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12-13 November: Make Way for the Cavalry

When SSG Terry’s tank was re-armed and filled to the top with JP8, we grabbed what was left of hot chow off the back of a 5-ton and headed back to the stronghold area just north of Isabel to get ready for another night of fighting.

I reviewed the events today. We spent all night last night desperately trying to staying awake along PL Isabel without actually advancing. Again we were waiting for the Marines to catch up. Secondly, we knew the enemy couldn’t fight at night, so we really didn’t need to assault at night. We just had to defend. That’s exactly what we did last night. We held our ground, didn’t encounter any enemy. Defending is easy when you can see the enemy in night vision AND in thermal vision. You can just sit there and see everything. It’s almost like a superpower Bad guys will try to hide in the bushes and you can see them squatting like sitting ducks. And then you shoot them dead. Then the next guy creeps up and hides in the same place. And you shoot him too. This will go on for about 4 or 5 guys until the little group is annihilated. And at daybreak, we began offensive operations again. But this time, TF2-2 underestimated the enemy’s ability to wait for the right moment to strike.

“Phantom 6, Red 6. We’ve left the LRP and are headed to your position.”

“Roger. When you get here, implement a rest plan and see me for a brief.”
“This is Red 6, Roger.”
“Phantom 6, out.”

Hmm. A rest plan? That was a first. This meant I could put 50% of my men down for some rack time while the other half pulled security. This was a major change in what we had been doing. For the past 96 hours and then some, we’ve tried to maintain 100% readiness at all times during continuous combat. A rest plan meant we could actually stretch our legs! And take our minds off the enemy.

“SSG Terry, figure out the radio watch. I’m going with SFC Lanpher to see what CPT Mayfield’s got for us.”

I walked up to CPT Mayfield’s humvee which was surrounded by the XO, the 1SG, and the platoon leaders and platoon sergeants.

“I think Ramrod 6 really hated that building,” He said to us all, referring to that one Bradley that joined us and shot it's basic load into the corner building earlier.

“What are talking about?” Someone asked.

“I mean, I really really think he had it in for that one building on the corner.” CPT Mayfield was talking about the corner where SSG Terry had almost been blown up in the rear by an RPG. “He showed up about halfway through our engagement and just parked and shot. I think he shot every single round of 25mm HE and 7.62mm on his track at that house. And then he launched all of his TOWs at it and took off. Hmmph. Whatever. That’s cool.”

CPT Mayfield then laid the plan on us. Everyone was just going to hold right where they were. The Iraqi Army was filling in all of the houses and street corners behind us with personnel to secure what we had liberated. What had initially happened is that the enemy took advantage of the fact that from east to west, the US Army and the Marines alternated sectors. And the Army moved south so much faster than the Marines that the enemy in the Marines’ sectors had a choice. They would look to their left and their right flanks and see that they could move laterally(east and west) and slip undetected into other sectors because the Army had already pushed south. This was better for them than retreating backwards and continuing to take it in the face. It was in the original plan to have the Marines and Iraqi Army secure the ground behind the Army but it was slow going in the start. Not any more. The Marines just couldn't keep up.

Our mission was to hold here until morning. Fallujah was all but liberated. There was only one kilometer south to seize. Further details would follow in the morning.

It was 2200. I walked back to the tank. “What’s the security plan, SSG Terry?”

“I don’t know. Legion 7 wants to know how you wanna integrate them in the radio watch.”

“Legion 7, Red 6. Listen, I think rather than dickdance with your two Brads and my one tank crew, just implement a security plan internally with your section and we’ll pull security between the 4 of us on our tank.”
“This is Legion 7 Golf, Roger.”
“Red 6, out.”

It was just so much easier this way. There were advantages to being a hunter/killer section. Having crunchies to clear rooms, different weapons and capabilities, extra grunts to help pull security. But Avenger and Terminator actually sat 500 meters south of us on PL Isabel. And everything behind(north) of them was occupied by Marines and Iraqi Army. And that’s where we happened to be.

“Hell, SSG Terry. Just do 25% security. It’s already 2200. We’ll do 2 hour shifts. Wake up at 0500. Just one man on the .50cal listening to the radios and watching with the NODs(night vision) and we’ll be good.”

They gave me the last shift. It’s a leadership thing. I didn’t ask for it, nor would there have been any protesting from anyone if I had asked. The leadership not only gets an uninterrupted 4 hours of sleep, but he also needs to be up 2 hours before the rest of his guys. This way he can police up his sleeping bag and conduct personal hygiene while his guys are still sleeping. And then when it’s time to get briefed for the mission, he can wake his guys up to get ready for the day while he gets the plan. As a bonus, they only gave me one hour to pull. It made up for all the times I let Mewborn sleep in the driver’s hole and Langford rack out in the loader’s station. I’m sure SSG Terry allowed the same standards on his tank. Actually, I knew for a fact that SSG Terry slept his ass off in the tank because when I called for Red 8, I always got Red 8 Golf on the net.

I looked around in the pitch black night. Flat paint was cool. The tanks and Bradleys looked like shadows, swallowing up any light from the stars. They were like ghosts...and they were HUGE! Our tank was parked on the side of the street in front of a few houses. The Bradleys were in front and behind me. I got comfortable in a sweet spot on the turret. I wedged myself sideways so I could fit in a space half the width of my shoulders, between the loader’s hatch and the lid of the loader’ storage box. I looked around with my NVGs and saw glowing IR chemlights at the base of the Bradleys. The light was illuminating the faces of a few infantrymen sitting on the ground. They were sitting up Bubba-Gump style, back to back. I felt a lot better with them on the ground. One of my fears was getting capped in the middle of the night by some insurgents who decided to be brave and sneak up to the tank. I kept my M9 in its holster and slept with it close to my face. This was about as vulnerable as we were going to get but it beat the hell out of sitting upright in a tank all night trying to stay awake. And at least they would trip over the grunts on the ground first.


CHAPTER 9: PAYBACK

13 November: Make Way For the Cavalry

Right around midnight, I awoke to SGT Pritsolas’ voice on the net. It was faded and crackled but I could still hear him.

“Phantom 7, this is Red 6 Golf. We’re back up and ready to leave the FOB.”

SGT P and my crew had done it. They got the tank back up. When SGT P and his crew had arrived at Camp Fallujah, there were no mechanics around. Most of the mechanics were in the LRP back in sector. They were working on all the tracks and the wheeled vehicles that getting taken out in the fight. Normally, replacing one side of track on a tank takes my entire platoon working like Irishmen and even our best time is usually around four hours. SGT P only had his 3 soldiers with him, one of whom had an injured foot. Right then and there, as the National Guard HET drivers downloaded the tank off of their HET, they saw that SGT P was hurting for manpower. They immediately volunteered to assist in assembling an entire side of track out of track blocks. The only available mechanic, PFC Lee, who was left behind during the fight, helped to repair the Number 7 control arm. All said and done, those guys performed something short of a miracle by repairing that left side of track.

There was no question in my mind that SGT P was the driving force in accomplishing that task. I’m sure he ran those soldiers into the ground in order to repair that track. But that was SGT P. He was unrelenting. He was the type of soldier who would rather take on someone else’s responsibility himself than trust it to a less competent individual. Because in the end, he knew it would get done right. He was a perfectionist in that respect. It was evident in the way he maintained the sponson boxes, or turret storage boxes. He took pride in staying neat and organized. He despised a slob. He was the epitome of an NCO in so many ways. But even more important than his desire to maintain a 100% Fully Mission Capable(FMC) status, was his desire to get back in the fight. I knew how mad he was to be knocked out of it in the first place.

They didn’t miss much so far and they were going to step right back into the rhythm without missing a beat. Things weren’t going to kick off that early in the morning so I interrupted the transmission to talk to the BRT First Sergeant.

“Phantom 7, this is Red 6. Let those guys stay where they are at. There’s no point in bringing them out. They can come out in the morning.”

We were doing nothing but pulling security at this point. There was no fighting in our sector. The task force was actually getting some down time for the first time. Furthermore, there was no way for SGT P to get my tank from the Marine camp to here without an escort. Since LOGPACs and all kinds of various patrols ran to and from the FOB in the day, I figured they could just catch a ride in the morning. This was their chance to eat some real chow, sleep in a cot, shower and take a real shit. And by real shit, of course I mean one of the spank tanks – the Port-A-Potties.

I stretched out my legs. I wiggled my toes, the cold night air was passing between them as I lay naked half-in, half-outside of my sleeping bag. The fear of getting killed in my sleep was shadowed by my utter and complete mental and physical exhausting. I fell asleep. Hard. And I didn’t wake up on that turret again until it was my shift.

My shift on radio watch was extremely boring. There was sporadic gunfire but it was so far away that I gained a slight sense of security because of distance. I scanned as much as I could with the PVS-14s but the monotony was wearing me down. I watched the infantrymen of my Bradley section still sitting up against the track of their vehicle. I put the PVS-14s down and just stared into the blackness until the sun rose.

Around 0700, the leadership met up at CPT Mayfield’s humvee.

“Until now, the Army has been considered the ‘supporting effort’ while the Marines have been the ‘main effort’. Yeah right. Anyways, the Marines have taken a lot of casualties. And since they’ve been dismounted the whole way through the city, they are pretty much smoked. So they are going to hold what they got. TF2-2 is now the main effort. And the BRT is the main effort for TF2-2. Terminator is going to clear blocks 006 and 007. We are going to clear blocks 016 and then 015.”

“The plan is as follows. We are going to lead with the tanks to an SBF(support by fire) position just north of PL Jenna. When the tanks are set and oriented west on the buildings, Neil, call up ‘SET.’... Neil, move forward with your tanks and stay with the lead dismounted element....” The front line trace is just another way of saying “location of our forward most element.”

“This objective right here is a major kill zone. Avenger company passed through it yesterday and took a lot of fire from every direction. This is where the enemy ...”

