Sheepdog in action
Apologies if Jonn already posted, but fug me….this dude had a bad day.
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Found on AlGore Net: Published on Sep 26, 2012 by FUNKER530
No rounds penetrated his body armor, and he made it home with no permanent injuries. This happened in Kunar Province, Afghanistan.
*READ* From the cameraman:
” I got a hit a total of 4 times. My helmet cam died and i made it down the mountain on my own. I was also hit in the side of my helmet and my eye pro was shot off of my face. We were doing overwatch on the village to recon and gather intel. I was point heading down the face of the hill with the LT. when we got hit. the rest of the squad was pinned down by machine gun fire. I didn’t start the video until a few mins into the firefight for obvious reasons. I came out into the open to draw fire so my squad could get to safety.”
“A round struck the tube by my hand of the 203 grenade launcher which knocked it out of my hands. When I picked the rifle back up it was still functional but the grenade launcher tube had a nice sized 7.62 cal bullet hole in it and was rendered useless. “
Varacity of info above unknown.
That made me cringe.
Just wait until D-Bag Witless-feld claims that is video of him. (Or someone else equally slapworthy)
“I came out into the open to draw fire so my squad could get to safety.” As a civilian, I can’t even imagine what that must be like. From the deepest depths of heart, there are no words that express the proper gratitude for what y’all do.
Huh, can’t get it to play….
Almost broke my iPad watching this
@6 Jab,
I was fighting a guttural desire to give him cover fire and then also wanting to get to him and drop grenades on the house below while rendering him some self-aid/buddy care.
AND I’M CHAIR FORCE!!! (Cargo Commando LOL) Never in country and never cut loose a round in anger in my life. Training and testosterone I guess.
Being a troop in the open is no fun at all.
Good man helping his squad out, selfless action. Glad he wasn’t injured.
Hearing “I’m hit” brings back some awful memories. It brings back the Platoon Sergeant in me and makes me want to be able to crawl into the screen and render aid and start calling a 9 line.
I do feel bad that one of my first thoughts at the beginning of the video was “man, he needs to work on his magazine change”. I do understand the adrenalin and the whole getting shot at thing, just Monday morning quarterbacking.
Crap … fight-or-flight endocrine response kicking in like crazy. Good man. Glad he didn’t get hurt.
Terrifying stuff, particularly since looking at the video I cannot even see where the enemy is or where the shots are coming from.
I would have crawled into a hole and started crying for mommy, which is why I am not a soldier and these brave men are over there fighting.
@11 OS, As Mr Gary Busey said…”I Am Going to Pull Your Endocrine System out of Your Body”
@11-that is what I was refering to in my second sentence. Watching the video I thought he got hit in the hand. I too am glad he didn’t get hurt.
I am glad that he was not seriously injured. It was very hard to watch. As others stated, I wanted to run/crawl to him, provide aid and get him out of the line of fire. Damn that response is heavily ingrained.
It looked like there was available cover on the back side of some of those slopes. Below there was an MRAP maneuvering to try to return fire with the crew-served. I wasn’t in his shoes, so I can’t say what he did was the right move or not, but it looks like he might have had alternative COAs.
Never been in a firefight, but….then why do I want to get a gun and back him up?
This is very difficult to watch.
Probably get a 15 for sleeves not being down, no reflective belt, and insulting Islam by shooting at them and making them use their ammo.
Balls of steel…took a lot to do that and not sure I ever could have. Hooah!
Well done.
@16: If you can walk away without getting the rest of your crew killed, my money is on “you did it right.”
It was hard for me to watch.
Had an urge to pull him to cover while giving some cover and I am just a Ex-snipe…Tough video but I am glad he came thru it OK. These are the guys we praise for their action… not lieing idiot like Dulles Witlessfold!
OWB-the fact that he survived doesn’t mean that he didn’t do some things wrong tactically (or not). There are too many things we don’t know (where the other dismounts are, if they had commo with the trucks, what his team’s part of the overall mission was, etc., etc., etc.) before we can do much of an AAR. It could easily have gone much more wrong with him exposed and wounded like that with the rest of his team trying to get to him. It’s not questioning his decision making or courage to point out that there might have been other possible actions which would have made this situation a little less intense.
I don’t know, if bullets are flying everywhere and one almost took your head off, all prior planning goes out the window. I’m not saying it is right or wrong, just from an outsider’s perspective that is how I see it.
@22: My AAR was expressed above. “Well done.” All I need to know is that we had some troopers whose training and experience allowed them to survive this encounter. Doesn’t matter to me if every “rule” was violated in the process. They had the will to survive and they did.
There is an old saying that every old flyer knows: if you walk away, it was a good landing.
This was a very good landing.
OWB-maybe not. There have been several people here who talked about how hard that was to watch, well for me it was hard to watch because every tactical instinct that I’ve got was screaming “GET TO COVER!!!”
Now, as I said-there are too many things we don’t know about this situation to make an accurate assessment of his actions, but it did look like cover was available. Maybe if he had comms with the trucks he could have directed fire from the crew served onto the enemy while directing his men to cover (from the angle we have there is no telling whether the trucks can even see the enemy). I’m not even talking about “rules”, because there are many right ways to accomplish a given objective, so long as you think your way through the encounter (which is the appropriate way to set up training scenarios or conduct AARs). If one of his Joes had come out after him when he got hit and been hurt or killed, it wouldn’t have been a very “good landing”.
And really, that’s a pretty stupid axiom when you get right down to it. Any landing that you can walk away from might be “acceptable”, but if you smashed up your bird, destroyed your equipment and endangered the lives of your crew in making a landing, even one you walked away from, I’m pretty sure that someone with a very heavy collar would explain to you why it wasn’t a particularly “good” one.
I was screaming ” find some fucking cover!” In my head. That, and I hate to be a Monday morning quarterback, and all, but why not just bound between cover on the rock face, instead of charging hey-diddle-diddle-straight-up-the-middle like he did; you can return and draw fire (from cover) and not get your dick shot off.
Folks: we’re doing a AAR/HotWash WAY detached from the scene. All we see is the narrow scope of a camera. Not fair to assess without all the other Situational Awareness factors. I’ve been shot at but this, as we saw it, was awesome.
Looks like he went to supply and drew Balls, Brass, Extra Large, unit of issue-Pair, that day. Hard to watch but glad he made it.
Bad day or the luckiest of his life, depending on how you look at it. Agree, not easy to watch from the safety of a computer screen.
@ #25: Continue arguing for as long as you care to argue. It is falling on deaf ears here. And is neither productive nor appropriate.
But bean counters who attempt to make the worst out of a great situation have walked among us a very long time.
Whatever.
Maybe it’s my Old Dawg eyes, but I’m seeing impacts on both sides of the rock outcrop, so no defilade to speak of except for that slight depression he was in.
Ain’t no way I’m gonna fault him for this or that, because I wasn’t there.
68 how about this why don’t you take some friendly advise and let it go. You weren’t there and you don’t know what was going on. He went to cover and he was exposed for whatever reason. It was difficult for me to watch for a completely different reason. We weren’t there and we didn’t have 360 view and didn’t know what was going on. There are times when you have to expose yourself to get the mission done plain and simple….
No words to explain the feelings that video caused. Some of you trigger pullers are a cut above. Keep kicking ass and staying alive!
I agree with you Just Plain Jason.
I don’t think anyone has a bad intent in “critiquing” what went down. It is natural to do so.
However, I don’t think anyone has a right to judge him since we weren’t his shoes and weren’t in that particular moment in time.
I can only imagine how chaotic it must be there. I’ve seen several of these types of gunfight videos, and you can never tell where the fire is coming from.
If it were up to me we would be dropping a nuke on their asses. But with this pussified PC “war” going on, these troops are doing the best they can. God bless them.
Jason-You’re absolutely right that I wasn’t there and I’ve made that clear in several comments. As you say, there are any number of factors that might explain his actions, but frankly I don’t think an honest discussion without any acrimony does any harm. I know exactly how those Joes who were out there with him had to feel when he started crying out that he was hit-it’s a sick, helpless, desperate feeling and the urge to go and get him had to be overwhelming. So let’s say I wanted to use this video for training purposes, wouldn’t it be appropriate to bring up variables like use of cover? Anyway, that’s what struck me more than anything else while I was watching it, so that’s what I commented on. OWB took exception to that, so I explained myself. Frankly, I think my tactical experience and expertise is orders of magnitude greater than hers.
OWB-being called a “bean counter” by a zoomie is freaking hilarious. You want to interpret what I’ve said here as making the worst out of it-that’s on you, because that is not my intent. While I was watching this I was trying to think my way through the situation. I (we) have to leisure to do so, given that no one is shooting at us. Discussing it here with people who have a similar amount of experience and expertise seemed to me to be both productive and appropriate. I’m not the only one who wondered about why he did not seek cover. Maybe we’ll get some answers from asking, and others may disagree. I’ve had my disputes with Jason in the past, but I respect his opinion on this, because I believe that he knows whereof he speaks.
68 I think you are a fucking joke as it is but didn’t you notice him going for cover? Quit playing stupid games. You are poking at people who don’t want to be poked at right now. Back away from the keyboard and take a breath and think. Hmm is it really a good idea to Monday morning QB this situation? He was in a shit spot and got to cover when he could.
Yikes. I read about it somewhere, but was too afraid to watch it. He had no place to go…but, if his troops made it to safety because he was drawing fire, then he did what he had to do.
Crash a crew chief’s Helo because of poor flying. Then you will find a lot of doened birds on turnup. We only let you pilots barrow our birds. I was thinking head to my helo and prepare for a hot med-evac. Very happy no one was WIA. Joe
Jason-I noticed him pass up some cover at one point-that’s why I mentioned the reverse slope earlier. Look, I might want to show this to my soldiers with no combat experience. It’s a pretty good POV video of a soldier in combat, but if I do I want them to learn something from it, so I thought I might stimulate some discussion here and get the perspective of those with combat experience.
“… I think you are a fucking joke as it is…”, well that’s what I get for trying to engage you like an adult. No one is trying to “poke you”. Grow up, you’re as thin skinned as any Islamic rage boy and you’ve shown it time and again.
How common is it for troops to have such a camera/who are they issued to? What is the “reason” for having them? The cynic in me says they could be used to assess ROE compliance.
68W-I will weigh in with my opinion as a trigger puller. There are many variables that we can’t tell from the POV video. Where is the fire comming from? what is the angle? Was the reverse slope where they were pinned down before? Was the cover he took the safest possible cover he could find? Pretty much, in my opinion, the only way you could use this video for training is to give your Soldiers a taste of what getting shot at is like as best as you can with video. I know I commented earlier on his magazine change, but I know from experience that some things get harder when you are getting shot at. Some things you just can’t simulate.
Jeezus. Every time I saw a puff of dust I just wanted to reach through the screen and pull him to safety. They had him zeroed, and they knew they hadn’t killed him. Glad he’s okay.
I’m glad he made it out, and relatively unscathed. Considering the circumstances, there’s no telling where the rounds were coming from but I agree that they had him zeroed. I won’t critique his actions as I wasn’t there, and can’t imagine what was going through his mind. I can say that based on the film, it gives those who’ve never been shot at a mere glimpse of what it’s like, and what kind of sounds one can experience. Brought back some memories, and the instinct of wanting to help.
68 the way you talk and act about certain situation and actions make me think you are an idiot and a joke it isn’t about having thin or thick skin. You don’t have a clue what you are talking about 90% of the time and you don’t know when to shut up. If someone were putting an IV in and doing it all fucked up then maybe I would listen, but you are talking about shit you don’t know about like an expert. Keep being a pecker checker and nothing else.
‘While I was watching this I was trying to think my way through the situation.’
Okay, think about this: In any event that requires quick reflexes and a quick response to stay “safe”, thinking goes out the window. It does not matter if it’s a horse refusing a fence or runnning off with you, or playing ice hockey or getting shot at in a combat zone. They are all the same thing and they all require the same kind instant reaction. There is no thinking involved. And you can’t think your way out because you don’t have time. Believe me, images will run through your head at the speed of light and you’ll reject
every one of them until you get the right one.
Since you can’t clearly see the source of the bullets in this helmet video, then scrambling for cover as best he could is this soldier’s only recourse. And when your adrenalin is pumping, changing clips isn’t going to be the smooth job you’re used to when you’re dodging bullets and your hands are shaking. (Sorry, Twist, I couldn’t resist using “clips”.)
Twist and Ex-PH2 those are both fair comments (though I disagree with your take on it Ex PH-2, I’ve been in intense situations and taking at least a pause to collect yourself before acting is almost always the right action).
Jason-you continue to display your usual acumen and insight.
Jason, you’re speaking from experience, aren’t you?
I don’t know what interactions you two have had in the past and I’m not trying to interject myself, but I will add that line medics see as much “action” as us grunts. They no longer wear the red cross and the do carry carbines and use them. My medic lived in my hip pocket outside the wire.
Twist-if you want some insight into the animus between me and Jason this thread http://valorguardians.com/blog/?p=29984 is a pretty good place to start.
Thanks but I’m not going to “get in the middle of it”. I just wanted to address the whole 68Ws wouldn’t know anything about fire fights. I don’t know if you are line or hospital, I just wanted to point that fact out.