Soldiers assigned to the National Guard’s Avalanche Company of 1st Battalion, 297th Infantry Regiment crept through the Alaskan wilderness.
The thick layer of snow covering the ground made it necessary for them to wear snowshoes to traverse the landscape, no easy task, particularly when burdened by the heavy equipment, machine guns, tripods, ammunition, and so on that an Infantry platoon requires. The soldiers wore over white bottoms and woodland camouflage tops to blend in with the forest above and the snow on the ground.
Weapons Squad leader Staff Sgt. Brendan White got his machine gunners into position on a designated support by fire lane, making sure each gunner had clear intersecting fields of fire on the target ahead of them, an enemy position reinforced by frozen redoubts. The riflemen in the platoon flanked around to the side of the enemy's position, and the assault began. White's machine gun teams hammered the target, suppressing the enemy position, while the riflemen advanced forward. Eventually, the command to shift fire and then lift fire was given to avoid hitting advancing friendlies.
This was the scene at this year's annual Infantry Platoon Battle Course (IPBC), which trains squads and platoons in live fire exercises. The soldiers at Avalanche Company began with dry fire and blank fire iterations on the range complex before graduating up to live fire training.
“The purpose of the squad live fire is to train and evaluate a squad’s ability to effectively fight, move and communicate under realistic combat conditions using live ammunition and ensure confidence in our leaders that they can control their squads and teams, and that we can keep building our lethality,” Capt. Andrew Viray, their company commander, explained.
The IPBC training was for the Avalanche Company, as National Guardsmen, their one weekend a month of military duty.
