Marines from Battery I, 3rd Battalion, 14th Marine Regiment, a Marine Corps reserve artillery unit headquartered in Reading, Pa., honed their gunnery skills during exercise African Lion 2011 May 25.
The crushing sounds of the impacts could be heard across the training area when the battery received a call to fire their massive 155mm howitzers. Artillery shells whizzed over the heads of the forward observers, as they directed the fire. In addition to the American gunners, a Royal Moroccan armed forces artillery unit trained their crews from a nearby firing position.
“It’s been very interesting to see how they do things,” said Cpl. Michael Brown, an assistant gunner who has been shooting artillery for five years. “They do things very different.”
During the training, the very ground the artillery was placed on became a challenge and training opportunity for the crew, added Brown. Roughly a foot below the surface, dirt turned into giant rocks and immovable boulders that made it difficult for the howitzers’ spades to dig into the ground and hold the gun in place.
“It’s very good training,” said Brown, while talking about the challenges the crews faced with emplacing the guns. Fire missions were called in on hand-held radios from forward observers. When the guns fired the requested rounds, the whole area shook as the recoil raised a haze of dust around the firing position.
“We’re doing indirect fire in support of forward elements,” said Sgt. Tony Panzarell, a howitzer section chief, explaining the mission of the day. From the beginning of the training day until the sun began to set, the howitzers thundered away, drowning out noise made by other units training in the vicinity.
Exercise African Lion is an annually scheduled, bilateral U.S.-Moroccan exercise. This year’s exercise, the 8th annual iteration, brings together more than 2,000 U.S. service members from multiple locations throughout Europe and North America with more than 900 members of the Royal Moroccan armed forces. African Lion is the largest exercise within the U.S. Africa Command area of responsibility, and is designed to promote interoperability and mutual understanding of each nation’s military tactics, techniques and procedures.