Army Training Site Brings To Life Horrors of War.

At Andy Andrews' amusement park, bullets whiz, grenades and mortar shells hurtle everywhere. Killers lurk around the corner. Andrews, resting on his cane and dragging on a cigarette, directs the horror show. But this is no Disneyland, MGM or Universal Studios, although many of the pieces of this amusement park came from there, and paint balls replace real bullets. This is where U.S. Army soldiers train for urban combat missions. At the Zussman Village, 40 minutes away from Fort Knox, Ky., soldiers get to experience a fictionalized, but realistic, urban war.

Andy Andrews is the range manager at the training site. He oversees the entire operation, from set-up to cleanup. The facility prepares troops for what the Army calls MOUT, or military operations in urban terrain. "When you hear on the news that we have deployed our soldiers into a city, we have deployed them into a potential buzz-saw," said Andrews.

MOUT-type conflicts are what the Pentagon expects U.S. forces to be fighting in the foreseeable future. It's a complex environment for any military force. "Where they send us, law and order is broken down," Andrews said. "It's dirty, it's nasty."

To make it look like real war, the training site is smothered with dirt and mud, the grass grows tall and the sewer system is not maintained, "because this is how we are going to do this for real," Andrews said. "If you saw pictures from Bosnia and Kosovo, did you see mowed lawns?"

Parts of the Zussman Village have a cluttered south-eastern-European village flavor to them. In 1988, Maj. Gen. Tom Tait came up with the idea to build an urban training site at Fort Knox. Andrews said they worked on the idea for several years, before construction started in 1997.

"We went to all MOUT sites, we gathered lessons learned from MOUT deployments from Panama forward, some were even from World War II," Andrews said. "We talked a lot to our allies who have a lot of experience in MOUT. We learned from what the British have learned in Northern Ireland, Lebanon, Syria."

When the main buildings were completed in October 1999, Fort Knox opened the site to selected units. "Seriously, the city will never be done," Andrews said. The entire range spreads out on 53,000 acres, which can handle aircraft landings. The 30-acre city area is surrounded by 14,000 acres, which Andrews called "complex, nasty terrain with severe elevation changes." Another 7,000 acres are used for live firings. So far, construction costs for the site exceed $15 million. The cost of operating the site is $800,000 annually.

"We are the Army's best junk men. We take everybody's junk," said Andrews. An industrial area and a junkyard full of rusty wrecked cars greet those entering the village. The railroad at the outskirts of the village has three tracks so far, but three more are to come. The goal is to be able to conduct train-wreck exercises. A Third-World slum will also sit in the vicinity of the railroad. "Environmental problems become tactical issues," said Andrews. Behind the industrial area, there's also a simulated drug lab trailer.

In the main village, a three-story government building is complete with a basement and underground parking. According to Andrews, no floor in that building looks the same. It has 45 rooms and about 60 doors. "It would eat up one whole company before it can clear up that structure," Andrews explained. Across from the government building is a 30-room hotel that also has a basement linked to the sewer system.

Andrews appears particularly proud of how bad it looks. "Ours is dirty, wet; there's an opening into the sewer system down in a ravine. Mother Nature populates the sewer with whatever Mother Nature wants to lay in there, even possums." And "yes," he added laughing, "I spent good government dollars buying rubber snakes and little brown piles to go down in the sewer."

Spitting distance from the hotel is Andy's, a cafe bar or brothel, depending on the situation. The building also holds several stores. Andrews emphasized that looting has been, and could be, a big problem among American troops sent on missions. During the exercises, all the stores hold "good stuff in there to see if they steal; we take good pictures of that and show them to their captains," said Andrews. "It's hard to win the hearts and minds and support those who have asked us into their country when we are stealing from them, so we help commanders train that out," Andrews said.

A bank and a radio/TV station are neighboring Andy's. The station can broadcast in almost any language. Often, one can hear Russian and Hebrew, Andrews said. Across from the broadcast station is an office building that has been damaged in a supposed attack In one of the rooms, the floor has caved in. Andrews explained that soldiers sometimes fall down where the floor ends. "It normally takes about three loud, blood-grueling screams, before everybody gets to realize, umm ... got to look down."

