Jim was an invaluable help with this, not only because of his experience as an NCO and thus the ability to take a lot of the burden away from Jack. He was also single, with no family to distract him at Zulu.
Jim apparently had a teenage son and an ex-wife living down in Texas, but Jim had not been able to do anything about it when the collapse happened and the relationship with his ex was a sore point anyway. Jack got a partial story, something about her being unfaithful while Jim had been away on yet another deployment, and Jack almost felt sorry for the other guy when he visualized having Jim coming after him.
The population at Zulu was about a hundred and fifty souls, including the guard force, family members and the kids. The intent was to keep life going at the base in as normal and constructive a way as possible.
The meeting area was used as a schoolhouse and for religious ceremonies on Sundays. The women had started to specialize in roles that they had skills at. Some of the mothers ran daycare for the younger kids, so that others could work. There was much to do, from cooking, food preparation, schooling, child care, nursing, equipment and clothing repair, carpentry, store management etc.
It was not an all-female force at Zulu; some of the older and perhaps less fit males fell into roles there, and a few of them were carpenters, mechanics and handymen. Jack also discovered that some of the volunteers that he would be training were female. Having served in a Ranger Battalion, having females in an infantry role was new to him, so he was going to have to figure that one out.
One of the key things amidst the hustle and bustle of Zulu was OPSEC. It would not do, for instance, to have wild teenagers ranging out through the woods, or kids running wild around the camp. The signature of the base to any overhead surveillance assets had to be managed. This meant keeping people under the cover of walkways and nets, and any parties that went out would have to be small and managed.
Jack and Caitlin were having a spat over what to do with Andrew. She wanted him to stay at Zulu, but Jack wanted to take him up to Victor Foxtrot with him. His reasoning was that although Andrew, like himself, would not deploy on operations, he needed to learn. If he spent time at the training base he could assimilate the training and be trained for when he became an adult. He had already proved himself in the firefights he had been involved in.
Caitlin was having none of it.
Unfortunately for Jack, he had not yet figured out that although he thought he was in charge of his family, he was not. Caitlin was. In the end, they came to a compromise where Andrew would base himself at Zulu, where he could be supervised by Caitlin, but that Jack would be allowed to take him up for visits to Victor Foxtrot to see some of the training.
Jack had got the use of a mountain bike from one of his new neighbors at the base, who had brought it in and would not be using it. He would be able to use it to make the trip between the two bases in breaks in the training, to see the family.
Chapter Six
Victor Foxtrot was up and ready. It was now late October and fall was progressing, temperatures falling. Major Cassidy had moved into the farmhouse and turned it into his headquarters along with a small staff.
The barn had turned out to be a large warehouse type affair of steel and aluminum construction with a concrete floor. It was ideal for conducting training classes, and provided weather protection and concealment from aerial observation. Jack had the building divided up using plywood partitions, creating a sleeping area with rows of cot beds, a large open training area, several smaller classrooms and a stores area.
They kept ammunition and explosives in one of the separate outbuildings. Another outbuilding was turned into a field kitchen. Latrine and hygiene areas were built back in the wood line behind the barn.
Jack had been working with Jim on the training program. They had the advantage that they would be effectively overwintering at Victor Foxtrot and thus had considerable time available. Weather and temperature conditions over the winter would make it harder to operate against the enemy, though not totally impractical.
The fact was that although they had supplies, they were limited, and there was no central heating. Conditions would be harsh, in the same way they used to be harsh in the old days before modern conveniences. They had to factor this in.
This meant that although they had the advantage of time, and were planning a long three or four month training program, they had to pace the volunteers. They were arranging for wood burning stoves to be put into the barn, to keep the worst of the chill away, and they were creating a dry room in one of the outhouses where wet clothing could be hung out to dry.
If they were going to push the volunteers, they would have to do so with full consideration to the weather, their calorie intake, and the need to recover in the conditions.
They were not planning on a physical trainingprogram: the training base was itself in a tactical environment, without the benefit of being separated from the theater of conflict, and thus it was impractical to go out running in the local area. Army style PT in formation and all that would have to be foregone. Physical conditioning would be conducted simply as a part of the tactical training. They also didn’t have the excess calories available and did not want to exhaust the fighters.
Jack and Jim were in agreement that they would make it plain to the volunteers that this was not like the sort of training or selection course that they may have been used to, or heard about, in the army. There was no badge collecting here.
The fact was that the course would be hard, but the purpose would be to effectively train the volunteers as fighters in small unit and insurgency tactics, from team to company level. It would not be Ranger School or Special Forces Selection, but it would be realistic, challenging, and it would produce fails and voluntary withdrawals. The training course was not set up with the express aim of doing this, but naturally not all personnel would be suited to the role.
The plan was that those who did not make the grade would be dealt with delicately and kept on side, being given duties more suited to their abilities. Some would be rotated back to the guard force at Zulu, closer to their families.
The basic organizational concept was based around four man teams, each team split into two pairs. In each team, one pair would be the IED specialists, the other pair would be a cover team selected for their ability to shoot well. The volunteers would be selected for their talents and allocated to specialties as appropriate. This would facilitate the deployment and infiltration of these small four man teams to conduct independent operations.
At the next level up, the teams would become fire teams, two fire teams to a squad, making an eight man squad. An additional squad leader could be added as the ninth man if one was available. Three of those squads would make a platoon, with a headquarters element added.
At the company level, Jack also intended to create a fire support platoon, within which he hoped to have machine-gun and mortar squads. He would work the details out as the personnel and equipment became available.
Their first challenge would be to identify who exactly they had to train. This would involve interviewing everyone. From this, they would make initial allocations into teams. It would also allow them to identify those with experience and potential leaders.
There was an element of identifying potential instructors also, so that they could ‘train the trainer’ and spread the burden — there was no way that as they got up to company level operations they could run the whole program themselves, monitoring everyone. So there would be a phased element to it, as they ‘trained the trainers’ and allowed these instructors to work with new recruits as they were phased in.