sailors

Lt. Cmdr. Michelle Sanabia hunkered down in a firing pit at Fort Jackson’s Bastogne gun range and kicked her boots up on the tripod of an imposing 50-caliber machine gun – a stalwart of the U.S. military since World War II. Not many rounds hit their mark. But the slight, 53-year-old Navy emergency room nurse from Millington, Tenn., has had her first experience with an Army automatic weapon. The training – which occurred in September – might be useful now that she has deployed to a NATO forward base hospital in Kandahar, Afghanistan.

CAMP McGRADY, S.C. — Located in the backwoods outside of Columbia, Camp McCrady was not what I expected. What I expected was Fort Jackson, a large sprawling Army post which graduates an Army basic training class every week and that 35,000 potential soldiers pass through each year. Instead as we drive through the security gates, I saw an unassuming base centered on a quad where the Navy trains sailors bound for the war zone.