In pretend war, you can shoot them

The pretend war was to start in two hours, but my lieutenant was not present. Not a problem. The platoon had worked without a lieutenant before and often worked despite having one.

The battalion was at Camp Maxey, Texas, about 20 miles north of Paris. During World War II, Camp Maxey encompassed around 60,000 acres bought from farmers and ranchers. After the war, the Army retained a little more than 4,000 acres and gave the camp to the Texas Army National Guard. The Guard used the camp for small-scale field training and for rifle, pistol and machine gun qualification.

A platoon sergeant from a South Texas mechanized infantry company was assigned to evaluate my platoon.

About an hour after breakfast, the platoon sergeant came over to my area. He asked if my platoon leader had arrived.

“Nope,” I said.

“Looks like you’re it, then.”

“Yep,” I said.

He said, “I’ll give you the op order when you’re ready.”

“Now is good,” I said.

The gist of the order was, an enemy force of unknown strength was in the vicinity of a set of coordinates. I was to take my platoon to the area, find and eliminate the enemy force. There was more information – situation, who was to my right and to my left, service and support – but then basics were, “The enemy is here; go kill him.”

I sat on a log with a map and notes and soon had my own op order. My three squad leaders came over and I gave the order – where we were going, the order we would move, the route and what to do when we found the enemy or he found us.

The easiest route to the objective led down two roads, but we were not going to take the roads. You increase the chance of being shot. My op order had the platoon of three APCs using the edge of the woods to make the movement. The location was easy to find, and we would be concealed the entire distance.

We moved out at a time that would allow us to make LD (line of departure) time as specified in the op order. As the lead track neared a barbed wire fence, an M151A1 (jeep) drove through the gate. My tracks stopped. Out of the jeep stepped my LT.

I dismounted my track and walked to the platoon leader. (We’ll call him Lt. Black, since that was his name.) He apologized for being late. I said, “Yes, Sir.” He asked what was going on. I took my map from a cargo pocket and explained everything.

“No,” the lieutenant said. “That’s not what I want to do.”

I wanted to say, “Sir, if you want a say-so on what to do, I suggest you get your ass where it’s supposed to be, when it’s supposed to be there.” But I didn’t say anything.

Lt. Black said he wanted all squad leaders at his location. When everybody was present, the LT changed the route from concealed in the trees to going down the roads. What that meant was, we would be approaching the objective parallel to it and exposing our entire right side. I didn’t say anything. I had tried before talking to Lt. Black about leadership and tactics and other things Infantry, but he was not interested. He was an SMU ROTC LT … That pretty much sums it up.

We took the LT’s route, we took fire from the right as we were exposed on the road, and we had to travel 100 meters or so before turning toward the enemy position. And then the LT stopped the tracks and dismounted the platoon 250 meters from the objective. My soldiers would have to run that distance, plus go into and come out of a depression with three-meter-high sides. Fortunately, the sides were not steep.

When everything was done – soldiers fired up their blank ammunition and whoever had smoke grenades tossed red and purple – the evaluating platoon sergeant and I were standing near a small tree.

I said, “Where is he?” The other platoon sergeant knew who I meant. “Where is he?” And then: “There he is.” I raised my rifle.

“You going to shoot him?”

“Yes.” I squeezed off three blank rounds.

The LT never knew.

Had it been real, I would have stopped it before it began. I would have said, “No, Sir. We’re not doing that.” Had it been real, he would have ordered me to do as he said. What would have happened after that … One lieutenant or 26 soldiers.