Canister Shot

This is a response to the buck shot question. This picture was taken a little after noon on 24 June 2005. We had just gone through the ambush in the city of about 100-150 insurgents. We had gotten halfway through the city when, as you can see, by turret was disabled at that angle. We turned around back through the kill zone and after escorting an M88 to a downed tank, I returned to Scunion to reload on main gun, 7.62mm and get some water and fuel, while my company maintained a blocking position right outside our walls to block the north side of the city. They were waiting for us to return. I am on the left holding a HEAT round. Langford(my loader) is holding a round, and Mewborn(my driver) is just airing out. Our company team chief is in the background looking at our turret. Right now, our tank was like swiss cheese but she still had kept us safe.

After what we had just faced, we always talked about having the old beehive rounds. A giant 120mm shotgun shell filled with 10,000 flashettes - tiny metal arrowhead looking things. Whenever we had looked down a side street, there were always 10-30 insurgents with RPGs running up and down the parellel streets taking shots at us. And when we shot at them, we either had to spray with coax or hit a guy with main gun. We could have killed so many more insurgents down every alleyway with a beehive round.

But we were told those types of rounds aren't in service. Rumors also said that those rounds are inhumane because tank rounds can't be anti-personnel anymore. None of this was ever confirmed.


I've found out what actually happened first hand about the following discussion.

Sometime in December or January, General B.B. Bell (4-star USAREUR commander) came to FOB Scunion to do some commercials for the Armed Forces Network about the great work soldiers were doing in Iraq. He was going to do two commercials and in the background, soldiers either stood still in the background looking hard, or in the other one they were supposed to be crawling all over humvees and tanks looking like they were working on something. He used mostly second platoon of my company for bodies. I was on the other side of FOB Scunion in my barracks.

There are two things you should know about General Bell. 1) He loves to talk to soldiers - enlisted men. He loves to get down with the junior enlisted privates and ask them how the hell things are going. 2) He gets really hot on officers if something is all jacked up.

After the commercials were finished rolling, General Bell grabbed a soldier from Avenger Company and looked back at all of our tanks lined up in the motor pool. This is paraphrasing but this is the gist of the conversation.

"Hey son, have you fired those tanks yet?" He asked.

"Yes Sir. In Baqubah and in Fallujah."

"Oh yeah? What kinds of rounds did you shoot?"

"MPAT and HEAT, Sir."

"What about canister rounds?"

"No Sir, we don't have those."

"Sure we do, son." General Bell then called for the brigade commander, COL Dana Pittard.

As my platoon sergeant, SFC Kennedy tells it, COL Pittard walked over non-chalantly to Gen. Bell. Gen. Bell asked COL Pittard why these tanks didn't have canisters on them to which COL Pittard replied that there were no canisters rounds.

At this point, it appeared to everyone there that Gen Bell started chewing him out and telling him that was bullshit and General himself personally saw to it that 1st Infantry Division had canister rounds in their inventory. Gen Bell was actually just fired up that the units that needed them just didn't have them.


Attack Battalions are the last to get anything. It's just the way the distribution system is set up. There really isn't any other way to do it. Supplies go from theater support to division support and then down brigade and battalion support units. For example, for 1st ID, we have main support battalions like 701st and 501st. Then there's 201st forward support battalion who gives our two tank battalions and one infantry battalion their food, mail, bullets, repair parts, etc. The problem is that while stuff works its way down, it gets pilfered or lost. I remember when the new ACH helmets were finally delivered to us, they were supposed to have these new soft removable football-helmet pads inside. You could remove the pads to wash them because they were Velcroed to the inside. This was so much more comfortable and convenient than the old leather sweatbands in the helmets. A lot of ours showed up with the boxes cut open and the pads missing. The same thing happened with mail. I remember Langford got delived a completely empty cardboard box in the mail. And I had boxes that were cut open from the bottom(so as not to disturb the label) and the DVDs inside stolen. My XO had ordered these Palm Pilot-type things for platoon leaders and platoon sergeants, but when our support platoon leader went across the street to FOB Warhorse to pick them up, all he got was an empty box from 201st.

This is just the way things are. Everyone knows it, everyone accepts it. It's really not the end of the world. We were still always mission-capable. So in COL Pittard's defense, if there were canister rounds, we would be the last to know.



 

12 November: Jumping Track Flash

SSG Terry plowed a lane for us all the way from the eastern edge of the city where we had become disabled, all the way to the highway – MSR Mobile. There we waited about an hour for CPT Freihl, the TF2-2IN BMO, to arrive with a HET and an escort of humvee gun trucks.

