On Point: the United States Army in Operation Iraqi ... - Boekje Pienter

the service and continues through career-long training and education. It is difficult this earlyafter the end of major combat operations to say with certainty what “right” looks like andwhat developmental assignments, training, and education should be reinforced. What is clearis that the present system of schools for troops, officers, and noncommissioned officers, andtraining—particularly collective training at the Army’s training centers—paid dividends. AsLieutenant General Dave McKiernan put it, “I think in the Army our training, our doctrine, ourleader development programs are pretty damned sound and produced soldiers and leaders whomade great decisions out there and who are pretty aggressive.” 12 Obviously, these institutionsshould remain dynamic to stay abreast of a dynamic operating environment, but they seemsound at their center. Although McKiernan asserted that Army training and education worked,in the same interview he identified the need to ramp up joint education at lower levels and gointo “overdrive” at the war college level. 13Leading From the FrontCombat is arguably the most stressful human endeavor. It is, as Whitman described it, an“incommunicable experience.” Effective leaders share that experience with their troops and inspireor steady by their presence. For this reason, the very best combat leaders lead from as far forward aspossible and often farther forward than than prudent, realizing their their physical physical presence presence is more is more important important thanpreserving than preserving themselves themselves from harm. from In harm. OIF, soldiers In OIF, felt soldiers the presence felt the of presence commanders of commanders appreciated andthe appreciated moral support the moral commanders support commanders provided by provided their example by their and example by their and desire by their to help. desire In remarking to help. Inon remarking the effectiveness on the effectiveness of leading from of leading the front, from Major the front, Gerard Major Cribb, Gerard operations Cribb, operations officer, TF officer, 2-70 AR, TFoffered 2-70 AR, the offered following the following while describing while describing the feint to the Al feint Hillah: to Al Hillah:I will remember Colonel Anderson (commander, 2nd BCT, 101st Airborne Division) and BrigadierGeneral (Ben) Freakley (assistant division commander, Operations, 101st Airborne Division) the restof my life. Right after the artillery—we received artillery—I hear this “tink,” “tink” on the TC (tankcommander’s) hatch and I open up (the hatch) and look over and there is Colonel Anderson. He said,“What do you need?” I’m like, “What, sir?” He goes, “I got the call, I got the read and everything, Isee you’re in contact here. I can have Apaches right here to try to loosen up those dismounted infantrypositions. I’ve got three battalions of FA (fi eld artillery) and it’s all yours, Gerard.”Later Ben Freakley arrived and Cribb described him as cool among “sporadic machine gun fire” andwanted to know “Is everything ok?”This is unbelievable. Here we are in contact and both of these guys are asking us what do we need tomake our situation better. That was great—definitely made us feel good going into the fight.After the conclusion of major combat operations, Colonel Will Grimsley wrote to thecommanding general of the National Training Center to thank him and his key leaders for thework they did in preparing Grimsley’s 1st Brigade, 3rd ID. According to Grimsley, “I told themI could draw a straight line correlation from how we fought in OIF successfully directly backto my National Training Center rotation.” 14 In anticipation of fighting on the escarpment, theNTC replicated the conditions Grimsley expected to see in the central corridor of the trainingarea and tailored other fights during the rotation against possible OIF scenarios. Although at thetraining center they trained against an enemy replicating dismounted Special Republican Guardtroops, the fact that they confronted paramilitary forces did not matter since the enemy foughtgenerally the way intelligence estimated they would. More important, the opposing forces at392