CPT Mayfield showed us a point on the map where there was a large clearing among the dense houses. It was a dirt clearing about the size of two football fields side-by-side. Avenger company had just raced through it and was caught in an ambush....

“We’re going to do things differently. We are going to enter the kill zone from here” He pointed to the north east corner of the circular clearing. “I want the tanks and Bradleys to go in - guns blazing.”

Sweet. I love this plan already.

“Once you punch through the kill zone, I want you to turn left…and then I want you to shoot every single house you see.”

This just got better.

“Put down plenty of suppressive fire – and you got smoke grenade launchers on those tanks right? All of the dismounts will be standing by, taking cover on the near side of the kill zone. Pop smoke and we’ll move under the cover of smoke and your fires.”

This plan is fucking beautiful. It had so many moving parts, yet it was so simple, even a child could understand it. And when properly executed, it was going to look we had rehearsed it for years.

There was only once concern – the smoke mission. For one, I didn’t have any smoke grenade launchers on my tank. They were deadlined(inoperable) way back in Germany, and they weren’t going to get fixed before we left for Iraq so we removed them from my tank. Second, we had no idea if SSG Terry’s smoke grenade launchers even worked, or if the smoke grenades in the launchers were going to fire properly. It wasn’t like we ever test fired the launchers, so therefore there wasn’t any turnover in the grenades. So God knows how long those grenades had been sitting there. But the bottom line concern was, we had never done something like this before.

No matter. I was ready to put so much 120mm HEAT, 25mm HE, .50cal, and 7.62mm into that kill zone, that the enemy wouldn’t even be able to see us through the obscuration of projectiles.

It was 0800. I was getting worried that SGT P was going to miss the fight. It was now one hour to SP time and I hadn’t heard any word from him. This mission could be executed with just one tank. Today our mission was suppressive fire, and two Bradleys and one tank can still keep a lot of heads down. But if he missed this exciting mission, I would never forgive myself. And if something happened to me, I believe maybe SGT P wouldn’t forgive himself. He always said to me again and again, “Remember what I told you from Day 1 when you came to this platoon. ‘Sir, I got your back’.” He always did.

I told SFC Lanpher that we were going to stay pure sections today. His two Bradleys together, and our tank all by our lonesome. I went over it in my head. A Bradley by itself was still extremely maneuverable in dense urban terrain. Furthermore, if things got really hairy, they could drop the ramp and get crunchies on the ground quick to help with the problem. But in the end I decided with a tank being so heavily armored, I’d rather have a tank without a wingman than a Bradley. Us armored folks were going to have enough friendly dismounts hot on our tail anyways. So they could help us big lumbering tankers if we were caught in a pinch. I let SFC Lanpher go to brief his men while I headed towards mine.
I walked up to SSG Terry’s tank and called the crew down to the front slope to brief them on the plan. Our part was simple. Simple maneuver, shoot everything in front of us and to our south or our left. Just one question to be answered

“SSG Terry, can we pop smoke here?”

“We can do it, Sir.”

“Ok. SP in 30 mins.”

Just then, A16 came tearing down PL Mike towards our assembly area.

“Holy shit, it’s SGT P. They made it in the nick of fucking time.”

SGT P pulled into the assembly area as I raced towards them. The track on his tank was clacking as he tore into the assembly area, followed by his tan dust cloud. Dawes quickly jumped off of the tank. Dawes and I pulled a little swapping of rifles and assault packs and now the section was back to normal. We were 100% FMC.

“Phantom 6, Red 6. I got my tank back.”

“Awesome, let me know when you’re ready to go. Phantom 6, out.”

“Jesus Christ, SGT P. I didn’t think you guys were gonna make it.”

“What a goat fuck, Sir. We couldn’t find an escort to come out here. They wouldn’t fucking let us come out here by ourselves. Finally, we hitched up with the LOGPAC that came out at 0830.”

“Alright well we’re kicking this shit off in 30 minutes. SP is 0900. Here’s the plan…”

At 0900, my tanks led the BRT out of the assembly area and into position on PL Jenna. Terminator was still clearing their sector. SSG Terry and I got into position anyways and backed up a little. We were now in the sand across from the houses. At the front of the very first houses was the road that ran north and south, PL Cain. SSG Terry found an alley to look down that was just a few houses to my left. A16 and A18 sat poised on the houses, waiting to make the push into the dense city. This was the first time my tanks were going this deep into the city. The alleyways were just wide enough to fit a tank in, which clearly meant that there was no room to traverse while moving between the houses. As I stood up in the hatch, I blindly reached for my rifle. My hand went swiftly to the plastic pistol grip and my finger was in the trigger well. Just a test. I knew that in the closest of combat, even my .50cal was going to be useless.

Suddenly, a lot of anxious traffic came over the troop net.

“They don’t know where he is.”
“How can they NOT know where he is? Is he dead?”
“Did he go in by himself?”

Everyone was talking about Terminator 6, but no one seemed to know what was happening. I looked over at SSG Terry. He looked back at me from his tank and just shrugged.

“What the hell is happening?” SGT P asked no one in particular.

At 1000, CPT Mayfield gave us the green light.

“Red 8, Red 6. Just push up past these first few houses. We’ll wait there for the dismounts to catch up to us.”

The two Bradleys roared towards us, carrying their infantry inside. When they reached the spot we were previously holding at, they dropped their ramps and unloaded their cargo. Two squads of about six men each came scurrying down the ramp and squatted down at the front wall of the first house. I looked at them with sympathy and envy at the same time. Watching them prepare to kick in the door and do the real man-to-man fighting filled me with a rush that I wanted to feel for myself. The fact that they were going to get up close and personal with the enemy was a source of pride that I wasn’t going to feel up here in my steel beast. At the same time, I knew how exhausting it was going to be clearing house to house. They were so exposed and vulnerable as they were about to enter into these homes. Houses that were rigged to explode when the doors were kicked in. Houses that were the filled with insurgents, seeking cover where the tanks couldn’t see them. I knew I had a better chance of coming home than these guys on the ground. With my experience at Ranger School and my respect for the boots on the ground, SSG Terry and I were going to give the best goddamn armored support crunchies could ever ask for.

“Let those houses have it with some API, Red 8.” The basic load on a tank is 900 .50cal rounds. We were each carrying about 5,000 rounds of Armor Piercing Incendiary. It would go through anything in this city. If the insurgents had any notion to seek cover in these brick and mud houses, we’d make them question their sense of security.

Df-df-df-df-df-df-df-df-df-df-df-df-df-df-df-df.

SSG Terry and I moved parallel to each other with him at my 9 o’clock, but we stayed slightly staggered. As we moved west, he would disappear behind the house that was between us. Then he would reappear on my left as we continued past the first house. Since we were both shooting from our 12 o’clock to our 9, I stayed ahead of him by a few meters and I never shot past my 10. I started my .50cal machine gun on the near side of the buildings and I sprayed from front to back. The bullets punched large holes in the bricks and chewed up the walls. It gave the bad guys inside something to think about.

Behind us, the dismounts started moving quickly from house to house. I could hear the 5.56mm spraying the houses and they cleared each room. Being in my tank, I wasn’t worried that they were shooting possibly in our direction.

We continued forward in our western direction. Electrical wires hung down everywhere. I was pretty sure they were dead wires, since the Marines had supposedly killed all the power to the city. The wires dangled in front of us and dragged up our front slope and onto our turret as we glided beneath them. Langford and I leaned left and right in our hatches to avoid touching them.

“Uh-oh. This is going to be tight.” SGT P called out.

There was a space just barely bigger than a tank in front of us. I would describe it as a square or a courtyard formed by the walls of four houses. In the courtyard were two Bradleys.

“I don’t know what the hell they are doing here.” I said.

“Red 6, Phantom 6, what’s the hold up? Keep moving forward.”

“Roger Phantom 6, there’re two Bradleys in front of me. I’m trying to get them outta here.”

I looked at the Bradley commander. It was my friend, 1LT Jeff Emery. He was a Bradley platoon leader with Alpha Company of 2-2IN. In the past 24 hours, he had lost his company commander, and his executive officer. He was in command of Terminator Company.

I looked at him with an expression that read, Hey dude, can you get out the fucking way? We’re trying to come through here.

He looked back at me for a split second, then at the ground in front of him, and then reached for the boom mic on his CVC and started talking to his driver. I’ll never forget that look on his face. Not that anything significant or life threatening was happening at that moment, but I stepped back to get a macroscopic look at the situation.
Here we stood, the greatest armored force in the history of the world. We came down to sweep clear the most dangerous city in the world of any enemy threat. Things were going fine in the north half of the city where we had a little more room to maneuver. But south of PL Fran, the city had narrowed by a third. Tanks and Bradleys were virtually on top of each other. And then SGT P summed it up.

“Jesus Fucking Christ. There’re too many goddam vehicles in too small of a fucking space.”

1LT Emery seemed to say with his expression, I know what you’re trying to do. And I’m trying getting outta here.

His Bradley did a perfect 270 degree turn. His track was now facing north and he exited that little square between two houses. His wingman followed him and the path before me was clear.

“God, thank god those were Bradleys. Can you imagine if we had to turn like that?”

First of all, it was impossible to turn like that. Second of all, our gun tube would have been a serious obstruction in trying to navigate around corners. The Bradley looked incredibly agile in the city. It could turn on a dime. The turret traversed so much faster than ours. And with such a short gun tube for the 25mm cannon, it could turn without fear of smashing into a house.

Our tanks pushed forward and we were about to enter the kill zone. SSG Terry was behind me and my two Bradleys were behind him. I punched forward and blasted the first house directly ahead of us. After pushing out just twenty meters, I liked where we were at.

