Rest in Peace, Brothers

This is what I've been up to for the last 24 hours. A platoon in my brigade was in a firefight, and the choppers came in to support. We need their eyes more than their guns, and they are invaluable. These guys were supporting the platoon in contact and were shot down. All we knew is that they went down and the general area where we think they crashed. Military buffs would call an attack into that scenario (no idea what the enemy of friendly situation was, not in familiar terrain, very little planning, very little sleep) a very high risk operation. I call it war. You never have all the answers, and seldom have any answers. You do the best you can with what you got.

Within 30 minutes of the report that we had a flyer down, my Panzers we rolling out the gate en route to the crash site. One of my platoons (currently the battalion QRF) was rolling within 10 minutes to the crash site and was the first on the scene.) I did not know the pilots, but I knew their call sign. I worked with them the day before. (see Troops in Contact) It didn’t matter to me that they were outside of my AO. Or that it was close to midnight after a very long day. It didn’t matter to my men either, although most were all roused from their sleep to get rolling. Others were on their “off” shift from guard duty. They knew that they would return from this mission and go right back out to the perimeter, their buddies having covered down on a double shift already. They rose to the challenge, transferred necessary equipment from their M1114’s to the tanks and BFVs, and we hauled ass (There’s no traffic after 2300, and everyone, I mean Everyone, gets the fuck out of a Tank’s way when it is on a mission.)

It took most of the night to get to the crash site, and the pilots didn’t suffer when they died, which is a small thing to be thankful for in all of this. A much larger thing to be thankful for is that at about 0600 we saw some of the shit heads coming out of the palm groves with weapons. After the Apaches on station expended their entire ordinance payload (30mm HEDP and 2.75” HE rockets), we dropped a 500 pound JDAM on the remains, just to be sure. We then helped the IA raid the entire town. I’m not sure what all they found, but they are somewhat less than courteous when searching homes. The average Iraqi would rather the US search a house than the IA, because we tend not to toss an entire china cabinet just to see what’s behind it. We tend not to. Depends on the situation.

Godspeed, brothers. You did not go gentle into that good night.