The Patrol Read Online Free
Author: Ryan Flavelle
dynamite or C-4 to reshape our beloved hill into a skull with glowing eyes. That would give the Taliban something to look at.
Music is blaring from every iPod, and most people are rockingout to hard metal as they pack their kit (the army word for equipment; especially nice or hard-to-acquire pieces of kit are known as
shiny
or
Gucci
).
Saw III,
a horror movie, plays on our TV as we pull everything that we need together, check it, recheck it, pack it, and repack it. This is no small task, as each of us is carrying nearly 70 kilos of kit. Last-second additions and subtractions are made. Water purification tablets and packs of crystallized Gatorade are added, and radio checks are conducted. All told, packing takes about two hours.
By the time that I start packing, everyone else in my room is putting the finishing touches on their kit. I am one of three company signallers, and as such it is my responsibility to pull an eight-hour radio shift every day that I’m in camp. This basically amounts to sitting in an air-conditioned command post (CP), listening to three speakers and writing down everything that comes out of them.
Today I’m let off shift at 1300, right after lunch. The headquarters section commander issued orders about the patrol in the morning. I missed them. Although I work at the nerve center of the company’s operations, I am less informed than anyone else in headquarters as to what we are going to be doing on this patrol. A paper copy of our orders sits on the table in our room, under the constant supervision of at least one person. I sit down and try to read them, but the data refuses to sink in.
Military operational orders are encrypted by a twofold mechanism. First, they are uniformly printed in 8-point font, so one has to squint to read them: like this. Second, every important aspect contained within the orders is shrouded in a nearly impenetrable veil of acronyms. For example, “Bravo Company will conduct a Cordon and Search of suspected compounds near the village of Zangabad” becomes “IAW SoM, B Coy will conduct a dism C&S of CoI CM1001, CM1002, CM1003, CM1004 and CM1005 IVO Gr 12U QQ 1234 5678.” One of the highlights of my tour wasspending the entire day sending in written reports without using a single acronym. I sometimes had to call people to ask what their acronyms stood for.
Although I’ve learned to translate military newspeak into English, I just don’t seem to have the strength right now. Instead, I chat up a few guys sitting around the picnic table outside, and try to get the actual situation from them. I sit beside our section commander and ask him what’s going on:
“Hey, I missed orders, what’s the deal with this patrol?”
“We’re going to go out dismounted through all the Combat Outposts (COPs) with 4 and 9 Platoon. OC wants you to come along. We’re going to hump to Zangabad, stay the day, and then hump to Mushan. When we’re there, we are going to cordon and search in Mushan, stay overnight, come back to Zangabad and try to find the fuckers who’ve been mortaring them. We might push north of the river from Zangabad. We’re leaving at last light tonight. We should be back in five days, but plan for two weeks.”
And just like that I have the plain pragmatic clarity that I’ve come to expect from infantry non-commissioned members (NCMs). We will be going out with two platoons of infantry, one from our company and one from Charlie Company, attached to us for the length of the mission. My heart sinks a little bit, and I can feel nervousness turn into fear as my section commander talks to me. I work hard to control my expression. I’d heard through the grapevine that a hard patrol was coming up, but this was the first time I’d gotten any details. Now I know that we are going to be embarking on a long dismounted patrol through outposts that have been attacked every day for the last month. Our goal is to root out and destroy anyone who puts up a fight, and to find
Music is blaring from every iPod, and most people are rockingout to hard metal as they pack their kit (the army word for equipment; especially nice or hard-to-acquire pieces of kit are known as
shiny
or
Gucci
).
Saw III,
a horror movie, plays on our TV as we pull everything that we need together, check it, recheck it, pack it, and repack it. This is no small task, as each of us is carrying nearly 70 kilos of kit. Last-second additions and subtractions are made. Water purification tablets and packs of crystallized Gatorade are added, and radio checks are conducted. All told, packing takes about two hours.
By the time that I start packing, everyone else in my room is putting the finishing touches on their kit. I am one of three company signallers, and as such it is my responsibility to pull an eight-hour radio shift every day that I’m in camp. This basically amounts to sitting in an air-conditioned command post (CP), listening to three speakers and writing down everything that comes out of them.
Today I’m let off shift at 1300, right after lunch. The headquarters section commander issued orders about the patrol in the morning. I missed them. Although I work at the nerve center of the company’s operations, I am less informed than anyone else in headquarters as to what we are going to be doing on this patrol. A paper copy of our orders sits on the table in our room, under the constant supervision of at least one person. I sit down and try to read them, but the data refuses to sink in.
Military operational orders are encrypted by a twofold mechanism. First, they are uniformly printed in 8-point font, so one has to squint to read them: like this. Second, every important aspect contained within the orders is shrouded in a nearly impenetrable veil of acronyms. For example, “Bravo Company will conduct a Cordon and Search of suspected compounds near the village of Zangabad” becomes “IAW SoM, B Coy will conduct a dism C&S of CoI CM1001, CM1002, CM1003, CM1004 and CM1005 IVO Gr 12U QQ 1234 5678.” One of the highlights of my tour wasspending the entire day sending in written reports without using a single acronym. I sometimes had to call people to ask what their acronyms stood for.
Although I’ve learned to translate military newspeak into English, I just don’t seem to have the strength right now. Instead, I chat up a few guys sitting around the picnic table outside, and try to get the actual situation from them. I sit beside our section commander and ask him what’s going on:
“Hey, I missed orders, what’s the deal with this patrol?”
“We’re going to go out dismounted through all the Combat Outposts (COPs) with 4 and 9 Platoon. OC wants you to come along. We’re going to hump to Zangabad, stay the day, and then hump to Mushan. When we’re there, we are going to cordon and search in Mushan, stay overnight, come back to Zangabad and try to find the fuckers who’ve been mortaring them. We might push north of the river from Zangabad. We’re leaving at last light tonight. We should be back in five days, but plan for two weeks.”
And just like that I have the plain pragmatic clarity that I’ve come to expect from infantry non-commissioned members (NCMs). We will be going out with two platoons of infantry, one from our company and one from Charlie Company, attached to us for the length of the mission. My heart sinks a little bit, and I can feel nervousness turn into fear as my section commander talks to me. I work hard to control my expression. I’d heard through the grapevine that a hard patrol was coming up, but this was the first time I’d gotten any details. Now I know that we are going to be embarking on a long dismounted patrol through outposts that have been attacked every day for the last month. Our goal is to root out and destroy anyone who puts up a fight, and to find
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