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Maine Guard artillery trains in Canada

Army News Service

Release Date: 8/18/2003

By Master SGT. Bob Haskell

CAMP GAGETOWN, N.B. (Army News Service, Aug. 18, 2003) -- Maine Army National Guard soldiers have learned a lot about working closely with their allied cousins, because they have been training on eastern Canadian soil most summers for the past 33 years.

Camp Gagetown, a sprawling training ground in the western part of New Brunswick, has been the home away from home for the 1st Battalion, 152nd Field Artillery for a couple of weeks of annual training since those Maine citizen-soldiers began towing their 155mm howitzers across the border in 1971.

"Going to Gagetown," therefore, has been business as usual for this Maine heavy artillery outfit for longer than many of its members have worn military uniforms or been alive.

The Lawfield Observation Post and the Hibernia Road on the post beside the Saint John River are as familiar to Maine citizen-soldiers, who train in Canada, as the Jackson Barracks beside the Mississippi River in New Orleans is to those in the Louisiana National Guard.

Some, including Sgt. 1st Class Zane Grant, 55, have been to Gagetown 35 or 40 times for weekend drills as well as for annual training.

"There is more urgency to train the way we would fight, knowing what has happened and what could happen," said Grant about the demands that the war against terrorism has made on the National Guard.

Now, Grant and other members of the Maine outfit are training with Canadian reserve artillery soldiers who also appreciate the chance to get better acquainted with their American counterparts.

Training at Gagetown makes sense for a couple of reasons, said Lt. Col. Verne McMoarn, who has commanded the Maine artillery battalion for two years.

The battalion needs a lot of room to maneuver and fire its howitzers with any degree of combat realism. Gagetown has plenty of room for that because the diamond-shaped base features nearly 425 square miles of wide-open and heavily wooded terrain for the Canadian army's Combat Training Center. That's nearly half the size of the U.S. Army's National Training Center in California.

"You won't find anything on the East Coast any better than this," McMoarn said. "The sheer size gives us the chance for realistic training with our support elements and our three firing batteries. Over here we can do tactical logistics."

It takes three days to get to Fort Drum in upper state New York, the closest place in the continental United States where this battalion can train with its heavy artillery. It takes three days to get back home. Those six days, Maine Guard officials said, cut deeply into the battalion's limited training time.

Earl Adams, who was 36 and a Maine Army Guard major at the time, pulled the strings that made it possible for the battalion to begin making the considerably shorter trips to the Canadian camp in 1971, during his second year as the battalion's commander.

It took less than a year to get the necessary permission from Washington, D.C., and Ottawa and to coordinate with the brass at Gagetown to make it happen, recalled Adams who retired as Maine's adjutant general in 2000.

"We never really thought of this as an experiment. The dye was cast pretty much from the start," Adams recalled. "But it has proven to be a lot more successful than we thought possible at that time."

Now the Maine battalion trains at Gagetown, about two out of every three years. It still has to make the long haul to Fort Drum every few years because that is where the Maine soldiers would report if the entire battalion were mobilized for war.

The other advantage, everyone agrees, is that the Canadians are incredibly accommodating and easy to work with.

"We are quite happy to have the National Guard train here. The Canadian and American forces have many traditions and tactics in common, but we can always learn from one another," said Canadian Army Capt. Doug Allison, spokesman for Col. Barry MacLeod, the Camp Gagetown commander. "We certainly look forward to the continuation of this relationship."

The Maine battalion trains more frequently at Gagetown than any other foreign unit, Allison said.

Maine Army Guard engineers have also built bridges and firing positions and repaired roads on the post in years past to help maintain good relations with the Canadians.

"We do exactly the same things. We just use different terms for them," said Maj. David Boudreau, second in command of the reserve regiment and a civilian engineer, who designs telephone switching systems.

For example, American army artillerists call the center of their target area the "azimuth of fire" while Canadians call it the "center of arc," explained Boudreau, adding that Gagetown is the perfect place to learn those lessons of the language.

"We wouldn't know that if we hadn't worked together," said Boudreau. "In the theater is no place to find that out. This is the place to find that out."