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By Root 1777 0

Then there are assigned equipment lists. Each man carries between five hundred and eight hundred rounds of ammunition, depending on his weapon and assigned team equipment. Team equipment assignments include shoulder-fired rockets, radios, first-aid kits, demolitions, time fuse, claymore mines, 40 mm grenades, and an enemy-prisoner-of-war kit with handcuffs and blindfolds. The list goes on. Hall also assigns duties within his ODA—radioman, point man, designated compass man, designated pace man, EPW handlers, and so on. He also makes assignments regarding who is to handle various portions of the operations order. Then the team goes to work. Each man has personal and team gear to prepare and pack, and information to prepare for the operations order—the permission briefing, sometimes called the patrol leader’s order. The patrol order is set for 0800 the following morning. Eight-one-one will be up most of the night making preparations. I ask Jan why he had put Sergeant Hall in charge and not one of the newer men.

“Sergeant Hall is a good briefer—a very thorough briefer. I wanted the younger men to see it done right. There is a lot of training value for them to see it done well.”

At 0800, their rucks, about ninety pounds per man, are lined up along the wall of the equipment bay, and the men are in cammies and wearing fully loaded combat vests. Hall again calls the roll and checks with each man to ensure his personal and team equipment is ready and good to go. After a time hack, he begins the formal operations order.

“All right guys, listen up. This will be your briefing for Target 001, the ambush of a foot patrol at grid 5211, 8693.” He turns to a map on the wall. “It’s a bend in a stretch of unimproved road between these two intersections right here. Everyone got that?”

There’s a rustle of activity as each man finds the target on his map. They’ve rehearsed this, and all of them have that section of the map neatly folded in their map cases with an acetate overlay of the target area. They’re all on the same sheet of music. For the next two hours, Sergeant Hall directs the detailed operational briefing that is the patrol leader’s order. He directs the team members to synchronize their watches, then calls on Tim Baker to brief them on the weather conditions. Roberto Pantella gives an overview of the terrain features and vegetation; Antonio Costa gives a breakdown of the enemy forces in the objective area.

“OK, everyone, stand up,” Hall calls out to his team. “Roll heads left, now to the right, now everybody run in place.” There is pounding of boots on the worn linoleum floor for about thirty seconds. “That’s enough, guys. So, we’re all awake. Now let’s talk about the mission and how we plan to execute it. Everyone gather around the terrain models and pay close attention.”

The two sand tables have been sculpted into scale models, one of the objective area and the other, a larger scale, of the target area. With a pointer, Sergeant Hall takes them over the key points and danger areas of the operation. “We’ll insert by helo here. If we take fire on the way in, the pilot will clear off the insertion point away from the direction of the enemy fire, and if we’re airworthy, we’ll abort the mission. If we crash, we set up standard security and call in the backup helo for extraction. If we take fire after we’re on the ground and the helo clears off, we’ll abort the mission and move to coordinates 5360, 8602 and call for extraction. These coordinates will also serve as a rally point if we are separated on the ground and have to abandon the insertion point.”

Following his briefing format, Hall covers the key points on the way to the objective, at the objective, and on the way to the extraction point. He details actions at danger points, actions at road crossings, actions at rally points, actions at a patrol base, actions on the objective, actions on clearing the objective area, and actions at the exfiltration site. He walks the team through the mission from the time they have boots on the ground until they are recovered.

“Questions?