Just a great film clip to share with you at Christmas

Every year the Dutch hold an event called the Nijmegan March, You can read all about it if you click the above link.

Here's a great little clip showing a small Belgian child as the Canadian Forces team in that event passes by.

Do yourself a favor, and turn up the volume while you watch it.

2nd Platoon, Charlie 1-26 (Iraq) and the mutiny that never was

I came across this story , and it's a revealing one if one realizes all of it's implications. For those of you that may think it's non-supportive of the troops, I'd suggest a moment's reflection before going there.

This is a story of how war effects the men fighting it, and it allows us to see the types of strain this involves on them - even in a well lead unit. It takes a surprising turn, although an understandable one, as that strain hits home.

Before you start to read the story, you should know who the men of US Army unit Charlie 1-26 were - and are.

The 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division — known as the “Dagger Brigade” — has sustained the greatest numbers of deaths of any Europe-based brigade; 56 troops have been killed in combat since the brigade deployed a year ago, mostly from roadside bombs. The hardest hit among Dagger’s battalions has been the 1-26 with a reported 27 losses.

During the year the 1-26 has been in Iraq, its soldiers have drawn dangerous assignments. They have rolled into, among other places, the heart of the eastern Baghdad sector of Adhamiyah, around the Abu Hanifa mosque, center of the extremist Sunni resistance in the area.

“Adhamiyah has been hot all year round,” Tharp said. “If you go into Adhamiyah and don’t fire your weapon, it’s a great day.”

“There’s every kind of attack you can imagine,” Tharp said. “I’ve seen machine-gun fire, precision small-arms fire (sniper attacks), large IEDs (improvised explosive devices), small IEDs, RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades), mortar attacks. We’ve taken everything they can throw at us.”

The 32-year-old from New Castle, Colo., estimates he has been hit by 14 makeshift bombs. The roadside attacks have damaged his vehicles and on occasions knocked him out.

“It’s been a very trying year. We’ve lost a lot of good men,” he said. “It doesn’t seem like we’ve seen the light at the end of the tunnel just yet.”

http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=55455&archive=true

These are good men, heroes all, and from what I've read they've been hit incredibly hard by unit losses, and fought in some of the toughest areas of Iraq bravely.

No one should question their dedication to the service to their country, nor the toll it took on them while trying to do it.

Such incidents belied the squared-away record Charlie 1-26 posted during its deployment to Iraq. In 15 months, they had one incident when two soldiers were caught with alcohol, Strickland said, but that was all.

“I think the performance comes from the level of discipline,” Strickland said. “And the discipline comes from the hardship. They’re a little bit more mature than a lot of other units.”

http://www.armytimes.com/news/2007/12/bloodbrothers3/

It got so tough for them that this unit refused to go out on patrol, not out of any cowardice, but simply because they realized they had become "dangerous". Refusal to follow orders is a serious offense in any military, especially in combat. For troops of this caliber , and experience, it's not a decision made lightly by any of them.

Though their commanders moved them from the combat outpost to safer quarters, members of 2nd Platoon would stage a revolt they viewed as a life-or-death act of defiance. With all they had done and all they had seen, they now were consumed with an anger that ate at the memory of the good men they were when they arrived in Iraq.

But when Strickland returned from a mission, he learned 2nd Platoon had failed to roll.

“A scheduled patrol is a direct order from me,” Strickland said.

“‘They’re not coming,’” Strickland said he was told. “So I called the platoon sergeant and talked to him. ‘Remind your guys: These are some of the things that could happen if they refuse to go out.’ I was irritated they were thumbing their noses. I was determined to get them down there.”

But, he said, he didn’t know the whole platoon, except for Ybay, had taken sleeping medications prescribed by mental health that day, according to Ybay.

Strickland didn’t know mental health leaders had talked to 2nd Platoon about “doing the right thing.”

He didn’t know 2nd Platoon had gathered for a meeting and determined they could no longer function professionally in Adhamiya — that several platoon members were afraid their anger could set loose a massacre.

“We said, ‘No.’ If you make us go there, we’re going to light up everything,” DeNardi said. “There’s a thousand platoons. Not us. We’re not going.”

