Mountain school gains acclaim by training U.S. terror fighters

National Guard, Mar/Apr 2002 by Haskell, Bob

STATE ROUNDUP

Vermont

Army Ist Lt. Jennifer DeBruin felt on top of the world recently because she completed a National Guard school that is clearly on top of its game.

DeBruin proved that her heart is as big as she is when she finished the two-week winter course at the Mountain Warfare School in northern Vermont.

She stands 5-foot-4 1/2 inches in her winter socks. She is a West Point graduate and a Medical Service Corps officer assigned to the 10th Combat Support Hospital at Fort Carson, Colo. And now she is among a handful of Army women who have earned the distinction as mountain soldiers.

Moreover, it makes no difference to this young soldier who conducts the military training so long as the training is good.

"I had heard nothing but good things about this school," shrugged DeBruin after scaling the 4,393-foot Mount Mansfield, Vermont's highest peak. "The fact that it's a National Guard school didn't faze me at all. "

That validation is important but it's only one of many for the only school of its kind in the Army. The Mountain Warfare School is receiving national exposure for training soldiers to survive in the Rocky Mountains before they deployed to Afghanistan.

Reporters as well as soldiers are now knocking on the doors in increasing numbers. The school's entire staff recently gave a group of journalists through a first-hand look at the tough winter training.

The tour included a few hours on top of frigid, forbidding Smugglers Notch, a stretch of the Green Mountains beside Mount Mansfield. That is where students learn survival and combat mobility skills from National Guard instructors considered among the world's premier mountaineers.

The school has embraced the Russian philosophy of small-team mountain warfare.

"Surprise, resoluteness, and audacity play an especially important role in mountainous operations," stated Gen. Yuri Maximov. "Even a small sub-unit can decide the outcome of a whole battle by unexpectedly maneuvering around a defender's flank or capturing a dominating height ... in mountain combat the subunits should operate independently of the main body."

Such challenging training can help all kinds of soldiers, DeBruin said. One of her mountain instructors said that her new mountain skills are going to make her more of a help to her soldiers at Fort Carson.

"She's one tough nut," Lunna said. "She's doing just great."

So, it would seem, is the school.

-By Master Sgt. Bob Haskell