Annual New Year's Eve Reminder

Not sure why I get such a kick out of this but hey, I'm easily amused.

2007

Pfc. Roger Montague, a Ramah, N.M., native with Troop A, 1st Squadron, 14th Cavalry Regiment, attached to the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division, escorts a toddler down the street during a joint patrol in Baghdad’s Karkh District Aug. 2. U.S. Army photo by Spc. Alexis Harrison, 2nd BCT, 1st Cav. Div. Public Affairs.

One of my favorite photosa of the year. It really says it all for me. And to all of the guys who served in Iraq any time between 2003 and today, I hope you know that each and every one of you made a difference. As part of an incremental process, every single thing you did led to where we are today. Thank you.

Two other posts to check out are Badger 6's Year in Review at Badgers Forward and Sgt Hook's Person of the Year.

Update: Wow. The Telegraph actually got it right. Via Ace.

173rd ABCT 319th AFAR in Pech River Valley, Afghanistan

Soldiers of B Battery, 4th Battalion, 319th Airborne Field Artillery Regiment at Camp Blessing in the Pech River Valley in Kunar Province, Afghanistan.

Interviewed are: Gun Team Chief SGT Daniel Branstrator, Ass't Gunner PFC Joshua Harbeson, and 1st Canoneer PFC Freddy Tiscarino.

Report from SPC Nathan Bowen, AFN.


Click here for more 173rd ABCT Afghanistan posts.

The Sky Soldiers of the Korengal

A Black Hawk helicopter landing at the Korengal Outpost.

The Vanity Fair feature by Sebastian Junger is out. He was with the 173rd ABCT in Afghanistan this summer on a joint embed with Brian Ross of ABC News, who pitched their coverage with obscene headlines like "Ambush: Video Shows U.S. Troops Being Hunted, Killed". Junger is mostly able to leave politics aside and delivers a gripping (if borderline sensational) piece well worth a read, accompanied by great photography from Tim Hetherington.

A strategic passage wanted by the Taliban and al-Qaeda, Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley is among the deadliest pieces of terrain in the world for U.S. forces. One platoon is considered the tip of the American spear.

They are the men of Second Platoon, Battle Company, of the Second Battalion (Airborne), 503rd Infantry Regiment, 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team. Second Platoon is one of four in Battle Company which covers the Korengal.

Traditional airborne calling card.

The soldiers of Second Platoon lurch out of their cots and feel around for weapons in the electric-blue light before dawn. The dark shapes around them are the mountains from which they will get shot at when the sun rises. A local mosque injects the morning silence with a first call to prayer. Another day in the Korengal.

The men assemble with their trousers untucked from their boots and their faces streaked with dirt and stubble. They wear flea collars around their waists and combat knives in the webbing of their body armor. Some have holes in their boots. Several have furrows in their uniforms from rounds that barely missed. They carry family photographs behind the bulletproof steel plates on their chests, and a few carry photographs of women in their helmets, or letters.

Junger tells the story of these men, including many familiar names like SPC Hugo Mendoza and SGT Josh Brennan. Or SGT Kevin Rice and SPC Carl Vandenberge, whom I briefly met when they were later medevaced to Germany for injuries suffered in the attack which claimed the life of SSG Larry Rougle.

Junger writes of Vandenberge, "probably the strongest man in the platoon, who stands six feet five and weighs 250. Specialist Vandenberge doesn’t say much but smiles a lot and is reputed to be a computer genius back home. In June, I saw him throw an injured man over his shoulder, ford a river, and then carry him up a hill. His hands are so big he can palm sandbags. He turned down a basketball scholarship to join the army."

And of Rice: "He walks into the open like he’s in his bathrobe going out to get the morning paper..." "Bravery comes in many forms, and in this case it’s a function of Rice’s concern for his men, who in turn act bravely out of concern for him and one another."

Read the rest here including the photo gallery which illustrates the extreme conditions under which the paratroopers operate.

H/T Jules Crittenden


Click here for more 173rd ABCT Afghanistan posts.

Once a Marine, always a Marine

Email from a former Marine who rallies the members of his local VFW to make regular donations of phone cards for the patients at Landstuhl.

Hi MaryAnn:

I'm sending you some more phone cards. Should be there in a couple of weeks.

I wish you a very Merry Christmas and a great New Year.

In 1952, I spent Christmas and New Years on an Outpost in Korea. On New Year's Eve, the 11th Mar. Reg. (artillery) shot a Regimental Time on Target. I don't think the Chinese appreciated our method of celebrating the occasion. It was great.

"It was great." Heh. These guys never change.

Some day, with his permission, I'll have to share his story about the Battle of the Hook.

Operation Winter Stand

PFC Fortier, 1-503 IN BN, 173rd ABCT, pulls security at a landing zone in Naka, Afghanistan.


Click here for more 173rd ABCT Afghanistan posts.

Christmas Message from Afghanistan

From the Sky Soldiers of Battle Company, 2-503 IN, 173rd ABCT who are manning the Korengal Outpost in Afghanistan:

Merry Christmas to all -

I am writing to you to wish you and your loved ones a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays. The men of Battle Company and I want to ensure that you know you are all deep in our thoughts and prayers as the whole Battle Hard family celebrates their holiday season apart from those they love.

As members of the family I wanted to include you in our best wishes, and ensure that you know and understand that we celebrate this season with you.

