Monday, June 06, 2005
Urban day three
After a great day of being the lightning rod for second squad, it was time for the platoon assault. Now it's time for some chaos. Once again I was in command and once again, my unit was the tip of the spear.
There is a bit of pride in being the go to guy. At times I hated being the navigator for the patrols, but I liked the fact that my peers picked me when it was time to get the job done. They may not like me all the time, they may not agree with my methods, but they know when there is a job to get done, I will do it. Honestly, that is a lot more important to me than having them like me.
So Lt. Rollins, who was our tactical platoon commander picked me to be squad leader and picked my squad to be first in the door. My heart was beating hard already, I could feel the tension in my squad and the attack was a few hours away. The tension builds for a regular attack in the treeline, but urban assaults carry ten times the tension. There is so much to think about during the attack, so many things to coordinate. Danger can come from high, low, in front of you, behind you. It is stressful and exciting at the same time. As the attack got closer and we loaded our weapons, I felt like I used to before taking the field for a baseball game. My heart was pounding, I couldn't stand still. I head butted a few guys in my squad, I slapped a few on the back, most of them were just as excited as me.
It may seem strange to be head butting and slapping backs when we are about to head into the attack, but there is some utility to it. As the squad leader, it is my responsibility to get my men prepared to do their job. I need to be confident and excited so that they will be confident and excited. In urban combat, aggressiveness will win the battle over deliberate slow planning more often than not. There was actually a great example of that later in the day; it really drove the point home.
So we moved into position, crouched at the edge of the treeline waiting for the signal to go. As always, things got screwed up. My assault section was not in the proper place to begin the attack, or the support section was not in the proper place, we could debate it forever but the fact is that my team had to run a long way across the front of our machine gun support which is always a bad thing. Once again, we hit a snag getting in the first door. This time the screwed up part is that I was with the second fire team, so there were seven marines in front of me when we hit the first door. There was engineer's tape (2" wide woven cloth tape used for marking) across the stairway and they were having the hardest time getting around it. Some were trying to step over it; some were trying to untie it. Does no one carry knives anymore? I pushed my way through the crowd and pulled my bayonet, the bayonet which many had made fun of me for buying, and sliced through the tape.
We pushed into the first building and began clearing. As squad leader, I was not really in direct command inside. My fire team leaders were leading their units through the building and I was coordinating their efforts. That is until most of my squad was wiped out.
In an extended attack, one which you take down more than one building, your squads should hand off duties. No one squad should be the assault unit the whole time, it is mentally and physically draining. But in the confusion of our relatively inexperienced platoon, my squad was once again on point to take down the next building. This was where we hit some trouble. I lost my first fire team, four guys on the first floor. My second fire team was taken out on the stairs to the second floor and my third fire team was taken out on the second floor. So there I was just me and Lt. Shultz, my radio operator.
Now here's the rub. I no longer have enough guys to clear rooms, you really should have four and the squad leader shouldn't be clearing rooms anyway, and I can't go back downstairs because if I do so, that floor is no longer clear; the enemy could re-take it. So I decided to hold my ground and wait for the support unit to come up. I waited and I waited and I waited. In reality it was likely one minute, but it felt like an eternity. My platoon commander was yelling at me to keep going; we were losing the initiative; giving the enemy time to reorganize and regain their composure. Finally I decided it was time to leave those other guys behind.
I told Shultz that we were going to clear that floor and he said he was with me. The first room we went to had a flimsy plywood door, which Shultz kicked open and I charged in. There was a bad guy behind that door, which wound up being a female, and I don't think she was ready for us. She seemed to be fumbling with her rifle as I came through the door, like our attack had caught her off guard. I put two rounds in her before she managed to get her rifle ready, but she still shot me in the hand. I can't blame her. If I spent all that time waiting and hadn't even gotten to fire off a round I would have been pissed too.
We continued clearing that building and went onto the next one. I can't even begin to describe the chaos that was taking place at this point. I no longer had a squad and our platoon commander was struggling to keep up with the information flying at him. We really should have taken a minute to pause and get our shit in order. There were so many times in the training that I thought to myself afterwards, "If only I had taken a few seconds to re-establish control and come up with a quick plan, things would have worked better." That likely would have been true, but the emphasis was not on us being brilliant tacticians, it was on us being aggressive.
Our instructors constantly prodded us to keep going and many of our peers, hopped up on adrenaline, lost all sense of calm and reason. There were many times that I saw members of fire teams completely go on their own and ignore their leaders. My fire team was one of the more disciplined, but when I was squad leader, I had several on the other teams trying to be heroes. I was frustrated by that, I'm sure we could have done much better if they had worked together as a team, but we were all new at this and all thought we had a better way to do it than the guy in command. I'm sure it didn't help that we were all lieutenants. ;)
I never made it into the third building. We (me, Shultz, and a bunch of guys from first squad) decided to gain entry through a window which was about five feet off the ground. I yelled for someone to give me a knee, which means I need them to kneel in front of the window with one leg up so I can step on their thigh and propel myself into the window. Out of the three six foot guys and one five foot girl with me, who gives me a knee? The five foot girl. Great.
I stepped on her knee and pushed myself into the window. There were two enemies in an adjacent room who had a clear shot at me through a hole broken in the wall. I figured my only hope was to get into the room quickly, so I pushed off on Nieves's knee with my foot to propel myself into the room quickly and her knee gave way. I crashed into the windowsill and fell back out the window. Not a great way to intimidate the enemy. I never got a second chance to try to enter the third building. I lost my three dimensional awareness, a bad guy leaned out the window and popped me in the back. Hell of a way to go out.
So once again, I sat outside a building contemplating what had gone wrong. I kicked myself for mistakes and thought of a million different ways I could have done things. I think that was the most valuable lesson of the training, learning from my mistakes. It is one thing to learn it in a class, it is quite another to experience for yourself.
So I figured my urban training was over, I had gone out like a chump and that was it for me. How wrong I was.
