Discussion 6 Planning for Improvement

Doing more with less. The story that immediately comes to mind is a bit painful to recount for me, but I can’t honestly think of a more important one for me personally.

I was in Kuwait and Iraq during the initial invasion with 11AVN REGT 2/6CAV, I was in communications for an Apache unit. Several of our missions required setting up a RETRANS station midway between Baghdad and our TOC (tactical operations center). This was basically myself and a PVT setting up two antennas in the middle of nowhere so when the Apaches were flying over Baghdad they could talk back to command. The usual setup was two Humvee’s one with us commo guys and one with two guys for additional security. When we moved, either returning to base for resupply or adjust due to mission objectives we would have an additional security Humvee join us for convoy security.

Well more with less comes in when we needed an emergency re position, we didn’t have an additional Humvee for security so were told to just go with what we had. About midway through the re position our security guys pulled over and stopped for about five minutes. Honestly don’t know what the stop was for, refuel out of a 5 gallon can or just a piss stop but long story short we were fired on by three or four insurgents. I shot and killed a boy who was about 12 or 14 years old. He didn’t even have a beard. After what seemed like hours but was probably only a few minutes the insurgents retreated. We called in to the TOC about the attack and were told to continue to mission which we did. I left a dead boy laying beside a blown-out building on the side of the road. It still haunts me.

Back to the question of doing more with less. I don’t know if having an extra security Humvee would have prevented the attack. I like to think so. I think I could have done some things differently, wounded the boy instead of killing him maybe. Maybe there should have been a better response after the attack so he wasn’t left on the side of the road. I still don’t know if his body was recovered either by us or them. Things were pretty hectic and disorganized during the initial push.