Here CWO2/Gunner Keith Marine, who knows how to walk
the walk, offers several small but interesting lessons from the ground in
Afghanistan. I'm impressed. For example, I've been around Quick Reaction
Forces, and in fact was embedded in one once, but haven't seen it made standard
procedure to have the QRF platoon leader sit in on the pre-patrol briefs
of other units heading outside the wire.
Gather
round, little grasshoppers!:
Defensive Positions. Every position is not laid out for Final
Protective Fires. Despite what IOC says,
sometimes Close Defensive Fires is your best option. Recognize the most likely place for the enemy
to take a few shots at you i.e. covered and concealed escape route, within
small arms range and lay your weapon system on that. Proof your range cards frequently. You may have set in your guns initially when
no corn was up and a month later the tactical situation has changed. Guns are also heavy and generally they are resting
in sand. As they sink, your range card
becomes worthless, guns become unleveled and your traverse ends up becomes a
search and traverse. Conduct frequent
training with the Marines on post on machine gunnery and how to manipulate the
weapon system/use the range card; along with telling them why the gun is
positioned where it is and aimed at that spot.
Commanders at individual positions should tour their posts daily.
Make sure your guns are cleaned and
lubed. Most Marines make sure the
weapon is clean and to keep it clean, they don't lube it. Take that into account with failure to clean
the ammo and then you will have a guaranteed jam when you need that weapon the
most - this happened to one of our COPs when they caught a couple of guys
laying in an IED and the guys got away.
Make sure you use good judgment
on where optics are placed, what kind of optics you use, and do detailed
sketches of the surrounding areas. Not
sure how many times, I have gotten on post and asked, how long has that loop hole
been in that wall across that field? A
Marine has never been able to give me an answer and a lot of them look like
recent additions to the local décor.
You have to battle track your
squads and get frequent position and radio checks. Keep abreast of the type of air on station
and where it is. You should have
redundant com and be able to operate your COC effectively day or night.
Use the right weapon system for
the right threat. .50 cals and
MK-19s are great but if your sector of fire/observation is 200 yards probably
don't need it, especially if your Marines aren't competent in using the system.
Have supplementary and alternate
positions. Basic fundamental but
most posts don't have them. Also make
sure they are labeled. A good system I
saw was numbers for posts and letters for Supplementary and alternate
positions. It's confusing to the Marine
if you tell him to take his men to the position next to the post at two in the
morning under attack. Be able to say
take your team and divide them between bravo and charlie.
Have a planned reaction force on
standby. The leader of that force
attends the patrol brief the Marines going outside the wire. Your briefing area
needs to be set up as user friendly as possible, so your Marines will use it. Have a GRG map up big enough to trace a route
along with a regular 1:50,000. Put up a
skeleton order with freqs and call signs on it.
If you can put benches in there to encourage Marines to sit down and
take notes, do so. Make a write board so
Marines can draw formations and do ROC talks for cordons etc. (I used the back of a laminated map and it
worked fine).
Make sure you are conducting
continuing actions. Take a look at
those claymores and your wire every day.
Often when I walked the wire, claymores were camouflaged with mud in
front of them or had fallen over and were pointing to the sky.
Know your neighbors. You should know each of them by name and
visit them a few times a week. If you
aren't visiting them frequently, bet your ass the enemy is and probably
observing you from their homes. But it
just isn't as exotic to stop by the neighbor's house and visit, besides who
wants to add more time to their patrol by stopping just outside the wire either
coming or going. Generally, your
neighbors are the most important people to talk to and know.
Use log books on post and log in
things that are important tactically, not radio checks and worthless
shit. Change your relief times (had one
post where they only got shot at right after or before changeover and Marines
could only identify general directions vice locations, just change up your
times and make sure the COG is keeping an eye out prior to relief).
Just like patrolling, get a hold of
a 6-4 and read the chapter on defense.
Lost art and you will never be surprised with what you find. By the middle of the second company, I could
tell platoon commanders what I was going to find. They thought, never on my post and they ended
up walking back steaming in most cases and changing how they did business.
'Nuff said?
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