Gender, Lies, and Valor: Part 3 - Army Doctrine Doomed the 507th
Gender, Lies, and Valor: Part
3 - Army Doctrine Doomed the 507th
DefenseWatch
This article is provided
courtesy of DefenseWatch, the official
magazine for Soldiers For The Truth (SFTT),
a grass-roots educational organization started
by a small group of concerned veterans and
citizens to inform the public, the Congress,
and the media on the decline in readiness
of our armed forces. Inspired by the outspoken
idealism of retired Colonel
David Hackworth, SFTT aims to give our
service people, veterans, and retirees a clear
voice with the media, Congress, the public
and their services.
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By David L. Arnold
As a former officer in the U.S. Army's Ordnance Corps, I followed
reports of the ambush of the 507th
Maintenance Co. in Iraq
with more than casual interest and a real sorrow. Up until now I've
refrained from comment on the ambush, figuring that my experience
is a bit dated.
But after reading the Army investigative report and some recent comments about the 507th's experience, including the adequacy of preparation and training, and some comments that I perceive as perhaps unfair slams on them, I want to throw in my two cents worth.
I submit that what happened to the 507th Maintenance Co. at An Nasiriyah was not simply the result what any individual soldier did or did not do on the field that day. Rather, I believe the tragedy was the end result of a reality of Army doctrine and culture that had been apparent to those of us in Combat Service Support many years prior to the ambush of the 507th on March 23, 2003.
SFTT reader Mike Rooney, in his posted response to Col. David Hackworth's column on the ambush incident ("That Bloody Road to Baghdad," DefenseWatch, Apr. 22, 2003), includes two very telling paragraphs:
"Another noticeable point - was the large number of WEAPON FAILURES.
QUESTION: Did this small company unit, its individual soldiers, plus
assigned leaders - fail to ensure and perform 'preventive maintenance'
daily on their weapons? From pages 6 and 7 [of the 'U.S. Army Official
Report on 507th Maintenance Co.: An Nasiriyah, Iraq'] one gets the
impression - that this unit DID DEVOTE a SUPER HUMAN EFFORT to its
recovery tasks. But, did these recovery tasks consume so much time
- that weapons 'preventive maintenance' was ignored, or even simply
not performed?"
"On page 2 [of the Army report] it states - 'There were 33 U.S. soldiers
in the 18-vehicle convoy.' Math-wise - 18 vehicles divided into 33
people - equals about 1.8 soldiers per vehicle. Since most of these
were large truck vehicles requiring full driver attention - that would
reasonably appear to leave only about ONE effective 'full-time' fighting
gun per MOVING vehicle. In addition, on page 3 it states - 'However,
all pyrotechnics, hand grenades, and AT-4 anti-tank weapons were consolidated
and secured.' This leads to the QUESTION: Were these soldiers EVEN
ALLOWED to have these additional items at hand and ready for their
OWN DEFENSE?
Rooney is on the right track: Over the years, starting in the 1970s, Army combat doctrine has increasingly shifted the responsibility for rear-area protection from line combat units to the rear area units. Line combat units, previously available in rear-area security and "reserve," disappeared at the same time Army commanders began to recognize the emergence of "fully-enveloping threat environments" on the modern battlefield. At the same time, the strength and capabilities of Combat Service Support units began to decline in the face of an increasing mission and a "tooth to tail" imbalance.
The result is the personnel math problem that Rooney cites in his response to the report. When deployed in their proper mission in support of a fast-moving force, even highly-trained service support units will find themselves undermanned, too widely dispersed, and completely outgunned in event of an enemy assault or an unplanned meeting engagement.
An immediate reaction response to the ambush - laying down a base of fire and charging the ambush - are realistic scenarios for troops operating from APCs or assigned to a well-prepared Ranger force. As the ill-fated soldiers of the 507th found out that day against the Iraqi gunmen, it can be a damn sight harder for a support trooper perched in the shotgun seat of a 5-ton wrecker that is sandwiched between two fuel tankers in a convoy traveling without flank security assets.
This illustrates the wider issue confronting Army support troops everywhere: Providing effective 24-7 security for a widely-dispersed logistics operation with a TOE that is barely adequate for garrison support duties at home - and totally inadequate to run support 24-7 on a moving battlefield while simultaneously maintaining effective combat security, defense, listening posts, patrols and all the other tasks of area and route security - is impossible in today's Army.
