Army officer shines through Indian exchange

  • Published
  • By Army Staff Sgt. Jeffrey Smith
  • 4-25th IBCT Public Affairs
JOINT BASE ELMENDORF-RICHARDSON, Alaska --  A U.S. Army lieutenant recently graduated with honors from the Indian army's Heavy Drop Course, where she learned a Pacific partner nation's rigging techniques and shared American tactics with Indian counterparts.

Army 1st Lt. Laura Condyles, a rigger-qualified officer with the 725th Brigade Support Battalion at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, graduated second in a class of 40 students at the Army Airborne Training School in Agra, India. Similar to the U.S. Army's Fort Benning, Ga., training in Agra includes airborne school, the heavy drop riggers course, high altitude low opening school and the pathfinder school.

Condyles, a 25-year-old quartermaster officer from Mechanicsville, Va., excelled in the heavy drop course and earned the Indian army's Medal of Excellence for achieving the "i" indicator on her completion certificate. The indicator means she performed at such a high level, she is qualified to be an instructor for the course.

"I got it," Condyles said. "I'm the first foreign officer that's ever gotten the 'i' grade before, so that was pretty neat."

Condyles began the 52-day course in August in one of the hottest areas in India - with average daily temperatures around 105 degrees. But the daily temperatures were far from the only challenges the lieutenant faced as class began.

"When I first got there, we found out that the class wasn't in English. The whole class was in Hindi the entire time," Condyles said. This particularly posed a challenge during the three, three-hour written examinations required to pass the course. They had an old dictionary they used to translate the tests for me."

Fortunately, the Indian army assigned a fellow student, Capt. Ashish Jha, as a sponsor to help Condyles as they progressed together through the course.

"I was really fortunate that Capt. Jha was there to translate for me," Condyles continued. "He would help me write out notes. He would help me translate the lectures. But packing is more hands-on, so if you see someone do it, you may not know what they are saying, but you can understand it.

The hands-on rigging portion of the course proved to be a learning experience for everyone, the lieutenant said.

India uses two primary aircraft for heavy drops - the Russian-made AN-32 Cline and the IL-76 Candid transports. These are comparable in size to the U.S. Air Force's C-130 Hercules and C-17 Globemaster III, respectively.

India's air force packs the personnel parachutes and the army focuses on heavy-drop rigging.

The Russian-engineered rigging equipment uses three different platforms: an extractor parachute, an auxiliary parachute and a main parachute.

"With each platform, there were three different parachutes that we learned, so all-in-all I learned how to pack nine different parachutes," Condyles said.

Recently, India purchased U.S.-built C-130s and C-17s. Because of her experience rigging and operating in these American planes, Condyles was able to help the Indian army in training with the Type V platforms and container-delivery systems portion of the training.

One of the benefits of partnership training opportunities is learning the unique cultures within the militaries of our international partners. In addition to improving her rigging proficiencies, Condyles said she learned a great deal about the Indian army and culture.
A list of items dropped, displayed on the installation, includes bagged items, tent supplies, bottles, hay, medical supplies, fish, meat on hoof, meat dressed, frozen meat, chicken dressed, chicken alive, fruits and vegetables, and fuel, oil and lubricants.
"They drop live animals!" she said. "They put chickens and goats on a platform and drop them in for food."

But seeing chickens fall from the sky was just one of the practices the lieutenant got used to observing.

"At their motor pools they have temples," she said. "So, before you get into a military vehicle and drive away, you have to pray to the gods, whatever gods you want to, or the god in the temple before you drive away."

Condyles also saw a big difference in the rank structure - particularly the standing of commissioned officers.

"Their structure there is pretty different," Condyles said. "Officers, Soldiers, and [noncommissioned officers] are very, very separated. It's not like our Army where we work together a lot more closely. When you are an officer on post, they cook your meal for you or they deliver it to your room. They clean your bathroom for you every day. They mop your floors in your room every day. They even make your bed for you every day, and they do your laundry."

Condyles purchased Indian clothes to wear for her cultural and historical experiences, including two trips to the Taj Mahal, a visit to the historic Agra Fort, a village wedding celebration experience, and sadly, a mourning ceremony for an instructor's 22-year-old son, who was killed by a train.

At one point, an instructor and his family hosted the lieutenant at their home for dinner, which turned out to be quite an experience - even beyond meeting a cow inside the home.

"I had dinner with his entire family," she said. "It was really exciting because they had never met an American. They never even talked to one, (so) they brought in the entire village - I met the entire village! It was such an exciting event. They hired a professional photographer to take pictures, and they made this big meal for me."

Condyles said the instructors and students at the school were very interested in American culture.

"They asked me to give a culture presentation, so I made a PowerPoint presentation," she said. "I thought it would only take about 20 minutes, but it turned into three and a half hours because they asked so many questions. They were just so interested in the United States and our culture!"

In all, Condyles thought the training was well worth it, and she hopes for more U.S.-Indian military cross training events to further improve interoperability between the countries.

"One of the things I learned was to just respect different cultures. People do different things, and are raised differently, but it doesn't mean it's wrong or right, they just do things differently, and I think it is important to know that," she said.

"The Indian Army is very professional and very disciplined. I had a great time training with them and getting to work with them. I would love to work with them again in the future, and I think our military would benefit greatly from that. We could learn from each other."