Tank? What tank? I’m going to Escape and Evade!
PT VI
Well, this was the morning of the enemies ‘Big Attack’. We got word about 15 minutes after dawn that the enemy was moving but the battalion was holding them. A short time after that, one enemy T-62 broke the lines and moved right to the TOC. As it rolled up, we fired at it, but M-16s are no good against armor. The battalion had no anti-tank weapons inside the TOC area, so the only thing that slowed the tank down was when the ground guide (safety guy that walks in front of the tank to make sure it doesn’t roll over anyone) stopped the tank, pointed at us and made some funny arm gestures at us, and then continued to lead the tank straight at the TOC tent. The tank then traversed it’s turret and fired two (blank) rounds at the tent.
We found out after the tank left, that the funny arm gestures meant that we were in the path the tank chose to drive, so we were crushed under it. The OC’s determined that too many people died, so they made us draw random casualty cards to determine our injuries. Our team drew spine injuries. We would have eight hours to receive proper medical treatment or we would ‘die’.
We also found out that when the tank rolled up, the battalion commander had been on the radio talking. When he heard the tank was approaching, he grabbed a young private, handed him the radio and told him to write down the report he would hear. Witnesses claim he said, “Tank? What Tank? There’s a Tank? Take this [the radio], I’m going to escape and evade!” He then grabbed the S2 and the S3 (operations officer) and took off out the back of the tent and ran into the wood line.
A while after the battle, the exercise went into pause mode so the leaders could gather at a central location and conduct an after action review (AAR) of the last ‘phase’ of the exercise. During the pausex, you get to relax and recharge for a few hours before you move on to the next phase. We spent the time trying to figure out how to get away from this unit.
After the pausex, we waited for the medical aid. The troop truck arrived five minutes before our time expired, so we ‘died’. At this point, they tried to load us into the truck, but when they grabbed my ruck, they put it back down and told us to carry our ‘damn heavy bags’ ourselves. LLVI guys get that a lot, so we just grabbed them and moved our dead bodies to the truck. They drove us to the casualty collection point, but since we were dead, the medics didn’t want us. So, they took us back to the brigade support area. The graves registration was there and they planned to drop us off there, so we could start our recycling. The problem was, the driver and passenger had no idea where graves was, so, they dropped us off in the wrong spot. So, there we were, three dead bodies lying on the roadside in the middle of the BSA in the middle of the night.
Now, JRTC is pretty strict in with the rules. So, if you’re dead, you can’t use your equipment, you can’t talk to the living, you can’t move on your own, etc… You have to take the yellow key out of your laser emitter on you rifle and put it in the harness with the sensors. The yellow key in your harness is a pretty plain sign that you’re dead or injured. You also have to take off your helmet when you die. It’s another symbol that you’re out of the game.
After watching some soldiers walk past us and not do anything, Frydaddy got irritated and told P-Ro that he was going to scout around and see if he could find someone to help us. He moved off into the night and came back about half an hour later. P-Ro and Church had gone to sleep, so he squatted down next to me and told me that he was pretty sure he was going to hell.
He said that he found a tent and went into it. He looked around inside but all the soldiers inside were asleep and he didn’t want to wake anyone up. So, he turned around to leave when he saw one man standing next to the entrance. He approached the man and in a very Frydaddy way (plenty of cursing), he related what had happened to us. He said he went on a blue streak for about five minutes and the man just listened without interrupting. When Frydaddy was done, the man told him that he knew where graves was and he gave him directions. When Frydaddy turned to leave, his eyes had adjusted to the tents darkness and he saw a small table in the corner of the tent with a cross on it. He then looked closely at the man, and saw the symbol of a Chaplain on his collar. Frydaddy told me that he almost ran out of the tent while he apologized.
The next morning, we decided that we’d go ahead and play by the rules and see if someone would help us. There was a chow tent right across the street and we saw soldiers walking in and out for almost an hour. No one stopped to even ask us what we were doing. We decided to see what would happen if we went to get some coffee. The cooks were pretty upset that some corpses had shown up in their chow tent. No, really, they wanted to kick us out. They were afraid that if their OC saw them serving ‘dead’ soldiers, they’d be punished for breaking the rules. We took our coffee and left.
After another half hour of being ignored, P-Ro decided to go look for help. He came back a short time later and told us he had found the interrogator section. Our OC was there and he was pissed that he hadn’t been able to find us at graves. We explained what had happened and then he was pissed off because of the situation. He recycled us on the spot and told us not to bother with graves. We waited at the interrogator tent for a few hours and Church showed up. Then our platoon leader came by and told us he’d gotten us a helicopter to take us to our next location.