Grunewald Training – Joseph Martinez

Most of our training was just a few miles away and we would hump to the Grunewald training site in full combat gear camouflage faces walking down the street. The people were used to seeing U.S. soldiers, so we were kind of oblivious to indigenous personnel except for the kids who would say hello and greet us with a smile.

Anyways on this particular day our training was to rehearse setting into an ambush site. We decided to set our ambush site a few feet from a trail and started to camouflage ourselves to blend in with the forest.

Once set we laid still waiting ourselves for the opposing forces to walk down the trail and after laying there for about an hour, we heard noises coming down the trail from the left side and it was not what we were expecting. It was a bunch of little school kids on a nature walk. Inside I was laughing and looking at my buddies to the left and right as we started to kind of smile at each other, but maintained silence.

Needless to say, the opposing forces did show up and training went well.