Someone somewhere along the way had the foresight to feed us because he showed up with one plate full of cold mashed potatoes for the 8 of us to share. It wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing. We hadn’t eaten for almost 9 hours and we were a little hungry. And morale was at a slight downturn, so the mashed potatoes were a nice change from the usual muffins and powerbars.

The HET had these powerful chains to pull the disabled tank onto the flatbed, but it was ugly to watch them hoist the tank up. Since the number 7 roadwheels were chewed up, they didn’t roll like normal. For you tankers out there, pulling a tank backwards with an arm that’s twisting forward isn’t good for the torsion bar. We all stood there watching and waiting for the hub to break, the arm to pop off, or the torsion bar inside to snap. Fortunately, the mechanics and support soldiers from some other National Guard unit managed to get the tank on the flatbed without any more disasters.

“Dawes, go back with One Six(A16).” SSG Terry ordered. Dawes seemed to be limping as he hobbled off of A18 and climbed up my tank.

“What’s up with Dawes?” I asked.

“Eh, his feet are bleeding.”

“No shit?” I replied quite suprised. I remember doing regular foot checks in Ranger School. They were mandatory. We all sat on our asses every morning in the dirt, pulled our socks off and held our feet in the air while the medics went by and examined them. White, sickly, blistered cow tongues are what our feet had looked like. But it was understandable. We had ruckmarched all day and night through rivers and swamps and up and down the Tennessee Valley Divide. Number one rule: Take care of your feet. My best friend had made the march to Camp Darby, but his feet had fallen apart along the way and he was forced to recycle. I remember looking at his feet in the aid station. The soles of his feet looked exactly like ground beef. Specifically, that 75% lean stuff, where it’s mostly red but with specks of white mottled here and there.

But we were tankers here. We didn’t road march. So it never occurred to me to do foot checks. But some people’s feet are softer than others. And 5 straight days without changing your socks or even taking your boots off for some air will take its toll.

“Well Sir. Let’s go.” SSG Terry beckoned for me.

I looked at my guys. They rode in the tank as it sat defeated on the back of the HET. I felt horrible. Up until this point, I had been there for all the maintenance in my section. And not for just my tank, but SSG Terry’s too. When we changed track, we did it as a platoon. Changing track was an all day affair. And our OPTEMPO when we arrived in Iraq was such that we were changing track on a tank every 3 weeks.

Now some platoon leaders might feel obligated to do maintenance to prove to their soldiers that they aren't afraid to get dirty. That wasn't my motivation. I wasn’t there to pull maintenance with the guys to earn credibility. It’s just that there was such a tremendous amount of maintenance to be done, that it only helped to have extra hands. Disconnecting final drives, linking track sections together, greasing track, tightening wedge bolts, changing arms, hubs, and road wheels; there was a lot of work to be done.

Now, here my guys went; off to repair a side of track. Just the 4 of them. Normally it’s 20 of us and even then it takes about 4 to 6 hours to put on one side of track, tighten the wedge bolts and grease the shock housings. To add insult to injury, not only was I not helping to get the tank up, but I had the pleasure of getting to stay in the fight. Of course that’s how it had to be. It’s always the case. If the platoon leader’s track goes down, he must jump track and get on his wingman’s tank. His job is to maneuver the platoon, not worry about his tank going down. I knew that. In Desert Storm and in 3rd ID’s assault for Baghdad, tanks went down for maintenance here and there. The platoon leaders left their tanks in the hands of their gunners and in the hands of the rear maintenance trains while they plowed ahead with the main assault. I knew I had to continue the fight with the rest of the platoon, but I just felt bad about not being able to help them.

“Sir, you can ride in the loader’s hatch.” He said, smiling at me.

“That’s fine, SSG Terry.” I replied, knowing exactly where he was going with this.

“Well I had this one lieutenant in Hohenfels during a HIC rotation and he had to jump track. Boy, he jumped up on here and tried to kick me out of the TC’s hatch. I said, ‘Listen here Sir. This may be your platoon, but this is MY tank. You can ride in the loader’s hatch and talk to the platoon and the commander, but I’ll command this tank.' ”

“Well relax SSG Terry. You can run this tank however the hell you want to. As long we do what we gotta do.” I jumped into the loader’s hatch and we headed back to where the main body of the task force had assembled. It was now 1500.

The task force vehicles lined up on Phase Line Isabella. The TF2-2 headquarters element maintained a stronghold among some buildings. And the BRT had an area of buildings and open space behind them. We headed there for further instructions.

I informed CPT Mayfield of the situation with my tank. We were still mission-capable with one tank and 2 Bradleys. Especially for the mission we had coming up this evening.

I didn’t know it at the time, but Green 6 had lost a good friend of his in this strong surge of enemy resistance. The Terminator executive officer was killed in his Bradley. During the forward push into the south this morning, he was hit with an RPG while standing in the hatch. There was a debate about whether or not the RPG hit him or the RPG struck the hatch cover. The reason that was significant is that (and you may have noticed this in the first picture I ever posted on Armor Geddon back in December) many of us slung our AT-4 rockets across the backs of our hatch covers. While the enemy was shooting at us, we were sitting with a lot of explosives on our backs. This was true for the Bradleys, humvees and the only tank to carry AT-4s...mine. Regardless of what happened. The enemy showed some uncommon patience in attacking our forces. The task force suffered some tough losses and so far it was the deadliest day for us.

CPT Mayfield cut us loose to head back to the LRP so we could refuel our tank. When we arrived at the LRP, we found most of Avenger company assembled there. I saw Green 6, 1LT Dave Meier, and ran up to him to see how he was doing. He was the same as always. Pretty relaxed. Not frazzled in the least bit after driving through hell.

“It sucked being in the humvees. We really couldn’t dismount and the tanks were doing everything. We wanted to be on the ground. And to top it off, they haven’t used us for much demo.” Dave seemed frustrated that his guys weren’t being employed the way he thought they were going to be. He and his men were combat engineers. He was probably expecting a lot of room clearing or maybe blowing up some enemy weapons caches with demolitions like C-4 explosives. Instead, it seemed to him that they were stuck behind the tanks pulling rear security while the tanks blew up everything in front of him. And the room clearing had really been left to the infantry guys in Terminator company, which was one city block over. As far as demo was concerned, there was an engineer platoon attached to Terminator company that had been tasked specifically to drive around in the PCs and blow up secured caches throughout TF2-2’s sector.

Although I sympathized with Dave’s frustrations, I could see how that could happen to him. Avenger was a tank company with an engineer platoon attached. You always tend to put your most violent foot forward. Back in Baqubah, the 82nd Engineers Battalion had a tank platoon attached. It was Boggiano’s old tank platoon. The engineers always let the tankers do the hammering. Who else had bigger guns? Here, I was attached to a light scout unit. CPT Mayfield insisted that we always lead the troop and hit everything with main gun first. And why not? You got it, use it. So in a tank company, barreling down the streets of Fallujah, blasting everything in their way, it’s hard to stop to let some dismounts get out and it’s easy to neglect their capabilities when you’ve got so much forward momentum. Of course, now you can argue that perhaps that very momentum caused us(as a whole) to overpursue and get caught with our backs vulnerable. As it turned out, that’s exactly what happened this morning.

As we relaxed and let our guard down momentarily in the LRP, I looked around and took a moment to find friends. Dave had all 4 of his humvees lined up in the LRP just standing by. His soldiers were milling around. Some were grabbing snacks to eat. Others were wiping down weapons. Most were recounting the crazy ass shit they just went though. I walked up to SSG Durden, one of Dave’s squad leaders, who was standing beside his truck.

“That boy, Stalker 6. Oh man. We call him ‘Lieutenant Dan.’” SSG Durden said. He was referring to my buddy Cole Namken who was the scout platoon leader for TF2-2. On Day 1, hours prior to H-Hour, he had been taking cover by my tank while his sniper team lay out in the middle of the highway picking off guys with the .50cal Barrett Sniper Rifle. And on Day 2, my hunter/killer platoon had gone in to pull him and his sniper team out of a building in which they were trapped. As scout missions go, he and his platoon had been tasked or “bitched” out to wherever they were needed. Today they were attached to Avenger Company.

“That boy is crazy. He was standing in the middle of the street. Bullets were popping off all around him. And he was trying to get some guys to go with him to clear a building. Now we were all standing fast here but man that LT was getting hot. He was screaming for someone to come with him until finally he said, ‘Fuck this,’ pointed ‘You, you, and you. Come with me’ and we all took off following him. He had his M4 in one hand and his ICOM radio in the other. He starts screaming something into his radio and shooting bad guys with his M4.” SSG Durden started acting it out with his arm raised straight out holding his rifle one-handed. He stormed away with a slight lean forward and his hand to his mouth. “Man that kid was walking, talking and killing bad guys. I call him ‘Lieutenant Dan’.”