Trainees call this building the Funhouse, said Capt. Patrick Walden, the MOUT observer/controller team chief. "You can hurt yourself in this building, but it's realistic," said Walden. All soldiers are required to have full gear and protective pads during their training.

A pond separates two townhouses from the office building. The townhouses have both attics, basements and plenty of rubble. Altogether, the site has three townhouses and four single-family houses. There's also a convenience store and a service station. The gas station can blow up in an instant, sending balls of fire all around. A few house structures and cars are also rigged to explode throughout the training site. The fire is made with propane gas, carefully engineered through a maze of pipes.

A church was erected at the opposite end of the road from the hotel. Its steeple is a high point for snipers, said Andrews. Right between the church and the service station, a tall water tower serves as the commanding station for the exercises. A two-story school building with 13 classrooms stands at some distance from the clutter of the town center. Andrews described it as so real that they had 65 school children in there for one of the exercises. A hodge-podge of chaotic noise--talk, screams, cries--envelopes the surroundings.

A medium-sized soccer field lies on the other side of the school. Andrews explained soccer fields naturally are going to be used to lure the other side into the open. The training site also has a cemetery and an electrical sub-station.

The designers and trainers at the Zussman village have paid attention to the smallest of details, from certain holes in the ground to odors and sounds of planes, helicopters, tanks, gunfire, bomb attacks and civilian unrest. "We use the odor of rotten bodies, the odor of sewage and contaminated water--nothing stinks worse than that," said Andrews. "We overload the sensory input, sight, sound, smell; we have a lot of things that move, make noise; we have things that make them afraid for their lives. They'd better get used to it, because that is where we are going to send them."

For a day of fun at the Zussman village, units not stationed at Fort Knox have to pay a total of $1,800. "That is an average training day at a fairly good intensity level," said Andrews. For those who want to use the site "cold," as Andrews puts it, it could be as little as $500, depending on the number of people. The sire can host up to 1,500 people at one time.

Sgt. 1st Class John Keith is one of the trainers. He explained the site was designed so that there is no limitation, only the units themselves set limitations. Walden agreed, "If they need to blow up something, they can...we break the windows, throw the desk down the stairs, cut the wires," he said.

Andrews explained that many units first focus on the "crawl, walk, run" training that hones in on individual techniques in an urban environment, and then they combine that experience with tactical knowledge.

"We are not a training center," Keith said. "It is not mandated that every unit come to this site and train on a certain mission. We are a training facility that has assets to help them train on their training plan. But there are a lot of additional things that can be thrown in the mix to make it more interesting and tougher."

For example, he said, in Korean villages, almost every family has dogs that bark all the time. "If I wanted to move with any stealth, I'd have to neutralize the dogs," he explained. "Most people don't even think about that, because they are so fixated on the patrol, or moving from building to building.

"When you spend all that money to come here and train at this level, you should add to it as much realism as the site would offer and capitalize on the whole training concept," he said.

Andrews told the story about trainees from an Army division in Fort Drum, N.Y., which was experienced in MOUT. After 30 minutes at the site, they asked if they could take out the furniture from the buildings--they were too confusing--and shut off the sound system because it was too hard to concentrate. "We make them train to a reality standard," said Andrews, who refused to honor their requests. Commanders sometimes try to get the blueprints of the buildings before they come to the training. "They are trying to cheat and have an advantage against the [opposing force] OpFor," said Andrews, who does not release any of the structure plans.

"We've seen units that get frustrated and use high-powered weapons, to turn the tide in their favor, when we know in reality those kinds of engagements would not be allowed by our State Department or policy makers," said Keith. "An urban environment is a three-dimensional battlefield," said Walden. "There is no line that says the enemy is on that side, and that the friendlies or your allies are on that side."

In MOUT, the success ratio is much different than in traditional, open combat. "Our soldiers, our tanks are the best in the world, what they can see on the battlefield they can kill," Andrews said. "Until they get into the city."

