determined enemy fighters at close quarters.
This presented quite a leadership dilemma. Again, I discussed
options with my trusted LPO: “We can stay where we are and wait until
nightfall. Or we can quickly break out of here and foot-patrol back to
COP Falcon. Or we could call in the Bradleys^1 for extract, though that
could take some time.” Bradley Fighting Vehicles provided protection
from small-arms fire behind their armored plating, and they brought
significant firepower with a 25mm chain gun and 7.62mm coaxial
machine gun. But they required some time to coordinate—to brief crews
and drive to our position. Bradleys were loud and the bad guys would
hear them coming from some distance. This option would also expose
the U.S. Soldiers that crewed the vehicles to the substantial IED threat,
as the roads in the vicinity of our position were extremely dangerous and
had not been swept by the IED-clearance teams. This could very well
result in an IED strike—a deadly explosive buried in the road, which
might kill or seriously wound the Soldiers inside. Were this to happen, it
would require sending even more vehicles and troops in harm’s way to
extract casualties and downed vehicles.
Calling in the Bradleys meant waiting for perhaps another half hour
and would put Team Bulldog Soldiers in significant danger. It would
also endanger us riding in the vehicles through heavily IED’ed streets. If
we stayed in position until dark in accordance with SOP, we would
almost certainly have to fend off increasingly violent enemy attacks for
another eight to ten hours. Should those attacks exploit the significant
weaknesses of our defenses, we might be pinned down and unable to
depart without calling in massive fire support and putting more forces at
even greater risk to bail us out.
If we pulled out on foot immediately and quickly patrolled back to
jeff_l
(Jeff_L)
#1