Wednesday, January 2, 2019

So there I was...

Years ago, I participated in a Corps level army exercise.  Early one afternoon, the 3 man CI team I was on found the Corps headquarters almost completely unguarded (one squad on patrol), with a single antenna sited within 50 feet of the command tents. They had one huge generator running everything. It was a hundred meters or so out beyond the hive of tents, because it was noisy and smelly.  We got hold of an O/C (referee), and told him that our team was going to shoot the generator. (He ruled it would take 3 shots to disable.)  He got another O/C to go turn the generator off himself, while we moved about 100 meters along the wood line.  Then we waited for the repair guy to show up. We shot him, too. Then we relocated, because the nearest patrol was only a half hour away.  The O/C thought the whole thing was hilarious.
The entire Corps command center went dark for the rest of the day. No lights, no computers, no comms. No backups, either, apparently.  One Sergeant Major had brought a whiteboard and pens in his own footlocker, and tracked the battle himself based on the reports of radio relays from a truck.
When the command center got power again the next morning, it hadn't moved, and their sole antenna was still in position next to the tents. So when they started broadcasting again, we called an artillery strike in on their location, and killed everybody. The 3-star was PISSED.

The only survivor was that SGM with the white board.  He had been having the truck with the radio move at least once per hour.  When the radios went live again, he got in the truck and had the driver move over a kilometer away into the forest.  We had a drink with him later, and laughed about the whole thing.  We didn't know it at the time, but the maneuver units performed a lot better without the Corps micromanaging them.

The General ordered the MPs to arrest us if they ever saw us again.  Not exercise mock-arrest, either.  Oddly enough, he didn't get his 4th star, and retired after turning over command the next year.

That's what I call a job well done.

No comments:

Post a Comment

I reserve the right to remove egregiously profane or abusive comments, spam, and anything else that really annoys me. Feel free to agree or disagree, but let's keep this reasonably civil.