“Action LEFT, Mewborn! Hard left, hard left!” Mewborn cranked the tank hard and jostled Langford and me in the turret. We were at the top, or north end, of the kill zone. We looked at the clearing and the houses that stood just a hundred meters in front of us. SGT P let loose with the coax. I watched the flames shoot out of the flash suppressor at the front of the turret. The flames shot out about a foot or two as the machine gun screamed away. Thousands of rounds of 7.62mm were linked together inside this tank.
God, that’s fucking violent.
Langford went maniacal with his loader’s M240. He grabbed the handles of his gun mount and smashed down on the butterfly trigger with his thumbs. He wasn’t as accurate as SGT P, but he was still putting deadly fires down range. I sprayed methodically from left to right with the M2. My rate of fire wasn’t as great as theirs, but there was no hiding from it.
Meanwhile, SSG Terry’s tank screamed out of the alley way we were in and blew behind us from east to west. He positioned himself on my right flank and actioned left. We were dead even and filling the houses with copper, lead and steel. The Bradleys followed suit and our armored/mech team was online at the head of the kill sac.

“Pop smoke when you’re ready.” I called over the platoon net to SSG Terry and the Bradleys.
“Everybody get down in your turrets and close your hatches.” He called back. SSG Terry had explained how dangerous firing smoke grenades can be. For one, the grenades are white phosphorous, which possess their own inherent dangers. For another, the launchers are pretty indiscriminate. There is no real aim to them. You just punch the Salvo buttons from inside the tank commander’s control panel, and the grenades launch up and out. As a safety measure, you get down in your turret; the safest place to be during a launch. But there was no way in hell I was missing this show.
I looked to my left at the alley we had just come out of. The dismounts were stacking up against the wall, waiting for our smoke screen. I looked right to my tank and Bradleys. POP-POP-POP-POP…

The smoke grenades lobbed up into the sky pretty high. As they came down, they seemed to send out little meteorites. Trails of white wispy smoke followed behind as they dropped to the ground. The grenades landed about thirty meters in front of us. They started pouring out thick white smoke. Even the meteorites gave off their own smoke. The clouds thickened as they continued to burn and the whole screen was slowly moving east. Oh man this is perfect, whatever undetectable breeze there was, was moving the screen towards the dismounts. Not all of SSG Terry’s grenades had launched. There were still several grenades still sitting in his launcher. But that didn’t take away from the mission. After ten minutes, everything in front of us was obscured. I couldn’t see the houses on the other side.

“This is fucking awesome. I can see everything,” SGT P exclaimed. “I can see all the houses with the thermals. Check it out, Sir.”

I bent down and looked in the GPSE. All of the houses showed up in crystal clear resolution. Of course, everything was green-colored because of the thermal imagery. But there was no trace of smoke anywhere.

“Man I can’t believe how awesome this shit works.” SGT P said. He was pumped as hell at the miracle of technology. So was I. It was our first time sitting directly in front of a smoke screen. Our advantage was almost unfair. It was like a superpower.

“Can you imagine the bad guys sitting on the other side of this screen? They can’t see us. And if they had the balls to come out, thinking just because they can’t see us, we must not be able to see them. As they move about, all of a sudden, precision 7.62mm and red tracers come shooting out of the smoke. How fucking scary would that be?” I asked my crew. We just laughed at the absurdity of that scenario. Unfortunately, we made such an assault on the kill zone when we came in; it was now as silent as a tomb in the clearing.

I looked over at the dismounts again. They stood up and made a dash for the other side. It was a good hundred meters or more from one end to the other. They moved as squads, staying behind the tanks and Bradleys. I was in awe of the whole maneuver. Up until now, this was the stuff movies and video games were made of. Tanks with blazing guns, heavy armored protection, dismounts running under the cover of smoke. We were living a scene that I played out in a sandbox with plastic tanks and G.I. Joes when I was six years old.

When they all safely made it to the other side, they made room for the tracks and we continued our mission through the alley while they continued to clear the houses behind us. We were now more than halfway through block 015, the last part of what we were supposed to clear.
I reached the last house on the corner. The house was on my left and was the northwest corner house of block 015. That was my Limit of Advance(LOA). But in front of me was a wide open clearing. If the dismounts were going to take these houses on my left, I might as well push out into the clearing and provide them cover. I stormed out in the open just like at the last clearing and pulled an action left right in the center of the clearing. SSG Terry pulled up on my left and the two Bradleys pulled up on my right. We were all facing south west as that was our primary direction of fire.

“SGT P, hit that house in the middle.”
“Roger. On the way.”

BOOM!!!

“HOLY SHIT, RED 6!! Did you see that guy go flying off the balcony?” It was Legion 7, SFC Lanpher. He was struggling to get the words out through his laughter.

“Dammit, no I didn’t, Legion 7.”

“There was a guy with an RPG on the second story and when you hit that balcony, he just went flying over the side.”

Unfortunately, when a tank fires in the sand or in the snow, everyone’s vision is completely obscured when the dust or snow flies up. I just had a cloud of brown in front of me for a few seconds, but SFC Lanpher had a front row seat to the damage we had just inflicted.

“Fucking sweet.” SGT responded.

“Red Platoon, this is Red 6. Let’s hammer these houses.”

“UP!” Langford hollered.
“On the way.” BOOM!!

If there was one guy hanging around, there was probably more.

“FUCK, the ammo door is stuck.” Langford screamed.

I looked over at him. He was pounding the ammo door knee switch. I could hear the hydraulics hissing and popping as the pump tried to get the door open, but it wouldn’t budge.

“C’mon dude. Pound that shit. Let’s go.” SGT P hollered at him.

This was a bad time and place to be sitting around without a round in the tube. I didn’t spend much time worrying about it, though. Getting this tank up was SGT P’s and the crew’s problem. My focus was on what the platoon was doing. Langford grabbed the breechblock operating handle, a big heavy metal handle that lowers the breech manually. The breech normally drops automatically after firing a main gun round. This opens the back of the gun tube, allowing the loader to shove another round in the hole. Sometimes, like when you don’t need to fire the round and you must pull it out of the tube, you stick the handle in a slot on the breech and drop it to access the round. Langford grabbed the handle from the turret floor and pounded violently on the ammo door. There was nothing on the tank that needed coddling or finesse. Everything demanded pure brute gorilla strength. Langford pounded the door furiously. Everytime he hit it, beads of sweat flew off his brow just below his CVC from the impact. I knew how hot and sweaty you get from being the loader after my experience last night. And here he was, doing an additional physical task that we never anticipated or trained for.

“Red 8, this is Red 6 Golf. Our ammo door is stuck and we can’t get it open-“

BOOM!! SGT Stoker just fired a main gun round from SSG Terry’s tank. The concussion shook my entire body. It felt like someone took two huge cymbals from the school band and smashed them together on my head.

Click-Skrrrrrr-Ka-chunk. The ammo door unlocked, glided effortlessly across the track and locked open.
“YEAH! That was fucking awesome!” Langford screamed.
“GO GO GO! Load another round, motherfucker!” SGT P screamed at Langford.
Langford dropped the handle on the turret floor and grabbed a HEAT round. “UP!”
“On the way.”
BOOM! He pounded another house.

“Holy shit, Red 8, this is Red 6 Golf. When you guys fired that round, the concussion knocked loose our ammo door.”

“Ahhthis is Red 8. Do I gotta do everything for you guys? Even open your ammo door for ya?”

My eyes were still blurry from the concussion. We had never been in this position before.

“Jesus Christ. Did anyone else feel that?” I asked my crew. But they hadn’t. They were down in the turret. And Mewborn was buried in depleted uranium down in his driver’s hole. Even though SSG Terry was on my immediate left and our hulls were facing south, we were canted south west. Essentially, SSG Terry shot from behind me and across my front. It wasn’t dangerous at all. I was completely clear of his fires, but I was still slightly in front of his concussion. “That was fucking awesome!” I laughed as I sucked air back into my lungs.
Simultaneously, the Bradleys were putting 25mm HE into every window they saw. I felt good. I felt like we were sending a message to the dismounts. We gotcha covered.

Being a dismounted M240 gunner in Ranger School, the most ammo you and your team could carry was around 800 to 1000 rounds of 7.62mm. And with only three teams per platoon, you were looking at three M240 machine guns and maybe four thousand rounds total. In this clearing, our four tracks were firing six M240s into the face of the enemy. The tanks alone were carrying over 24,000 rounds of 7.62mm. This was not the time to conserve. Dismounts needed cover.

The dismounts started to clear the last row of houses that were on our left, the ones we had left behind to get out into this clearing. They started at the north house and moved south.

“Red 6, this is Phantom 6. We’re going to establish a stronghold in the second house. But we’re taking sniper fire from the south.”

“This is Red 6, roger.”
“Red 8, Red 6. Hit the houses in front of you, due south.”

Our two tanks started pounding away at the houses until the dismounts established themselves in the stronghold. They sent their snipers onto the third-story roof top.

“Red 6, this is Phantom 6. We are set in the stronghold.”
“Phantom 6, Red 6. Roger. We’re going to orient south and west.”

SSG Terry began shooting his .50cal at a transformer that was feeding power into one of the houses.
BOOM! The transformer exploded in a giant fire ball.

“Goddamn, Red 6, did you see that?” SSG Terry hollered at me over the net. But it wasn’t over. Fire started pouring out of transformer like a watertower full of napalm.

“What the hell is burning?” I asked my crew. Whatever was pouring out of the transformer was extremely flammable. I was bewildered.
“That was cool as shit!” Langford exclaimed.

I looked at the clearing. There were just a few medium sized paved roads that ran from this clearing due west into dense neighborhoods. I decided to position my platoon to watch the western flank as the dismounts fortified their position.

“Legion 7, this is Red 6. Take your section and move to the southwest end of this clearing. Cover everything west and south. Red 8 and I will orient down these two roads that run west and cover everything due west.”

I stared through the GPSE about 900 meters down the road our tank was looking at. Suddenly an old greenish, brownish jeep zipped by. It was fleeting because I was looking down a road that had houses on both sides. So 900 meters down from that, the space between the houses on the left and right was pretty tiny.

“Holy shit! Did anyone see that?” I asked.
“See what?”
“SGT P. You didn’t see that jeep with like four dudes in it hauling ass from north to south with RPGs or rockets in the back?!?”

