,” he said. “Some of the things we were yelling at them about in the shoot-house, we wouldn’t want them doing anywhere.”
It took Specialist David Moske of the 194th Military Police Company, 716th Military Police Battalion, 101st Sustainment Brigade, two tries before he passed the Shoot-house exercise, but the lessons he learned are invaluable.
“This is more about focusing on being more precise and not just taking everything out,” he said. “You gotta watch what you’re doing and there more strict parameters on what you have to do.”

Note: The MP’s are scheduled to graduate this Friday. The Ceremony will be at the 716th MP battalion.