well, what the hell was he doing on that side of the hill with no cover? who is teaching these guys? and he yells out "ow!' when he gets shot? that was kinda funny. still, he shouldn't have been there in the first place.

Fake?

sithon: Fake?

maybe. i bet i would be alot more upset if i took a 7.65 round. alot.

Farking spawn campers.

some_beer_drinker: well, what the hell was he doing on that side of the hill with no cover? who is teaching these guys? and he yells out "ow!' when he gets shot? that was kinda funny. still, he shouldn't have been there in the first place.

justanothersumguy: Was this guy on point? The lack of cover is insane. I really don't understand what is going on here. Does he even know what he is shooting at? It seems to me that M4 is pretty useless if that sniper is across the valley, Where is the suppression fire?

jst3p: some_beer_drinker: well, what the hell was he doing on that side of the hill with no cover? who is teaching these guys? and he yells out "ow!' when he gets shot? that was kinda funny. still, he shouldn't have been there in the first place.

All of this. Who the fark keeps walking where there is no cover with shots landing at his feet. Get down to that building ASAP or back up and get behind the ridge. Where the hell was he going, he was just traversing the open side of the hill.

FTA: "I came out into the open to draw fire so my squad could get to safety."

Not saying it's smart, but that's why he was out in the open.

some_beer_drinker: well, what the hell was he doing on that side of the hill with no cover? who is teaching these guys? and he yells out "ow!' when he gets shot? that was kinda funny. still, he shouldn't have been there in the first place.

I'm baffled, too. I was a desk jockey in the Marines... but we did train for combat, and this guy seems to be breaking every rule we were taught. He's walking in the open, slowly, firing seemingly from the hip into the air? WTF?

Find some cover, failing that, get flat, then find the assholes firing at you and return well-aimed fire. Jeez... you've got an M-4 with a scope, fercrissakes. I was 3rd award Expert on the rifle range, when we used M16A2s with no scopes.

It also helps to remember that something like 250,000 rounds of ammunition are expended for every shot that actually finds its target. Finding cover, or at least going flat increases those odds, walking around firing at nothing in the open DECREASES those odds exponentially, since you make yourself a prime target (hint: they'll fire at you because you are firing at them, even if it's not aimed anywhere near them).

Teufelaffe: FTA: "I came out into the open to draw fire so my squad could get to safety."

Not saying it's smart, but that's why he was out in the open.

Not a very good tactic. He'd have better served his squad by laying well-aimed suppressing fire from cover.

I have to wonder WTF he was taught in Infantry School. I realize they don't require GIs to have the highest ASVAB scores, but they do drill basic tactics into your head.

Wheres the dude with the .50 Cal to put a couple shells downrange?

NashMcNash: Man, if all you guys were in Afghanistan, we'd have this thing wrapped up by now. Great tips from all of you!

It's not even an armchair general thing to say that maybe you shouldn't fire wildly into the air and descend uncovered down a rocky slope into automatic weapons fire.

Frothy Panties: The other problem with this dumbass is that he was so far away from his battle buddy that they couldn't even hear him when he was calling for help...that and strolling down the hill in open terrain. WTF!!!

Basic elements of fire and maneuver + shoot, move and communicate were not even seen. This is the kind of video that needs to be shown at Benning.

/Three combat tours

//Glad he came out of it okay...

Mag change took way too long. Send em back to blue phase at the very least.

chrisco123: Was he hit?

Hard to tell. Might have to watch it again to be sure.

For those of you too young to remember, footage like this was on the news every night from Viet Nam, in the '60s and '70s. I got to sit through two years of wondering when I'd see my dad get shot on TV. Oh yeah, that's partly why we aren't still fighting there.

Feral_and_Preposterous: You'd need to be Napoleon Dynamite's uncle to lob a grenade that far.

Well, he had a grenade launcher, before it got shot, knocking his rifle out of his hands:

KidneyStone: 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.

Of course, he couldn't be bothered to actually make USE of the grenade launcher before jumping out into the open and firing uselessly into the air.

"I came out into the open to draw fire" is not a legitimate tactic.

Staying under cover and laying suppressing fire is. Suppressing fire means well aimed fire at the direction of the enemy who is shooting at you.

With a grenade launcher, he could have shot a couple of 40mm grenades in the direction of the enemy, which certainly would have given them a bit of a pause. Also, as others have said, why weren't smoke grenades deployed to obscure their movements? Hell, as I said, I was a desk jockey, but I have used smoke grenades in exercises during Combat Skills School at Camp Lejeune. This isn't rocket science... and the tactics have been employed in one form or another for thousands of years.

I realize this is an Army squad... they don't have an automatic weapon (M-249 SAW) team? It's a great weapon for providing fairly accurate suppressing fire.

At any rate, making yourself a target is not a valid tactic. Everybody in a squad has a purpose and the incident in the video was a basic situation that they would have drilled proper tactics on.

I'm glad the guy was not permanently injured, but he was a dumbass on several levels.

KidneyStone: Yes, he was point. He went in the open to draw fire so his squad could get to safety.

Mission accomplished. He was taking a LOT of fire.