SGT P didn’t see it, but he replied with a ka-CHUNK ; I heard the gun tube jump and the hydraulics kick in as he grabbed the cadillacs. I knew he was watching now. Anytime SGT P squeezed the Cadillac triggers, it engaged the hydraulic pump which forced thousands of pounds of pressure with Fire Resistance Hydraulic fluid – FRH we simply called it – running throughout the arteries and veins of the turret. That pressure is what raised the gun tube, turned my .50cal machine gun, and traversed the 26-ton turret among other things.


“Phantom 6, Red 6. I just saw four guys tearing down a road in a jeep from north to south. Distance, 900 meters. Can I move a section further south to intercept enemy that I observe moving north to south?”

“This is Phantom 6. Negative. We are at the boundary of our sector. Hold what you got.”

I looked back. He was all tied up with taking that stronghold. It was an unnecessary precaution to hold us here. There were no friendlies to our west or south.

“Legion 7, Red 6. Take your section and push south and orient one of your tracks due west. Red 8, Red 6. Keep your eyes peeled for enemy activity moving north to south in front of you 900 meters-”
R-rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!
I watched SGT P’s tracers arc down the road. God those bullets travel slowly. I know bullets move fast but these ones were traveling almost a kilometer to their target. And I could watch the tracers travel, which gave me the sensation that they weren’t going fast enough.

“SGT P. Whaddya got?”
“This fucker just crossed the road from north to south. But I missed him. I’m going to main gun.”

I bent down in the GPSE and looked down the road with SGT P. At the end of the road, from the corner of the left house, a head and upper body peeked around the corner at us.
“On the way.”
BOOM!

“You gotta be fucking kidding me! Did you see that asshole look back at us?” SGT P asked.

I couldn’t believe it myself. The idiot just barely missed getting mowed down by 7.62mm. So he comes back to see what was shooting at him. I can’t blame him for being curious though. We were sitting almost a kilometer away. He probably couldn’t even see us.

“Red 6, Phantom 6. What the fuck was that?”
“Phantom 6. Red 6. One enemy KIA.”
“Awesome. Phantom 6, out.”

Ten minutes later, five men carrying Ak-47s strolled casually across the street from right to left, north to south.
“On the way.”
BOOM!
“This is fucking ridiculous.” SGT P said astonished and amused.

“Phantom 6, Red 6. Five enemy KIA.”
“Red 6, Phantom 6. Roger. Phantom 5, Phantom 6. Did you copy that?”
“This is Phantom 5. Roger. Five enemy KIA.”
“Roger. Phantom 6, out.”

CPT Morrison, the troop executive officer, was keeping track of the battle as it unfolded. He was also keeping track of the annoying details and bookkeeping while we were in the heat of the battle. That way, we always had someone we could refer to if we missed anything important.

“Red 6, Legion 7. You got room for us over there?” It was the same old thing. When you’re not the one getting the kills, it feels like you’re missing out on the action. Everyone wants a piece, who could blame him?

“Negative, 7. There probably isn’t room for both of us to sit on this alley. Hold what you got.”

Of course I didn’t want to give up my spot and miss out on these kills, but more importantly, I didn’t want the bad guys to have an opportunity to get away alive while we were switching places. Furthermore, SGT P was familiar with the picture. He knew everything about what a target would look like when it popped in our sights. You must exploit that.

BOOM! SGT Stoker let loose with a main gun round to my left.

“Red 8, Red 6. Whaddya got?”
“Ho’d on a minute.”
“Ok, what did you see, 8?”
“Ho’d on…” He trailed off. “Hah hah hawww. Red 6, Red 8. One enemy KIA.”
“What the hell is so funny?” I asked.

“Well, I seen a guy walking from right to left with an AK slung on his back but when Stoker shot him, we didn’t see nothing. Then this dog came up from right to left and stopped. And we could see the back half of the dog but his front legs and head was behind the house. And he started tugging on something and then he dragged the body back into view. That’s when I knew we got him.”

“Good shit, 8.” I grabbed the hand mic with the troop net on it. “ Phantom 6, Red 6. Red 8 has one enemy KIA.”
“This is Phantom 6, roger.”

This continued for the next thirty minutes. SSG Terry and I continued to pick off guys moving from north to south. I checked my map to figure out what was going on. When I checked the distance, I realized that we were looking down a neighborhood street that intersected PL Henry about a kilometer away. PL Henry was a major highway that ran north and south through the heart of Fallujah in the Marine Corps sector. Picture a square. The top side had the Marines in it, top being north. The right or east side had me and SSG Terry and the BRT. The left or west side was the entire other half of the city with the Euphrates River running north and south at the very west end of the city. The only open side was the south, where there was only 500 meters of dense city left. After that last 500 meters, it turned into open desert. And waiting out in that open desert was the U.S. Marine Corps with their LAVs, M1A1s, and the US Army 1st Cavalry Division with their M1A2 SEPs. There really was no where left to run in the grand scheme of things. They were just prolonging the inevitable. I wanted to kill as many of these fucking insurgents as possible while we were sitting here.


So here we were in the large open space between PL Isabel and Jenna. In the past hour, SSG Terry’s crew and mine had killed about 25 or 30 insurgents. It must have been a wave because now things were real quiet.
“Hey Sir, check that shit out, will ya?” SGT P asked me.
I watched from outside the hatch as he turned his gun tube away from the alley and slightly to the right of it. I looked into the GPSE to see what he was talking about and saw an RPG on the ground, a pack of Marlboros and a dirty ragged shoe. The RPG was facing north straight up and down as it lay almost a hundred meters in front of us.
“That’s pretty weird-“ I replied.
“OH SHIT! Look at that! Ha HA!” SGT P cut me off.
He had turned the gun tube to the left of the alley that we had been looking down and what we saw answered the mystery. About 25 meters behind or south of the RPG, smokes, and the shoe was a dead insurgent laying face down with his feet towards us and his head pointed down the alley we had been shooting up – and he only had one shoe on his foot.
“What the fuck is wrong with him? What’s up with his ass?” SGT P asked us.
Langford grabbed the binoculars as we all stared at his backside which was facing the sky.
“It looks all torn up.” I said.
“No.” Langford argued, “It’s not there. His ass is missing.”
“Ha HA! I bet he got hit with artillery when they nuked this place yesterday.”
“I can’t believe he actually got blown out of his shoes!”

We found the scene terribly amusing but it was back to business all of a sudden as the troop commander came on the net.

“Red 6, Phantom 6. I need you to go to the following grid and do a face-to-face link up with the Marines. Let them know our position and tell them not to advance any further south.”
“This is Red 6 roger.” I was extremely disappointed. I didn’t want to leave my position. For one thing, we were having a grand old time in this turkey shoot while insurgents were trying to regroup and I didn’t want to miss getting any kills. And secondly, we were just starting to have fun with the dead guy. For a brief moment, I contemplated sending SSG Terry to do the link-up. I was already in position, my gunner was well-oriented on the targets in front of him and 20 out of the 25 kills were in this spot. Strike while the iron is hot, I say. Don’t mess up the rhythm. But I squashed that notion as quickly as I thought of it. Nobody in the platoon knew where we were better than I. It was my job as a platoon leader to keep track of all the key elements. Secondly, I was the senior leadership for this task, so I was the guy the Marines should be talking to – not old Arkansas Terry.
“Red 8, Red 6. I gotta go link up with the Marines and tell them to continue to let the Army do all the work for them. I want you to take up my position once we pull out of here.”
“Ah-this is Red 8. Roger, moving.”

“Alright Mewborn. BACK US UP!” We pulled straight back and
turned the rear hard left. We were now facing north and roared forward to find the Marines at the grid Phantom 6 gave me. I pulled up to PL Isabel which ran east and west along the 89 east-west gridline. PL Isabel happened to be a hardball road and all of Avenger Company was sitting on it with their tanks, PCs, 2 Bradleys and their M88s. They had been watching our entire gun show from only 500 meters north of us.
“Damn Avenger. How does it feel to have someone bust out in front of YOU and get all the kills!” We were all still steamed about Avenger Company stealing our lane two days ago. But it hadn’t mattered because they didn’t kill anything as they drove in front of us that night of the 11th. This was much sweeter. They watched as we hammered the dogshit out of this kill zone and everything in it.


“Hard left, Mew!” I went due west on the hardball until I reached a small road that ran north and south. This was the border between the Marines and TF 2-2. I looked to my left – we had just come from that area and I could see a small figure which was the dead insurgent with no ass. “Straight ahead, Mew.” In front of us and to the right was open desert. Again the Marines had given the Army a denser and larger portion of city to clear. Behind me, Avenger and Terminator were in the thick of the city, but in front of me, the Marines were organized some open desert as the south half of Fallujah reconstituted here. The Marines had pulled up to some houses where the south half of the city started for them. They were in these huge boat-like monstrosities called Amtracs. They were just hideous and looked like the juiciest RPG targets. They looked like they had a higher profile( or height) than our tanks. And they rolled on these tracks like our tanks but their track was nothing like our track. M1A1 tank track is some serious shit. And the armor on those things didn’t look like they could stop anything greater than 7.62mm. I felt sorry for the Marines. They really needed better equipment.
I pulled up to a house that they all seemed to be fortifying and I jumped on the ground with my map. I found a Major and ran up to him.

“Hey Sir. 1LT Prakash. I’m with the Brigade Recon Troop attached to Task Force 2-2. We’re right here.” I pointed to the map. “We just wanted to let you know not to pursue any further south yet. We’ve occupied this open ground and in an hour or so, the main effort of TF 2-2 is going to push south of PL Isabel and clear as much as they can south of here.”
“Sounds good Lieutenant. We’re establishing our stronghold here.” He pointed out his position and all of his Marines north and west of where we were standing.
The major had a pretty cool demeanor. Thus far in my deployment in Iraq, I had run into idiots and slugs. This guy seemed like neither. I jumped on my tank. “Let’s get the hell back to our spot.”

