of sports. He particularly valued accurate firepower, for being able to hit what you aim at. It is his conviction that most battles and engagements are won by units with weapons skills. Maneuver is important, as is knowing how to maneuver, but in the final crunch, it's the unit's fighting capability in terms of toughness and their weapons skills that wins in a fight.

How do you train for toughness and weapons skills? By drills and exercises. By setting up a qualification course for vehicles such as tanks. And then by practice and more practice to reach combat standards. You push your unit's edge as far as you can. Then you push it farther than that.

Units need intensive training — if they can get it — even in combat zones.

After Grail Brookshire took command as 2nd Squadron commander from Jim Aarstaat early in September, the squadron completed its move to Di An. There they were to exchange most of their M113s for newer Sheridan light tanks. And there they also drew 81-mm mortars in exchange for their 4.2-in weapons (the 81-mm mortar could shoot closer in to its own position, a capability Brookshire wanted).

At Di An, in addition to receiving new weapons, the squadron would undergo a CMMI (Command Maintenance Management Inspection), an administrative procedure that looked into how the squadron's maintenance program was going. The new weapons were an important addition to the squadron. The CMMI was a bureaucratic joke.

'For Christ's sake,' Franks said to himself when the inspectors made their appearance in their crisp, spiffy rear area uniforms, 'the squadron's in the middle of a combat theater, and here come these rear area guys with clipboards checking us out like we're at Fort Knox with nothing better to do.'

There were too many scenes like this:

'Hey, look here,' a CMMI officer laments, adding up check marks on his clipboard. 'These vehicles have holes in them.'

'Shit, sir, they got hit by RPGs,' a soldier answers, with barely concealed disgust. 'That happens when you fight.'

Franks knew the CMMI threatened to take the squadron's focus off needed combat training. They did not let it happen. They kept their eye on the ball. It was a great lesson. Franks would later remember this as he kept focused on the training and preparation for war amid all the distractions of VII Corps's deployment to Saudi Arabia.

Despite the CMMI, the standdown for maintenance came at a good time for the unit. Most vehicles the squadron was keeping needed to be fitted out with new tracks or otherwise repaired and brought up to speed. This time also gave Brookshire a chance to get to know the squadron and for them to get to know him. More important, they needed a rest. They had been on line in operations for more than six months without a break.

It wasn't a holiday. Brookshire wanted discipline, combat discipline. He wanted a training program, to institute maintenance procedures that would work in combat, and to stress teamwork. He also wanted to get the squadron provisioned with all the right equipment, and to replace what was lost to combat actions. Weapons needed to be fixed or replaced, and fire control on tracked vehicles corrected. They needed spare parts, and they needed to load up on ammunition. While all this was going on, Brookshire was everywhere looking into everything, and he expected Franks as the S-3 and Gilbreath as the executive officer to be doing the same thing. It was a break from combat, but a busy time for the squadron.

Meanwhile, they took in the new Sheridans, and on the whole, they were glad to have them.

The Sheridan light tank was an innovative, and in many ways a flawed, machine (its official title was Armored Airborne Reconnaissance Assault Vehicle, or AARAV). Originally designed to be dropped by parachute, for use by airborne units (the 82nd Airborne is phasing out Sheridans, but used them effectively in Panama in 1989), the Sheridan was fitted with aluminum armor and an aluminum frame. It had a decent powerplant, which made it quick and agile (much better than the M113 in that regard); and because it was light, it didn't normally bog down in the often soft terrain of Vietnam. Soldiers also welcomed the big weapon it carried, a 152-mm cannon (the tank commander had, additionally, a.50-caliber machine gun). From this you could fire either an antipersonnel flechette round, a HEAT round, or even a Shillelagh antitank missile. The flechette round is packed like a shotgun shell with three-inch-long darts that are propelled to a velocity comparable to the muzzle velocity of a bullet. HEAT rounds (High Explosive Anti-Tank) were used for bunker busting. They were not actually used against tanks, since in those days the U.S. Army did not see NVA tanks. Shillelaghs were not used in Vietnam.

On the other hand, the Sheridan came with serious drawbacks. Its aluminum underside offered little protection against mines. The remedy for this problem, three- or four-inch belly armor bolted underneath, meant that the Sheridan could no longer be air-dropped. The aluminum armor on the front and sides didn't offer a lot of protection, either. This made the Sheridan especially vulnerable to NVA RPGs. Worse, the Sheridan's cannon used what is called combustible-case ammunition (This was the Army's first attempt at combustible-case ammunition. Though there were problems with it, the Army continued to correct these problems. The 120-mm combustible-case ammunition on the M1A1 works very well.) During that time, all too often, when you were firing a number of rounds in a short time period — as in a fight — still-burning residue from incompletely consumed rounds would often stay in the chamber, and you'd get a premature detonation. You don't want to be inside a Sheridan when that happens.

Still, for all that, the Sheridan was an improvement over the older M113s, and the troops welcomed them. Meanwhile, they had to learn how to use them. They had to learn to drive, load, shoot, and maintain them, and the vehicle commanders had to be taught how to command them.

When the Sheridans arrived, Brookshire asked Franks to draw up the new equipment training program — a job very like the one he would have on a larger scale twenty years later as brigadier general in Grafenwohr for the Seventh Army Training Command in Europe. There he put together the new equipment training programs for the M1 tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles, and MLRSs (Multiple-Launch Rocket Systems), then newly arriving in Europe. In Di An, the job was smaller, but more immediately pressing. Second Squadron would be taking the Sheridans into combat in only a few weeks.

For the training program, they had some help. The Army sent a team along with the Sheridans to teach the squadron's crews about the vehicle — about how to drive it, how to operate the turret, and about maintenance (both in the shop and at crew level). But it was Franks's responsibility to train the crews how to fight with the Sheridan and to determine whether they were combat ready. He wanted to create a rite of passage.

Under Franks's direction, the noncommissioned officers of the squadron built a crew qualification course near Di An, where crews would have to pass a series of tough, realistic exercises with strict standards. On the course, Sheridan crews would fire at a number of situational targets, that is, standard silhouette targets that replicated the kinds of situations they were likely to face in combat. There also were a few hard targets — damaged vehicles were used for that purpose. For these exercises, live ammunition was used and tank crew examiners rode along in the vehicles when they were shooting to score and critique the crews. If the crews didn't pass, they shot again until they did. At the end of the training, there was a graduation course. When they passed that, they were certified ready for combat.

It was a good program, and it paid off. When 2nd Squadron crews completed Fred Franks's training program, they were ready to fight with the new vehicles, and to fight with them in units.

ACTION

In early October, the squadron was sent to Loc Ninh, about thirty kilometers north of An Loc, with a mission much like their earlier operation in August, to secure both the road to An Loc — Highway 14—and the area around Loc Ninh.

Loc Ninh was a village of close to fifteen hundred people (three or four thousand people lived in An Loc, which was the market town and commercial center for the district). Around and about Loc Ninh were farms and rice paddies, and a small logging industry operated in the forests nearby. The road was the only access for the local people to their markets, and the Army needed the highway for military convoys to resupply 2nd Squadron. The North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong tried to close the road by laying mines and setting up ambushes. There were quite a few NVA around Loc Ninh, and Franks and the squadron saw constant action, sometimes two or three times a day.

Добавить отзыв
ВСЕ ОТЗЫВЫ О КНИГЕ В ИЗБРАННОЕ

0

Вы можете отметить интересные вам фрагменты текста, которые будут доступны по уникальной ссылке в адресной строке браузера.

Отметить Добавить цитату