Today I heard someone yell, “Tripwire!” There was a bit of electrical cabling sticking up from the gravel and the guy was making a dumb joke, but it still sent two jolts through my brain.
On a submarine, tripwire is a signal word used to indicate that some tactical threshold has been met. The range to an enemy surface combatant closes to within X yards. Another submarine’s acoustic signature changes in a particular meaningful way. Something like that is observed, “tripwire!” is announced with the datum that caused it, and the watch team reevaluates the situation and adjusts the plan. The idea is that, when a parameter leaves its acceptable range, everyone knows and everyone evaluates its effect.
It’s a bit simpler a signal word in the world of land combat. Tripwire means, “don’t move or you might cause that booby trap to go off.”
This is conditioning. My submarine training conditioned me to autonomically respond to the signal word. My combat skills training conditioned me to autonomically respond to the signal word in a completely different way. Now, when this guy yelled this afternoon, I didn’t reach for the periscope or freeze in my tracks, but I certainly felt two distinct impulses. It was a bit jarring.
Break.
Prior to my Baghdad deployment, I had gotten a lot of pretty good, pretty effective training on IEDs. Trash on the side of the road was a common and effective hiding spot for bombs, so I was trained to not just be aware of trash, but not to touch it, either.
I made it home without any first-hand IED experience, thankfully, but the conditioning stuck. I was walking down the street one day a month after my return and, for a moment as I touched the plastic bottle on the sidewalk, about to pick it up and throw it in the trash, my heart stopped.
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