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February 22, 2005
Battle in Falluja...
One of group of talented military bloggers is RedSix (AKA Neil Prakash) a typical modern American officer (college grad now commanding an Armor platoon in Iraq). His web site is here. Here is an exerpt from his entry about the battle in November 12, 2004
- I watched SSG Terry pull back and turn down the street moving west. I was looking down the space between that first corner house we slept near during the night, and the house adjacent to it, to its south. There were only a few meters of space between the two houses. SSG Terry popped into view as he moved from north to south in their backyards and then he stopped. The front half of his tank was behind the second house, but I could still see him and SPC Dawes standing up in their holes. SSG Terry was so high up in his hole, it looked like his ass was resting on the hatch. Suddenly, I saw a head peek from the back corner of the first house. I bent down into the GPSE to get a better look. When I did, I saw a red laser beam fire from just 10 meters behind SSG Terry…right at the rear of his tank.
“RPG!!!”
“OH SHIT,” SGT P screamed.
BOOM.
The RPG exploded on SSG Terry’s tank. The back half of his tank disappeared in a cloud of white smoke. OH SHIT. OH SHIT. OH SHIT. OH SHIT. SSG TERRY’S DEAD. My stomach turned and I felt sick. I can’t even begin to describe the feeling you get when you see your family get shot at by direct fire and disappear in a flash. All of this happened in the blink of an eye; the RPG, my thoughts, the sickening feeling. We couldn’t shoot back because there were friendly forces in every direction. It seemed like nobody knew what was going on.
”RED 8, RED 8, THIS IS RED 6. YOU JUST GOT HIT WITH AN RPG! ARE YOU OK?” I know it seems silly to tell him that. But believe it or not, in the confusion of battle, especially on something as big as a tank, it’s hard to figure out what is going on and what the explosion might have been. And there were a lot of things exploding in Fallujah. Grenades, RPGs, land mines, AT-4s, MK-19, 25mm chain gun, TOW missiles, Javelins, Main Gun, CAS(close air support) like 2,000lbs bombs, 5,000 pound bombs, and JDAMs, to name a few things.
In my opinion this war in Iraq is the best documented war in history thanks in large part to the bloggers both in our military and some Iraqis.
Posted by rakhier at February 22, 2005 10:57 AM