They decided as a platoon that they were done, DeNardi and Cardenas said, as did several other members of 2nd Platoon. At mental health, guys had told the therapist, “I’m going to murder someone.” And the therapist said, “There comes a time when you have to stand up,” 2nd Platoon members remembered. For the sake of not going to jail, the platoon decided they had to be “unplugged.”

Ybay had gone to battalion to speak up for his guys and ask for more time. But when he came back, it was with orders to report to Old Mod.

Ybay said he tried to persuade his men to go out, but he could see they were not ready.

“It was like a scab that wouldn’t heal up,” Ybay said. “I couldn’t force them to go out. Listening to them in the mental health session, I could hear they’re not ready.”

At 2 a.m, Ybay said, he’d found his men sitting outside smoking cigarettes. They could not sleep. Some of them were taking as many as 10 sleeping pills and still could not rest. The images of their dead friends haunted them. The need for revenge ravaged them.

But Ybay was still disappointed in his men. “I had a mission,” he said. “The company had a mission. We still had to execute. But I understood their side, too.”

Somehow, the full course of events didn’t make it to Strickland. All he knew, the commander said, was his men had refused an order, and he was determined to get them to Apache.

“When you’re given an order, you’ve got to execute,” Strickland said. “Being told, ‘They’re not coming,’ versus, ‘They’re taking meds and went to mental health,’ are different things. It was just this weird situation where almost nothing connected.”
A revolt in the ranks

“They called it an act of mutiny,” Cardenas said, still enraged that the men he considered heroes were, in his mind, slandered. “The sergeant major and the battalion commander said we were unprofessional. They said they were disappointed in us and would never forget our actions for the rest of their lives.”

But no judicial action ever came of it.

“Captain Strickland read us our rights,” DeNardi said. “We had 15 yes-or-no questions, and no matter how you answered them, it looked like you disobeyed an order. No one asked what happened. And there’s no record — no article 15. Nothing to show it happened.”

After the members of 2nd Platoon had spent a year fighting for each other and watching their buddies die, battalion leaders began breaking up the platoon. Seven noncommissioned officers were told they were being relieved for cause and moved out of the unit. Three noncommissioned officers stayed at Old Mod. Two, including Sgt. Derrick Jorcke, would remain in Iraq for one month after 2nd Platoon went home in October because they had been moved to different battalions in different areas of Iraq.

“In a way, they were put someplace where they wouldn’t have to go out again,” Johnson said. “But as an NCO, they took these guys’ leaders away and put them with people they didn’t know and trust. You knew 2nd Platoon would die for you without a second’s hesitation. That’s what made them so great. These guys need each other.”

Then, they were all flagged: No promotions. No awards. No favorable actions.

“We had PFCs miss [promotion to] specialist for two months,” DeNardi said. “Bronze Stars and [Army Commendation Medals] were put on hold. You’re talking about heroes like Cardenas. These are guys who save lives and they can’t get awards.”

“I didn’t want to punish them,” Strickland said. “I understood what was going on. But they had to understand you couldn’t do something like that and have nothing happen.”

And things could not continue as they had. Strickland could not operate for three more months with a platoon that refused to go out.

“Within the company, we made some adjustments,” Strickland said. “They needed a fresh start. After looking into it, I didn’t feel the need to punish anybody.” However, he left the flags in place.

“If anything was going to be punishment, that was it,” he said. For at least one soldier, that meant going through a promotion board again. Jorcke lost his promotion table status, but Strickland signed a memo re-establishing it. “I’ve tried to fix those issues. Almost everybody else has been promoted except one guy.” Jorcke made his E-6 on Nov. 1.

Even after the “mutiny,” Strickland said, he had a great deal of admiration for his soldiers.

“I understood why they did what they did,” he said. “Some of the NCOs, I was disappointed in them because they failed to lead their soldiers through difficult times. They let their soldiers influence their decisions. But on a personal level, I applauded their decision because they stood behind their soldiers. I was disappointed, but I thought they had great courage. It was truly a Jekyll/Hyde moment for me.”

And though they were horrified at being torn away from each other, the soldiers themselves were conflicted about the outcome.

“For us being disbanded, now we definitely had unfinished business,” Jorcke said. “If we’d cleared Adhamiya, we could have said, ‘I left Iraq and my buddies didn’t die in vain.

