Ghost Championship
September 11, 2010 // Newspaper "Ukraina Moloda"
The best reconnaissance party of the 8 Army Corps nominated in Zhitomir region
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They operate in the enemy’s rear. Prior to deploying any large unit to any given area, it is vital to know whether there’re enemy forces there and how strong they are. Sometimes an enemy HQ must be destroyed, secret documents secured, or an informant captured. All these tasks are a responsibility of reconnaissance units that exist everywhere from tank to airborne troops. September 7 was no day to rest for the reconnaissance personnel of the 8 Army Corps (8 AC). The reconnaissance troopers spent their professional holiday in exhausting marches, ambushes, river-crossings, and minefields in order to determine the best ones among them. |
Battle for the Cake
We arrived to the 240 Training Center in Zhitomir region on the second day of the four-day-long championship. The reconnaissance parties performed a 30-km accelerated march yesterday. Under heavy rain, soaking wet, carrying 30-35-kg loads and personal weapons. Some had radios. No wonder most of them were exhausted at the finish, while others hardly dragged their feet. Today’s event will test their skills rather than endurance. Scheduled for today is a forest-road ambush, minefield crossing, populated area reconnaissance, and crossing of a mountain stream. That’s correct, there is a mountain stream on the training grounds.
“The sun shines today, so they cheered up a bit”, says Col. Oleg Kamkamize, 8 AC chief intelligence officer. Indeed, the soldiers show little sings of yesterday’s fatigue; they joke and eye reporters carefully. Nobody wants to be spotted. Ten 8-men reconnaissance parties approach the start position. A party loses one point if its member drops out. Entire party is disqualified after four its members have dropped out.
“The team that wins the championship gets the challenge Cup, while other teams get challenge streamers, Col. Kamkamize says. There’s a personal score, too, besides the team points. We will determine the best reconnaissance party leader, best sniper, grenadier, radio operator. In addition to the Cup, the best team gets a …cake to celebrate their victory”. Last year’s champions – 54 reconnaissance battalion are defending the title. The parties representing 95 airmobile brigade and 1 armoured brigade are right on top of them. The border guards stand by this year: they observe the competition in order to be able to participate next year.
Only the best candidates came to participate in the championship, so there is no performance other than excellent. At the same time, it is not enough to stay within the allowed time. All tasks must be completed precisely, professionally, and correctly. The groups are mixed – there are both contract and conscription soldiers. Some of them took part in the peacekeeping operations in Kosovo and Iraq.
Participants live in the woods over the entire championship period. There are neither barracks nor tents there. There’s no food except for MREs.
Hunting the SUV
Our reporter’s gang is attached to the group from the 72 mechanized brigade. No one is eager to become a TV star, but they obey to the order with the only condition that we stay out of their way.
The first task is setting up an ambush. A SUV traverses the woods. There is an “unaware” driver and a passenger in the car. It has to be stopped with a single shot or low-power explosion. The purpose is to take the passengers out and secure secret documents. The SUV is booby-trapped afterwards.
What matters here is how discreet and unexpected the ambush is, and how quickly it is performed. The assault team must show perfect teamwork and make no sound in order to prevent anyone from raising the alarm or transmitting the distress call over the radio. A scout that starts shooting is no longer a scout, he’s an ordinary infantryman, says Col. Kamkamize.
“Surprise course”
We walk for ten minutes until we reach another site. The hosts are the engineers of the 95 airmobile brigade. The mine obstacle course must be completed in 40 minutes. The task is so exhausting that sometimes people lose several kilograms of their body weight over those 40 minutes.
Making your way through the minefield places extreme strain on person’s nerves and eyes. The first scout probes ground with a stick and paves the way for others following his trail. The spotted traps are marked with gauze straps.
The first step brings the first surprise. “They haven’t tuned to the course yet,” says engineer platoon leader Lt. Nebybko. He is the designer of the minefield which will test the scouts’ skills and challenge his as well. “Those are extremely hard to find,” Lt. Nebybko says. “We are using fishing line for making traps, or a chameleon line that changes colour depending on the terrain. It is almost impossible to detect if there’s no direct light. The eyes get tired, and so do the scouts. They start making mistakes. If I were them, I’d replace the one walking in front”. Human eye is designed in such a way that it notices a horizontal wire, but doesn’t see the diagonal one. To make it even more difficult to detect, the wire is placed 1 meter above the ground or higher.
Another, much louder explosion sounds in a few minutes. We are covered with dirt and sand. “That one could’ve taken half the group out if there was a real mine there,” says the engineer. “Making such a trap is quite easy, try googling it,” Lt. Nebybko says. “Two wooden plates, a plastic bottle, several nails, aluminium foil, and a couple of wires. Add a battery and an explosive charge and you’ll have a booby trap. Those are very difficult to detect, too. I placed them in broad daylight, and had trouble finding them when the night fell.”
The ghost town
A large portion of the 240 Training Centre’s immense territory is designed for peacekeepers training. There is a miniature town with several streets, a school, a marketplace, a church, and a city hall. Everything is converted from warehouses and marked in English.
This is where our group has to recon a populated area. The scouts have to sweep the town and return in order to mark the houses, roads, and enemy positions on the map.
In Zhitomir mountains
A picturesque lake located in the training centre has rocky banks and … a real waterfall preceded by a rapid mountain stream. There used to be no mountain training programme in the 8 AK, until someone realized that our soldiers could find themselves in any part of the world.
