Quote:
Originally Posted by CA SGT
Spent some time at Joyce/A-bad, working up in the Chowkay looking for some dudes. It's an "interesting" area to say the least. Not surprised as to the level of opposition they faced that day, but I was mystified as to the TOC' s lack of assistance. They seemed pretty squared away when we we there.
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That was my unit(1-32 INF). All in all I think we were a very squared away unit(as do many others who later went to other units, so they had a comparison). Unfortunately, when this went down the battalion commander was on leave. The battle captain was very new and the battalion XO had to be woken up several times to come to the TOC(that should tell you everything you need to know about that).
Even worse was that one of our D co.(mounted) platoons was at the entrance of the valley the whole time and were ordered by the TOC not to go in. Our scout platoon was also just inside the valley and they repeatedly requested permission to move in. IMO, some orders are meant to be disobeyed, especially when you've got uparmored gun trucks and you are sitting there watching guys drive back into the valley.
Another part of the problem was that 4-4(the brigade 1-32 fell under for that deployment) had ridiculously strict ROEs when it came to using artillery. Huge shift from 2006 when it was "Flashlights in the open, fire for effect". In 2009 you had to have Brigade(at JAF) clear artillery, which took much longer and usually resulted in them requesting more information. Sometimes you got lucky and had someone in the TOC who knew exactly how to phrase stuff, but for the most part it took entirely too long to get rounds in the air.
That being said, Captain Swenson is truly a hero. I'm glad the MOH was finally approved.