Vignette
Quick warning: I don’t like the written aesthetics of curse words, so I typically use symbols in place of some letters when I find it necessary to use salty language. In the voiceover, I tend to omit curse words completely. In this short story, however, I have decided to leave the curse words. In the written portion, I use the language as infantry soldiers tend to use it on a daily basis. Reader discretion is advised.
Captain Drake lay prone over her tablet briefing her platoon leaders one by one on the change to the mission. Her infantry company had been tasked to seize a hilltop overlooking a road intersection, and she had just returned from her leader’s reconnaissance. She showed her officers the pictures she had taken with her ETRO (Enhanced Thermal Reconnaissance Optic), which allowed her to see human thermal signatures from 300 yards in thick woods. The ETRO batteries only lasted about 15 minutes. Still, so far they had given her company a significant advantage by allowing them to see the enemy before the enemy could see her and her company.
Covered by a poncho and speaking in a low whisper, she pointed out where she spotted the enemy positions and where the support-by-fire position would be located1.
Private Snuffy, the new medic, asked the senior medic, Sergeant Jones “Why the hell is she using a poncho? It ain’t raining.” Jones looked at him the way new NCOs typically look at new privates. “Light discipline, dumbass. If the enemy sees the light from her tablet it will give away our position.” Some elements of field craft never get old.
Lieutenant Jackson, the 1st platoon leader, callsign: 1-6, had been tasked to provide support by fire for the company attack. After hearing Captain Drake’s updated instructions, he asked earnestly, “Ma’am do you want me to break out the quadcopter and confirm these positions before the assault?” Captain Drake thought Jackson knew better. She kept from rolling her eyes as she thought to herself “What the hell are they teaching kids at infantry school these days?” She looked at Jackson and said “No, if we fly the copter on the objective we’ll alert the enemy and lose the element of surprise. But make sure you bring it with you once we seize the objective and don’t leave it in the ORP2. We’ll fly it to look out for a counter-attack.”
“And Jackson,” she snapped as he was getting ready to leave, “Make sure you have a squad stay close behind the MRGPs (Mobile Robotic Gun Platforms), don’t just drive them up to the support by fire position. If the guns on those robots jam, like usual, you’ll need to manually suppress the enemy and we can’t have a lag in suppression.” Jackson looked at her nervously and said, “Yes, ma’am,” before quietly scooching his way out from under the poncho.
As Captain Drake quietly packed up her gear, she used her night vision goggles (NODs) to signal to her forward support officer, Lieutenant Bains. Fortunately, the new NODs replaced the infrared beam with a unidirectional Wi-Fi signal that still allowed soldiers to signal to each other without alerting the enemy. The letters, “CDR” popped up in the corner of Bains’ night vision, alerting him that the commander was signaling to him. He stood up slowly and crept over to her.
Drake whispered to him, “Do you think the rounds will actually impact this time?” Bains thought momentarily and whispered back, “It’s hard to tell, ma’am, but I wouldn’t count on it. We’ve done twelve fire missions in the last month and only three missions have had effects.” Drake looked at Bains discouraged, “Well, if they have a jammer maybe they’ll forget to turn it on so the electronic fuses will actually detonate.” Bains looked at her discouraged and said, “We can only hope, ma’am. Either way, I think we should fire the mission.” Drake agreed.
Bains whispered the fire mission into his radio as the platoons began crawling stealthfully to their positions for the attack.
The silence was broken by the sound of machine guns from the support-by-fire position on Drake’s right flank. “What the fuck?!” exclaimed Drake. “She grabbed the radio from her RTO and yelled, “Baker 1-6, this Baker 6! You weren’t supposed to begin suppression until after the artillery rounds impacted!”
“Baker 6 this is 1-6, roger that, you want us to cease fire?”
“No, God damn it! Just keep suppressing!”
She dived to the ground as the enemy began returning fire. Bullets whizzed over her head as she keyed the radio to call the platoon leaders from second platoon (2-6) and third platoon (3-6).
“2-6 and 3-6, this Baker 6, I’m going to cancel the fire mission, begin the assault now, OVER.
“This is 2-6 Roger.”
“This is 3-6 Roger.”
“Baker 6 OUT.”
Drake yelled over to Bains, “Cancel the fire mission!”
Bains yelled back over the roar of the machine guns, “They just called SHOT OVER, it’s about to splash.”
“Okay, tell them to cease fire!”
As soon as she yelled the order, three massive explosions erupted on the front side of the objective, Drake knew immediately that the artillery rounds had fallen short of the main defensive bunker.
“Baker 6 this 2-6, were those our rounds? I thought the fire mission was canceled, OVER!
“2-6, a few rounds slipped through, but the fire mission is done, keep moving, OVER!”
The assault continued, but the support by fire wasn’t effectively suppressing the enemy, and the company was taking heavy fire from the hilltop. Drake could feel that the assault had no momentum and she was furious.
As she lept to her feet and began to sprint forward she was rocked as more artillery rounds impacted off to her right. She screamed at Bains, “Bains, I told you to cease fucking fire!”
