A Bright Eyed And Brand New'shit Bag E 4 '

James R. McDonough sets a spectacular example of what it is to be a second lieutenant in the United States Army and what it is truly like to lead a group of enlisted soldiers for the first time. Lieutenant McDonough, a graduate of West Point, was deployed as a platoon leader in a small fort with the mission of holding a Vietnamese village out of the hands of the Viet Cong. When he arrived, Lieutenant McDonough discovered that the former Lieutenant and platoon leader of the 2d Platoon, Bravo Company, 4th Battalion, 503d Infantry (Airborne) hardly ever left his

When Halstead was given this mission in Iraq, she never anticipated the challenge she would soon face. She had one year to plan her operation, train and certify her units for deployments and after months of painstaking preparation and training, Halstead was confident her soldiers and unit were ready to be certified for deployment. However, certification had to be issued by her superior, a three-star general recently back from Iraq—and the most challenging boss Halstead had ever encountered in all of her years of services.

The book Black Hearts by Jim Frederick is an in-depth narrative about the 1st platoon, Bravo Company 1-502nd Infantry 101st Airborne Division deployed to Iraq in 2005. The leadership failures documented in this book range all the way from the general officer level down to the lowest private. LT general Ricardo Sanchez failed to understand the climate his command group was entering as they were deployed into Iraq. From then on the entire leadership failures continued to compound upon each other with improper time to plan. It is customary to have a six month lead time to have a proper battle hand off when preparing to take over an AO from another unit. To compound this problem, the entire time the 502nd was in pre-deployment training, they

troops on a hopeless humanitarian mission pulled out of Mogadishu, Somalia. A few Americans realize that during this mission, U.S. troops had the most continuous and gruesome battle fought by American’s since the Vietnam War. The afternoon of October 3rd, 1993, soldiers of Task Force Ranger, and Delta Force were sent to capture two lieutenants of a rebel Somalian warlord and return to base. This mission was supposed to take 30 min, but instead, the soldiers were pinned down in the middle of Mogadishu market and in a desperate effort of kill or be killed. For about 20 hours, U.S. soldiers created a bloody firefight that resulted in 19 American fatalities and the death of 1000 Somali fighters. Black Hawk Down tells the story of that desperate battle, from all angles of the war.

When I went on mobilization to Fort Lewis, Washington and left my son in the care of my parents, I thought my parental duties would be set aside until I returned home. Unfortunately, the soldiers of 351st Ordnance Company would prove me wrong with their excessive alcohol consumption, commonly term “binge drinking,” and destructive behaviors. I would then spend the next year sharing the responsibility with four other junior noncommission officers in the task of taking care of soldiers. Despite the efforts of myself and the others we were not fully prepared to handle some of the outrageous events and lack of engagement from the leadership that would challenge us during the tour. My abilities as a junior noncommission officer and the understanding of leadership were redefined and I learned exactly what it meant to ensure soldiers have proper guidance, leadership, positive morale, and well-being.

Operation Anaconda was the first major joint combat operation against the war on terror that the US was committed to winning. This operation would test our military’s readiness for joint operations against a hardened and willing adversary. The primary mission was to kill/capture Taliban/Al Qaeda forces occupying towns and villages in the vicinity of Shahi Khot in order to gain control of the valley.1 The US needed the towns, villages, mountains, and more importantly, the intricate and hard to access caves cleared of enemy fighters. Units participating in the operation included elements of the 101st Airborne Division, 10th Mountain Division, Special Operations Forces (SOF), and Coalition forces from seven nations

On June 13, 1942 William “Wild Bill” Donovan set out to select, train, and assess hundreds of young enlisted and commissioned soldiers for the daunting task of operating behind enemy lines in World War II. Each of these soldiers would endure six to eight months of rigorous training that included small unit tactics, language, subversion, sabotage, logistical resupply, and supporting a resistance force. At the conclusion of training, eighty-three Americans would join the ranks of over a hundred Jedburgh teams that inserted into occupied France to disrupt Nazi forces. Their mission: organize, arm, and train groups of French resistance guerrilla and orchestrate the sabotage and guerrilla warfare activities to complement operations of the advancing

Many elite forces from around the world came together for operation Anaconda. The focal point of the operation was the Lower Shahikot Valley, which housed and protected a large number of foreign fighters – “Afghan Arabs” from al-Qaeda, Uzbeks, Tajiks, and Chechens from the Islamic Movements of Uzbekistan (IMU) 5. Takur Ghar was the highest point overlooking the Shahikot Valley and was a key terrain to capture for the mission. A noted Afghanistan specialist, Lester Grau, believes there were initially 600 estimated enemy fighters in the valley, which tallied with other credible sources6. The valley was protected by multilayered defenses. At the entrances to the valley, the insurgents maintained checkpoints, which allowed an early warning system of attempted ground attack7. The valley was “classic guerilla terrain – easily defendable, controlled access, numerous routes of escape, and near a sympathetic border”8.

