It's astounding to get this direct from the guy who did it.
ARMOR GEDDON
avengerredsix.blogspot.com
posted by REDSIX at 8:36 AM 13 comments
About Me
Name:Neil Prakash
Location:Syracuse, NY, Germany
Cut off date: Jan 10th 1LT Prakash Avenger Co, 2-63AR OIF 2, FOB WARHORSE APO AE 09392 Liverpool H.S. '98 Johns Hopkins '02 Neuroscience Armor OBC Grad '03 Ranger School Grad '03 Currently enrolled in School of Hard Knocks
9 November(D+1): Fire for Effect
“Red 6, Outlaw 1. My LRAS guy is going to lay you on a building with bad guys. There’re two guys with weapons on the rooftop. Can you take out the building with main gun?”
“Yeah just tell me where to go”
He guided us forward, describing things we should be seeing in the road. Landmarks. Suddenly, we saw what he was looking at.
“Jesus. Look at the size of that thing, I said.
“I don’t think he realizes we can’t take down that whole thing,” SGT P said.
In the distance, a huge hotel building loomed. It looked about 6 or 7 stories high.
“Hey, there are some guys crossing the road,” SGT P called out.
I looked down and saw 3 guys race across the road from north to south into the hotel. They were too far out of range to engage with the coax machine gun. Damn.
”Let’s hit it, 8.” SSG Terry and I began to pound the building with HEAT rounds. Even if we couldn’t bring it down, anybody inside was definitely getting a mouth full of 120mm.
Suddenly 5 guys came out of nowhere from the left, sprinted in front of the hotel, and then crossed the road.
I sent a sitrep to Phantom 5, telling him what I saw.
“Roger. Send a grid and continue to observe,” he said.
Hmmm. Ok. They seemed to be running towards a central location up ahead. It looked like they were running into a mosque. So I looked at my map. I had a grid to where I was.
“SGT P. Give me a range to where you saw those guys.”
SGT P fired his laser range finder and called out, “2490 meters.”
I subtracted 2490 meters from the 10-digit grid I had and called up the grid I calculated.
“Shit there goes some more!” SGT P said. 5 more guys scurried across the road from the left to right. They had A.Ks slung and a few had RPGs.
“What the fuck?” I wondered what the hell was going on.
For the next 20 minutes, we kept seeing guys in groups of 3 to 5 sprint across the road and into a building in front of a minaret. I couldn’t see what they were doing once they crossed the road. I didn’t even know if they were still there or if they had moved north, but at least 40 or 50 guys had crossed the road so far.
A guy came running back into the middle of the road from the north and threw something. It landed in the road and exploded into flames.
“Molotov Cocktails!” A few more guys came out into the road and started throwing more bottles into the street. The fire got bigger. One dude started pouring something all over the flames. It grew into a huge curtain of fire pumping out black smoke. These dumbasses were trying to make a smoke screen. I guessed that the fuel was probably diesel, judging by the way it burned and the black smoke.
I called up what we were seeing.
“Roger Red 6. Continue to observe.”
Jesus. Can’t we do something about this?
”Hey this is Red 6. Can we get some indirect dropped on these guys? It looks like these guys are going into a building by a mosque.”
I made it clear on the net exactly what we were seeing. Phantom 5 started explaining the trickiness of this fire mission, since it was so close to a mosque. ”We need to be absolutely sure of this grid. You’re definitely seeing guys with weapons running into a mosque?”
Suddenly, I became filled with doubt and fear. I knew that they were running into a building. And I wasn’t sure if it was at the mosque or real close to it. At 2500 meters, you lose precise depth perception, looking through a monocle sight.
“Sir, I don’t know if this is such a good idea," SGT P said. "Remember what a stink they made about Baqubah,” my gunner was doing his job of looking out for his lieutenant.
I was getting frustrated. I started worrying about getting in trouble and being solely responsible for destroying a mosque for no good reason. “Dammit, but we saw those dudes just running across the road with A.Ks.”
“Sir, I know what you’re seeing. I see it too. I just don’t want to see you fry, that’s all.” He felt my frustration. He had a good point. If I did nothing, then there was no way I could get in trouble. But if I called for indirect, I could either kill some bad guys, or destroy a mosque for some bad press.
