Silver Flag (again)

Well, it was off to Silver Flag (again). If you’ve read my posts since their inception, you’ll notice my first post was also of Silver Flag. Well, I had the pleasure of returning to refresh my training, this time in Europe instead of Asia. Of course, Silver Flag was in addition to going to a training exercise called Eagle Flag last December, which was remarkably similar. The idea of both of these programs is to train us to be ready to deploy into a base and get it ready for operation. Since it looks like I will deploy to Southwest Asia (Iraq) this summer, it’s certainly worthwhile training.
We spent the first week living in tents and listening to academic lectures during the day and working on developing a beddown plan. This meant that the hours were rather long, but at least the tents we stayed in were rather comfortable.

Although most of our meals were out of a bag (Meals Ready to Eat), we did have a nice dining tent.

Here’s the attorney of the class, Christopher. Don’t worry though, he’s actually a very nice guy. 🙂

After our week in the class, we headed out to the field for a three and a half day field training exercise, where we put the skills learned to use. The training tested every career field that was there, although the following pictures only show a few.
Here is one of the utilities Airmen filling up one of the deployable water tanks.

Normally, these are used as a water tank for fire fighting, but in this case, one of the cadre running the exercise was moving to another base and his peers decided he needed a dunk before he left.

Also, our Airmen practiced identifying chemical contamination. Not to worry though, it was simulated and very good training for them.

There were a number of scenarios that required our fire fighters to respond.



Once we finished our exercise, we all came back to the academic training site.

As you can see, by the end of the graduation ceremony, everyone was rather tired (including me). So, after we finished and recognized our outstanding performers, we got back on a bus and headed home for a well earned rest.

That concludes my European Silver Flag experience.
–Jim