thedrifter
04-08-03, 07:54 AM
04-07-2003
With the ‘Marne 500’ in Iraq
Editor’s Note: This is a message forwarded to SFTT.org from an Army officer serving with the 3rd Infantry Division artillery. It arrived during the week of March 31 at the time of widespread news media reports that the campaign had bogged down.
Things are going pretty well. We just gotten to a bit of a lull in the battle, and had to hook up the internet to request some repair parts. Tell everyone not to listen to the news that says everything is going to ****. I have a sneaking suspicion that that impression is not being given accidentally. Probably shouldn't say more. Let's just say it's not a bad thing if the Iraqis think we're on our ass.
We have only had one enemy-caused KIA in the Third Infantry Division. At this point in the [1991] Gulf War (supposedly a smashing success) the United States had more than 150. A sniper got a lucky shot at a poor tank driver during a refuel just about 5 kilometers away from us. He had just stuck his head out, and he had his helmet and his vest on, but the guy got him in the neck from about 800 meters. Rumor is the other guys in the unit found the guy and beat him to death, literally. But that's just a rumor, and Army rumors have a way of getting colorful. I have no idea what actually happened.
So far, everything is going according to plan. Really, there hasn't been anything all that interesting as far as Iraqi surprises. The Saddam Fedayeen are pussies, and we're kicking their collective ass. These are the dedicated Ba’ath party members in each of these little towns that will be killed by their neighbors as soon as Hussein is overthrown, so they have nothing to lose in fighting to the death to maintain the regime.
A lot of the POWs that we’ve taken have said that these Saddam Fedayeen guys have come to the regular army units that wanted to capitulate and told them that they would kill their children and rape their wives if they surrendered. This should give you a general impression about the situation over here.
Every night during the update there's a phrase something like, “We killed approximately 150 dismounts ... ” tossed in innocuously with a bunch of maintenance and supply data that the Brigade Commanders brief to the Division Commander over the tactical satellite radio.
We are invading a country that has had 12 years to prepare, has prepared defensive positions, and knows the terrain, people and their own capabilities. I know we've killed more than 500 in the past week or so, only the guys that actively confronted us and so far they've gotten one guy on a lucky shot. You tell me how you think we're doing. From what it sounds like, the press is playing our “setbacks” up way too much.
It's so funny. Everyone expects all modern military combat to be over in three days or so. This isn't Grenada or Panama and this isn't Desert Storm. We are invading a country that doesn't want us to be here with little to no cooperation from allies and neighbors. We have a long way to drive. Just getting there is going to take a while.
Speaking of which, the real danger over here is driving. We've had quite a few people killed in accidents. It was the same way during the Gulf War. Driving is a lot more dangerous than combat. There have been times where I've been driving at night with no lights, wearing NODs, in conditions so dusty that I couldn't see the IR tail lights of the vehicle three feet in front of me. There are vehicles turned over on either side of the road, which has steep drop-offs on either side, every few miles the whole way up here.
I'm driving a high-back HMMWV (humvee) with a trailer and driving has been a bit hectic. I'm riding with my sergeant major and a very good private 1st class. We have the ultimate setup. In the back (this HMMWV has a large cargo area in the back) we have set up a bed that allows you to lay flat and stretch out, so one of us sleeps while another drives, and another rides shotgun (literally). Pfc S--- is great, but is scared to drive in the dark, so I wear the NODs (night optical devices), take sergeant major's 9-mm. Beretta, load a round into the chamber, put it on safe, and lay it on the dash next to my steering wheel so I can shoot with my right hand while I drive and all I have to do is flip it off of safe with my thumb and squeeze off the first round double-action.
I give my M-16 to sergeant major and he aims out the right window, locked and loaded, with the weapons on safe while we drive. So far, we haven't had to fire a round in anger. During our second night of driving, we were stopped with all the lights off when we heard an explosion on the right, and saw tracers go by. We all emptied out of the truck and got flat on the ground. We were looking at the house next to us, and thought the rounds might have come from there, and we saw people moving around inside. It was a little tense. Sergeant Y--- , one of our NCOs, saw someone moving in the doorway with his NODs, and I saw it too. We had our weapons trained on the door, as there had been a lot of ambushes along this road.
They were crouching down, and then we saw it was just a mother sweeping some dirt out of her door. She brought her kids inside, and turned out the lights. It was completely dark and we hadn't seen the kids. Later on, we found out that the unit behind us in the convoy had been engaging enemy to our front and right and we had seen their tracers go by on the right, and the explosion had been them shooting their Mark-19 automatic grenade launcher.
Morale is high. We have had a couple of injuries, but none serious. Our first sergeant got his HMMWV run over by a HMMT, a military equivalent of a semi, and it was just destroyed. He went to the field hospital for a couple of days of observation, and he's back now. We were all worried about him, but he's okay. Yesterday, we found out one of the privates 1st class, a little guy who looks like W---, has this really thick Georgia backwoods accent and is a real favorite around the TOC lost his two-month-old daughter to illness. He saw her once right before he deployed. We're sending him back home on emergency leave, but that's just about the worst thing that's happened since we've been here, as far as the DIVARTY is concerned. You all can pray for him and his wife.
continued.........
