"How Does One Really Prepare for Combat" Topic

"The "thousand-yard stare" from an infantry officer talking about his time in Iraq; routine bursts of anger from a former soldier who watch his friend step on an IED; a seasoned NCO who exited his track only to turn around and desperately scream to get back inside. Despite the myriad of training maneuvers, large-scale training center rotations, life-fire exercises, shoot-house drills, etc… nothing in training really prepares one for the visceral ugliness of combat. Assuming it is possible, how does one correct this in order to better prepare our forces for their eventual deployment to a hostile zone? How does one replicate the complex scenarios and subsequent decisions involved when lives really aren't "on the line"?

I recall speaking to a fellow infantry major who had served as a company commander in Iraq sometime in 2004-2005. He was telling us about a particular day when his company was ordered to hold a part of a small town. He told us of a boy, about 10 or 11, who was wearing a radio-controlled suicide-vest and was approaching the checkpoint he was at with his soldiers. At this point, I could see that he was no longer looking at us but was looking back a thousand yards…"
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