In conventional battles, Andrews explained, supplies, ammunition, refuel stations and medics are in the rear and safe. In MOUT, the ammunition use is so extensive that the soldiers have to move those supply points closer to the troops. "You are on the third floor of a building; your unit has just about been decimated; you've got wounded; you are out of ammo, and you call the reinforcement of another unit to pass through to you," Andrews said, setting up a potential scenario. "Think about it, we are talking about a building with a couple of elevator shafts, maintenance stairwells, how does one unit pass through another?"

In urban combat, soldiers have to watch in every direction, said Sgt. 1st Class John O'Boyle, who trained at the site. "It's a lot more physically demanding, running around. You have more obstacles within the site, a lot of jumping through windows, doorways, climbing." said O'Boyle. "If you go through the sewer network for about 100 meters, you get tired."

The hardest part of a fight, O'Boyle said, is to take the first building, "They have to be really careful when they go in there," he explained. "The bad guys are going to know which are the good angles to hide, where the shadows in the rooms are, and they are going to take [the good guys] out from 100 meters away. ... It's like fighting in the trenches, when you look the guy in the eye."

Specialist Richard Hebert was part of the OpFor in several exercises. He said that it was fairly easy to take out 80 percent of the forces when they landed.

Hebert said about the enemy troops, "They are not going to fight like we will. They are going to do the sneaky things. . ..You can't let your guard down. You have to expect the unexpected. Something will always be around in every corner."

During one exercise, the Blue Force (friendly) units sent in platoon after platoon into one building. The soldiers would stand in front of the windows as they were clearing out a room. "You would just look at the little silhouette in the window, shoot it and throw it out of the game," Hebert said. "There could be someone hanging from the ceiling or at the top of the stairwell, waiting for you to come up, and no one is going to look up there. But you have to because they know the city so well."

One of the biggest challenges in urban warfare is operating the main battle tanks. In one of the exercises, the infantry had too many vehicles coming through. "As long as you got spots doing 360 degrees around, you could tell where they were coming from and focus your defense against that," Hebert said. Tanks are threatened, Andrews explained, by things and people they can't see. In an open-area battle, a tank can kill everything in sight. In urban combat, its capabilities are limited, said Andrews. Moving along sometimes is restrictive for a rank. Piles of rock and bricks, rubble, can damage the tracks. Some obstacles may even immobilize the tank and then it can become an easy target.

"With an M-1 tank [in the city] soldiers can't walk alongside; you can't walk behind it, because there is 900-degree exhaust coming out of there; you can't ride on top of it, and if it fires a main gun, you become marshmallow," Andrews said.

A tanker needs to experience this kind of environment, and "he needs to learn to work in a combined arms team, where the infantry, the engineers and the armor or cavalry work side-by-side," said Andrews. "Everybody in the military will tell you the wonderful term 'combined arms.' Doing it is another issue. Training it is another issue. That's a lot of resources to get together at one time and one place. It's not cheap; it's time consuming."

Troops also find it difficult to maneuver when there are civilians around. Keith explained that it is hard for the Army Rangers--who are elite combat soldiers--to deal with civilians. "You got to learn to put your weapon down a little bit, relax a little," said Keith. "It's not natural for them to be willing to do that."

The National Guard units appear to do well in urban environments, Keith noted. Not only are they street smart--because they usually live and operate in an urban environment--but they are part-time civilian-soldiers, he said. In places such as Bosnia and Kosovo, "they are walking around with their weapons slung on their back; they are talking to the civilians and getting along with them. As civilians are getting more rowdy or more insurgencies begin to happen, they take the appropriate response," said Keith.

First Sgt. Robert Wilson said that the Army needs to focus seriously on MOUT, because it hasn't trained like that since World War II. "Right now, we are very weak when it comes to fighting in an urban environment," he said. "I don't think the force, as a whole, is prepared to conduct major operations in an urban environment."

But Andrews said that be believes sometimes there are no right answers for military operations in urban terrain. "There are less wrong answers," he said. Decisions are made on the fly, in split seconds and have a life-long impact.