Platoon Leader Stories

[tomahawk6]

This is a monthly topic for the Army Magazine from cc.army.mil [company command] this month though was featured some interesting accounts from platoon leaders.

http://www.ausa.org/publications/armymagazine/armyarchive/February2009/Documents/CompanyCommand%200209.pdf

Taking Charge
Lt. Stephanie Gillespie sat across from her brigade commander
in his office.
“What are your goals?” he asked.
“I want to be a platoon leader,” Stephanie replied. She
had been working as an assistant S-3 at brigade for the two
weeks since she had arrived in Iraq straight from the chemical
officer basic course. Her deployment experience so far
had been disappointing. After all, she hadn’t left a successful
career as a teacher and joined the Army as a 28-yearold
just to make slides and write memos about staff actions
in an air-conditioned building. She wanted to lead Soldiers.
“Are you willing to take any platoon?” asked the colonel.
He seemed to have something in mind.
“Any platoon!” she assured him. As her father had 30
years before, Stephanie wanted to be a platoon leader.
Soon after she left the commander’s
office, Stephanie received word that
her wish had been granted. She was
to pack her bags immediately and
move to a different FOB and take
charge of an Army Reserve platoon of
quartermaster Soldiers who were performing
an “in-lieu-of” convoy-security
mission. She and another new lieutenant
in the brigade were being sent
to the unit because of perceived leadership
issues. The company she was
joining had not had an officer platoon
leader for five years.
Stephanie’s plan for taking charge
was to lie low at first—to assess the
situation and get to know her people
before taking action on any of the [problems she might identify. There was, however, one issue
that Stephanie was prepared to address immediately. Her
unit, she was told by her command sergeant major, had a
reputation for poor uniform discipline outside the wire. The
Soldiers did not always wear all of their protective gear
while on missions. Stephanie felt confident that she could
correct this shortcoming right away. She knew what “right”
looked like, and safety was too important to postpone.
Hours before the start of her platoon’s first mission after
her arrival, Stephanie took the patrol leader aside and reminded
him of the uniform standard—Kevlar, IBA, DAPS
for gunners, gloves, eye and hearing protection, elbow and
knee pads. She wanted to be sure that
something as basic as minimum uniform
standards didn’t become an issue.
Several hours later, the Soldiers
showed up for their patrol brief and rehearsal.
The only protective gear they
carried were their Kevlars and IBA.
Stephanie could feel her heartbeat
quicken. This is why they sent me
here. She went to her company commander
and explained the situation to
her and indicated her intention to make  the Soldiers get into the right uniform.
“OK, that’s fine with me,” replied her passive commander,
a major.
Stephanie returned to the platoon and reminded the convoy
commander that the Soldiers had to wear complete
uniforms on the mission.
“It can’t happen, ma’am,” said the NCO. “There’s not
time; we can’t miss SP time.” The mission was set to begin
in two hours, and the platoon’s barracks were a mile away
from the motor pool where they were assembled.
“It can’t not happen,” insisted Stephanie as calmly as she
could. “You know the uniform standard. I reminded you of
the standard earlier today. It’s your job to enforce the standard,
Sergeant. You have trucks to move everyone back
and forth to the company area. There’s time to get in uniform
and accomplish the mission. Now stop arguing with
me and do your job.”
When her Soldiers returned to their barracks to get their
equipment, Stephanie realized how deep the problem was.
Some Soldiers couldn’t find gloves; others had to unpack
locked duffel bags to find their DAPS and knee pads. It was
painfully clear that these Soldiers had not worn the prescribed
uniform in a long time. The Soldiers were not at all
happy to be forced to scramble for their gear, but they did
manage to meet their mission start time.

This was an interesting story.

Responding to an IED Ambush
Lt. Mike Johnston reached across the Humvee and
slapped his driver on the arm.
“It feels good to be in the middle of the pack for once,”
Johnston said.
Johnston was the platoon leader of his battalion commander’s
personal security detachment (PSD). Usually,
Johnston’s vehicle led their convoys.
Today, however, the battalion was occupying a new area
of operations. American vehicles had not driven this road,
Route Malibu, in months. They were moving into enemy
territory, so a route-clearing element was in front of the
PSD. Engineer vehicles led the movement, followed by a
platoon of infantry, then Johnston’s element. Johnston’s vehicle
was just in front of his commander’s, which was tenth
in the order of march, a relatively safe position.
BOOM!
The noise and concussion shook Johnston’s bones. I’m
hit. Then he realized he hadn’t been hit. The explosion had
occurred behind him—right where the commander’s truck
should have been. Looking back, all he saw was a Humvee
door sailing through the air about 30 feet high. The battalion
commander is blown to smithereens.
Johnston sent a quick contact report to battalion and
then heard a radio report from his medic, who was in the
truck behind the commander’s.
“Polar Bear 6’s truck is flipped upside down and off the
side of the road!”
Johnston jumped out of his truck and started running
back along the road. Debris was still falling. The first thing
he noticed as he approached the vehicle was the massive
crater—15 feet wide and 5 feet deep—that obliterated the
raised roadway. Then he noticed blue Diet Pepsi cans
strewn everywhere. The blast had blown off the back hatch
of the commander’s Humvee, and the contents of the trunk

