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[at-l] Re: Camp Merrill
At 04:03 PM 1/11/97 -0600, David Craft wrote:
Camp Merrill is in northern Ga, just off the trail. Airborne or some other
>serious group trains there. The camp is named after a famous WWII (?)
>officer, "Merrill's Marauders". John Wayne or some other macho stud played
>Merrill in a movie. There training does go into the trail area, however the
>soldiers are penalized for contact with civvies.
>
>A similar experience for me occurred in the Uhwarrie NF in central NC, when
>our Boy Scout Troop was rousted out of our tents at 2 am by soldiers from
>Fort Bragg's 82nd.
The "serious group" is the US Army Rangers. Camp Merrill is a training
post. Soldiers completing Ranger school spend three weeks there during the
mountain phase of training. They learn basic mountain climbing and infantry
patrol work in rough terrain. The Ranger school is considered the toughest
leadership school in the Army. Many of the students you might see are only
operating on 2-3 hours of sleep a night and as few as a single MRE meal per
day. The successful ones do this over 9 weeks in the red clay of Ga., the
Appalachians, the Fla. swamps and the Utah desert. Think of it as the
thru-hike from hell. Cadets from North Georgia College, a state military
college, as well as from the Civil Air Patrol, also train around Merrill.
A lot of soldiers from Ft. Bragg and other nearby posts are brought into
Uhwarrie. Everything from combat patrolling to E&E (escape and evasion) are
sometimes taught there.
Jim Greenway
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