Perspective: In rush to surge, soldiers sent in with little training

A Soldier from 1st Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division charges into a firefight in a mock town during a mission readiness exercise at Fort Stewart, Ga., in October

Soldiers of the 1st Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division had so little time between deployments to Iraq that they had to cram more than a year's worth of training into four months.

Some had only a few days to learn how to fire their new rifles before they deployed to Iraq - for the third time - last month. They had no access to the heavily armored vehicles they will be using in Iraq, so they trained on a handful of old military trucks instead. And some soldiers were assigned to the brigade so late that they had no time to train in the United States at all. Instead of the yearlong training recommended before deployment, they prepared for war during the two weeks they spent in Kuwait, en route to Anbar, Iraq's deadliest province.

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