We headed back to where we were initially sitting in the clearing surrounded by houses and oriented west down that alley/road. SSG Terry had originally been in our spot, but as we pulled into it, he pulled straight ahead – right towards that corpse on the ground. He pulled his tank right up to the left of it.

“Red 6, this is Red 8. Red 8 Lima wants to bet twenty dollars that he’ll get on the ground to turn this dead guy over.” Red 8 Lima was SSG Terry’s loader, SPC Dawes. This was that quiet soft-spoken kid from the south who had gotten so shaken from SSG Terry’s yelling during a gunnery, that he cried and got booted from Terry’s tank. This was the same kid who just one day ago put two bullets into an insurgent armed with an RPG and a solid bead on Terry’s back.
“Red 8 Lima, this is Red 6 Golf. You don’t have a hair on your ass to do it.” SGT P called out.

“What’s up with Dawes?” I asked my crew. “He’s fucking crazy now.” Dawes had definitely changed overnight in my eyes. “Red 8 Lima, this is Red 6. I’ll bet you a carton of smokes you won’t get off that tank.”

“This is Red 8 Lima, I like Marlboro Reds.” Dawes took his CVC helmet off and grabbed his Kevlar out of his sponson box. He grabbed his M4 and jumped onto the ground on the left side of the tank. Suddenly I got a bad feeling and realized that this wasn’t a good idea. We had all done some crazy shit so far and it was just a means to keep your sanity in the madness of continuous combat. It was just like when Chris Boggiano was shitting in a giant pit and his men started throwing smoke grenades into the hole with him. But I shouldn’t have been encouraging this. What if the body was rigged with a grenade?

Dawes had just started running around the backside of the tank and was coming around to the right. “Red 8, this is Red 6. Tell him to get away from the body NOW. Tell him to get the hell back on the tank. I’ll give him his damn smokes.”

SSG Terry leaned over the side of the tank from his hatch and hollered down at Dawes. I couldn’t make out the conversation but Dawes scrambled like a madman right back where he came from. He ran clockwise from behind the tank and all the way to the front.
“What the hell is he doing?” I asked my crew. Dawes came around to the body and straddled it. “What the FUCK!” Dawes started pretending to hump the body while he was standing up and flipped both middle fingers at the corpse.
“Well that’s it.” We all laughed. “Dawes has lost his mind.”
“GET THE FUCK BACK ON YOUR TANK. GET AWAY FROM THAT THING!” I screamed at Dawes. He gave the space above the corpse two more pumps with his hips and pulled out his digital camera. He snapped some photos and then scrambled back up the tank like a monkey. As he put his CVC helmet back on, I called out over the net. “Hey Lima, I was just worried that the body might have been booby trapped.”
“This is 8 Lima. It’s cool. I got some great pictures.”

I just shook my head. “Man, Dawes has lost his fucking mind.” We were all shocked
and amused by Dawes’ behavior. We wondered if it had something to do with the insurgent he killed yesterday. That was the first guy Dawes had ever killed and it was so personal.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
It’s hard not to take it personal when you get blown up or shot at. I remember when my first commander had gotten blown up by a car bomb very early in the deployment in Baqubah. It was April and my tank section had just gotten off of a route clearance mission. These missions were boring and didn’t accomplish much. Our mission was to drive up and down all of the MSRs (main supply routes) in our sector for a few hours. The MSRs were just the major highways in our sector. Highway 3 and Highway 5, which would take you to Baghdad. We would hopefully find IEDs or possible catch the guys red-handed burying them in the shoulder of the street. The problem was that these guys were so good at planting IEDs, that they would just wait for the tanks to roll by and burying them knowing that another patrol wouldn’t come by for some time. Another technique was for one guy to dig a hole. Another guy would come by later and drop an armed IED in the hole. Finally a third guy would come by and over watch it and command detonate the bomb when a patrol drove by.

It was morning and we pulled into the motor pool because my tank had a broken hub seal in one of the road wheels. We got into our coveralls and busted out all of the BII(basic issue items) tools necessary to do the maintenance. When we finished changing the seal, my soldiers opened up all of the tank skirts so they could “grease the track”, which actually means to pump grease into the shock housings and not on the track itself. All of our tools were spread out over the front slope and I was standing on the turret digging into the loader’s sponson box to get the grease gun. Suddenly there was the loudest explosion I had heard thus far in the deployment. We all looked up and to the north where it came from. In the sky, a giant brown donut cloud rose in the air.
“HOLY SHIT THAT WAS LOUD!”
“CHECK OUT THAT RING CLOUD!”

I immediately got depressed. We had just come from that location not more than twenty minutes ago. I failed in my mission to clear the roads. I wondered how we could have missed it. I was worried that someone may be dead.

“Guys, pack up all this shit. Put the tools away. Get ready to go REDCON 1” I said to my section. REDCON 1 was ready condition 1 – engines are running, stations are manned, we are ready to move now. REDCON 2 was ready to move within 15 minutes of notification. 3 was thirty minutes and 4 was ready in one hour.

“But Sir, we didn’t even finish greasing the track.” SGT Pritsolas said to me.
“You see that explosion that just went off? We just came in from sector. Battalion knows this. We are the fastest tank QRF(quick reactionary force) they could possibly send right now. I guarantee we get sent out the gate to secure the site. Langford, turn on the radios.”

I had the speaker boxes turned up and listened to Battalion talk to my company CP.
“Avenger X-Ray, Lion X-ray.”
“This is Avenger X-ray.”
“Do you have a tank section available to send out to the following grid to secure the VBIED location?”
“This is Avenger X-Ray, roger. We can send our Alpha One Alpha section.”
“Roger. Tell them not to worry about a trip ticket if it’s the same crew from the MSR Clearance mission. Just call up the SP(start point) time.”
“This is Avenger X-Ray, roger.”
“Lion X-ray, out.”
“Red 6, Red 6. Avenger X-ray.”
“Avenger X-ray, this is Red 6, yeah I monitored the traffic on the battalion net. I copy. We’re REDCON1. I’ll let you know when we SP.”

“SSG Terry, how did we miss that big ass IED?” I asked visibly disappointed.
“I don’t know, Sir. I didn’t see nothing and Stoker didn’t see nothing neither. It musta been well dug-in.” He replied.
We mounted up and rolled out the gate. We blazed at full speed towards the site which was just north of our FOB and FOB Warhorse.
We arrived at the bomb sight still rolling fast. Scout humvees were already on the scence since they were the wheeled QRF.
“Mewborn, continue past the sight and stop one hundred meters after the last vehicle.”
“Red 8, Red 6. Stop one hundred meters short of the site and orient south. You take near side security, we’ll take far side.” Medics and ground security forces were already in place. Our presence was for deterrence, to be a major road block for any other types of VBIEDs, and to be far-looking eyes and firepower tot secure the sight. I saw our company First Sergeant on the ground. He had been in the last humvee of the 4-humvee patrol and was checking on the soldiers who had been in the first humvee – the commander’s humvee.

SLOW DOWN! His lips mouthed as we blew past him.

I slowed us down and got my chance to look at the humvee on the left and the car bomb on the right shoulder. There was nothing left of the car except for a few scraps of metal and what looked like a piece of exhaust piping in the dirt. The car had been on the shoulder and blew a crater so large and so deep that the EOD(explosive ordnance disposal) expert was standing up to his waist in the hole. The hole itself could hold an entire car in it.

I looked to my left at the humvee. I couldn’t understand how anybody survived the blast, but they did. The windows were completely blacked out from the explosive material and the dirt. All four tires were flat. The front two were just bare rims. The engine compartment was completely exposed as the hood had been blown off. More significantly, the humvee had been blown to the other side of the road. Surprisingly, the commander just had a mild concussion and the driver had bumped his knee while inside.

Later on that day, the commander spoke to his junior officers about the incident. Up to that point, that was the largest car bomb anyone had faced in our sector – three 155mm artillery rounds on top of 30kg of plastic explosives in the trunk. It was a completely orange car with the windows painted solid black. I received some relief in discovering that the car had been moved into position after we had passed that route. But I was also furious because I knew that if we had seen an abandoned car like that, we would have shot it with .50cal and it would have made a tremendous and wonderful explosion.

“Guys, I want you to know that my PSD(personal security detachment) did a good job today. After that car bomb went off, my first reaction was to kill every Iraqi that was standing around. It was obvious that it was command detonated and somebody somewhere was watching. I was angry as hell. The thing to remember is not to take it personal. They aren’t trying to kill me because they don’t like me personally. Stay cool, keep your head and don’t take it personal if you are under attack.”

It seemed like weird advice at the time and I didn’t fully understand it. But then
again, we had only been deployed for a little over a month. I hadn’t been shot at or blown up yet. Until a month later I got RPG’d for the first time and it really pissed me off. I didn’t care what my commander had said to me, it was impossible not to take it personal. I knew the guy was hiding somewhere, armed and watching us. Just waiting to kill us and take out our vehicle. I remember thinking, God, what the fuck? Why are they trying to kill me? We’re just here trying to help this goddamn country. It seems stupid and naïve to have a thought like that but it was still one of the first thoughts that popped in my head.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Dawes’ kill was more personal on a difference level. Not just perhaps he felt like it was a personal attack on him. But rather, Dawes and this insurgent were face to face. They were separated by only 20 meters. The man was armed and in position to fire his RPG, but Dawes got to the draw before him. Dawes may have even seen his eyes and the expression of pure hatred or absolute fear in the terrorist’s face. Whatever it was that happened between the two of them, it visibly changed Dawes. And not necessarily for the worse.

CRACK! CRACK! Bullets started snapping around us again. It was hard to tell where it was coming from since we were surrounded by houses in all four directions and each house was two or three stories high.

“Red 8, Red 6. Pull back and pull up on my right flank.” I didn’t know where the shots were coming from but I also didn’t want a tank directly in front of me and obscuring my line of sight. SSG Terry pulled back but he also wanted a good view down the road, so he squeezed right up against us on my right.

BOOM.BOOM.BOOM.

