Riding into the future

Lt. Col. Brian Cole, formerly of Ontario and now a resident of La Grande, stands outside the La Grande Armory with his custom built motorcycle. Cole, took up the challenge delivered by a senior officer when he was an enlisted man to help change the Guard and now commands Eastern Oregon’s 3rd Battalion, 116th Cavalry. The 3rd Battalion is currently conducting annual training south of Boise at the Orchard Training Area.

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Cole admitted nearly 20 years later he was not sure exactly how the officer was going to take his honest answer.

He could get chewed out.

The officer could have dismissed Cole’s concerns.

After all, he was a low-ranking enlisted man with only a short time under his belt in the National Guard.

What that officer said, though, changed Cole’s career.

If you don’t like it, then do something about it, the officer told Cole. Become an officer, be a vehicle for change instead of complaining.

That’s exactly what Cole did.

Twenty years, and seemingly a lifetime later, Cole stands at the helm of Eastern Oregon’s 3rd Battalion, 116th Cavalry, Oregon Army National Guard. Now a lieutenant colonel, the former Ontario resident commands one of the biggest Guard formations in Oregon.

As the unit descends on the Orchard Training Area, south of Boise, this week for its two-week annual training stint, Cole is no longer the young inexperienced enlisted man but a combat veteran with a one-year tour of duty in Iraq looming in the not to distant past.

The 3rd Battalion is a different organization than the one Cole joined back in the 1980s. The 3rd Battalion is a combat-tested outfit, and its one-year tour in Iraq changed the unit in a number of different ways, Cole said. Some of those changes, he said, are obvious, and others are more subtle.

“The top leadership (of the battalion) is a refined team. Iraq raised the level of maturity and our technical capability is higher than its ever been,” he said.

The deployment to Iraq raised the level of expectation for the 3rd Battalion, Cole said, and it also honed the skills of the officers who lead the citizen-soldiers from the Eastern Oregon Guard outfit.

“I have 1st lieutenants that could be battalion commanders. They planned their own missions in war. We know what’s important now. We’re more diverse. Cooks are not just cooks, they’re infantry,” he said.

A final verification

Cole served as the 3rd Battalion’s executive officer — or second-in-command — in Iraq, a job he said for the most part he enjoyed.

“I’m not going to say it was the culmination of my career. But it gave me seven years of experience in one year. It was interesting because I got to see the merging of the active duty and the National Guard,” he said. “It (Iraq) elevated the professionalism base up a notch.”

What the deployment also did, Cole said, was erase any doubt about the capability of part-time citizen-soldiers.

“My friends used to call us ‘weekend warriors’ and I hated that. We’re not,” he said.

Iraq definitely changed the U.S. Army’s view of the Guard, Cole said. One key sign of the confidence from the regular army is the absence of its in-house trainers with individual Guard units.

Before Iraq, the U.S. Army assigned these trainers — dubbed the Resident Training Detachment — to duty with Guard units. That program, at least for the 3rd Battalion, is no longer operating.

“They don’t have them anymore. It’s like big Army said, ‘Yeah, you’re OK, we don’t have to baby-sit you,’” Cole said.

The 3rd Battalion’s success during its deployment to Iraq simply reinforced what was already a fact, Cole said.

“We’ve proved it time and again,” he said. “One of our biggest strengths is that we are citizen-soldiers.”

Cole said an average Guard unit like the 3rd Battalion, as compared to a regular Army unit of the same size, is unique in the sense it must be more proficient, not to mention faster, when it trains.

“What they (the regular Army) do in a week, we do in a weekend. A Guardsman, during a typical drill weekend, puts on his uniform, gets on the bus, goes to Gowen Field and then draws his tank. Then he does PMCS (maintenance) and is on the range firing. An active duty unit spends a week shooting one table,” he said.

One item Cole said he liked best about the modern day structure of the Guard and the active army is the sense of partnership.

“The Guard role just increased until we are all just soldiers,” he said.

Cole pointed out that a typical Guard unit can offer a tremendous reservoir of resources either at home or in a place like Iraq.

“In a Guard unit you have doctors, corrections officers. I can go internally in the 3rd Battalion and tap into 22 guys from the Oregon Department of Corrections,” he said.

With those skill sets, Cole said a Guard unit can address a challenge faster.

“You can instantly start troubleshooting,” he said.

Changes in latitude

The deployment to Iraq will also influence the battalion’s internal procedures at this year’s annual training cycle.

For example, the time-honored procedure of a daily “commander’s call” — a meeting that brought all the officers and some senior enlisted men in one place each day during annual training to evaluate progress — will be dropped.

In Iraq, 3rd Battalion leaders learned the daily meeting was just too cumbersome.

“It (the commander’s call) was a legacy passed to me. My experience in Iraq tells me I don’t have to do that as commander,” Cole said.

Instead, Cole said as commander he will rely on the method utilized in Iraq of circulating to individual units throughout the battlefield.

Cole said he is excited about the 2007 annual training session.

“I have the utmost confidence in my commanders. I’m looking forward to see how they’ll do,” he said.

Cole’s job is mammoth. As commander, he must monitor, evaluate and offer guidance to soldiers and officers of a huge citizen-soldier outfit.

The 3rd Battalion consists of Oregon Army Guard units from Ontario, Baker City, La Grande, Pendleton, Hermiston, The Dalles, Hood River, Redmond, Prineville and Woodburn — more than 500 soldiers.

The battalion will be focused almost exclusively on tank gunnery exercises. Each exercise on a gunnery table — or range — is designed to funnel 3rd Battalion tank crews toward the final qualification range called Table 8. All of the gunnery tasks must be completed in just 15 days.

The pace set by the battalion to get crews through each range on the way to Table 8 is hectic, but Cole said much of the potential success of the unit will revolve around individual initiative sharpened in Iraq.

“It (Iraq) helps with the prioritizing of effort. For the use of man-hours you have to be motivated and move to get tank crews through. The mission itself sets the pace,” Cole said.

Cole said he recognizes the 2007 annual training session will be significant not only because of the new set of challenges but also because it will be the first time since Iraq that the battalion has maneuvered as a unit.

“It will be a great opportunity for us to reinforce our esprit de corps and our technical knowledge,” he said.

Cole said there will also be one key difference between Iraq and the Orchard Training Area.

“In this environment we don’t have people trying to kill us,” he said.