This is an email I sent out after I had been in my first enemy contact. As it was our first time, we reacted rather slowly and we were very confused. Almost as if we couldn't believe someone was shooting at us. I was really pumped up after this, and I wanted to get a note out to help my fellow ETTS react better than we did. At one point I was standing in the open, in the middle of the road, trying to pinpoint the enemy location. I felt really foolish afterward. Well, here it is. I hope that it provides some useful information to future ETTs


Please pass this on to other ETTS so that they can learn from our mistakes.

Today we were attacked with mortars and small arms fire, in an area that the Marines were attacked just a week ago. The mortar fire has gotten closer than the first time.

We were driving two platoons of ANA to support a Marine Corps mission. We started out with two military trucks (a Tata and a US Army 5-ton), a Ford Ranger, and a regular HUMMV. After 30 minutes on the crappy road, the 5 ton truck broke down, so we left a platoon behind to catch up in a rented Jingle truck.

Then, about a half hour later, the other military truck broke down, and could not be fixed. We dicked around with it for an hour or so when the Jingle truck showed up with our first platoon in it. So, we left a squad with the broken truck and loaded everything and everyone onto our Hummv, a Ford Ranger, and a jingle truck.

We had been moving for about 500m when an explosion occured in a field to our left. One of the ETTs thought a land mine had gone off, when two more landed in the same spot.

In the convoy brief we gave to the ANA, we were supposed to return fire, keep driving and then stop outside of the kill zone. What actually happened is the ANA stopped and jumped out the trucks shooting rounds everywhere.

CPT Oles, SSG Baker, and I got out to yell at them to get back in the trucks. That is when CPT Oles noticed that small arms fire was landing around our HUMMV. I ran over to a squad that was lying behind some rocks and shooting at villagers on the other side of the river. It took forever to get them to stop firing, meanwhile the mortars moved from about 50m away to about 20m away. In addition to this they were firing a DSHKA (russian 50 cal) at us. Finally, we got the trucks to move out and the soldiers followed on foot. We had no weapons that could respond to them, at a distance of about 1200m. We were so caught up in getting the ANA the hell out of the kill zone that we did not call for CAS until much later.

Then, to make matters worse, the river had washed out the road, and we had to return back through this same area. Luckily, no one shot at us this time, probably because an A10 had come in to support us.

Side note: The SGM of the 82nd himself got on the horn and promised to provide cover from two A10s for our return trip. He stayed on the line with us all through our return trip. This was actually quite touching to me that we got so much support from them.

It is amazing that no one got hurt at all. We were very lucky!

OK, AAR Lessons learnt.

1) Practice convoy reaction drills with the ANA, the briefing was not enough. Rehearse before you go out. After Thought: It is very difficult to get the ANA to plan and rehearse anything try to cover a few fundamentals and give them a very brief OPORD

2) We should have talked to the Marines in depth about what happened to them the week earlier. We did talk to them, but we should have already set up areas where we could call for fire based on their intelligence. Maybe we would have gotten the fuckers then!!!! After thought: From then on, we always set up Targets on our routes. The artillery unit we worked with was outstanding

3) CPT Oles and I should have called for CAS when we got out of the kill zone. We should have had something already worked out to do so, but we had to call back to the TOC with our radio and relay through them. We had no FM or VHF assetts to talk to the birds with. It was also very difficult for the bird to identify us because of our wacky convoy (Ford Ranger, Jingle Truck, HUMMV). The Marines joked for days about the pathetic convory we had as they heard the conversation over the radio.

4) The ANA all got into the fight, they are not cowards, all except one that is, who I had to drag out of the HUMMV. Sort of like the scene in Apacolypse now I'm not going.

SONNY