The Soldiers of the 1st Brigade, 7th Iraqi Army Division, competed in a “Best Squads Competition”, Nov. 28, at Camp Ramadi.

The competition, held quarterly, pitted five teams of Soldiers against one another in common Soldiers tasks and skills.

Staff Sgt. Johnathan Lloyd, 1-7 IA Bde., military transition team (MiTT), said that Iraqi Soldiers used to be taught by the MiTT troops, but now the Iraqi troops are training themselves.

“When we got here ten months ago, we had to do lots of training, but now we have seasoned Iraqis that we taught conducting the training with us,” he said. “The training started at the crawl phase, then walk and now we’re in the run phase. They (Iraqis) are running with it.”

During the competition, the IA Soldiers competed against their peers in physical fitness, marksmanship, weapons assembly, first aid and map reading. The Soldiers fired 10 shots on the range, plotted points on a map, conducted first aid on simulated patients and performed pushups and situps in the competition.

“They have been doing real well,” Lloyd said. “There are some areas we’re going to stress more in future training, like map reading, but overall they are doing pretty good.”

Getting everything all together was the real challenge for many of the troops. The MiTT troops had to get the range, supplies and the Iraqis ready for the competition.

Lloyd said, “We didn’t have the squads together for this competition, so we had to wait a bit on that but the event went very well.”

For Lloyd, the biggest reward of the day came when he watched the individual squads leaving a station happy after completing it.

“The camaraderie among the squad members was great to see,” he said. “The competition brought out a sense of pride among the members when they succeeded.”

Even though the challenge was over for the IA Soldiers, the training’s not. Those that left the event know what they need to work on and will prepare for the challenge next quarter.

“We gained a lot of experience today,” said Jundi Abbas Mosa, 1-7 IA Bde. “All of the stations were helpful and will help us in our missions around Ramadi. Everyone really enjoyed the challenge but enjoyed the experience the most.”

Mosa, who was also instructed on the breakdown and reassembly of the AK-47 rifle, said the weapon tasks were his favorite.

“The AK-47 challenges were good because you need to know how to use it properly, so when you are on a mission and something goes wrong you know what to do,” he said.

As the MiTT troops looked over the results of the current challenge competition, Iraqis can expect the next challenge in three months to reflect the last one.

“When we conduct our after action report, we’ll have lots of things we can add into the next training,” Lloyd said. “As with any training, it’s a constant improvement the more you do something, and the Iraqis are constantly improving, so next time should go even better.”