US Soldier Intentionally Exposes His Position to Draw Fire Away From Squad VID, page 5

Ah, the armchair quarterback debate – This is why I am against the helmet cams to begin a competent and thorough AAR can be conducted without every firggin field grade in the chain of command having the opportunity to weigh in on each Privates actions/inactions in every situation. Helmet cams are here to stay though and I am glad they were not SOP for other than the shoot house when I retired. In the shoot house when things happen in splseconds they help a lot teaching but are just an unnecessary pound of BS we don’t need. Maybe even on say some HVT raid like the OBL take down where its national level stuff.

Anyway, I have been in combat, close, far, in engagements that were initiated by me and those initiated by the Hajjis on me. It is always preferable to initiate since you know where the enemy is. My experience is in Special Forces – I was both enlisted and an Officer.

In my opinion this is one of those situations in which the enemy has opened up on a patrol of some kind from a position unknown.

I am not going to hold this Marine to the SF standard as a matter of fact I’m going to give him a break because I’ve been there and I have no idea what happened before or after the segment.

I know I don’t hear his team/squad leader...leading, if anyone should be criticized it’s him. We should be able to hear his voice as should this Marine. Hell, maybe he is the team leader sometimes in the Army they choose to carry the 203’s in a squad. If that’s the case he has had a Leroy Jenkins moment…

Honestly everyone has them – even highly trained and disciplined operators. For all the arm chair Generals out there firefights follow a pattern. The pattern is a little different if you initiate, the enemy does or if it’s a simultaneous one. This one appears to be enemy initiated to me. So the pattern is…

The first moment of terror when you realize you are being shot at and you have no cover. Then you breathe a sigh of relief when you find it. If it is your role you return fire in the general direction (say the SAW gunner or those designated as suppressive fire). The rest of the men are trying to figure out where the hell the enemy actually is. In cases like this one appears to be it’s a long distance engagement that can take quite a while. Unlike in the movies there are no dramatic flashes that tell you where the enemy is. So then there is the lull when the enemy realizes you have no idea where they are. You fire back sporadically – these engagements can go on for a long time and ammo is a finite resource. Sometimes during this period someone will get fed up with the not knowing part and have their Leroy Jenkins moment…which is what I think this guy is having.

That breakdown in reason when you just want something to happen and make a move toward the enemy. This should be a coordinated maneuver by fire and buddy teams initiated by the squad leader but again we don’t hear anything from this guys leaders which is probably why he is acting this way.

Once you actually locate the enemy then you need to figure out how best to maneuver against them using the terrain, your force and all your force multipliers like artillery and air cover. In this case the leader is silent so we don’t know what he’s doing but seeing the houses down there he’s not going to get a fire mission. He might get an Apache if they have on station.

After that it’s pretty standard fire and maneuver IMT and such until you get them followed by the friggin crash…if you’ve been there you know what I mean. There are a few things people noticed I will comment on though…

First is the fact that he sounds out of breath – this could be that he’s out of shape, or sometimes just so pumped with adrenaline you sound like that. Who knows, I’ll give him the benefit of a doubt.

Second was the magazine changes someone commented on that. They are indeed slow and sloppy, there are a few things this could be. Poor training, poor physical condition thus slowed reactions, or most likely he has been conditioned to fear losing magazines more than he fears making a slow sloppy change.

We see this in SF all the time when guys come first come to teams. Because at the school house you get eaten up for losing one. You have to counter that bad habit with drills. Sure you don’t want to just waste them all over the battle field but honestly he changed magazines while totally exposed – I’d just drop it and move on to cover... However, my SF team has a bigger budget than a Marine Company or even a Battalion most likely. Again, I give him the benefit of a doubt that he has been trained to not lose them to the point of risking his life for it. Not a good thing.

Then lastly is the fact he was hit in the vest. I have personally been struck in the back by a 7.62 round. That said, I also have to weigh in that it is not something one just shrugs off. I was knocked off my feet and very much out of breath, disoriented and out of action.