GOWEN FIELD TRAINING AREA, Idaho, - When a car breaks down, an insurance company will come get the vehicle from the side of the road. Now make that vehicle much bigger and put it in a combat zone. It's not so easy to repair or tow now.
This is a job for the Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Truck (HEMTT) wrecker drivers and mechanics of Delta Company, 3rd Battalion, 116th Cavalry Brigade Combat Team of the Idaho National Guard. The brigade is training here south of Boise for its upcoming deployment to Iraq.
The HEMTT wrecker has a crane and hitch able to pull most military vehicles. It dispatches to where it is needed and tows the broken down vehicle to a safe place where it can be repaired.
Sometimes this is not as easy as it sounds.
“It could take 15 to 45 minutes... if the area is clear,” said Staff Sgt. Paul Hussey, a HEMTT wrecker mechanic for Delta Company.
That is a long time to be working outside in a combat area. Therefore, drivers and mechanics started cross-training in order for the drivers to be able to fix their own vehicles and to make towing faster.
“Just in case gets hit or someone is unable to do the job, everyone needs to know everyone else’s job to be efficient in all the tasks,” said Hussey.
With this new information and training, drivers and mechanics alike will spend less time waiting for repair and have more time to effectively complete their mission. The knowledge also provides a new hurdle for the soldiers to overcome.
“This is something new to us, something we have to do ourselves which we kind of like because we are able to do more, but it’s also challenging because we have to learn new tasks and skills,” said Spc. Thomas Collins, a HEMTT wrecker driver with Delta Company. “Before we’d just call [Quick Reaction Force] and have them come out and fix us up.”
Collins sees the benefit of this new deployment training.
“Lots of situations came up in our last deployment when we didn’t know what to do," he said. "We’d have to call someone who did, and so the more you know the more you can do without having to call a specialist in to do it.”
This cross-training will help to cut down on time spent towing vehicles and more time repairing them, so they can be back on the road where they are needed. It will help to maximize not only the HEMTT wreckers’ mission, but also the overall mission of the 116th Calvary Brigade Combat Team.