10 November: For Shits and Giggles

“Red 6, Outlaw 1. We’re at the clover leaf and there’s a sniper in the building on the south side.”

We drove up on the highway and headed south towards 1LT Boggiano’s platoon. Along the way, we passed a ton of press personnel hanging around Bradleys and PCs. There were Boston Globe folks, CNN reporters, FOX News, Time Magazine, and all the cameramen to boot. Too bad there’s no place on a tank to stick an embedded reporter. This is where all the fun is but the dismounts get all the coverage.

I pulled up to Chris but I didn’t need to ask him where to shoot. There was a building that just finished exploding from Mk-19 grenade rounds. There was brown dust swirling everywhere. Brass shells and links were just littered everywhere. I loved it. We actioned right and faced southwest to poise ourselves for a shelling. SGT P was on it and I didn’t need to give him any guidance. I looked over at the scouts to make sure everyone was clear. They looked at me and put their hands over their ears.

“On the way.” BOOM. “Ha HA!!” The house exploded. At a range of only 300 meters, the house exploded right after SGT P said “On the way.” It’s not like the normal distances for a gunnery range, where you can watch the round travel. It’s more like SGT P was down in his hole, remote-detonating a bomb. He pulled the triggers and all at once, FLASH - the gun banged and the house was blown out. We put two more rounds in it for good measure. It was a big house.

“Hey let me shoot a round!” Chris was at the side of my tank.


>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
We had talked about this before. He missed tanking and he never got to fight his tank in a high intensity conflict. I don’t even think he fired a single main gun round in combat here. 1LT Boggiano had been a tank platoon leader until June of 2004. I had been offered a specialty platoon with the BRT but after some long deliberation, I had turned it down. For a while afterwards, I kept second-guessing myself and wondering if I would regret it. A specialty platoon is an honor and a credit to your ability(and it's also about timing).

Plus with the BRT, everyone said I would have had a lot of face time with the Brigade Commander and would have locked in a good career start. And I would have been living at FOB WARHORSE, which is paradise compared to FOB Scunion. The food, the gym, the nice phones, the entertainment that comes there. The only group that came here was the 1st ID Band. And they were damn good. God bless them for being the only ones to visit us. And I would not have had to pull force protection and guard duty on the towers in this FOB. And no more tank maintenance and changing two sides of track every 3 weeks. The tank maintenance was blowing us out of the water at the time. We had put a year’s worth of OPTEMPO on our tanks in 3 months. The BRT, on the other hand, had humvees which are a joke in terms of maintenance. And they did a lot of the high profile raids and missions. They were around for most HIC situations.

Well the only reason I turned it down was because of the men I was with. SGT P made me laugh my ass off every single day of the week. SSG Terry. Well he speaks for himself. But I remember him saying again and again how we were the tightest this platoon has ever been. And we were like a family. I loved my crew. And my platoon sergeant was an awesome NCO to be partners with. Laid back, easy to work with and competent as hell. There was no way I was going to choose to give up this family. Plus, I had only been with my platoon for 6 months at the time. I wanted to be with them longer. Now I’m on month 16 and still running. That’s unheard of these days. I consider myself the luckiest platoon leader in the army. I joined these guys before the mission readiness exercise in October of 2003. I went to a gunnery in January and deployed with them. We've been through major combat and now we are all coming home together in a few months. It doesn’t get any better than that.

To top it ALL off, I have the coolest commander in the world. I'm not apple-polishing here. My time is up in this company in a few months and he doesn't even read this anyways. But seriously, this man is an awesome dude to work for. He backs me up on everything I do. When stuff goes down with the brass, this man will go to war for me. He never lets anyone outside the company interfere with his lieutenants' business. He never micromanages, he only gives us his guidance and lets us run with it. The times I've brought up ideas on how I've wanted to do things a certain way, he'll just say, "Yeah, and tell me how it goes." No bullshit, this is every lieutenant's ideal commander. Bottom line: This man extends the latitude and trust necessary for platoon leaders to grow. I consider myself lucky to work for a boss like that. He also grab-asses with everyone; officers, NCOs and junior enlisted soldiers are all comfortable around this guy because you can bullshit with him. I think his only pet-peeve is when I cross his First Sergeant. And for those officers out there who are reading, you know it's impossible not to butt heads with the First Sergeant.

I went with my heart and turned the offer with the BRT down. They offered the scout platoon to 1LT Boggiano. His platoon time had been up and he had the choice of becoming an executive officer for a company or taking the BRT. For him, it was a no-brainer. Being a platoon leader is the best job an officer can have. And for him, getting another year of platoon time was the best deal. But Chris always regretted not going into heavy combat with tanks. When he arrived to the BRT, he found those guys talking plenty of shit about tankers. As much as Chris loved being with scouts, he made it clear that he was an Armor officer in a scout platoon leader position. His heart was with tanks.
>>>>>>>.

“Of course you can shoot dude. Hop on up. But you gotta let me shoot an AT-4 afterwards.”