From our left as we faced or south of us, artillery started exploding everywhere.

“Looks like someone figured out where we were getting shot from.”
“Damn, that’s close. Look at all of the shrapnel.” Langford said to me. In the sand in front of us, hundreds of little puffs of dust rose up off the ground as if someone was shooting at the ground rapidly. It was the tiny specks of shrapnel, so small and moving so quickly that it was invisible to the naked eye.

“Well, no better time to take a shit than now.” I said as I put my hands on cupola of the tank commander’s station and did my tricep dip to pop out of the hatch.

“You’re gonna do what?!” SGT P asked me.

“Look, I’ve been holding this shit in forever and I gotta drop a deuce NOW. And SSG Terry is like practically right up against us so I got plenty of cover. Y’know. It’ll be like one of those stories I’ll get to tell my grandkids when I’m old. ‘So no kidding, there I was. We’re in the middle of a kill zone, artillery is dropping on our position and shrapnel is falling everywhere. The tanks are firing and here I am in the sand with my pants around my ankles taking a crap.’ Come on! That’s beautiful.”

“Whatever you say, Sir. But I’m not coming after your crap-covered carcass when you get whacked.” SGT P replied.

I climbed out of the tank and popped my Kevlar on. I reached into the bustle rack and got out our “toilet” - a wooden crate that two .50cal ammo cans came in. We lined it with a Hefty black garbage bag for each use and it was ready to go. SGT P popped his head up into the TC hatch and looked around like a gopher. He threw on my CVC so he could fill the tank commander station and maintain observation.
“Shit. No toilet paper. Hey SSG Terry. Toss me some of your TP.”
“What!? Hey Gunner!! Why the fuck are you all fucked up? Why ain’t you guys got no toilet paper on your tank? Y’all need to take better care of your lieutenant.” He reached into his sponson box and threw a roll at me with a mock scowl.

I jumped down and placed my pistol on the back deck of the tank. I figured I would have enough of a posture to kill someone with my nine-mil if I was taking a crap if he got close enough. And he shouldn’t even be able to get that close because my guys better have popped him first. I dropped my pants and sat down on the open end of the wooden crate. Best toilet ever. No fuss, no muss and plenty comfortable. I watched more puffs of dirt pop out of the ground as artillery exploded on our left.
“Sweet.” I smiled.

An hour later, Avenger Company roared to life and began pushing towards us.
“All Phantom elements, this is Phantom 6. Check your fires. The main effort is pushing through. Stand by for further guidance.”

Once the main body had past in front of us and continued south, I ran up to the Bradley to see the booty they had collected. While the tanks had been in the lead, clearing the way for the dismounts to enter the houses, the Bradleys had brought up the rear. As dismounts stumbled upon weapons caches, the Bradleys would drop their ramps and load up on the junk. I wanted to see what we had collected so far.
SSG Walker dropped his ramp so I could climb in. He dropped down from the turret where he was commanding and hunched down in the personnel compartment to show me his cargo. At well over six feet, he didn’t look comfortable in that cramped Bradley.
“Check this shit out. Night vision!” He thrusted an RPG launcher at me. It was empty and filthy and all scratched up. It was dark forest green and had a small site on top which was supposed to be night vision. Except that there was no power source. And the launcher looked too banged up for the optics to even work. He then pulled out a handful of old grenades and a really cool rocket. It was one of those 57mm rockets with the really long, thin tail fins. It had wires coming out of it.
“This was probably one of those rockets they were gonna position on the roof and remote fire, judging by the wires.” SSG Walker said to me. It was so funny to see him showing this stuff off to me, as if he was showing off his own personal stash or find.
After several hours of simply holding our ground, CPT Mayfield decided this wasn’t a good place for a stronghold. Since we were now behind friendly lines(because the main body was south of us and continuing south), we pulled off from our current position on PL Jenna and headed due north to PL Isabel. We took a hard right until we hit PL Mike. The infamous corner of PL Mike and Isabel. A few hundred meters north of here was our assembly area we had been using for the past two days.

Bad News/Good News

Thanks for all of the posts, comments, and especially emails. I will be writing back to you. I got a lot of great ideas and some people even archived my stuff and sent it to me. Thank you.

Bad news. I will be deleting the entries about Fallujah and anything describing our manuever, and I won't be posting anything new about Fallujah yet.

Good news. I got an email this morning from a high-ranking officer:

LT Prakash,

I'm one of the people following your blog. I have to correct you and say that your blog is not all over AKO's IA sites - it's all over 1st IO command's IA site, and they happen to be on the front page of AKO right now. That said, the IA concerns prolly *are* reasonable.

Anyway - why don't you put your blog on AKO? Yes, your audience might be a little truncated, but the people you really want to see it - parents, other soldiers - still can. I will be happy to devote some contractor time to helping you get it set up.

That way, your blog will still be up and you'll be making the IA guys happy. At the same time, it'll be a big win for AKO - we really wanna break into the blog space.

Whatever you do, do *NOT* delete your entries.

Email me back and lemme know. In the meantime, don't forget to boresight!

Thanx....

This is the best news about the blog I've gotten so far. So if you are military or the immediate relative of the military, you will be able to access the weblog once I get this going. I'm sorry it can't be available for everyone.

But I will continue to post anything else not maneuver-related.

Next post: Atomic Sit-up

Time to Shut Down

Suddenly my entries are all over AKO OPSEC websites. I would argue the ways they say it violates OPSEC except for the fact that OPSEC is very vague and can be defined in any which way by the entity enforcing it. Nobody has shut me down yet, but I figure it is just a matter of time. And I really don't want to do the Army any harm sooooo....

What I want to do is put this blog on hold without actually deleting it. The solution seems to be to put this on an FTP server. Anyone know how to do that? Or does anyone have any suggestions? email at neil.prakash@gmail.com Thanks. If I can't do that, then I will just delete every entry on Armor Geddon except for the ones like: Corn Syrup vs. Tabasco, soldiers getting awards, build-up to Election Day, and coming soon - "What Happens to 2 Sergeants when they make PV2 Hutto do an Atomic Sit-Up and SSG Terry decides to help Hutto seek Revenge"
Neil
p.s. At the end of my senior year at college, I fell for the Atomic Sit-up at a Brotherhood camping trip, so don't feel bad, SPC Hutto. I guess I'm that gullible too.

12 November: The New Red 8 Lima

I hate putting pictures of myself up but I just had to show you this obnoxious CVC helmet that SSG Terry handed to me as I climbed up on his tank. "You gonna be on my tank, you gonna wear this CVC."


1800

I ran back to my platoon. It was a no-brainer of a maneuver. The Bradleys were not going to dismount any of their crunchies, to their chagrin. All I had was one tank I really need to worry about. My only concern was the turning part. SSG Terry explained to me that a tank can’t turn when it’s plowing. Unlike plowing snow, a mineplow’s blades are buried underground. Imagine him trying to turn left or right. The blades serve as an anchor. That kind of torque created by the tank track will rip the very sprockets that are only meant to move track forward and back. If you still don’t get it, take a model car with rubber wheels. Hold it down real hard against a table while you twist it like you were juicing an orange and see what happens to the wheels. To make it even worse, turning is not recommended for even fractions of turns. Yet here we were talking about a complete 180 degree turn.

To accomplish a plow mission that requires you to turn lanes or create new lanes, you must raise the plow, then move the tank, and then drop the blades again. But SSG Terry’s plow could only be raised and lowered manually. There was no way in hell we wanted to risk having a bunch of guys standing right by a major kill zone in the open. Then have the ballistic tank skirts open, leaving the fuel cells and driver vulnerable, and be dicking around with the mine plow.

“Fuck it. We’ll do it.” SSG Terry said matter-of-factly. “I’ll turn this goddamn tank.”

I didn’t even ask for him to elaborate. He had already told me a hundred times previously that turning couldn’t be done with the mine plow down. “The plow lane has got to be straight Sir. I can only go straight,” He had told me. “I ain’t fucking turning the slightest bit.” I remember this conversation from the first night when Hunter platoon had hit a land mine and blown up out in the middle of nowhere and we had to go get him. That was the same day we recovered the snipers.

But there was something to be said if SSG Terry says it can be done. If I asked SSG Terry to pop a wheelie with his tank, and he said it could be done, then you would see Arkansas “T” driving down the road with 12 sets of road wheels airborne, and 2 sets down. It doesn’t matter if it’s impossible.

EXECUTE:

At 1900, we pulled out of our assembly area and rumbled south down Phase Line Mike. We headed back to that corner where we had spent the night sitting up in our tanks at the enemy’s front door. It was PL Isabel. SFC Kennedy had jumped onto my tank during the night to tell me that hilarious story with Roby and the hand grenade. When we reached the intersection of PL Isabel and PL Mike(which we were moving south on), we stopped and I jumped out of the loader’s hatch onto the front slope. I grabbed the plow release cable and yanked. The blades lowered and after I climbed back in the loader’s hatch, we were off on another plow mission.

PFC Padilla was down in the driver’s hole just plugging away with SSG Terry’s commands. SPC Stoker was in the gunner’s hole with his gun tube completely over the right side of the tank.

R-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r

It was the longest burst of coax I had heard yet. He was facing the buildings and spraying into the windows with 7.62mm. It was fascinating watching everyone operate. Padilla had his mission to move the earth in front of him. Stoker was shredding anything that chose to stand behind the walls of mud and brick. And SSG Terry was surveying his work, looking in front of him, and watching the BRT move in behind him. I watched the humvees follow us like little ducklings. They churned like boats over all of the turned and twisted sand. The tank just glided through like a submarine. I always enjoyed the fact that the tank was such a smooth ride over rough terrain and the humvees just bounced and the gunners bobbled horribly halfway out of the roofs holding onto their guns for balance.

“Hey SSG Terry, just a heads up. I’m gonna let loose with the M240.” I warned him.
“Go for it, Sir,” he said smiling.