He responded, “I did cease fires, that’s not our artillery!”
A calm and crusty voice spoke over the radio. She knew that voice was the first platoon sergeant (Baker 1-7).
“Baker 6 this 1-7, our MGRPs just got hit with indirect. The first squad was right behind them, and they got hit too. 1-6 is down. I’m moving up second and third squads to provide suppression, OVER!”
Things were not going according to plan.
Drake felt her vision narrow and her hands start to shake as panic started to overtake her. The beta blockers she took before the mission hadn’t kicked in yet, but she knew they would calm her down in a few minutes.
She took a breath and spoke slowly and deliberately into her radio, “1-7, grab the wounded and pull back to the ORP, if you try to suppress from the same position the enemy will just repeat the fire mission and you’ll lose the rest of the platoon. 2-6 and 3-6, stop where you are and take cover. We are going to collect ourselves and try again. I am going to repeat the fire mission to suppress the enemy. Once the fire mission is complete, 2-6 is going to become the support by fire, and 3-6 you are going to assault the objective. 1-7, have your platoon ready to move to the objective to support third platoon. Acknowledge in sequence, OVER.”
“1-7, roger, OVER”
“Baker 2-6, roger, OVER”
“This is 3-6 roger, OVER”
“This is Baker 6, everyone better get their fucking heads out of their asses, or we’re all gonna die here. This attack will not fail. Let’s fucking do this. OUT”
There is a lot going on in this little story, and if you are unfamiliar with the intricacies of light infantry operations, you might have found that you were a little lost. I wrote this story for a class at the Command and General Staff Officer Course called “Future Hunters.” The purpose of the class was study what the future of warfare might look like. Most of the technology here I made up. For example, if you Google “ETRO (Enhanced Thermal Reconnaissance Optic)” or “MRGPs (Mobile Robotic Gun Platforms)” you will find that no such thing exists, though things like this are being developed.
But if you take the technology out of the story, you will see that light infantry combat in the future probably looks a lot like light infantry combat of the past — brutal, raw, and unforgiving.
Leadership theories and ideas that are designed for office settings do not translate to the life-or-death situations of combat (and vice-versa). The problem for leaders in a peacetime Army is that we can easily forget how to lead in the direst circumstances.
Once when I was a company commander, I was talking with my platoon leaders and I asked them, “gentlemen, imagine that your platoon is tasked to seize a bunker as part of a larger operation. How many soldiers are you willing to lose to take the bunker?”
They thought for a moment before one spoke up and said, “Well, sir, I think we are combat ineffective after we lose a fire team, right?”
I said, “Okay, four soldiers, then?” They nodded.
“What about five? You take the bunker but you lose five soldiers. Would you do it?”
Another one looked at me and said, “I think five would be fine.”
They weren’t sure where I was going with this.
“What about six soldiers? You have to take the bunker to allow the larger operation to succeed. Would you be willing to lose six soldiers?”
This time there was no response.
“What about seven? Or eight?”
They looked frightened and confused. Apparently, they had never thought about this.
I leaned forward over my desk, looked each of them in the eye and said, “Gentlemen, the correct answer is: ALL. OF. THEM…and then YOU. This is the US Army, not the boy scouts. We will never leave the enemy in possession of the field, understood?”
Readily will I display the intestinal fortitude required to fight on to the Ranger objective and complete the mission though I be the lone survivor.
-US Army Ranger Creed
One of my more disputatious lieutenants responded skeptically saying, “Sir, is it really worth losing a platoon to take one bunker? Once you lose that platoon, you can’t get it back.”
I smiled knowingly and said, “That’s not up to you or me. We report to the higher commander, and he will determine the point at which we’ve lost too much combat power. But when you say you can’t that platoon back, you’re totally wrong. If we go to fight a big war, the country will figure out how to generate more soldiers and more platoons. The best thing we can do is figure out how to fight smart, with all of our available tools so we don’t lose whole platoons taking bunkers.”
They shifted in their seats, sensing that my speech was coming to an end.
I closed by saying, “The important thing here is the willingness to sacrifice. I know it’s counterintuitive, but the more ferocious we are, and the more willing we are to sacrifice ourselves in combat, the more effective we will be and the fewer casualties we will have. We will build that ferocity in training, and someday we will bring it with us to the battlefield.”
I am thinking about writing more fiction, either for the newsletter or as another side project. Would you be so kind as to answer the poll:
The support-by-fire position in the light infantry world is where the leader places their machine guns to pin the enemy down so the rest of the company can maneuver.
Objective Rally Point (ORP). This is where infantry units prepare the soldiers, weapons, and equipment right before beginning an attack.
>>Captain Drake lay prone over her table
I'm still trying to figure out what this describes.
So, I was a bit disappointed. I had hoped to hear more about the *changes* that future tech would bring to light infantry. I would be willing to argue that, just like the various pardigm shifts that light infantry has gone through in the past, there will be future changes as well that will make things look very different.
A fun thing to explore. I do some of it in one my stories, altho my focus isn't that much on the military tactics.