Cold War Veterans Blog

Troops face tough training to serve in detention centers

by Wayne Woolley/The Star-Ledger

Ed Murray/The Star-LedgerDuring training in preparation for deployment to Iraq, Lt. Colonel John Craddock, of the New Jersey National Guard's 10d2 Cavalry, is sprayed with Oleoresin Capsicum.

Getting sprayed with extreme pepper spray

McGREGOR RANGE, N.M. -- New Jersey Army National Guard Spc. Matthew Lane experienced plenty of discomfort on his two combat tours in Iraq. But nothing prepared him for the agony he recently endured while training here for a third trip to the war zone.

The burly 26-year-old specialist from Phillipsburg and his comrades from the 50th Infantry Brigade Combat Team went through what the Army calls the "Oleoresin Capsicum Confidence Course."

A chemical more powerful than bear repellent was sprayed in their faces.

"It hurt so much, there were a few seconds when I would have gladly given up a couple of fingers or a hand to make the pain stop," Lane said. "After it was all over, I heard another guy yelling that he wasn't going to see his wife again."

Then, while fighting pain more intense than most said they'd ever imagined, they had to run a gantlet and, along the way, subdue five other soldiers who were posing as inmates at an Iraqi detention facility.

This training is a requirement for every soldier who will serve at a detention center in Iraq or Afghanistan. And for the majority of the 2,800 members of the 50th Brigade, detainee operations will be the main focus of their 10-month duty tour in Iraq, which begins at the end of the month.

The part-time troops were mobilized for full-time duty in June and are now honing their skills at a mock detention center the Army erected in a desolate expanse of desert on the northern reaches of Fort Bliss.

The soldiers have been immersed in every aspect of handling detainees, from speaking basic Arabic to using nonlethal weapons such as Tasers. Their trainers consider the OC Confidence Course among the most important.

Maj. Bryan Chubinsky, a member of Task Force Outlaw, the Army unit that trains troops in detainee operations, said the OC course helps soldiers realize that detainees can fight aggressively even if sprayed with the chemical.

"It also reminds them that if they get sprayed, they're going to still have to help their buddies get the situation under control, even though they're going to be in pain," he said.

Command Sgt. Major William Venneman, the top enlisted soldier in the task force, noted that the course strengthens the bond between soldiers who have been hit with OC.

"It's such rotten nasty stuff. They help each other get through it," Venneman said.

The soldiers, he said, also learn to rely on each other to get through the 21-day immersion course in detainee operations. After 11 days of learning the finer points of shackling inmates and learning to break up riots, the soldiers man a detention center populated by paid civilian role players. The mock detainees scream from their cells incessantly and try to fight every chance they get. At the same time, the compound comes under frequent attack.

Venneman said the aim is to create the most realistic -- and stressful -- environment for the soldiers in training.

"Our job is to train them so that they come home having accomplished their mission with no psychological damage and all the parts they left with," he said. "And to make sure the only way they're going to make the news there is by doing something good."

DETAINEES, NOT INMATES

Since the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, the Army has drastically increased the training for troops who will have contact with detainees. The facility on Fort Bliss and the specialized training didn't exist in 2004 when the disturbing images of American soldiers abusing detainees emerged from the prison complex outside Baghdad.

Venneman, who works for the Nevada Department of Corrections in civilian life, said the Army recognizes the importance of avoiding another episode of detainee abuse.

"If we mess it up, nothing else we do really matters," he said.

The New Jersey soldiers said their training has been steeped in reminders that Iraqi detainees are just that: people being detained, without having been convicted of a crime. The Army conceded that while there are many bona fide insurgents in the detention centers, many others are people who found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time and who, after an investigation, ultimately will be cleared and released.

With that in mind, Staff Sgt. Cliff Meros, a Union County sheriff, said handling detainees in Iraq will be vastly different than transporting prisoners at his civilian job in New Jersey.

"You need to adapt your mind-set," he said. "At home we put handcuffs on all kinds of people, and while you want to treat everyone with respect, you really don't worry about what they think about you. Over there, with the detainees, we're trying real hard not to turn these people against us."

The New Jersey soldiers will be running the two main detention centers in Iraq: Camp Bucca near Basra and Camp Cropper near Baghdad. There are more than 22,000 detainees at the two facilities.

The countdown has begun for the soldiers' departure.

"We're feeling good about the training we've had," said Staff Sgt. Philip Lore, a retired Jersey City police officer and one of the very few Vietnam veterans remaining in the Army. "They've run us hard, but we're feeling pretty good about what we've already accomplished."

Nearly one third of the brigade's soldiers have made at least one overseas deployment.

Staff Sgt. Stephen Lewis, a 52-year-old Continental Airlines employee from Newark, is among the veterans. He spent 2005 deployed in Iraq with the National Guard.

"My wife keeps asking why I have to go back," he said. "I tell her it's just something I do."