The M240 was a more personable machine gun than the .50cal. The .50cal on our old M1A1 tanks was in a very rigid and bulky mount. You could only move it using the elevation and azimuth controls in your station. The M240 was something you grabbed by the butterfly handles and swung around like a hose. And you depressed the butterfly trigger on the backplate of the receiver on the weapon itself. The .50cal had a roller that depressed the butterfly for you. You hit a red button on your elevation control to activate that roller. Bottom line: M240 – more personable.

I grabbed the M240 and laid into the houses. Stoker started taking aim at the rockets in the tubes on the rooftops with the coax. The loader’s M240 was by no means an accurate weapon. It was an area weapon. I flooded the front of all the houses with copper and lead. I finished off a 200 round load of ammo and grabbed another box of 7.62mm. We had over 10,000 rounds of 7.62mm. We were going to be fine.

We reached 300 meters and it was time to turn around. SSG Terry had Padilla start a left turn. The turbine seemed to groan from turning an anchored 68-ton beast but when the strain seemed too much, he went straight, releasing the tension in the track. Then he started some more to the left until the tank whined again and then straight again. SSG Terry kept guiding Padilla like this until we were finally turned around. It was amazing. SSG Terry did a 180 with the mine plow down, and we didn’t shear a sprocket. Shearing a sprocket is some nasty maintenance. We dodged that bullet. We now faced the BRT but we were to the right of them. They were coming towards us, filling in the plow lane and moving southeast still. Stoker had kept his cadillacs(the gunner’s power control handle – called cadillacs because they are made by the Cadillac Gage company) depressed so the gun tube never took it’s eye off of the houses while Padilla was turning. The entire hull had turned a half circle while the three of us in the turret stayed facing the houses. As we moved northwest, Stoker continued to lay into the house with 7.62mm. The machine gun fire was too loud outside of the turret for me to talk on the radio so I dropped down in the loader’s hatch to give CPT Mayfield a SITREP. Suddenly SSG Terry started screaming. I looked at his station. He was outside of the tank from the waist up, but I watched his left leg snap forward and kick Stoker as hard as hell right in the back of the head. Stoker’s head recoiled off of the browpad and bounced backwards.

“WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING STOKER? THERE’S A GODDAM HUMVEE IN FRONT OF YOU!”

I jumped out of the hatch. I realized what had just happened. As we were moving northwest, the first humvee was moving towards us in the southeast initial plow lane and passing us on our left side. Stoker had no visibility of that whatsoever. A gunner can really only see what his gun tube sees. There is no such thing as peripheral vision for a gunner. SSG Terry kicked him right before the humvee passed in front of the gun tube.

Goddam that was close. SSG Terry knew where the responsibility really fell. Everyone did, so there was no need to discuss it but the truth was - it was SSG Terry's responsibility to maintain 100% situational awareness. Friendlies do often die like this and it's one of the reasons people hate tankers and think we are big dumb idiots. But in our defense, tankers were designed to fight in open ground against other tanks. They weren't built for close combat and good nearby visibility. If you don't believe me, sit in a tank and try to look around nearby. That is why we hang ball-defilade out of our tanks. Because it's the only way to see what's going on around us. And then our commanders yell at us to get inside of our tanks where we can't see a goddamn thing.

We finished the CASEVAC plow lane once we reached the rear Bradley that was up at PL Mike and Isabel. Now nobody had to get out of anyone’s way if a vehicle had to egress in a hurry. They could just back up and take off in the plow lane that was right behind the first one. Once we were covered by the Bradley, we jumped out and raised the plow behind the security of a Bradley and came back down the CASEVAC route to get into our original position in the front.

The BRT was firmly positioned in the plow lane and started letting loose with machine gun and MK-19 grenade fire. It was just an awesome display of firepower. M1A1 Abrams Main Battle Tank, Armored Humvees with M2 .50cal machine guns, M240 7.62mm machine guns, Mk-19 grenade launchers, AT-4 rockets, and Bradleys with their 25mm HE, 7.62mm machine guns, and TOW missile launchers. And to top it off, we had Stalker platoon with us.

We unleashed a barrage of machine gun fire and grenades into the house. As the machine guns chattered away, the TOWs corkscrewed amusingly into the air and landed among the houses without exploding. It was funny but also disappointing. Those Bradleys had just been through too much hell for those TOWs to stay serviceable. Or else it was just a bad lot of TOWs. But then something suddenly flew straight out of the sky like a kamikaze bomber. It entered the roof of a third story and blew out every single window as it drove itself to the first floor.

“DAMN!”

Debris shot out of every window and every level of the house seemed to be exploding in a flash. And just like that, everything in the house was cooked. I remember it like it was in slow motion, even though it happened in a flash. The windows and debris blew out level by level as the missile worked it's way down.

“What the hell was that?”
“That was a fucking Javelin. Stalker platoon.”

Stalker was the only platoon that I knew of that had the Javelin system with them. The weapon is absolutely devastating. No tank is safe from a Javelin. It is designed to shoot at the target and then drive itself straight up into the sky, and then nose dive onto the top of the tank. We’ve all seen the video of a Javelin hitting a Soviet T-72. Let’s just say that after a few seconds on impact; the turret comes falling out of the sky. And nothing is left but scrap metal. It’s scary.

Now it was main gun time.

“Alright Sir. You ready?” SSG Terry asked me.

I had only loaded once before in my life. It was at Ft. Knox. And it was a dummy round. Made of metal and plastic and rubber. And we were in a motor pool. In peace time. And I had had a full night’s rest. I never got to be in the loader’s station when the gun fired. Gunnery was different because back then, I was in the TC's station doing my own thing, worrying about fire commands and acquiring targets and not messing up for my gunner.

Now we were in combat. And these were real rounds that explode. The only reason there was nothing to fear was that the enemy was not taking the offensive with us at the moment.

“Yeah I’m ready.” I said.
“Just give us a good loud ‘UP!’" SSG Terry instructed me.

When the loader puts a round in the tube, he raises a giant metal lever up which arms the gun. If it’s down, there is nothing the gunner can do to make the round fire. By announcing “UP!”, the loader tells the crew that the gun is armed and that he has backed up against the radios or the side of the turret; any place that is clear of the breech. The tank commander can now say “FIRE.” When the main gun fires, the breech recoils almost to the back of the turret and if you were in the way, you would get royally screwed. The breech would smash into you shattering your bones. During gunnery, failing to announce “UP,” or giving the command to fire before getting the “UP” is a safety gig and a crew cut in points. That is why loaders give a bloodcurdling “UUUP!!!” instead of that stupid cheery “Up” you hear in the UCOFT computer trainer and the CCTT simulations.

“Let’s GO!” SSG Terry said.

I hit the knee switch to open the ready rack and was too nervous to enjoy the sweet smell of the ammunition. It’s not gunpowder or cordite, it’s something else. You can smell it in the honeycombs that support platoon brings when they deliver the rounds.

I slapped the clip that retains the round and the back end of a HEAT round squeezed out a few inches. I grabbed the end and pulled it out. Somewhere along the way, I gashed my right index finger open. It was a blunt injury so it was numb as the skin peeled and bled everywhere. I shoved the round in the tube and popped the lever up.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” I screamed as I made myself as narrow as possible. It was the longest, loudest “UP” in the history of tanking. And if someone saw me in the loader’s station, it would like Owen Wilson in Shanghai Noon trying to hide behind a little wooden beam as he was getting shot at in the church. I was straight up and down with my arms pinned to my sides and my chin in my chest. Go ahead, laugh. The gun fired, the afcap dropped with the sound of a pot falling to the ground, and the breech dropped. I opened the ready rack door and repeated my mission. By the third round, I was dripping with sweat from my forehead. My CVC was feeling extremely humid and my hand started to hurt finally. This continued for 9 more rounds. It was exhausting. While Stoker was going to town with the main gun, SSG Terry was letting loose with his machine gun still. And it’s typically the loader’s job to refill the ammo on the TC’s gun(even though I do it myself on my own tank). .50cal ammo isn’t heavy but it is by no means light. And replacing can after can in the middle of loading main gun rounds was making me break a sweat.

“Sir, you GOTTA wear gloves when you’re loading!”

He saw the blood on my finger.

“I know! I can’t believe I forgot!” Tankers never tanked without their gloves. Tanks are unforgiving. You find yourself without gloves, then you’ll find yourself incapable of pulling maintenance on those hot ass tank parts.

I try never to take my soldiers for granted. Which is why I try to do as much stuff myself as possible and lend a hand where I can (where it doesn’t put me in their way). But serving as a loader on this day really humbled me. I thought I appreciated Langford before, but now it occurred to me that loading will smoke you. And my respect for his job was the utmost now.

Just then Ramrod 6 pulled up at the end of our column. I looked over at the extra Bradley that joined our melee and watched as he unloaded his basic load of 7.62mm and 25mm HE.

R-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r. POCK.POCK.POCK.POCK.POCK

This went on for what seemed like minutes. The TOW launcher rose up slowly on his Bradley.

“Jesus, let ‘em have it, Ramrod 6.”

Zzzzffeewwwww. The TOW entered the house and exploded much like a main gun round. It still wasn’t as cool as a tank because it lacked the initial BOOM from launching out of the tube.

He launched his TOWs and suddenly did a right face and pulled away.

“Guess he’s not sticking around for the after party.”

After about 2 hours, we were through pummeling the city block. We headed back to the stronghold area and from there Phantom 6 cut us loose to refuel and re-arm at the LRP. 

1 K.O. But the Fight's Not Over

We are 2.5 km south of the cloverleaf on MSR Mobile and 3 km east of the city. We are waiting for an escort to show up to escort this HET back to Camp Fallujah with my tank and crew on it 

Blinky is down.

This photo was taken by SGT Stoker from SSG Terry's tank. His back is to the houses with the sniper that ends up shooting at us in a minute. My tank is facing north west and Phase Line Mike is a few hundred meters behind Stoker. You can see my track laid out. Underneath it are more tank mines, one of which SSG Terry kicked. Mewborn is in the driver's hole, Langford is up top. I am looking at the number 7 roadwheel and SGT Pritsolas is coming around. 

