388th Fighter Wing member finds deployment training Iraqis 'different, but fulfilling'

  • Published
  • By Maj. Bernadette Dozier
  • 388th Fighter Wing Public Affairs
When the 388th Maintenance Operations Squadron superintendent deployed last year, little did he know just how much he was going to impact the lives of others - and that he would actually be part of history.

"My tour was different," said Senior Master Sgt. Reginald Murrell, who holds a unit training manager Air Force Specialty Code. Typically when unit training managers deploy they provide U.S. military members with opportunities to take College-Level Examination Programs and Excelsior exams, he explained.

However on this deployment, Sergeant Murrell found himself in a unique role as a training advisor to the Iraqi Army from April to October 2008.

During the first four months, Sergeant Murrell, along with two other unit training managers, 11 U.S. Army Reservists, 10 contractors and 14 Iraqi interpreters, formed an advisory team that worked for the Coalition Army Advisory Training Team, which is a branch of the Multi-National Security Transition Command - Iraq (MNSTC-I). He was at the Taji Regional Training Center (RTC) where his team advised 324 Iraqi Army Training Cadre and helped them develop, organize, train, equip and sustain the Iraqi Security Forces. Together they helped trained more than 8,400 Iraqi trainees - also called Jundi - in four months.

At first the current training methods posed a challenge for the team, according to Sergeant Murrell. For example, Iraqi soldiers received their training via lectures versus hands-on.

"Prior to our arrival, we had heard horror stories that involved basic combat training graduates being sent to the fight and dying because of a lecture-based first aid/self-aid buddy care program," he said.

As a solution, Sergeant Murrell and his team advised the Iraqis to incorporate certain graduation requirements like SABC, AK-47 training, drill and ceremony and customs and courtesies into their training program. "This simple task significantly reduced the loss of life and ensured the soldiers were well versed in life-saving techniques."

Other changes were also made, such as troops being allowed to rest in the shade and have access to water. He and the other advisors worked to develop several tests as well as a confidence course that would ensure Iraqi troops were ready to fight and defend once they graduated. The training advisors also established a formal graduation for the soldiers.

Sergeant Murrell and the other team members helped establish a training/operations room that was benchmarked Iraqi-wide, built the fiscal 2009 training schedule for ten training centers, and worked the training capacity versus capability project that proved the need to increase the Iraqi Army with another 87,000 soldiers.

Thanks to the hard work and efforts by his team, the Taji RTC was named the "flagship training center" in Iraq.

For the last two months of his deployment, Sergeant Murrell worked at the Multi-National Security Transition Command-Iraq Headquarters as an advisor to the commanding general there.

Sergeant Murrell described this part of his tour as exciting. He was able to use the experienced he had gained in the field to advise the Ministry of National Defense who is over the Ministry of Iraq and the Ministry of Interior who oversees the Iraqi Army and Iraqi Police.

He described his six-months in Iraq as "unique, gratifying and history in the making."

"It wasn't until the end that I realized the significance of the training advice I had provided our senior leaders - both coalition and Iraqi - with and its impact on the Iraqi Army."