Cowboy Up

Smith and I had a sneaking suspicion that our evaluator was communicating with the opposition forces. Our primary piece of evidence was that he had a radio and kept talking to someone named 'OPFOR'. We decided that on our next lane one of us would be in charge, and we would go totally cowboy. Smith got control of the squad, and chose me to be the recorder, the guy who does the route planning and so forth.

Smith decided that he wanted to give the OPFOR misinformation, so he had me prep two routes to the objective. The first, we would radio up to Sergeant Ellis to make sure we had the right distance and direction to run head on into the OPFOR, making sure they knew we were taking the direct route. The second lead us around behind them so we could shoot them in the back. Smith briefed the squad that we would start out going kind of straight but sliding right as we went, stop at various points along the way, conduct a reconnaissance, the use of fire and maneuver, and other military things. Based on the fact that Smith briefed this and that Sergeant Ellis walked this lane every day and knew the route through the woods, it struck me as odd that when we started out going to the left-ish Sergeant Ellis apparently didn’t notice. Nor did he say anything about the fact that we never stopped, we just kept on trucking.

As we got closer, the OPFOR began to recon by fire (two notes here: first, that means they just shoot their guns and see if we give away our location by shooting back; second, they knew to recon by fire because we sounded like a herd of cattle trying to break through all of the brush and branches). At that point, Smith lead us across a road (apparently the OPFOR guys saw us crossing the road). We then circled around behind them, continuing to sound like a herd of cattle breaking brush. Though it seems impossible to believe, what with all the noise and the fact that the OPFOR saw us crossing the road, the OPFOR continued to rely on the intel they had received. That is, they were still looking in the direction Sergeant Ellis told them we would come when we walked up behind them. Smith looked at the situation, chucked the last one hundred twenty years of combat wisdom out the window, and called, “FULL FRONTAL ASSAULT!” We then all stood up and charged civil war style onto the objective shooting the thing up like Billy the Kid and the Regulators.

It was possibly one of the worst things I’ve ever seen. No one in the squad knew what was happening except Smith and I. And we didn’t even know. Smith was just making it up as he went along. We relied on Civil War tactics (remember how hundreds of thousands died?). It violated everything we’ve been taught to do as leaders, and is the sort of thing that gets people killed in real life.

Smith was given a rating of ‘Excellent’. Sergeant Ellis informed him that that was the kind of leadership we needed to see.