“Yeah of course, no problem.”

“Hey SGT P. 1LT Boggiano’s coming in”

Unlike last time, I wasn’t standing up on the turret this time. I didn’t know what other snipers were around and it was bright daylight out. I watched Chris mash his face into the GPSE to get a sight of the target. He took his time and got a good lase to the house.

BOOM.

“Hey,” someone shouted from the right side of my tank. “Let me know when you’re gonna fire so I can take a picture.” It was SGT Snow, the camerawoman who was attached to the BRT.

“Awesome. Thanks man,” Chris already climbing out of the turret. There wasn't going to be a second shot. I followed him down. We knelt at the right side of my tank and stared at the house. I felt bad that SGT Snow didn’t get her shot of the tank firing.

“Ok, let's go get that AT-4. I’ll set it up for you. And here, take these earplugs. It’s loud as fuck.” Chris pulled his earplugs out of his head and handed them to me. I saw an AT-4 lying in front of the tank in the median. I sprinted towards it so I could get down in the prone fast and launch that thing off.

“NO NOT THAT ONE!!” Chris shouted at me. I skidded like I was sliding feet first into homeplate. I scrambled back to the tank. “That one didn’t fire. We’re gonna need you to blow it up.”

“Ok no problem," I said. "We’ll do that when we’re done here and everyone pulls away. We’ll just hit with .50cal.”

Chris handed me an AT-4 off the back of the gunner’s hatch on his humvee. “Ok, the safety pin is out, the cocking handle is pulled, the sight posts are up. Just look through here, push that red safety in with your fingers and hold it down. Then hit the trigger with your thumb.”

I was excited and nervous. The AT-4 was clumsy. It just rested on your shoulder with a little shoulder backstop. I figured the thing would go launch into the sky when I pulled the trigger. Plus, everyone was watching. What if I missed the house? I’d look like an idiot. SGT Snow started snapping pictures like crazy. I was kneeling at the side of my tank. Don’t miss. Don’t miss. Don’t miss. BANG.

The rocket went straight into a window and exploded into the house. My body shook with the concussion. “Holy shit. That was awesome!”

I ran to Chris and high-fived him like a dork. “That was fun as fuck!” I handed him back his plunger-style earplugs – all covered with my sandy chunks of earwax. Gross.

I climbed back in the tank and told everyone in the BRT to back away. I was going to destroy this AT-4 that apparently shit the bed. Mewborn backed her up and kept her facing due south. I watched the rocket laying on the ground in my .50cal sight and lined her up. “Gimme a range, SGT P.” None of us had seen an AT-4 blow up close by so we didn’t know how far back we needed to be. After a few hundred meters back, I popped off a few .50cal rounds.

Df-Df-Df-Df-Df-Df-Df- BOOM. The AT-4 exploded in the tube.

“Goddddaaammn! That was pretty cool,” SGT P exclaimed. “But I don’t think that AT-4 would do shit to a tank.”

We pulled up to it and drove over the launcher, just to make sure nobody would try to use it against us.

The BRT was ready to penetrate the industrial zone. It was late morning on 10 November. 1LT Boggiano was going to take his scout platoon by themselves out to the south of the industrial zone but east of the city in the open desert. He would continue to observe with his LRAS while we spearheaded the main BRT effort. The plan was to take a building and use it as a stronghold to run missions out of to clear the rest of the industrial zone. My platoon would lead the way and take care of the enemy dismount threat and clear IEDs and explosives, while the scouts would seize a building.

Weeks later back in Baqubah, when the photo of me shooting the AT-4 hit the 1ID webpage, plenty of officers and senior NCOs came up to me to have a good laugh.

“That’s classic. You gotta be the only guy who gets out of his tank - armed with a 120mm main gun guided by the most precise fire control system on the ground – to shoot an 84mm rocket by hand, eyeballing it. Nobody else besides a tanker is going to recognize the idiocy in that.”

What people don’t realize about the tank is that the computer in the fire control system calculates a ballistic solution for each round it fires. The computer gets a range from the laser range finder. Windage data is taken from the crosswind sensor on the back of the turret. Ammo temperature, air temperature, and barometric pressure are all inputted into the computer in the gunner’s station. And finally, as the gunner is tracking a target on the move, the computer calculates and automatically induces lead. So even if you have the red dot on center of mass as the target is moving laterally, the gun will lead the target. To top it ALL off, the stability system keeps your eye on the ball while the tank is running amuck. And by “eye,” I mean “cannon.”

One of my favorite things to watch out of the hatch, is when the tank is bouncing around tearing up God’s earth and the driver is turning left and right. The gun tube stays still as death as long as the gunner squeezes the cadillacs on the GPCH(gunner’s power control handles). While the hull is turning, and the tank is going up and down, and the tank commander is eating the metal off the backplate of his .50cal, the gun tube stays right on target, rising and falling to compensate for the suspension. It’s just sick how badass a tank looks when it’s killing.