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U.S. Army Teams Record Lessons From Iraq
I think this a good idea. They get the story right, while it's fresh. Plus it gives these guys a chance to talk about it and maybe get it out of they're system a bit.Pfc. Derek Smolos looked into the video camera as calmly as he could and began telling his story.He described how his Bradley Fighting Vehicle was ambushed. He pointed to the burnt-out truck from where Iraqi troops fired a rocket-propelled grenade. He looked toward where his section leader, wounded by the blast, jumped out of the turret and ran for cover. Smolos wasn't rattled a bit by the U.S. Army combat camera team in front of him, recording a video history of the 3rd Infantry Division's campaign to overthrow Saddam Hussein. The adrenaline was rushing through his veins for another reason â returning to the place where he had been attacked. "I was very nervous about being back in that spot," said Smolos, 20, of Ithaca, N.Y. "I was confronting what just about killed me." Before they go home, leaving the land where they risked their lives, U.S. soldiers are returning to the battlefields where they fought just weeks ago to recount and record their impressions, their memories and their feelings. Smolos's vivid tale of the ambush, given as he walked the camera team through the place where it happened, was just the kind of account that Col. David Perkins said he hoped to capture for military historians and to record lessons learned by troops in the field. "We're trying to do it while we still have it fresh in our minds, while we're here, before everyone goes to the four winds. And we're trying to get back on the terrain, mainly because it jogs the memory when somebody sees, `Oh yeah, we were here, the tank was there,'" said Perkins, the 2nd Brigade commander. Capt. Steve Berry, commander of A Company, 4th Battalion, 64th Armor Regiment, described how his company engaged 10 Iraqi armored personnel carriers, which were hitting his M1A1 Abrams tank with 30 mm cannon fire. "The survivability of the tank is what saved us here," Berry said, explaining that he could hear the shells hit the front of his tank but didn't feel the impact. "If these guys had more time, they could have fired Sagger missiles at us, but that takes time and it's wire-guided." I remember when the Abrams were first being built. They were too big, gas guzzlers, the guns were bad, they were deathtraps. Shows what media "defense experts" know. Perkins said the recordings and information will be valuable for the Army, which has already begun to analyze the war in Iraq for potential changes in military doctrine regarding the use of armor units in urban areas. "It becomes a very useful resource," he said. "We just want to historically recount what happened, and try to put the pieces together." The combat camera team carried two video cameras to film from two different angles and capture the scene while the officers and men involved in the battles described them. Some soldiers learned things about the battle that they didn't realize until they returned to the scene. When Smolos' commander, Capt. Chris Carter of A Company, 3rd Battalion, 7th Infantry Regiment, went back to the site of the ambush, he was surprised to find nine destroyed Iraqi armored vehicles and four cargo trucks where he thought there were only a few gun trucks. Carter inspected the holes in the armor and the turrets that were tossed across the field when the vehicles exploded. "I think we've learned that the Soviet armor isn't what we thought it was," Carter said. Then he reflected about the four rocket-propelled grenades that penetrated the armor of two of his Bradleys. "But then again," he said, "ours isn't either." Posted by: tu3031 2003-05-10 |
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