Near Fratricide

[redfish]

I remember at some point we were in a bit of a long wide wadi. I may have been just a low area. We came to a stop. I do not recall why. We were in an area where a previous battle had occurred. There were some dead Iraqi's around. Some how we became aware of a pocket of RGF just over the horizon. A small detachment was sent out and discovered they were surrendering and were all wounded. I was back in our make shift perimeter where we had all dug in as best we could and facing outward no knowing how the RGF group were going to behave. They were still over the horizon from us.

Suddenly over the horizon comes a group of soldiers running toward us. I had sited in on one of them and removed my safety. Visibility was poor I could only see silhouettes coming at us. I was finger on trigger, squeezing toward fire when I realized the on running soldiers were some of ours.

[FA1SGret]

Close ...

[redfish]

I've read several accounts of actual incidents of Bradleys being engaged by M1s causing several deaths and a number of injuries. Forget where I read them. Was a good read. We can understand the confusion and chaos involved. Hate it for the guys involved.

[FA1SGret]

Yeah ... I had a similar experience ... didn't fire but was damn close ... too close.

[redfish]

I can easily imagine how it happens. Media makes a big deal out of it and people who have not been there can't understand. I wonder how frequently it did happen and went unknown or un reported. Couldn't be too much cuz the casualty count would have been higher. But.......

[FA1SGret]

I've read about a couple of actual fratricide incidents, but I have no clue about how many close calls there were ... I have personal knowledge of three close calls and personal experience with two. I wasn't trigger happy by no stretch ... I wanted to make damn sure what I was shooting at before I pulled the trigger ... but damn, talk about scared.

[redfish]

Did y'all have big orange markers on top of your trax to help keep from being engaged from the air by mistake?

[FA1SGret]

If I remember correctly we had a big inverted V painted on the sides of our tracks and vehicles. The panel markers came later. I don't remember when, some after a couple days of the ground fight. When we did the passage of lines at night, we marked our stuff with chem lights.

[redfish]

We had the inverted "V" too. I thought that was for the "Victory" division. The 24th infantry division. No wonder I saw that everywhere.

[FA1SGret]

I don't know why the inverted V was chosen, just what we were told to paint on our vehicles. 24th got there before us, so maybe we just adopted what was already there.

[Redleg13f2h]

Yup, inverted V's on the sides and back and orange aircraft panels up top, and I.R. chem lights on the antennas. Fortunately, they only had BMP's and not any of our 113's. They did use some of our 109's though, which could've created a mess. We even captured a nice one to replace on of ours that blew a pack. Funny mustard yellow instead of tan. It went to the 1st A.D. museum in Germany along with a T-72 we captured.

[Dagger X-Ray]

Yup, inverted V's on the sides and back and orange aircraft panels up top, and I.R. chem lights on the antennas. Fortunately, they only had BMP's and not any of our 113's. They did use some of our 109's though, which could've created a mess. We even captured a nice one to replace on of ours that blew a pack. Funny mustard yellow instead of tan. It went to the 1st A.D. museum in Germany along with a T-72 we captured.

They had 113's, we cannibalized a couple for torque converters to get 1 of our M577's back up and running, that thing went through 3, I think, converters over a 3 month period. 1 of them had been hit by an Abrams and our mechs had to work on it with remains inside.

[FA1SGret]

577s were hard on the torque converters because of all the extra crap they got stuffed with. Most every 577 that I saw during my 20 years was grossly overloaded.

[Redleg13f2h]

At least it wasn't a friendly 113 with our guys inside, eh?

[FA1SGret]

I remember seeing a couple of 113s that had been hit by something big. One was in a crater but wasn't damaged ... didn't know if they drove off into the crater or what, but it was Iraqi and it had no personell inside. Had a more destroyed shit around it, but it was not damaged.