Scouts have to cross the river after descending from a cliff. This apparently easy “tourist” task becomes difficult given the weight of the kit and weapons. The team has to cross in 20-25 minutes. This is the last task for today. They can now rest. There are two more days of superhuman effort ahead. Two days of competition for the cake and the title of the best reconnaissance party of the entire Army Corps.
Oleh Snihur
We arrived to the 240 Training Center in Zhitomir region on the second day of the four-day-long championship. The reconnaissance parties performed a 30-km accelerated march yesterday. Under heavy rain, soaking wet, carrying 30-35-kg loads and personal weapons. Some had radios. No wonder most of them were exhausted at the finish, while others hardly dragged their feet. Today’s event will test their skills rather than endurance. Scheduled for today is a forest-road ambush, minefield crossing, populated area reconnaissance, and crossing of a mountain stream. That’s correct, there is a mountain stream on the training grounds.
“The sun shines today, so they cheered up a bit”, says Col. Oleg Kamkamize, 8 AC chief intelligence officer. Indeed, the soldiers show little sings of yesterday’s fatigue; they joke and eye reporters carefully. Nobody wants to be spotted. Ten 8-men reconnaissance parties approach the start position. A party loses one point if its member drops out. Entire party is disqualified after four its members have dropped out.
“The team that wins the championship gets the challenge Cup, while other teams get challenge streamers, Col. Kamkamize says. There’s a personal score, too, besides the team points. We will determine the best reconnaissance party leader, best sniper, grenadier, radio operator. In addition to the Cup, the best team gets a …cake to celebrate their victory”. Last year’s champions – 54 reconnaissance battalion are defending the title. The parties representing 95 airmobile brigade and 1 armoured brigade are right on top of them. The border guards stand by this year: they observe the competition in order to be able to participate next year.
Only the best candidates came to participate in the championship, so there is no performance other than excellent. At the same time, it is not enough to stay within the allowed time. All tasks must be completed precisely, professionally, and correctly. The groups are mixed – there are both contract and conscription soldiers. Some of them took part in the peacekeeping operations in Kosovo and Iraq.
Participants live in the woods over the entire championship period. There are neither barracks nor tents there. There’s no food except for MREs.
Hunting the SUV
Our reporter’s gang is attached to the group from the 72 mechanized brigade. No one is eager to become a TV star, but they obey to the order with the only condition that we stay out of their way.
The first task is setting up an ambush. A SUV traverses the woods. There is an “unaware” driver and a passenger in the car. It has to be stopped with a single shot or low-power explosion. The purpose is to take the passengers out and secure secret documents. The SUV is booby-trapped afterwards.
What matters here is how discreet and unexpected the ambush is, and how quickly it is performed. The assault team must show perfect teamwork and make no sound in order to prevent anyone from raising the alarm or transmitting the distress call over the radio. A scout that starts shooting is no longer a scout, he’s an ordinary infantryman, says Col. Kamkamize.
“Surprise course”
We walk for ten minutes until we reach another site. The hosts are the engineers of the 95 airmobile brigade. The mine obstacle course must be completed in 40 minutes. The task is so exhausting that sometimes people lose several kilograms of their body weight over those 40 minutes.
Making your way through the minefield places extreme strain on person’s nerves and eyes. The first scout probes ground with a stick and paves the way for others following his trail. The spotted traps are marked with gauze straps.
The first step brings the first surprise. “They haven’t tuned to the course yet,” says engineer platoon leader Lt. Nebybko. He is the designer of the minefield which will test the scouts’ skills and challenge his as well. “Those are extremely hard to find,” Lt. Nebybko says. “We are using fishing line for making traps, or a chameleon line that changes colour depending on the terrain. It is almost impossible to detect if there’s no direct light. The eyes get tired, and so do the scouts. They start making mistakes. If I were them, I’d replace the one walking in front”. Human eye is designed in such a way that it notices a horizontal wire, but doesn’t see the diagonal one. To make it even more difficult to detect, the wire is placed 1 meter above the ground or higher.
Another, much louder explosion sounds in a few minutes. We are covered with dirt and sand. “That one could’ve taken half the group out if there was a real mine there,” says the engineer. “Making such a trap is quite easy, try googling it,” Lt. Nebybko says. “Two wooden plates, a plastic bottle, several nails, aluminium foil, and a couple of wires. Add a battery and an explosive charge and you’ll have a booby trap. Those are very difficult to detect, too. I placed them in broad daylight, and had trouble finding them when the night fell.”
The ghost town
A large portion of the 240 Training Centre’s immense territory is designed for peacekeepers training. There is a miniature town with several streets, a school, a marketplace, a church, and a city hall. Everything is converted from warehouses and marked in English.
This is where our group has to recon a populated area. The scouts have to sweep the town and return in order to mark the houses, roads, and enemy positions on the map.
In Zhitomir mountains
A picturesque lake located in the training centre has rocky banks and … a real waterfall preceded by a rapid mountain stream. There used to be no mountain training programme in the 8 AK, until someone realized that our soldiers could find themselves in any part of the world.
Scouts have to cross the river after descending from a cliff. This apparently easy “tourist” task becomes difficult given the weight of the kit and weapons. The team has to cross in 20-25 minutes. This is the last task for today. They can now rest. There are two more days of superhuman effort ahead. Two days of competition for the cake and the title of the best reconnaissance party of the entire Army Corps.
Oleh Snihur