]had been jettisoned. Diesel fuel from the vehicle’s cracked
fuel tank was dripping over everything and everyone inside
the upside-down truck.
The Humvee’s nearside back door was open, and the
first thing Johnston saw was the commander’s interpreter,
nicknamed Scarface, unconscious and suspended upside
down by his seat belt. The back third of his head was
cracked wide open, his brain matter exposed. Johnston
quickly looked into the TC’s seat and assessed his battalion
commander. He was conscious and yelling in pain,
bleeding from his ears and mouth.
Scarface needs treatment first. Do I move him … or will
that screw him up worse? There’s no time to debate.
Johnston began pulling the interpreter from the vehicle.
The vehicle’s driver, Spc. Martinez, joined him. Johnston
looked upon the Soldier, who wore only ACUs. Where the
hell’s your gear? Then he saw Martinez’s IBA, still tangled
on equipment in the driver’s compartment. Martinez had
slipped out of his IBA in order to extricate himself from the
vehicle. He’s out here on a battlefield without his equipment,
risking his life to save his fellow Soldiers. Johnston
felt proud to lead such men. Together, Johnston and Martinez
pulled Scarface out of the truck and onto the road,
where the platoon medic, Sgt. Shane Courville, immediately
began treating him.
Johnston and Martinez turned their attention to rescuing
their battalion commander. His door was combat-locked,
and the commander—dazed, bloodied, bruised and
soaked in diesel fuel—was having difficulty staying alert.
Johnston worried that the vehicle would go up in flames at
any moment. He coached his commander to unlock the
door’s combat lock. Johnston and Martinez, both weight
lifters, strained against the door, pulling with all their might
to open it. The door wouldn’t budge.
How are we going to get him out? If we have to wait for
equipment, that’s an hour at best.We don’t have that much
time.
Then Johnston remembered the “rat claw.” When he had
been at brigade headquarters a couple weeks earlier, the
brigade safety officer had handed him a prototype rat claw
that he had developed to pull doors off Humvees. Only one
per battalion had been issued. Johnston had thrown it into
the trunk of one of his vehicles and hadn’t given it another
thought … until now. Fortunately, that vehicle was in the
convoy today. Unfortunately, it was last in the order of
march, at least 200 meters away.
Johnston sprinted down the road. He felt totally exposed.
The IED had been command-detonated. He knew it was
likely that he was being watched. His understrength platoon
had no dismounts to spare. His only protection as he ran
along the raised roadway were his gunners atop Humvees,
positioned 50 meters apart from one another along his route.
Johnston arrived at the last vehicle. The back hatch
wouldn’t open. Aahhh! He beat on it. No luck. He climbed up
on the hatch and stomped up and down as hard as he
could. Finally, the hatch popped. Johnston pulled the hatch
open and dug through the gear to find the rat claw. It wasn’t
small. At one end was a large, heavy metal claw designed
to clamp onto Humvee doors. Several long cables came off
it with hooks on their ends to affix to vehicles or winches.
Johnston began his sprint back to the commander’s destroyed
truck. He held the claw to his chest with both arms,
the cables resting over his shoulders, the hooks dragging
along the ground behind him. Johnston, a collegiate athlete
who prided himself on staying in top physical condition, was
shocked at how exhausted he felt. How the hell is it possible
that I have to do this? Running my ass off, exposed to the
enemy, dragging godforsaken hooks behind me, and my
commander could go up in flames any second. This sucks.
Back at his commander’s truck, Johnston clamped the
claw to the stuck door and then guided his own vehicle into
position to hook up to the cables. It was time to try pulling
the door off. I hope it doesn’t cause a spark that sends
everything up in flames. Everyone held his breath as the
vehicle pulled forward. The door popped off without a hitch.
The claw worked exactly as designed.
Johnston and the medic struggled to pull their commander
out of the vehicle. He was a big man, and it seemed like
every piece of equipment got stuck on everything possible
as they attempted to extricate him. As soon as they got him
out and onto the ground, the commander went into shock.
The medic, who had snaked a tube into Scarface and was
still treating him, gave verbal instructions to Martinez, who
successfully treated and stabilized his commander.
With his commander safe, the situation began to come
under control for Johnston. Using his MBITR radio, he sent
reports to the nearest company, which relayed them to the
battalion TOC. The infantry platoon that had been in the
convoy—which had inexplicably stayed with the engineers
and not stopped after the IED attack—finally returned and
provided security. With adequate security established, a
medevac bird came in for the commander, landing in an
Iraqi family’s front yard next to the crash site. The destroyed
vehicle’s gunner, who was less seriously injured, had been
able to crawl out of the turret and was evacuated by the
EOD JERRV vehicle.
Scarface died on the road. The platoon placed him in a
body bag and laid it across the back seat of one of their
trucks for the short trip to the patrol base. The gunner essentially
had to sit on the body, which he found upsetting—
Scarface was like a member of the platoon.
On what should have been a short movement, another
IED was found alongside the road. Johnston and his platoon
had to wait on the road for about 35 minutes as an
EOD team arrived and destroyed the ordnance in place.
Johnston used the time to talk with his battalion TOC, correcting
inaccuracies in earlier reports the TOC had received
about the ambush.