“But in a way, the disbanding was good,” he said. “We — what was left of the platoon — got to come back home alive.”

http://www.armytimes.com/news/2007/12/bloodbrothers3/

There's another story I discovered about Charlie 1-26, one that might illustrate the type of pressure that unit was facing in battle.

If you search the DoD releases on combat deaths, there's a listing for one of it's officers.

IMMEDIATE RELEASE No. 876-07
July 13, 2007
DoD Identifies Army Casualty

The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom.

1st Sgt. Jeffrey R. McKinney, 40, of Garland, Texas, died July 11 in Adhamiyah, Iraq, of injuries suffered from a non-combat related incident. He was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 26th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division, Schweinfurt, Germany.

The incident is under investigation.

http://www.defenselink.mil/releases/release.aspx?releaseid=11126

That name is still on record, after investigation, as "non-hostile - accident".

3897 07/11/07 McKinney, Jeffrey R. 1st Sergeant 40 U.S. Army Non-hostile - accident Adhamiyah Garland Texas US

http://icasualties.org/oif/SearchByName.aspx

Here's the actual incident, as told by a member of the unit :

Master Sgt. Jeffrey McKinney, Alpha Company’s first sergeant, was known as a family man and as a good leader because he was intelligent and could explain things well. But Staff Sgt. Jeremy Rausch of Charlie Company’s 1st Platoon, a good friend of McKinney’s, said McKinney told him he felt he was letting his men down in Adhamiya.

“First Sergeant McKinney was kind of a perfectionist and this was bothering him very much,” Rausch said. On July 11, McKinney was ordered to lead his men on a foot patrol to clear the roads of IEDs. Everyone at Apache heard the call come in from Adhamiya, where Alpha Company had picked up the same streets Charlie had left. Charlie’s 1st Platoon had also remained behind, and Rausch said he would never forget the fear he heard in McKinney’s driver’s voice:

“This is Apache seven delta,” McKinney’s driver said in a panicked voice over the radio. “Apache seven just shot himself. He just shot himself. Apache seven shot himself.”

Rausch said there was no misunderstanding what had happened.

According to Charlie Company soldiers, McKinney said, “I can’t take it anymore,” and fired a round. Then he pointed his M4 under his chin and killed himself in front of three of his men.

http://www.armytimes.com/news/2007/12/bloodbrothers3/

That was on July 11th.

Five days later, an IED killed five more men in another company, after Charlie Company's orders where canceled , and Alpha Company took their place at the last minute.

But the mission was canceled. The medevac crews couldn’t fly because of a dust storm, and the Iraqi Army wasn’t ready for the mission. Second Platoon went to bed.

They woke to the news that Alpha Company had gone on the mission instead and one of their Bradleys rolled over the 500-pound IED. The Bradley flipped. The explosion and flames killed everybody inside. Alpha Company lost four soldiers: Spc. Zachary Clouser, Spc. Richard Gilmore, Spc. Daniel Gomez and Sgt. 1st Class Luis Gutierrez-Rosales.

“There was no chance,” said Johnson, whose scouts remained at Apache and served as the quick-reaction force that day. “It was eerily the same as June 21. You roll up on that, and it looked the same.”

The guys from Charlie Company couldn’t help but think about the similarities — and that it could have been them.

“Just the fact that there was another Bradley incident mentally screwed up 2nd Platoon,” Strickland said. “It was almost like it had happened to them.”

The battalion gave 2nd Platoon the day to recover. then they were scheduled to go back out on patrol in Adhamiya on July 18.

- Ibid

That's when the men refused to go out on patrol.

After the heavy losses this unit had previously taken, a suicide on patrol by a well respected 1st Sargent, and then coming this close to losing more men , I don't think any of us could blame then. They were smart enough to realize that they'd become a ticking time bomb, and professional enough to realize it wasn't going to take much to set them off.

As such, their refusal to go on patrol reflects far more on their strength as a unit, than it's weakness as one. For men this dedicated, that must of been a very difficult decision to make - and only one they would make when they could bear no more without snapping.

The sad part is that they were penalized, but off the record.

There's no Article 15 against any of them, no official record of it occurring, and yet all promotions and awards have been placed on hold. The unit itself was broken up, and dispersed.

These guys were heroes, both before and after this incident.