Inside of me, I felt like this was a bad idea now. I started thinking that I was going to hang. But there was a part of me that didn’t want to buckle on my own convictions. I couldn’t back down now. Maybe it was pride. That’s a bad reason to ever make a decision, but I felt like it was worth frying. I knew what I saw.
The BRT was still back on the bridge at the cloverleaf more than a kilometer behind me. They pulled the truck with the LRAS mounted into a position on the bridge where it could see what I was seeing. They were going to help me out by getting a second set of eyes on the scene. 1LT Boggiano called out a grid based on what his operator was looking at.
I copied the grid and looked down at my map. “No, that’s not right. The grid you gave is too close to me. This mosque is about two and a half clicks away.” Here was the problem. The whole damn road had mosques all along it.
He sent me another grid and it was much closer to what I had calculated. He also sent me an azimuth of 265 degrees. Once we were both looking at the same thing, he called up to higher to confirm everything that I had seen. The bad guys, the fire, everything.
I thought about 1LT Boggiano’s grid. He got it from lasing the minaret. His LRAS provided a grid number, where my laser just provided a distance in meters. But we had lased a tiny building in front of the minaret. “Hey SGT P. Lase the minaret that 1LT Boggiano is talking about, and tell me how far away it is from the building where all those guys went.” 300 meters. I added 300 meters to the grid 1LT Boggiano sent me. It was right on the grid that I had originally calculated. 1LT Boggiano had gotten a grid to the minaret which was 300 meters behind the building that I had calculated a grid for.
”Red 6, Outlaw 1. Get on the Fires net and talk to Ramrod 18 directly. And if they ask for a 10-digit grid, just add a zero at the end of both numbers I gave you. Don’t worry about it, it’s fine. Also, if they offer you CAS, Accept it.” 1LT Boggiano had been the champion of indirect and CAS so far. He was killing plenty of bad guys. And just like the rest of us, he liked blowing shit up.
“You know what? Fuck it. 1LT Boggiano is backing us up. So is Phantom 5. Let’s do this shit.” SGT P was fired up now.
I was talking with the captain who was in charge of the artillery.
“Red 6, Ramrod 18. You need to be absolutely sure of this grid.”
“Roger,” I sent him the grid. “I’ve got troops in the open. Distance, 2490 meters. Direction, 265 degrees. One round, adjust fire, over.”
“Roger, send that direction in mils.”
Shit. Well, I knew there were 6400 mils in a circle. And due west was 4800 mils or 270 degrees. And the direction was 265 degrees…so…um…”4700 mils.” Sounded right.
“Roger. Shot over.” The one round to make adjustments just left the gun back at camp.
“Shot out.” I replied. I was ready to observe.
“Splash over.” It was about to impact.
“Splash out.” Any second now.
K-k-r-r-BOOM. An explosion went off right where they had all been gathering. It was dead center of where the guys had disappeared.
“Ramrod 18, Red 6. That shit was right on. Fire for effect. Fire for effect!”
“Roger. 20 rounds. Observe effects.”
“Holy shit. 20 rounds? That’s gonna be bigger than the barrage.”
K-k-r-r-BOOM. K-k-r-r-BOOM. K-k-r-r-BOOM.
“Oh SHIT! Look at that! No WAY that just happened.” I was in shock.
Explosions went up 5 to 10 stories. Huge grey clouds shot upwards. It looked like volcanoes were erupting. But that wasn't what shocked me. On top of the explosions, bodies were thrown straight up into the sky. It wasn’t like the movies at all, where the explosion goes off and the guy is airborne, flailing his arms and legs. It looked like a child threw some action figures straight up in the sky. They didn’t flail at all. They just went straight up end over end and bloomed outwards like the petals of a flower blooming in fast-forward on the Discovery Channel. It was unreal. Each explosion sent up 3, 4, or 5 terrorists up into the sky.
K-k-r-r-BOOM. K-k-r-r-BOOM. K-k-r-r-BOOM. It was the funniest thing we had ever seen. It was also unreal. You never expect to see bodies do that. So when you see it, it feels surreal
”Red 6. Ramrod 18. How was that?”
“That shit was dead on. It was perfect.”
“Hey if there’s anything left, call for a repeat mission.”
Good lord. We hammered the shit out of them. Maybe there were some more bad guys around. Ah what the hell.