Q&A with some lady from San Fran public radio

I get a lot of emails from people who want to write an article for the school paper or talk to me on public radio. Well rather than forward the Q&A session via email to each new person, I thought I would post it here. I'm sure to catch hell with this one.

Also for the record, I never said the Dell comment in that WIRED magazine story. It was a miscommunication between those guys and me, but they were very apologetic and wanted to know if a correction needed to be run. They are good people and no harm was done so I really didn't care that much. But just so you all know - It was a choice between medical school and the Army. Not a call center and the Army.

Q&A:

How is it that soldiers actually have laptops and Internet access while on
> active duty? (It's hard for those of us at home to imagine this.) And
> please help us understand how you have the time not only to write down your
> thoughts, but to maintain a very professional-looking website.

First of all, combat experiences vary depending on the MOS. Some
soldiers are on vacation in Iraq. Drinking alcohol and carrying on in
speak-easies in Baghdad. I haven't seen it myself, but I've heard it firsthand from soldiers who made it to Baghdad on escort missions. Plus we (you and me both) all saw that picture in the papers of that PFC who lifted her shirt at one of these wild parties. Man what are people doing in Iraq that gives them the time to throw parties that rivaled my fraternity days in Pike at college?

Other soldiers have quiet sectors where nothing happens and there is no danger. Some people's MOS's require them to go out the gate several times a day on combat patrols to drive around in sector - presence patrols or counter-mortar missions. Other people's MOS's require them to sit at a desk from 9-5 and never see a hint of danger. All of this is relative, of course, because technically if you are in Iraq, a mortar round could fall on your head. But that's not dangerous, that's just wrong place wrong time. So take people's experiences with a grain of salt.

Just about everyone has laptops. We don't always sleep in the sand
and have no amenities. There are soldiers living in Saddam's palaces
with every luxury available to man. Satellite TV, electricity all the
time, A/C, hot showers in the winter, etc. Some of us didn't have
that. For 3 weeks in Fallujah, we just lived and fought off of our
tanks and ate muffins and powerbars and drank water. Sometimes we
were brought Gatorade or some chow from USMC Camp Fallujah. But when
we were in Baqubah, we had decent living conditions. We were living
in former Fedayeen barracks and it beat sleeping in the dirt. Living at the river bank of the Tigris sucked as far as living conditions, but we were out there by ourselves away from the company and the First Sergeant. Sometimes that is nice.

I have tried to explain this over and over again. 99% of a combat
deployment in Iraq is boring even for combat arms soldiers. We were
in Baqubah on June 24th 2004 in some the heaviest combat 3rd BDE, 1ID had ever
seen up to that point. And we were in Fallujah for the month of November
2004. Those were the two greatest combat experiences ever, yet other
than that, there wasn't too much excitement until Election Day on Jan
30th. IEDs, VBIEDs, and stupid enemies taking pot shots at us with
AK-47s are not a big deal. People make them out to be huge ambushes.
Trust me, they are not a big deal. Except in Baghdad where the IEDs
are ridiculously huge. Whole 'nother ballgame, there. Saw those craters with our own eyes as we came home from Fallujah. Those things would probably tear a tank up.

Ask any soldier, he's seen more movies on DVD than any civilian ever
will. We worked our asses off on the tanks and with maintenance and
patrols at any given time of day or night, yet we still had time to screw
around. Just imagine what a person who doesn't patrol does when he's not working 9-5. Some units even got Sundays off, which I think is ridiculous. But believe me, Iraq is not hard. On a side note - I didn't mind being out in sector all day on Thanksgiving, Christmas(it rained cold all day), or New Years. But man I woulda killed to have the day after the Super Bowl off. So I hope that answers your question about time.

Maintaining a professional looking website is nothing. Everything is
automatic with blogspot.com. I am not computer-savvy at all. Enough
said on that.


>
>
>
> What kind of civilian response have you received to your entries that
> provide detailed descriptions of battle?

Mostly supportive. Some people insist that I write well and paint a
vivid picture. The compliments are very nice. But
I am no writer. I was a science-type guy in college. I never enjoyed
writing. The fact that people think I'm a good writer makes me
question the whole profession of writing. But I love my job as a tank
platoon leader and as a combat arms officer. Maybe that passion has
something to do with it.

A few negatives have appeared on the website. These negative people
know nothing of combat, so I don't really care for their opinion. If
there is one profession you cannot judge, it is the work of a combat
soldier who faces the enemy. Even soldiers cannot judge one another
unless they themselves have faced the enemy. That's why when everyone
was up in arms about that Marine sergeant who killed that guy in a
mosque, I didn't care and said out of emotion I probably would have done the same
thing. I was there in Fallujah fighting alongside the Marines. If
you weren't, then you wouldn't understand. Insurgents were walking up
with white flags or speeding in VBIEDs with white flags coming out of them. We learned that the Marines offered assistance to them
and then they blew themselves up taking dozens of Marines with them.
Every situation is different. You gotta be there to understand.

My favorite responses are from veterans - of any era. They fire me up with their energy and their passion. But especially tankers. Years go by and they still are as psyched about tanking as I am.
>
>
>
> Are there any topics that you feel are off-limits (i.e., do you censor
> yourself)?

Yes, discussing classified material, current operational stuff(mission
related), and personally I don't like talking about politics or
people who died. How would I like it if my mother read about my death
on some soldier's website? In fact, I took down a post about recovering a downed vehicle and one dead and one dying soldier. I hadn't realized how widely read this website had become. It was meant for my friends and family. My post about the truck roll-over was straight facts regarding the incident and the surviving soldier had her own candid website describing her injuries and the incident. She and I emailed each other about this afterwards and she wasn't offended in the least. However, I still felt like it was inappropriate to talk about it after I put myself in the dead soldier's shoes. Now I do love talking politics with my peers. I have very strong opinions about islamic extremism. But that stuff doesn't belong on my weblog. Not while I am in the Army.
>
>
>
> Which military blogs do you find yourself reading regularly?

> None, I only got involved with my blog to keep my family posted on what Fallujah was like. I don't have time to read blogs. I can't even have enough time to give my readers as much as they want. Plus most of the blogs disgust me with all of their whining and crying. Iraq isn't that bad. And before anyone interjects that I was safe in a tank - we actually spent most of our time in humvees(usually the jalopy which I loved because it never got bogged down in the mud since it wasn't armored) and doing foot patrols, so I don't want to hear it.
>
>
> Are soldier-journalists (i.e., with their ability to provide more direct and
> timely war coverage) a good thing for the military? For the administration?
> For those of us at home?

For the most part, I think they are a bad thing. I have only seen a few blogs myself. All of them were negative. Most of the blogs I have heard about are negative. Some blogs contain straight lies, and are blown out
of proportion. They can give the public the wrong idea, just like the
main stream media. Not all soldiers should be talking about their work. A lot of the blogs out there are whiny. But like my platoon sergeant always says: The day a soldier stops bitching, then something is horribly wrong. Soldiers are always going to complain. Now you put that on a public forum concerning a volatile issue like the War on Terrorism and you've got trouble. Even I have gotten some facts wrong. But I will make the appropriate changes. And I am done posting anything that is a second-hand story after I got the interaction wrong between COL Pittard and General B.B. Bell. If it didn't happen to the person telling me the story, then I don't believe it happened in Iraq. That's why I was glad I got the facts straight from the source afterwards.

Our job situation is very dependent on how the public feels. For the most part, I think these blogs can do more harm than good. Freedom of speech is a right, but it also carries a responsibility. Do you know how many irresponsible people there are with voices that are heard?

Look at Dan Rather and CBS. Look at Newsweek. Lou Dobbs on CNN. These people are trusted and they misuse that trust to alter perceptions of reality. And with blogging being such a new medium, and with the public so hungry for warfront
news, people are taking blog material at face value.


>
> Should the military have control over this new form of coverage? Should the
> military control blogs that do not jeopardize operational security?

Absolutely. I don't care what anybody says about free speech. I am not a civilian, I am a soldier. There is a reason we are called GIs. Yeah I have my own ideas and opinions. And in the heat of battle, my commander takes my judgment into consideration. So I know when to voice my thoughts and ideas.

But at the same time, I can't just say whatever the heck I feel like.
It can hurt the unit. We are not a 9-5 job. We are a war machine.
Very few soldiers understand that. Some soldiers don't understand
that they VOLUNTARILY gave up certain freedoms when they enlisted in the Army. Nobody made them do it. It was their own choice. Accept the reality.

So with that said, yes the military should have control over blogs.
Again, yes I have my own opinions, but again - this is a war machine comprised of men and women - people with emotions and a sense of humanity. You must foster and nurture the morale to complete the mission. How I feel politically stays behind closed doors. As it should for all active duty soldiers, especially during a time of war.


>
>
>
> In the long term, how do you expect the Pentagon to deal with military
> blogging?

The Pentagon should leave it at the discretion of the commanders. My
company commander knew about my blog. It was a way for me to brag
about my soldiers to their families. Family and friends were very
proud of their soldiers in 1st Platoon. I loved hearing from a soldier that his mom, sister, or friend read about him on Armor Geddon. Especially when it came to awards. Enough cannot be said about how great these guys were downrange. I also think someone organic to the unit should monitor them randomly. I always checked with my S2 to make sure nothing I was talking about was classified. That helped
my chain of command rest assured that they weren't going to have a
security violation with me.


I realize that most of what I said above would seem to make me a
hypocrite. But I am an officer. I take my job very seriously and
take responsibility for what is said on my blog. I have a lot of
pride in the U.S. Army and our great nation. At no point during my
time as a soldier would I do or say anything to contradict the values
we try to uphold. There is a time and place for everything and it
takes a bit of common sense and maturity to run a military blog. If I were told to shut this website down, I would in an instant...And then just wait a year until I was a civilian again to put it back up.
ha.

1LT Neil Prakash