Crash Course in Combat

Giving the Salvadorans some American basic training

Hunched down in concrete foxholes, the officers and NCOs fingered the triggers of their M-16s as instructors stood behind, monitoring the shooting exercise. Then came the command to fire: "Comienzen fuego."

Normally, the men in the foxholes at Fort Bragg, N.C., would be American G.I.s. But these were Spanish-speaking members of the Salvadoran army taking part in a novel experiment. The soldiers are among 1,466 members of the 15,000-man Salvadoran force who are starting to receive a crash course in basic U.S. Army fighting skills at two of the country's most important military installations, Fort Bragg and Georgia's Fort Benning. The $15 million program is by far the largest basic training exercise for foreign troops ever undertaken at one time on American soil. Its aim: to boost the Salvadoran military's ability to fight its protracted guerrilla war and to professionalize a major portion of the Salvadoran officer corps.

Some 900 Salvadorans arrived last week at Fort Bragg's John F. Kennedy Center for Military Assistance, joining the 60 Salvadoran officers and NCOs who were already on the post. During the next three months, 185 Spanish-speaking U.S. Special Forces and 82nd Airborne Division instructors will teach them the light-infantry skills that an average G.I. might absorb in nearly a full year. The program includes everything from basic physical training to communications to the use of American weapons. Much of the emphasis will be on training the Salvadorans to operate as coordinated units on the squad, platoon and company levels. There will be instruction on day and night troop movements, as well as the ambush and counterambush tactics useful in an anti-guerrilla war. There will be, says a U.S. Army spokesman, "a lot of time in the field, and some very long days."

At Fort Benning, about 500 other Salvadoran trainees last month began a combined 14-week basic training and officers candidate course. American soldiers normally spend 38 weeks in these courses, emerging as combat infantry platoon leaders. The special program puts a high emphasis on tactics: how to deploy men in combat, techniques of patrol and arranging fields of fire to provide the best defensive protection.

At both bases, the Salvadorans will receive full and explicit instructions on how the U.S. Army expects its own soldiers to behave toward civilians. That, of course, includes prohibitions against massacre, but other strictures deal with the proper treatment of prisoners and noncombatants. U.S. rules of military conduct spell out internationally accepted standards in even greater detail. The instruction could eventually make important improvements in the country's grim human rights record. According to a U.S. Army spokesman, the Salvadorans are "very sensitive to this issue. It is a topic of conversation to them, as well as a topic of training."

The crash nature of the programs inevitably raises questions about their effectiveness, especially since the basic educational level of many of the Salvadorans is below that of their American counterparts. (Average education of the Salvadorans is the equivalent of ninth grade; more than 80% of U.S. recruits last year had a high school diploma.) But, says the U.S. military spokesman, "they are very eager learners." The Americans involved have their own appreciation of the program. Says an Army officer: "This sure beats cutting orders to send me to El Salvador." qed

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.