I shook hands with all the engineers and said goodbye. We finished fueling up and headed back down into our stronghold in the southern half of the city. We pulled in and spaced the tank and Bradleys out to the perimeter of our stronghold. I ran into the center to find CPT Mayfield’s humvee. His plan for us this evening was going to be to use direct fire to hammer the dog shit out of the city blocks that we took contact from this morning. Hopefully, this would dissuade the enemy from holding their position and maybe they would pull back. Pulling back would be fine with us. The funny thing is, the enemy only had a kilometer of city left to withdraw to. After that, it was open desert and the Marines were pushed way out there in the open desert with their tanks and LAVs watching the edges of the city, just waiting for exfiltrators. Also, it was easier to kill bad guys on the run, than bad guys dug in.

“Neil, what I need you to do is plow a lane from the corner of Isabella out into the desert like this.” He drew a 45 degree line on his map that started at the edge of the city right at PL Isabella and went southeast into the open desert where we were supposed to have been this morning to call for fire.

“Plow us a lane, the rest of the troop will follow you. Hunter Platoon will be right behind you. Have your Bradleys bring up the rear for security. We’ll be facing the eastern side of the city and we’re gonna hit it with everything we’ve got. As soon as you go out about 300 meters, turn around and plow a lane just behind the first lane back to your start point. This lane will be behind us and we can use it as a CASEVAC(casualty evacuation) route.”

So the troop was going to move at crawl speed behind the tank as we moved southeast in the sand. Then everybody would do a right face, which would turn us southwest to face the eastern buildings no more than 200 meters away. And then we would unleash hell on the side of the city that inflicted casualties on our brothers. It was too simple.

By Chris Boggiano - 12 November: Neil Gets Burned

This is Chris's entry from his notes. I thought his perspective was interesting. This is where I wanted readers to get caught up. - Red 6.


After driving out of the minefield area we turned south and worked our way along the outside of the city. Once we got to a good spot, we turned back into the minefield and pulled up to a spot near the big hole in the ground that I’d taken a crap in the day before. There were some big piles of dirt there, so we pulled our trucks up behind them as an added layer of protection and started looking into the city.

Peew

“Great, more snipers. These guys just don’t give up.”

After a few more minutes of bullets whizzing by my trucks, I decided to pull back into the desert several hundred more meters away from the city. There wasn’t much of a point in sitting that close anyway.

After carefully following our tracks back outside all of the suspected minefields, we parked behind a big sand berm that ran through the middle of the dessert for no reason. The city was quite a ways off, but at least we didn’t have to deal with any sniper fire. In fact, we were about as safe as someone can get in Fallujah.

We then linked up with some of the marines that were a few hundred meters off of our flank. It had worked out pretty well for us last time we’d done that since the guys in the LAV-25’s had helped us out big time.

My last words to those guys were, “Hey, make sure you guys are watching out for mines around here, we had one of the trucks in our troop destroyed not to far from here.”

Sure enough, not five minutes after I left them I watched a Bradley Fighting Vehicle get blown up by an anti-tank mine only a few feet from where I had just been standing. Fortunately, it looked like no one was hurt and the Bradley had its track blown off.

By now, it was midday, and things had heated up inside the city. The rest of our task force has stopped its advance so they could drop some artillery to soften the insurgents up before pushing south again.

”Red 6, Phantom 6. I want you to move to a position where you can observe the city. Ramrod 6 wants you to call for indirect. Adjust your first round. After that, it’s ‘Fire for effect. Drop 50, fire for effect. Drop 50, fire for effect. And just keep doing that until someone tells you to stop, Got it?”

It looked like Neil was going to get to have some fun. He was going to get to level a big chunk of the city. One of the other companies had already started firing rounds into the area they had just come from. Normally, higher up automatically cancels a mission that is too close to friendly forces, but for some reason they were dropping rounds even though all of A 2-2 hadn’t pulled out.

In the distance between me and the city I could see Neil’s tanks pulling out to get a good view. He was sitting out in the open.

BOOM!!!

One of the incoming artillery rounds screamed overhead and landed on the edge of the city.

“Who’s calling that?”
“I think the tank company.”

BOOM!!!

Another round landed, and this time it was pretty close to Neil’s tank.

“Phantom 6, Red 6. Tell whoever is calling indirect to check their fires. They are walking their rounds right towards us.”

I jumped over to the battalion net on my radio to see who was calling it and I caught “Ramrod18, Avenger6, right 200 fire for effect.”

I relaxed. It was CPT Fowler. From where he was sitting, the adjustment would move the rounds away from Neil and into the city.

BOOM!!!

Or not. A round landed maybe 35 meters from the side of his tank. Everyone in my platoon started yelling at our forward observer since he had a radio to talk directly to the guns and could stop the incoming rounds at their source. In the distance, I could see Neil’s tank backing up farther from the city to get away from the fires.

“Check Fire!! Check Fire!!”

“It’s not my mission. I’m in no position to stop it.”

