Know Your Men

19DEC2007

This year 137 soldiers have committed suicide in the Iraq Theater. There are 30 more still under investigation. Yesterday a soldier from an unknown unit committed suicide on Camp Taji. The issue of suicide has become a serious issue in the chain of command and at the conclusion of every brief we reminded to “know your soldiers”.

When a soldier commits such a violent act upon him or herself the soldiers chain of command comes under the spot light. Did the service members of the individual solder do everything in their power to prevent such an accident? Was the chain of command involved in every aspect of the service member’s life?

Tonight I am training a Private who has been assigned a new machine gun how to properly disassemble and reassemble his weapon. This soldier has not operated this weapon before and is getting a crash course two nights prior to going into theater. It has been awhile since I have had a machine gun in my hands but like riding a bike I was able to easily show all the proper steps to basic machine gun maintenance.

Training this particular Service Member how to properly use the M249 Machine Gun is ironic because just two months ago we removed this soldiers M4 riffle from him after he stated he was going to do harm against his chain of command.

 

22DEC2007

Today is our final day in Kuwait and at 13:00 this unit will pick up and move into Iraq to begin a fifteen month deployment joining 150,000 other Americans currently serving in Iraq. Soldiers have called there loves ones for the last time and will not have contact with the outside world for a few days while in transition.

Also today, live Force Protection ammunition was issued to each soldier. After today no more blank ammunition will seen for over a year and only live rounds will be issued. This is not something we are used to seeing, for the last two years we have had blank firing adapters on the end or our weapons and have training with primarily blank ammunitions.

It is surreal to hear the sounds of magazines being loaded for the soul purpose of going to war and not going to a training range. Each bullet that you hand load into you personal magazine has a different meaning to it than it did yesterday. Bullets loaded now will not be fired at paper targets or balloons. A bullet fired now will serve as a means of self defense or with the intent to destroy an enemy. Each Service Member in my unit now and for the next fifteen months will have the power to take life at a moments notice. I trust each and every one of them with my life and have all the confidence in the world that this unit is ready to go.

Last night at dinner my weapon Specialist told me a story of how impressed he was with the accuracy of the soldiers in this unit. While he was at the range he witnessed that soldiers were able to hit targets accurately walking, running, shooting left or right handed, from 5 to 15 meters. The last two years of training has this unit better trained and better equipped than a majority of units that enter the Iraq Theater.