Despite our losses this year we will honor those who have given their all with a small show of appreciation. Tomorrow night at 1500 Zulu the men of Battle Company will shoot one illumination round for each of our fallen brothers.

Each of the rounds will be fired by one of the soldier's brothers in order, and lying over the spot in which they made their final sacrifice. I will include pictures of the occasion tomorrow night on a follow up email, but wanted each of you to know that at 1500 Zulu (1000 AM EST) if you look up into the sky-- know that your Battle Hard Family is there with you.

Please don't take this in the wrong way, but as a gesture of appreciation and a way for the Battle soldiers spread across the valley and the world to unite and pay tribute to their fallen brothers. I ask that at 1500 Zulu you join in with us and look out your window and up into the sky and know that we celebrate this Christmas as a family.

Merry Christmas to all, and Happy Holidays.

I hope you'll all be standing by Christmas day at 1500 Zulu.


Click here for more 173rd ABCT Afghanistan posts.

Merry Christmas

Arrived the other day to spend Christmas with the family in the U.S. The last family member will arrive this afternoon on a red eye after working the Hawaii Bowl game last night.

It feels odd not to be with the guys at Landstuhl, but I'll be thinking of them and everyone downrange. They all do what they do so the rest of us can celebrate Christmas at home with our families.

I'd like to ask you to please join me in sending up some special thoughts and prayers to the Hauser family who arrived at Walter Reed 2 days ago after over three weeks in Germany. Hugs and much love to you, Margie and Ray. We're all pulling for Mike!

Last but not least, a shout out to my buddy and hero Zach, back in Texas from Iraq via Landstuhl and Bethesda just in time for Christmas.

A blessed and peaceful Christmas to all!

Victory is an orphan

Victor Davis Hansen on impatience, historical amnesia, and the juvenile demand for perfection.

[M]ore likely the American public, not the timeless nature of war, has changed.

We no longer easily accept human imperfections. We care less about correcting problems than assessing blame — in postmodern America it is defeat that has a thousand fathers, while the notion of victory is an orphan.

We fail to assume that the enemy makes as many mistakes but addresses them less skillfully. We do not acknowledge the role of fate and chance in war, which sometimes upsets our best endeavors.

Most importantly we are not fixed on victory as the only acceptable outcome.

What are the causes of this radically different attitude toward military culpability?

An affluent, leisured society has adopted a therapeutic and managerial rather than tragic view of human experience — as if war should be controllable through proper counseling or a sound business plan.

We take for granted our ability to talk on cell phones to someone in Cameroon or select from 500 cable channels; so too we expect Saddam instantly gone, Jeffersonian democracy up and running reliably, and the Iraqi economy growing like Dubai's in a few seasons. If not, then someone must be blamed for ignorance, malfeasance, or inhumanity.

It is as though we expect contemporary war to be waged in accordance with warranties, law suits, and product recalls, and adjudicated by judges and lawyers in stale courtrooms rather than won or lost by often emotional youth in the filth, confusion, and barbarity of the battlefield.

This excellent essay offers some important reminders from the past, putting the state of our current conflicts into much-needed historical perspective.

H/t Power Line

Update: In semi-related news, this couldn't have happened to a nicer guy: (via CDR Salamander at Milblogs)

After months of congressional pressure, the Department of Defense Office of Inspector General has opened an investigation of an Army general who tried to bring murder charges against U.S. troops. ...

"I am troubled by the premeditated-murder charges levied against Master Sergeant Troy Anderson and Captain Dave Staffel" of Special Forces, said Mr. Jones, in an October letter to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates. "Based on his own statements, Lieutenant General Frank Kearney directed that charges be brought against these two American heroes despite the fact that the two soldiers were exonerated by the Army's Criminal Investigation Command." ...

The three-star general angered many Army Special Forces and Marine Special Operations Command members when he tried twice to bring legal actions against U.S. forces.

Whether Lt Gen Kearney's motives were personal or based on the aforementioned unrealistic expectations of perfectionism and PC-ness in war, as a good friend of mine quipped last night, "Nothing is quite so difficult to watch as a big organization with a very big ass trying to cover it."

Good to see that people are waking up to the fact that some of these CYA, kneejerk reactions can be legally considered "overreach".

The Screaming Angels

(This is a repost from April, 2006. I thought of it recently now that the 101st are back downrange.)

From a letter submitted by Aric Catron, 25, a Washington state National Guardsman to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

On one of those days in Iraq where I wasn't sure if I'd see my daughter again, I was working at a checkpoint near a small camp in the desert. (...)

On this particular day one of the locals had his little girl with him. She was shyly watching me from behind his legs. When I smiled and waved at her, she brazenly ran up to me with a big smile and held out her arms, expecting to be picked up.

At first I was shocked at her sudden bravery, and it took me a second to reach down and pick her up. When I did, she immediately kissed me on my cheek and then nestled in as if she meant to stay a while.

I looked toward her father and he immediately began talking rapidly in Arabic and gesturing at me. Our translator quickly explained that he, the father, had been locked in a prison for most of the child's life. He had been sentenced to death for being a Shiite dissident traitor.

The man went on to say that soldiers wearing the same patch on the shoulder as I was (the 101st Airborne Division) had freed him shortly after we began the liberation of Iraq.

His daughter from then on believed that the famous Screaming Eagle patch of the 101st meant that we were angels sent to protect her family.

Read the rest.

Thanks to Soldiers' Angel Nila for passing this on.