Barking_Mad
Non sibi sed omnibus
Jesus.
US Bring in the bullet heads
All six soldiers jump out of the truck and sprawl in the dirt, triggers at the ready. Minutes later they clamber back in. Nobody thinks to look behind until a smoke grenade explodes 3m away. The buzzer sounds. "A grenade. We're dead, dude," says Private Tyler Franzen.
They were wiped out within the first five minutes of their drill on convoy movement, and the implications register quickly. Days from now Pte Franzen and the 319th Signals Battalion could be in Iraq. "This makes me more scared," he says. "I am preparing for the worst."
Their trainer calls troops such as these "bullet magnets" - army reservists or National Guard soldiers, weekend warriors with minimal combat training pressed into service.
By the time the troops have arrived at Fort Bliss in western Texas, they should be all but ready to go. But the fact of their deployment has yet to sink in. "I kind of expected this, but I didn't think it would happen," Pte Franzen says. He signed on for the college benefits in January last year. Two days before basic training, his girlfriend learned that she was pregnant. Now he is 19 - too young to drink in Texas - has a three-month-old son, and is days away from war.
The shock of deployment was even greater for veterans such as Maritess Leyson, 37, a computer systems administrator from Chicago who describes her 18 years in the army reserves as a "hobby job". When the call came last November, the single parent was in a panic to try to soften the news for her three teenage children. "When it was time for me to go, it hit me like a brick wall, oh my goodness," she says. "It's scary, but I signed on the dotted line."
None of the reservists raises the possibility of being killed - their instructors do that for them. "If the Iraqis executed an ambush with any degree of efficiency, some of you might not come home," says Major Shawn Marshall, after drill.
What he does not need to say is that the death toll in Iraq has been especially high for reservists, National Guard members and support units. Most have not been trained for a guerrilla war - with lethal consequences. They simply do not know how to fight. Some freeze in training exercises. At the firing range they blast away, and the targets still stand. They were trained in technical skills, not combat capabilities.
"These people are what I call bullet magnets," says Colonel Rick Phillips, who is in charge of training. "What they find over there is that these kids aren't pulling the trigger. They are waiting to engage."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardianweekly/story/0,12674,1168079,00.html
US Bring in the bullet heads
All six soldiers jump out of the truck and sprawl in the dirt, triggers at the ready. Minutes later they clamber back in. Nobody thinks to look behind until a smoke grenade explodes 3m away. The buzzer sounds. "A grenade. We're dead, dude," says Private Tyler Franzen.
They were wiped out within the first five minutes of their drill on convoy movement, and the implications register quickly. Days from now Pte Franzen and the 319th Signals Battalion could be in Iraq. "This makes me more scared," he says. "I am preparing for the worst."
Their trainer calls troops such as these "bullet magnets" - army reservists or National Guard soldiers, weekend warriors with minimal combat training pressed into service.
By the time the troops have arrived at Fort Bliss in western Texas, they should be all but ready to go. But the fact of their deployment has yet to sink in. "I kind of expected this, but I didn't think it would happen," Pte Franzen says. He signed on for the college benefits in January last year. Two days before basic training, his girlfriend learned that she was pregnant. Now he is 19 - too young to drink in Texas - has a three-month-old son, and is days away from war.
The shock of deployment was even greater for veterans such as Maritess Leyson, 37, a computer systems administrator from Chicago who describes her 18 years in the army reserves as a "hobby job". When the call came last November, the single parent was in a panic to try to soften the news for her three teenage children. "When it was time for me to go, it hit me like a brick wall, oh my goodness," she says. "It's scary, but I signed on the dotted line."
None of the reservists raises the possibility of being killed - their instructors do that for them. "If the Iraqis executed an ambush with any degree of efficiency, some of you might not come home," says Major Shawn Marshall, after drill.
What he does not need to say is that the death toll in Iraq has been especially high for reservists, National Guard members and support units. Most have not been trained for a guerrilla war - with lethal consequences. They simply do not know how to fight. Some freeze in training exercises. At the firing range they blast away, and the targets still stand. They were trained in technical skills, not combat capabilities.
"These people are what I call bullet magnets," says Colonel Rick Phillips, who is in charge of training. "What they find over there is that these kids aren't pulling the trigger. They are waiting to engage."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardianweekly/story/0,12674,1168079,00.html
