First Movement

It had finally gotten dark and we were doing our final preparations before our movement. This was supposed to be a short mission. It would be less than 2 kilometers to the hide site. We were testing the new equipment that had been fielded to our battalion over the past few months. The intercept radio was the same one that we had been using in Afghanistan. We had borrowed one from the Canadians and one from the Special Forces. Chad and I had become experts on this radio. We were happy to have one again even though, quite frankly, they were already outdated.

Mike was new. He arrived shortly after we had come back from Afghanistan. He integrated nicely into our platoon and into our team. He was tall, strong, and the women liked him because he was good looking. An alpha male sort of guy, an all around corn-fed white boy with a college degree. However, he wasn’t the alpha male this night. He was the cherry…

cher·ry (chĕr‘ē): n., pl. -ries.

1. Any of several trees or shrubs of the genus Prunus, especially P. avium or P. cerasus, native chiefly to northern temperate regions and having pink or white flowers and small juicy drupes.
   1. The yellow, red, or blackish fruit of any of these plants.
   2. The wood of any of these plants, especially black cherry.
   3. Any of various plants, such as the Barbados cherry or the cornelian cherry, having fruits resembling a cherry.
2. A moderate or strong red to purplish red.
3. Vulgar Slang. The hymen considered as a symbol of virginity.

 In the Army we call the new guys cherries.  He was the new guy to the team. He had never been to combat and had no field experience. We had been conducting training in preparation for this exercise and for the war in general, but this was the first time he’d experienced the “back 40”.  

The back 40 is a large area of land on Fort Campbell that is used for training. It consists of ranges, training areas, farm land, and lots and lots of wilderness. There are plenty of trees, thorn bushes, critters that bite, stinging bugs, snakes, and other animals of all types. There are open fields, deep ravines, creeks, rivers, and any other terrain feature you can imagine. The back 40 can be tough terrain in the daylight, but at night it is down right treacherous.

We finished cross loading and doing our pre-combat checks (PCC’s). We knew there wasn’t an opposing force (OPFOR) in this exercise, but there were staged transmission that we were supposed to listen for and report on if we heard them. This would prove futile, not because the radios didn’t work, but because there had been a major planning flaw.

By the time that our team acquired our intercept radio it had grown 6 inches on the bottom and put on a lot of weight since we’d seen it in Afghanistan. Through evolution, the designers decided to modify it to meet the requirements that the Army had requested. However, they never once thought to ask an operator’s opinion of proposed changes. The extension was designed to allow the radio to operate on a different battery type. They were the same size batteries that our communications radios used. Therefore, in one respect it made a lot of since. However, the brass up top wanted us to use rechargeable batteries. The problem was that the change required us to use two big batteries instead of one small one. Sure it was more economical (the Army only needed to buy one type of battery now), but it was a pain for the person carrying the thing. This wasn’t the worst part. The worst part was that we were being forced to carry rechargeable batteries. These batteries lasted half the time of a non-rechargeable and weighed twice as much. There was also no way for us to recharge them once we were in the field. To top it off the batteries were bad when we got them and never did hold a charge.

The distribution of the gear was pretty even. We each were carrying over 100 pounds of gear in our packs and on our bodies. I had the intercept radio (the new one) with two batteries, some other small electronics , and personal gear. Chad had his gear, the VHF communications radio, the PLGR (GPS device), most of the batteries and cables for the radios. Mike had the antenna for the intercept radio and the HF communications radio some batteries, and his personal gear. Oh, and it was December…so our gear was heavier because we had winter gear…it was bad and getting worse.

The order of march was simple. Mike was first, then Chad, and I was in the rear. We would march in a single file across the open field in a hurry to get to the tree line as fast as possible. Normally, we would avoid open areas, especially large ones like this, a soldier is an easy target in an open field. We had no choice though, so we just had to stay low and move quickly through it.

Staying low was the easy part. The field grass was as high as my chest at some points so we had decent concealment. It was also almost totally dark. Chad was two faint glowing dots in front of me. We call them cat eyes; fluorescent squares on the back of a Kevlar that let the person following you at night keep sight of you. Mike’s cat eyes were almost invisible to me. He was just a slightly darker spot on darkness. If I didn’t know he was there I wouldn’t have been able to see him at all.

Night vision makes depth perception disappear, so walking with them is tough. I decided I would limit the NVG use and go with my naked eye as much as possible. Mike needed to use his so he could see where he was going and get us to our destination. He was the point man after all.

THUD! I didn’t hear it. We had traveled less than 150 meters when I imagined that the dark spot that had been Mike had vanished. I couldn’t tell if he was there or not. I heard the speedy shuffling of Chad’s feet and saw the cat eyes on his Kevlar bouncing as he hurried to Mike’s aid. Mike had tripped on a fallen log. It was covered by the grass, and there was no way he could have seen it. He snagged his foot and began to teeter. He tried to recover. It was a valiant effort and a lesser man would have fallen sooner. As strong as Mike was he was off balance. This meant he was no match for the 100+ pounds of gear he was wearing. He fell face first into the cold hard ground and was having trouble standing back up with all of the weight. I took a knee, donned the NVG’s and watched and waited. After a short rest and a little help from Chad, Mike was up again. We were moving. We took it a little slower this time, sure it was an open field but it was training and we were going to war soon. There was no need to kill anyone before we got there.

After a few feet I saw the light. It was a bright green glow coming from Chad’s right pocket. “What the fuck is that”, I asked myself. Then it hit me, “He’s got a chem-light in his pocket!” I tapped my legs (our silent hint to let someone know to look at us) but he couldn’t hear me over the rustling grass. Then his left pocket lit up. It was WHITE LIGHT. White light at night is sure to draw the enemy. His mini-maglite had come on while he was walking. He had a green light in his right pocket and a white light in his left. I tapped again, a little louder this time, but he didn’t hear me. I stopped moving. He would turn around and look for me every few feet. This is something we did to prevent someone getting lost or left behind.

He didn’t look. “Chad”, I whispered. He kept walking. “Chad”, I said in a normal voice. He stopped and turned to look at me. I took a knee. Dickens turned around and saw Chad looking at me. He took a knee. Chad took a knee and I moved to where he was. “You’re lit up like a Christmas tree, sergeant. You have to ditch the light.”, I said. He responded with an, “Oh shit. Thanks man.”  In Afghanistan, Chad and I had learned the importance of light and sound discipline, but apparently, we still had to pay more attention to what we were doing. We had only made it about half way to the wood line, and were already looking like a group of amatuers.

Before I go much farther, I have to contrast this with the three soldiers who were approaching the Brigade TOC that night in Kuwait when all hell broke loose. We had trained a lot more. We had moved together as a team a lot more by that night. We were no longer bumbling morons in the dark. We were serious and ready to go. We knew that we had to rely on one another to stay alive. Getting it wrong was not an option. We knew how bad it could get. In training is where you make mistakes. Real life is not the time to learn. We had made our mistakes (as you’ve read so far…there are more coming), but those were behind us. The uneasy part of the whole situation was that we were not sure if the other three with us that night had their shit wired tight (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, read “This is how it all started”).

…to be continued…