Maine National Guard in training for deployment to Afghanistan in 2009

GILEAD – As a row of Humvees rumbled along a dirt road west of Bethel, figures wrapped in bed sheets emerged from the trees. Some of the costumed men yelled. Some waved.

The soldiers in the trucks pointed their guns.

“It could be a setup for a bushwhack,” Capt. Michael Steinbuchel said as he watched the drama unfold.

While the convoy slowed to a halt, the soldiers playing Afghan civilians waved sticks in the air, climbed onto the desert trucks and shook the mirrors.

“Back away, sir! Back away!” commanded a young guardsman sitting behind a mounted machine gun. The soldier – bound for Afghanistan in a few months – didn’t shoot.

In this case, it was the right call.

“We have a whole series of ‘shoot/don’t shoot’ exercises this weekend,” Steinbuchel said.

The reason: deciding how to act in a country where the good guys look just like the bad guys.

In early 2009, the Bangor-based Combat Service Support Battalion is scheduled to begin a yearlong deployment in Afghanistan.

The exact mission of the unit, part of the Maine Army National Guard, is uncertain. The soldiers have been told they will likely lend a hand to the security force there. They may protect convoys or help guard the bases.

This weekend, spent at the Maine Guard’s Bog Brook Training Facility in Gilead, is meant to prepare them.

It’s also aimed at protecting a group of 40 soldiers headed to Iraq from the country of Montenegro.

Six officers from the former Serbian province watched as Guard men and women from across Maine went through maneuvers at imaginary bases and villages.

“We have theory,” Maj. Milorad Radinovic said. “This is practical.”

He plans to return to Montenegro with Maine organization, synchronization and discipline, he said.

Before he puts his soldiers in harm’s way in Iraq, he, too, wants a better understanding of the shoot/don’t shoot rules.

While Radinovic and others watched, soldiers ran through several dramas. In one, men and women guarding a base were faced with Arab demonstrators. In another, the civilians came with hidden explosives.

When the scenario ended, the soldiers were critiqued by men and women who’d been in Iraq.

Some were praised. Some were criticized, particularly when the likely suicide bombers survived long enough to set off their explosives.

“What are you waiting around for?” asked Staff Sgt. Jesse Laforest. Any delay could cost lives. The moment the bomb or a detonator was spotted, the base guards should have fired, he said.

It’s the kind of call that sobers Spc. Sarah Ziehm of Sabattus.

“The scenarios make you realize how important this kind of training is,” she said. “You become more aware.”

On Friday, she participated in the scenarios while dressed in her full uniform. Though temperatures in the forest passed 80 degrees, she carried more than 70 pounds of gear, including a bulletproof vest, an M-16 rifle and drinking water. Her face barely glistened with sweat.

“We’re soaking wet underneath all of this,” said Ziehm, who will turn 24 in September. She’s been told to prepare for freezing cold and heat reaching to 130 degrees.

She and her unit are ready, she said.

“This is the greatest team from Maine you could be with,” she said.

The training will help, said Steinbuchel, who served in Iraq with the Guard’s 133rd Engineer Battalion. But the learning won’t stop when they board an airplane for Afghanistan.

“Honestly, they’ll pick up a lot of this when they get in theater,” Steinbuchel said.

Real guns and real threats are effective teachers, he said.