“Roger. This is Red 6. Repeat 10 rounds. I say again, repeat 10 rounds.”
And the rounds came in.
3 bad guys came stumbling out of the smoke. One was clutching his belly with one arm and holding onto the sling of his AK with the other. K-k-r-r-BOOM. They disappeared.
“Daaaaammmn!” SGT P laughed. “I shit you not. I swear that round landed directly on his head.”
A round impacted on a huge hotel-looking building off to our left. (If you look at the pictures in the Telegraph article, that’s SSG Terry’s tank and my tank hammering at that hotel. There had been a few snipers on the roof of the building. The round hit the right side, top corner.
“Oh shit!” said SGT P. “There was a guy on the roof.” When that round hit the building, it looked like God himself came down and pimp-slapped him off the building. He just flew sideways like he was catapulted into orbit. And this other dude got slammed down from the roof. He hit the ground and then bounced off the pavement for another 60 meters. SGT P told us everything he saw as I kept the artillery guys informed of what was happening.
“ Red 6, Ramrod 18. Send me a BDA(battle damage assessment) if you can.”
“Roger. That shit was dead on. I saw about groups of 5 guys blow straight up into the sky with each round that was impacting. About 3 guys survived the first attack. They came out of the smoke doubled over and grabbing their stomachs. The repeat mission hit those guys right on the head and finished them off. I’d say about 20 guys were killed.”
“Red 6, Ramrod 18 roger. What about that building?”
“Roger. That building that the guys ran into is obscured from the debris but it looks gone. The minaret is still standing. The mosque looks fine.”
“Hey good job on the guns, guys. Red 6 said he saw guys blowing up…”
Ramrod 18 was now talking to the guys on the gun line. We were all on the same net. Me being the forward observer, he being the guy keeping track of friendly locations and where the bad guys are, and the guys loading and firing the 155s. He relayed to them everything I saw, letting them know their work was appreciated and well-employed.
Later that afternoon, we pulled off of the objective and let the rest of the BRT occupy the ground. When we reached the LRP, some guy Toby Harnden and some lady from CNN were looking for me. I was told they wanted to interview me but I had no idea why. Then Phantom 5 and 1LT Boggiano told me about the buzz.
The reporters found me on the ground and started asking me a few questions. Major Johnson was from 2-2IN and said he was serving as the historian. He seemed to be operating in some sort of PAO role, so I felt good with him there. I was extremely skeptical about talking to the media. For one thing, I didn’t want to say anything that would get me in trouble. Second, I didn’t trust them to portray things how they really happened. And worst of all, I didn’t want them to convey how excited we all were about killing bad guys. I didn’t want to come off looking like a blood-lusting, warmongerer.
I described the situation as it unfolded without a problem. I tried not to show any excitement. I stuck with the facts. I avoided talking about how I felt…until he asked me what I saw. I knew that I loved what I saw. And I knew nobody at home would understand that.
“Hey Sir,” I stepped away and beckoned for MAJ Johnson. “Can I tell them what I saw? I saw bodies flying in the air and all kinds of crazy shit. I don’t know what I can say or not.”
“Yeah it’s fine. Tell them what you saw. This was a huge success.”
I felt a lot better now. “Man when those rounds hit, bodies went flying up. It was fucking awesome, because I was so frustrated that we couldn’t kill all these bad guys who right in front of me..." I went on.
I finished up the interview and I asked Major Johnson what the big deal was.
“You haven’t heard? They think they got [high value target] with that fire mission. The military intelligence and psy-ops guys went through there and think maybe 50 to 70 bad guys were killed in that indirect attack. And from the looks of the intelligence, it looks like there were a lot of key leaders in there.”
Now I was really pumped. I thought about all of the key players on this mission. If 1LT Boggiano hadn’t backed me up, I’m not sure if I would have gone through with the mission. I felt like the entire BRT had my back on this one.
Weeks later, back home in Baqubah, we talked about the absurdity of this mission. We dropped artillery into another task force’s sector. Ramrod 6, at the AAR, emphasized how he would never allow that. And we all agreed. That was fucking nuts. It was hard enough to coordinate fires in such a tight spot within your own area of responsibility, where you knew where all your guys were. But observing and dropping artillery in another sector is just plain balls-to-the-walls crazy.
posted by REDSIX at 10:48 AM |