“Goddamit, check that fire or I will kill you myself if those guys get hurt out there.” SSG Amyett yelled at him. It was convincing enough to make him pick up his radio but he was too late.

BOOM!!!

I couldn’t see Neil’s tank anymore. It was obscured in black smoke.

“Holy shit! Get on the trucks. That round just landed right on top of them. Let’s get out there.”

By now my platoon was scrambling. We had just watched our own artillery move 200 meters in the wrong direction and land right on his tank. I hopped in my seat and grabbed the radio.

“Red6, Outlaw1, are you guys alright.”

I got no response.

“Red6, Outlaw1”

By now we were pulling out and starting to race toward the tank. Minefields or not, there was no way I was going to sit there if they were injured.

“RED6, OUTLAW1!”

Still nothing.

Jesus Christ. They’re all dead. I thought to myself.

Back to Life


“Outlaw1, Red6”

I could feel everyone in my platoon simultaneously breath a collective sigh of relief when we heard those words come over the radio.

“We’re all ok, I got tangled up in my spaghetti cord when that round landed off the side of the tank.”

What a crazy 30 seconds that had been. Thank god they were alright is all I can say.

The Air Force Comes Out to Play

“Outlaw1, Phantom6, I want you to level the southeast portion of the city.”

Hearing that, my forward observer and air force guys went into action.

“Hey sir, I’ve got a fighter overhead that wants to drop some bombs on the city if you’re got somewhere to put them. All I need is someone’s initials.”
“Well, mine are CB if that counts for anything. Have them drop it on the very corner of the city there.”

Everyone knew that there was trouble in the last sector of the city to clear, so we’d be given the go ahead to pummel it good before any friendlies went in there.

“60 seconds!!!” I heard the Air Force guys yell. My platoon was out and about with their cameras to take pictures of us dropping a 500 lb bomb. Unfortunately, from where we were sitting we wouldn’t see too much detail, just a real big cloud of smoke.

Two minutes later I got “30 seconds!!!”

No one thinks of the Air Force as the service with guys that are involved in ground combat, but we’d had one of their humvees attached to us the entire time in Fallujah. They’d sampled some pretty good fights and by now were sitting next to me with two bullet riddled windshields among other things.

“Here he comes. Ten seconds!!!”

Just then I could see a little speck dipping down from way up high. He seemed like he was only a few hundred meters above the ground. We couldn’t hear anything yet though because of the jet’s speed and distance from our location. Still, everyone saw the little speck drop out from under its belly and nose dive toward the target house.

A second later there was a giant mushroom cloud followed a couple of seconds later by a really big boom.

“Outlaw1, Phantom6, what the hell are you doing!!! We’ve had enough friendly artillery dropped on Red6 today.”
“What is he talking about? That was over 1000 meters from where they’re at?”

My CO was still out in the minefield getting Neil’s tank ready to tow back to Camp Fallujah. Even though they were plenty far away, they were spooked about getting blown up, so I had gotten yelled at.

“Alright, let’s drop another one, this time move it 50 meters farther into the city.”

For a 500 pound bomb, 50 meters is nothing, but at least I could say that I was moving away from my CO if he asked me about it. Either way, I was still having them drop it plenty far away from their position.

Since we had the jets on station, it didn’t take long to get the next bomb dropped. After it hit, I watched an insurgent fly about 100 feet in the air flailing and then back into the city. Things probably didn’t end too well for that one.

“Outlaw1, Phantom6, much better. I want more of that. Bring it north now.”So let me get this straight. I drop one bomb and get yelled at for it being dangerously close, but then I drop another right next to it and that one’s perfect. Not only that, but I get told to bring it closer to my boss’s position for the third bomb.

After waiting a little while longer they dropped another one followed by the same giant explosion and mushroom cloud.

“Outlaw1, Phantom6, what the hell are you doing? Are you trying to get us killed? That one was way too close.”

Alright, I give up. I can’t make anyone happy. Oh well.

So I had them drop two more bombs just for good measure. Fortunately, I didn’t get any more complaints.

“Hey sir, want them to do a strafing run?”
“They do that? Like with one of the machine guns inside the jet?”
“Yea sure, all you have to do is ask”
“Yea let's do some of that”

Now we were back to screwing around. A strafing run was going to accomplish next to nothing, but they were willing to do it and we got to say it was another weapon that we had some experience with.

It was true, the strafing run did nothing, but it did sound cool. The jet swooped in real low and then pulled up. With the sound delay, we heard what sounded like a big fart as it was pulling back up to a high altitude. I couldn’t complain, it was just another weapon that everyone got to use in Fallujah.