Soldier gets Silver Star, reprimand for same battle

[Dave]

Originally Posted by SteveP

Did you see the pic is that base? How could you possibly defend it?

three ring concertina wire and stakes are a good start

[fatbuckRTO]

Originally Posted by Dave

three ring concertina wire and stakes are a good start

Sounds great. Got any handy?

[Dave]

Originally Posted by fatbuckRTO

Sounds great. Got any handy?

the army has mountains of that shit. If he didnt have any he failed for not asking

[fatbuckRTO]

Originally Posted by Dave

the army has mountains of that shit. If he didnt have any he failed for not asking

From the article Pauldun posted:

As one Army source put it to me, "The paratroopers sent to Wanat knew they were in big trouble. Although the battalion HQ was only 7km away, these guys lacked class 4 [construction and fortification materials], ran out of water and had little material to build up their defensive positions."

Could barely get water, much less concertina.

The army (and the military in general) has mountains of lots of things that don't make it to the warfighter on the ground. For instance, there are thousands of airmen who never leave their FOB running around with PAC-4's, CCO's, and every other piece of fluff known to man strapped to their M-4's, while grunts running daily missions that include CQB are pimping M-16's with iron sights.

In our case, when we were going to a similar COP all we wanted were NVG's and chem lights (two things the army also has mountains of, especially chem lights). After begging and pleading and sucking the right dicks we finally got NVG's, from a captain who had no resposibility to supply us whatsoever. When we got back, we found out why we couldn't find chem lights. They were all being used at Trance Night.

Originally Posted by Papa_Complex

I wonder if there might have been a more obvious failure there, like not properly posting sentries or something along those lines? I agree that such a forward base is a tough thing to defend, as they repeated found in Vietnam, but are we getting the whole story?

I can guarantee you two things from personal experience:
1) When you're at a COP like that, you don't fail to post sentries. It just won't happen.
2) If they somehow had failed to post sentries, the senior officers looking to cover their own asses by throwing this captain under the bus right now would be screaming that shit from the rooftops.

[Papa_Complex]

Originally Posted by fatbuckRTO

I can guarantee you two things from personal experience:
1) When you're at a COP like that, you don't fail to post sentries. It just won't happen.
2) If they somehow had failed to post sentries, the senior officers looking to cover their own asses by throwing this captain under the bus right now would be screaming that shit from the rooftops.

Not having your experience on it, I'll take your word for that then.

[derf]

There is a huge write up of the whole battle online somehwere. The unit was making a 3 day stop at that village when they got word that there was gong to be an attack, they stayed longer than they were supposed to. They had a ressuply expected the next day. They were attacked by a much larger force than intelligence had said. They won, but there were some KIA.

I wouldnt place the blame on anybody, shit happens in battle, the only thing you should really expect is that the battle plan is gonna go to shit once the first bullets start flying.

The only reason he got a letter of reprimand is because the news has been all over this story and someone is trying to prove put the blame on someone. Two decades ago a few deaths would have been buried deep inside a newspaper where none could read it. Not justifying those deaths its a waste of life but in previous wars we were not able to keep the death tolls nearly as low as it is now thanks to modern aromor and medical tech.