Rooney also raises questions about the 507th's PM and, by implication,
their training and readiness. To explain my take on this, I need to
indulge in a small anecdote. In the mid-1970s, V
Corps and the 8th
Infantry Division performed the first division-level exercise
of an assault crossing the Rhine River in many years. It was a big
deal training event. I was Division Materiel Officer at the time.
After the bridges were in place at one particular crossing I was involved
with, the lead elements went across. The first element to cross the
bridge were some combat engineers (proving that they trusted the floating
bridge) from the 12th
Engineers. The second element across was one of my ordnance contact
teams and a recovery point group.
I admit that I have never been in a real combat assault river crossing, but I seriously doubt that doctrine calls for the assault to be led by an Ordnance shop officer in a jeep with a wrecker and a contact team truck.
The reality was that my unit (the old 708th)
wasn't there to train. Sure, we were tactical. We got to fold the
windshields down on the jeeps and work from generators instead of
base power. But we were there to make sure that the exercise went
well for the combat units - our regular job - not to do tactical training.
The second flaw exposed by Mike Rooney's commentary and underscored in the river-crossing anecdote are at the heart of what happened to the 507th five months ago. In my experience - and I doubt this has changed significantly, combat service support units are simply not allowed to train in peacetime for combat survivability in wartime.
The command structure and culture of the combat units they support will not allow it. No combat formation commander - whether at the company, battalion, brigade and certainly not division level - wants to hear that their combat readiness report is suffering because some rag-tailed Ordnance unit and its commander decided to close the shops and do convoy and ambush reaction training.
No armor brigade commander is interested in being told that his fire control is down and tanks redlined because the fire control mechanics are taking weapons training and running perimeter patrol drills out in the FTX area.
In my years as a either a field logistician or trainer, I met damn few combat commanders who were ever willing to take a hit on their own readiness reports and stand up to their highers so that the CSS guys and gals supporting them could be out taking care of combat training and readiness for their own units.
In my last year or so with the 8th ID, the Division Support Commander was the late Col. Winfield Holt, an Infantry officer's Infantry officer. He understood our problem, but even he, with the leverage of being a combat line officer, could never buy us the training time.
So on that day in Germany on the Rhine, we I charged across the river on the pointy end of the division, and immediately set to work coordinating collection points and maintenance and supply ops all over the division area. We hauled trucks, fixed tanks, kept artillery pieces running with spit and bailing wire, handed out what parts we had, and generally didn't sleep much. When the combat units all went home to garrison, we stayed in the field two or three more days picking up the pieces and getting yelled at because we didn't have so and so's tank fixed and why weren't we back at garrison to open the shop?
CSS units, more than any other type of formation in the Army, do their wartime jobs 24 hours a day, seven days a week in peacetime. Most of them do it well and most of them are damn proud of it. They will put their mission skills, their wrench-bruised knuckles, their eyes bleared from reading rain-soaked tech manuals in the dark, their stains and breaks from wrestling with combat recovery vehicles - all of that - up against any unit in the Army. We lived then, and I suspect CSS troops live now, in the world of the immediate.
They are not allowed to live in the world of what might be - a world that might include sudden combat in the rear areas of a force on the march.
The 507th, whatever its internal strengths and weaknesses, was in large measure an ultimate victim of years of both Army doctrine and the paper culture of readiness reporting.
In all likelihood, the 507th was never allowed to fully train in the combat skills that would have saved them that day. If they didn't do preventive maintenance, it may well have been because, as Rooney senses, that they were spending 24-7 on the people their world focused on - their combat customers. They certainly were not equipped for what happened. CSS doctrine and staffing and equipment all in essence hold a little dark secret: Combat service support units are essentially expendable after the first day or so of battle.
Add that to an ass-covering command culture that too often demonstrates that managing unit paper readiness reports in garrison is more important than obtaining comprehensive combat sustainability, and you have a recipe for disaster.
I suspect this is part of what happened to the 507th Maintenance Co. an An Nasiriyah. It could have happened to any combat support unit in Operation Iraqi Freedom.
[Have an opinion about the views expressed in this commentary?
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