With the ‘Marne 500’ in Iraq
Editor’s Note: This is a message forwarded to SFTT.org from an Army officer serving with the 3rd Infantry Division artillery. It arrived during the week of March 31 at the time of widespread news media reports that the campaign had bogged down.
Things are going pretty well. We just gotten to a bit of a lull in the battle, and had to hook up the internet to request some repair parts. Tell everyone not to listen to the news that says everything is going to ****. I have a sneaking suspicion that that impression is not being given accidentally. Probably shouldn't say more. Let's just say it's not a bad thing if the Iraqis think we're on our ass.
We have only had one enemy-caused KIA in the Third Infantry Division. At this point in the [1991] Gulf War (supposedly a smashing success) the United States had more than 150. A sniper got a lucky shot at a poor tank driver during a refuel just about 5 kilometers away from us. He had just stuck his head out, and he had his helmet and his vest on, but the guy got him in the neck from about 800 meters. Rumor is the other guys in the unit found the guy and beat him to death, literally. But that's just a rumor, and Army rumors have a way of getting colorful. I have no idea what actually happened.
So far, everything is going according to plan. Really, there hasn't been anything all that interesting as far as Iraqi surprises. The Saddam Fedayeen are pussies, and we're kicking their collective ass. These are the dedicated Ba’ath party members in each of these little towns that will be killed by their neighbors as soon as Hussein is overthrown, so they have nothing to lose in fighting to the death to maintain the regime.
A lot of the POWs that we’ve taken have said that these Saddam Fedayeen guys have come to the regular army units that wanted to capitulate and told them that they would kill their children and rape their wives if they surrendered. This should give you a general impression about the situation over here.
Every night during the update there's a phrase something like, “We killed approximately 150 dismounts ... ” tossed in innocuously with a bunch of maintenance and supply data that the Brigade Commanders brief to the Division Commander over the tactical satellite radio.
We are invading a country that has had 12 years to prepare, has prepared defensive positions, and knows the terrain, people and their own capabilities. I know we've killed more than 500 in the past week or so, only the guys that actively confronted us and so far they've gotten one guy on a lucky shot. You tell me how you think we're doing. From what it sounds like, the press is playing our “setbacks” up way too much.
It's so funny. Everyone expects all modern military combat to be over in three days or so. This isn't Grenada or Panama and this isn't Desert Storm. We are invading a country that doesn't want us to be here with little to no cooperation from allies and neighbors. We have a long way to drive. Just getting there is going to take a while.
Speaking of which, the real danger over here is driving. We've had quite a few people killed in accidents. It was the same way during the Gulf War. Driving is a lot more dangerous than combat. There have been times where I've been driving at night with no lights, wearing NODs, in conditions so dusty that I couldn't see the IR tail lights of the vehicle three feet in front of me. There are vehicles turned over on either side of the road, which has steep drop-offs on either side, every few miles the whole way up here.
I'm driving a high-back HMMWV (humvee) with a trailer and driving has been a bit hectic. I'm riding with my sergeant major and a very good private 1st class. We have the ultimate setup. In the back (this HMMWV has a large cargo area in the back) we have set up a bed that allows you to lay flat and stretch out, so one of us sleeps while another drives, and another rides shotgun (literally). Pfc S--- is great, but is scared to drive in the dark, so I wear the NODs (night optical devices), take sergeant major's 9-mm. Beretta, load a round into the chamber, put it on safe, and lay it on the dash next to my steering wheel so I can shoot with my right hand while I drive and all I have to do is flip it off of safe with my thumb and squeeze off the first round double-action.
I give my M-16 to sergeant major and he aims out the right window, locked and loaded, with the weapons on safe while we drive. So far, we haven't had to fire a round in anger. During our second night of driving, we were stopped with all the lights off when we heard an explosion on the right, and saw tracers go by. We all emptied out of the truck and got flat on the ground. We were looking at the house next to us, and thought the rounds might have come from there, and we saw people moving around inside. It was a little tense. Sergeant Y--- , one of our NCOs, saw someone moving in the doorway with his NODs, and I saw it too. We had our weapons trained on the door, as there had been a lot of ambushes along this road.
They were crouching down, and then we saw it was just a mother sweeping some dirt out of her door. She brought her kids inside, and turned out the lights. It was completely dark and we hadn't seen the kids. Later on, we found out that the unit behind us in the convoy had been engaging enemy to our front and right and we had seen their tracers go by on the right, and the explosion had been them shooting their Mark-19 automatic grenade launcher.
Morale is high. We have had a couple of injuries, but none serious. Our first sergeant got his HMMWV run over by a HMMT, a military equivalent of a semi, and it was just destroyed. He went to the field hospital for a couple of days of observation, and he's back now. We were all worried about him, but he's okay. Yesterday, we found out one of the privates 1st class, a little guy who looks like W---, has this really thick Georgia backwoods accent and is a real favorite around the TOC lost his two-month-old daughter to illness. He saw her once right before he deployed. We're sending him back home on emergency leave, but that's just about the worst thing that's happened since we've been here, as far as the DIVARTY is concerned. You all can pray for him and his wife.
continued.........