Monday 12 June 2006

How would I have handled Haditha in 1986?

Haditha - the Yanks are in a tizz because some Marines hosed down a few houses after a roadside bombing and a bunch of civilians got zapped in the process. Some are screaming "massacre", whilst others are saying they were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.

What a difference 20 years makes.

1986 - I am an Army Reserve Grunt. Young, dumb, and... you know the rest. I am the biggest guy in our section, so I get the fun part - the M-60. Woohoo, 10 kilos of rock and roll. I loved that ugly bastard - heavy, lumpy and a bitch to lug around, but I never ever resorted to using a sling to carry it. I had forearms like hams and biceps like Arnold.

The Army back then was not as modern and switched on as it is now, and the ARES was the most underfunded, backward looking bunch you've ever seen. We were still training for a war that was over 10 years dead by then - Vietnam. The drills were simple - we'd patrol in section strength (8-10 men) day and night and brass up the "enemy" - fellow grunts dressed in black pyjamas and cone shaped bamboo hats. We marched to simple tunes, like "napalm sticks to kids". War was hell, combat was nasty and I was given a simple brief as gunner - carry lots of ammo, and blast merry hell out of anyone that took a pot shot at us. In fact, blast anything that looked like there might be someone lurking behind it that might take a pot shot at us. Trees, rocks, ant hills, dirt mounds, fat hampsters - you name it, I shot at it. I was good at that. I was fit. I was strong. I played that M-60 like a violin.

Urban combat was not an issue in 1986. We expected to be working in horrible, steaming out of the way places where "urban areas" consisted of a few bamboo lean-to's and the locals were not armed with mobile phones and handy cams. The leech filled, mud laden shit holes that we expected to be deployed to would not be crawling with the media. The important thing was to keep your weapon pointing away from your mates and to brass up the bad guys with extreme prejudice. Any nig-nog that got in the way was, well, a nicely ventilated ex-nig-nog.

So the thinking went. We patrolled night and day for two weeks, got thoroughly filthy and bruised, then got wildly drunk at the end of tried to screw the female members of the unit. Life as a choco was simple. Difficult concepts like "collateral damage" and "civilian casualties" were not part of our briefing. Keep it simple for us young boneheads. Kill them all - let God sort them out.

Haditha, 1986 style, would have been simple. Bomb goes off, someone in our unit dies. We jump out of our vehicles and run this way or that way, depending on where we think the ambush is coming from. Gunners like me start hosing down any that looks like it has Luke the Gook (remember the post-Vietnam thinking) hiding behind it. Trees, houses, cars, goats, donkeys, chickens, ducks, swingsets, above ground swimming pools, banana lounges - you name it, I zap it. The guys with the 40mm grenade launchers might pop off a few rounds at the buildings, trying to get fragmentation grenades through the windows. The riflemen advance and blast anything that moves with their SLR's.

I know what the M-60 can do to a brick building, so I aim low (assuming that anyone inside will hit the deck when I start shooting) and concentrate on the areas below and to the sides of windows and doors. I know that the 7.62mm rounds will go through a few double brick houses in a row without even slowing down. The fun part would be to knock down a small house with concentrated machine gun fire.

The thought of even approaching the houses without blasting them first - ludicrous! The idea is to kill everyone inside before you even get near the place. That is the idea of the air cooled, belt fed, bipod mounted 7.62mm machine gun. In fact, screw the machine gun - that is what helicopter gunships are for. Who wants to do house to house combat with piddly little M-16's and fragmentation grenades? Shit, the idea of running upstairs to see if a good guy or a bad guy was up there would be seen as lunacy. Someone like me would just stand inside the front door, point the M-60 upwards and fire through the ceiling. My offsider would run around just behind me, laden down with lots of green bags each containing a 100 round belt. Every rifleman in my section ran around also festooned with the same green bags. There was no question - when the shit hit the fan, the M-60 would be a very well fed little sucker. We all wanted the comfort of lots of firepower, and firepower laid on with gusto. Gunners should love the sound of their weapon firing. If you didn't crack a fat at the thought of blasting away, it was time to quit the gun and pick up a radio.

Of course we didn't have buildings to train with. In fact we hardly had ammunition to train with. We ate rat packs that had been packed before I was born. We shot up trees because trees are cheaper to grow than buildings.

These days, they call it MOUT - Military Operations in Urban Terrain (I think). Back then, it was simple - "contact front", or "ambush left" and we blasted away in the chosen direction and then assaulted with deliberate, murderous intent. It was not uncontrolled blasting - it was well directed, controlled firing. But it was no holds barred fighting. I guess it was a military mindset that was a hangover from fighting the Japs in PNG. The swine never surrendered, and they never asked for quarter. It was a real fight to the bitter end mentality.

If it was 1986 and I was at Haditha, there wouldn't have been any buildings left. Anyone in them would have been buried underneath the rubble, and knowing our mindset at the time, we would have tossed a WP grenade on top of the rubble to finish the job.

Boy, have things changed.

No comments: