First hand reports on Poe
OK, so bear in mind that the MN National Guard has told it’s people to stop talking. Totally get it, and am NOT picking on the command. I would want this to go away too. But guys are still very angry. And they still want to tell their story.
As I said earlier, I need more info for the SIGACTS check. Some guys are claiming they were at KAF, but other elements had moved out earlier. Here is an anonymous account from one soldier that talks about the period in question for the miraculous insta-healing grape wound/RPG attack.
Here is a timeline as the best I can recall from the top of my head. I know we left the states around the 26th or 27th of July, as [redacted, but event that he knows the date for.] Now looking at the press release from the PAO in MN, it looks like we were boots on groun in Manas on the 28th of July. I know this is going on kind of a whim, but I checked dates of photos that I took in the properties of the photos. I know this is not concrete evidence at all, but, I know for a fact that date and time was set correctly on my camera. We left Manas for KAF on 8/4/2009. We left KAF for Leatherneck on 8/11/2009. These dates however are going to fluctuate as our company left KAF by platoon, on different dates, and from what I recall, all the convoys were spread out over a period of about a week and a half. The only thing I remember and of the three convoys seeing action wise was during our convoy in which the Taliban ambushed an Afghan National Army Checkpoint about a mile ahead of the road of us while we were stopped for mechanical issues. There was a MEDEVAC at that time, but it was of a local national who got shot by either the Taliban or ANA. No friendly injuries were recived, and we were not in contact at all during that incident. One of the other convoys from our company that left got held up, but that was because of numerous heat causaulties from us not having AC and piss warm/boiling water. Once we got to Camp Leatherneck, we fell in on our tents, and I can’t tell you how long it was until our first mission. I will tell you that we did go through the RIP/TOA process with the platoon that was doing our mission, and the first several missions which our company did go out on were key ) personnel (squad and team leaders and a few high speed E4’s) for the left seat/right seat ride process. Our mission runs, like I said before were desert runs, which we would occasionally run across a mud hut here, and a mud hut there. We never, ever cleared any buildings. Our first contact that we recieved as a company was mid September I believe as the person that got hit was my battle buddy from Iraq from back in the day.
If anyone else wants to comment from the 114th Transportation company (the sweetest smelling Guard unit in the ‘verse) you can either email us, or leave a comment.
Category: Politics
This is the other retarded part about this….yeah he says his dd214 is fucked up and all the other usual nonsense but does he not realize the massive amounts of paperwork there would be just to get him out of theater? And especially on a medevac.I mean the dude was the supply sergeant, doesn’t he realize there are going to be hand receipts for all of his stuff that he didn’t take with him? There is gonna be sigacts, SIRS, CCIRs met, from his company level all the way up. Then there is gonna be paperwork on the medical side going from his bn aid station all the way over to landstuhl. Yeah sometimes paperwork gets lost and sometimes it gets fucked up. But that much paperwork, especially stuff that would get saved on more than one computer, in that many places? I don’t think so.
Agreed.
Just to get him from his point of injury to a centralized medical facility involved some extensive communication between his unit, whoever is providing air support and MEDEVACs (if he was in Marine country around Leatherneck as suggested it sounds like it would be the DASC), the communication up and down conflicting the airspace, communication with TF Pegasus and every single service and country whose airspace they have to go through (at the very least he’s almost certain to have traversed British airspace at some point), the medical facility, the communication with Landstuhl or wherever they would have sent him out of country, arranging the flight manifests to get him there, etc.
There would be documentation without his name during the time frame described. There are only so many MEDEVACs. An Army Sergeant (or whatever his rank actually was at the time) from his TF with his injury wouldn’t have more than a few if any similar cases. There would also be more than a few reports and manifests with his name floating around duplicated over various units. There is NO way to be wounded and end up being evacuated from country without some proof somewhere. On top of that this wasn’t that long ago, and even if it wasn’t I’ve never known the military to be fond of deleting any sort of file.
MASS runs the DASC. They’d have records. MTACS runs the TAOC. They’d have records. Both are subordinate to the MACG. They’d have records. The flight squadron that undertook the mission would have records as well. There would be paperwork all over the place. The problem is all that is on the SIPRnet. How long before that stuff is declassified? Three years seems a little short. How would any civilian trying to access these records actually get their hands on them?
He would never have gotten out of med hold without his transfer orders from the evac. They hounded me for those stupid evac orders like they were written by God. They hounded me until the hospital found were they had filed them, because who better to ask than the guy who was in a coma for 3 days while being transfered to the states.
Whoops, meant to say ‘deconflicting’ in my original post.
CRaissi, it’s not something a civilian would be able to verify, but it is a way for the military to prove Poe is lying. Particularly it would refute his claims that there are record errors.
the letter above matches real close to my dates my platoon was the last to arive at fob leatherneck on about the 12 of aug and like said above we only had heat issues none of our guys ever got injured or killed untill the convoy that Spc. George Cauley was on witch was on oct 10 2009 the rest of the deployment went without any injuies due to combat
Well it sounds like no one in the military really wants to wade into this. They’re probably being given orders to ignore this fiasco and do everything they can to help with the Obama campaign movie being produced by Sony.
@ CRaissi: Flight Manifest are classified as well as being unclassified. There are two copies, but the important piece to remember is that the unclass, the names and ranks of all individuals on the flight, CIV, MIL, OTH. Now, it isn’t like this paperwork would be keep, not on official forms, but the SIPR HD would be retained by the organic unit and could be accessed, ie, probably already done and the information could be sent across the SIPR to the MNARNG where they could request expeditous release of non-essential classified information, ie what he was on the bird for, if he was non-crit, most likely case, it will state such as the same if he was crit condition, ie granade in the back, not thinking that would be over looked.
When I was medevac’d out of Afghanistan, I took all of that paperwork with me in a folder. When I was in Jalalabad they started the folder, and it went with me everywhere I went. When I left Fort Gordon, GA four months later I still had that damn folder with me. The folder had everything from the medic in the field who treated me after the IED, to the closing paperwork from Gordon. When I got home I took the entire folder to our state’s AMEDD, (I’m in the Iowa Guard), and they took care of it from there. Also, the documents on the Blaze can be found anywhere on the internet, Poe could have gotten them right off of AKO and put anything he wanted on them. Also, they could be real documents, as they seem to be follow up documents more than a year after his “injury” date. They are not documents of his injury, rather of his complaints. The Doc or RN who fills these things out just writes in what the SM says.