Chosen Soldier - Dick Couch [88]
“Think like an enemy gunner,” Sergeant Warner tells them. “Always be thinking, ‘I’m up, he sees me, I’m down.’ And just before you go down, try to locate the next place you’ll run to.”
On dash after dash, between the chatter of automatic fire, the woods echo with the soldiers yelling, “I’m up, he sees me, I’m down!”
“There’s nothing magical about small-unit tactics,” Jan says, “but it’s a core discipline of just about everything we do on deployment today. These guys will spend a lot of their time teaching this when they get to their groups. They’ll teach it to Afghans, Iraqis, and Kuwaitis. They’ll teach it in South America, Africa, Southwest Asia—all over the world. But before we get into small-unit tactics, we work on basic individual and squad movement.”
After a day of movement drills, the two ODAs move on to squad tactics. There are variations and permutations, but as a small unit—a squad or a platoon—they move in three basic elements: A-team, B-team, and C-team. The A-team is usually the assault element and the C-team is the fire-support element. The B-team, with the squad leader or patrol leader, is the command-and-control element. The essence of small-unit tactics is the management and coordination of these three elements in a tactical environment. Under the watchful eyes of the cadre, the teams practice group movements, danger crossings, security halts, recons, assaults, fire support, and actions on the objective. They use hand, arm, and various recognition signals. Toward the end of the five-day field exercise, they are running ambush drills—again and again—and rotating squad members through leadership positions. For the Rangers and combat veterans like Dolemont, it’s practice and review. For soldiers like Aaron Dunn who have come from a technical specialty, it’s the first time they’ve seen this training.
After every tactical evolution, there is a critique. “All right,” Sergeant Warner says to 812 while 811 runs a battle drill, “while they train and we watch, we can still learn.” When 811 is finished, they are called in for a critique. “Give me three things eight-one-one did wrong,” Warner tells 812, and the men do. “Now three things they did right.” Again, the men in 812 offer their observations. “Now, eight-one-two, it’s your turn. Let’s go out there and make some new mistakes. Mistakes are OK, but don’t make the same mistake twice. Eight-one-one, it’s your turn to watch and learn.”
While 812 prepares for the next drill, he turns to 811. “OK, think about what you did out there. What’s the one thing we can do to overcome mistakes when the bullets start flying?” Sid Warner is a combat veteran from 5th Group and recently back from duty in Afghanistan. “Violence of action, right? So don’t let the volume of fire slack off. Keep the pressure on the enemy; don’t let him regroup. And talk it up; yell it out along the line. Once the shooting starts, there’s no need for stealth—let the bad guys think there’s a battalion of you out there. Winning a firefight is often a matter of gaining the initiative and maintaining the initiative.”
When they return to their classroom in the meadow, three men have their weapons slung and chant in unison, “My weapon is slung because I almost killed my friend; my weapon is slung because I almost killed my friend.” These men were inattentive in just where they pointed their rifles.
“Fratricide is something we all must work to prevent,” Jan tells 811 and 812. “Muzzle control has to be a religion. You cannot point that