In early January 2002, American intelligence received evidence of a large volume of enemy forces assembling in the Shahi Kot Valley in Eastern Afghanistan. Central Command (CENTCOM), led by General Tommy R. Franks, was directing combat operations in Afghanistan through the Coalition Forces Land Component Command (CFLCC) and Coalition Forces Air Component Command (CFACC). As the interest in assaulting the Shahi Kot Valley amplified, General Franks reached a conclusion that a U.S. tactical commander was a need in Afghanistan. The decision was to assign the 10th Mountain Division Commander, Major General (MG) Franklin Hagenbeck, as the tactical commander. In an effort to strengthen MG Hagenbeck’s command authority, CENTCOM named his headquarters Combined Joint Task Force (CJTF) Mountain and gave it command and control authority over Operation Anaconda. By having command and control authority, MG Hagenbeck would encounter challenges with the command structure. The challenges of command structure were due to CJTF Mountain not having tactical control (TACON) of multiple Special Operation Forces, the Joint Special Operations Air Component (JSOAC), and friendly Afghanistan forces. These misunderstandings were resolved during the execution phase, but rectifying the command relationships prior would have avoided lost time and resources needed on enemy forces and positions. In this paper, I will identify the challenges of command structure during Operation Anaconda.

Deceased philosopher Bertrand Russell once said, “War does not determine who is right- only who is left”. Those left are the soldiers of the 1-502nd, specifically Bravo Company 1st plt, and the Janabi family and to a greater extent, the ever-changing global world we all live in today. The tragic events that conspired in a small Iraqi village became a microcosm of how leadership failures at every level shaped the actions of a few soldiers who committed atrocious acts. One can also see how a high operational tempo, along with prolonged violence and death, has on a person’s psyche. It is the ugly side of war that the average American citizen may not want to hear or talk about. For a soldier, it is inevitably what they train their

The military has a saying, "no matter how well you plan an operation, Murphy's Law is always going to change it." As leaders, these unexpected events are something that we have to plan for in order to manage the operational risks. The events of March 4th of 2002, on the mountain ridge of Tahkur Ghar, later known as "Robert's Ridge," are a good example of leaders who overlooked red flags of the mission and ended up being a part of one of the fiercest battles in the Afghanistan War.

You have to consider for a moment the serious nature of this action. When we deploy, we rely on the person to our left and right. The profession of arms is one that requires all to do their part. Combat, by nature, is a physical, difficult, and demanding task. A person’s very life may depend on the actions of those around him or her. Ask any Soldier pulled from the vehicle hit by an improvised explosive device if that is true or not. You must have personnel on whom you can rely. The actions and directions from the brigade forced us to accept people who may be

It became clear this valley was an Al Qaida stronghold in the area; this would be the area in which the operation would take place. The problem was, U.S military planners had a hard time determining the overall size of the Al Qaida force within the valley, along with their composition. Initial aerial reconnaissance reports led the planners to believe that the force was small in size along with being intermingled with the local civilian population. (Naylor, 2005) Observation posts (known as OPs) had been set up earlier to give the planners more on-the-ground intelligence; those OPs gave a conflicting report of at least 400 fighters in the valley, with no civilians in sight. (Naylor, 2005) This would prove to be challenging for the U.S and coalition military forces. Never-the-less, a plan was devised to emplace SEAL and Delta sniper teams, while having U.S Special Forces conduct a convoy with their Afghanistan forces, and finally air assaulting Ranger and conventional assets into the valley. All of this would happen while an AC-130H gunship provided over-watch from the sky. (Naylor,

As we were refitting our vehicles with ammunition and cleaning them back out from the prior engagement, we got a call from our Company Commander. He wanted us to head back out immediately to conduct another mission in the same area. He wanted us to move up the mountainside to a village just above a valley where we were receiving the enemy fire from. He wanted us to engage the local elders and ask them why we were being attacked from the area and to see what kind of information we could get about the enemy fighters in the area. This valley was right across the river from the Hellgal valley. It had been known that this has historically been one of the major routes that has been used that leads to a number of camps in Pakistan. I could hear my Platoon Leader (PL) grasping at straws as we tried to explain that it was still a hot area from the contact and tried to explain that part of the area. He told the commander that we didn’t have an interpreter at the time anymore either. Our commander

Mission starts at 2000 day prep the Soldiers, vehicles, gear and equipment for night operations. Today’s operation was to get the Insurgents to give up their location by firing loom rounds from the 60mm mortar. We started out on foot tonight so strap up the old boots and head out for a night under the stars and miles of walking. We finally arrive to our spot to fire loom rounds where I began to realize wearing my tanker boots was not the best of decisions because my feet were killing me. I feet started to form blisters on the heels and toes of my feet and not trying to look week I took a knee, waited for the loom rounds to be fired and pressed back to our AO. Once I returned to the AO I rubbed down my feet put on mole skin and wore 2 pairs