Accounts aim to instruct new troops

The blunt accounts reflect a different view of the conflict than public statements.
WASHINGTON POST
WASHINGTON -- As the insurgency in the Sunni Triangle was heating up last fall, Lt. Col. Steve Russell was dealing with a new wave of attacks in which bombers were using the transmitters from radio-controlled toy cars: They would take the electronic guts of the cars, wrap them in C-4 plastic explosive and attach a blasting cap, then detonate them by remote control.
So Russell, who commands an infantry battalion in Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit, mounted one of the toy-car controllers on the dashboard of his Humvee and taped down the levers. Because all the toy cars operated on the same frequency, this would detonate any similar bomb about 100 yards before his Humvee got to the spot. This "poor man's anti-explosive device" was "risky perhaps," Russell writes in a 58-page summary of his unit's time in Iraq, but better than leaving the detonation to the bombers.
As one of the biggest troop rotations in U.S. history gets under way in Iraq, with almost 250,000 soldiers coming or going, the seasoned units that are leaving are doing their best to pass on such hard-won knowledge to their successors in e-mails, in essays, in PowerPoint presentations and in rambling memoirs posted on Web sites or sent to rear detachments. And in the process, these veterans of Iraq have provided an alternative history of the Army's experience there over the past nine months -- one that is far more personal than the images offered by the press and often grimmer than the official accounts of steady progress.
Taken together, these documents tell a story of an unexpectedly hard small war that has been punctuated by casualties that haunt the writers. At the same time, they show how a well-trained, professional force adjusted last year to the first sustained ground combat faced by U.S. troops in three decades, relearning timeless lessons of warfare and figuring out new ones.
Life-or-death advice
"We had to learn the hard way," Capt. Daniel Morgan, an infantry company commander in the 101st Airborne Division, writes in an essay that is rocketing around military e-mail circles.
Like most of the 28 documents reviewed for this article, Morgan's is relentlessly specific. One the most striking lessons the 1992 graduate of Georgetown University passes on: Every soldier in the unit should carry a tourniquet sufficiently long to cut off the gush of blood from major leg wounds. "Trust me," he writes, "it saved four of my soldiers' lives."
Morgan also emphasizes to incoming soldiers that they need to be ready to kill quickly yet precisely. "If an enemy opens fire with an AK-47 aimlessly, which most of these people do, you should be able to calmly place the red dot reticule of your M-68 optic device on his chest and kill him with one shot," he admonishes. "If you do this, the rest will run and probably not come back."
That no-nonsense conveyance of small but crucial details permeates the commentaries, in which today's Army talks to itself in blunt, sometimes ugly language. There also is a life-and-death urgency to many of the commentaries. "There was too much crap I saw over there that guys just don't understand, and it meant soldiers' lives," Capt. John Wrann, a 4th Infantry Division engineer, writes in an essay on www.companycommand.com, a private Web site run by and for younger Army officers.
Although some of the commentaries argue that progress is being made, as a whole they tend to paint a harsher picture than the public statements of senior officials. In his advice to incoming troops, Capt. Ken Braeger, a company commander in the 4th Division, which has headquarters in Tikrit in the middle of the Sunni Triangle, states that "what they have to understand is that most of the people here want us dead, they hate us and everything we stand for, and will take any opportunity to cause us harm."
Criticism of accounts
In part because of unvarnished comments such as that, the documents are provoking controversy within the military. Some senior officers at the Pentagon argue that by bypassing the chain of command, the authors may violate security procedures and could tip off the insurgents in Iraq.
Others dismiss those concerns. "I have seen so many of these that I have lost count," said retired Army Col. Johnny Brooks, an expert on infantry training. "I see them as newly indoctrinated young men, having done something of which they are proud, trying to help out their comrades who are getting ready to deploy."
Officers in Iraq said the documents tend to be useful, especially because they are more up-to-date about conditions there than are official publications. One officer based at Balad noted that after reading Morgan's essay, he made adjustments in a convoy he was organizing for an operation in the Sunni Triangle. "Our troops are in down-and-dirty fights in the streets of the Fallujahs of this country, and mostly the Army still trains for the Big Fight," he said in an interview. "So we definitely need these informal debriefs."
The documents run the gamut from inarticulate to polished, from dull to action-packed, from heavily technical to highly philosophical. The stunning summer heat of Iraq provides the backdrop for many. "It is the most horrible environment that you could ever imagine," warns Capt. Mike Titus, a former commander of a 101st Airborne maintenance company in Iraq. "Prepare for the worst -- heat, dust, sandstorms -- the elements are as much your enemy as the Fedayeen."
Main topics
Five subjects dominate the new veterans' discussions: the nature of the foe, the need to adjust tactics and equipment, the ways to keep troops sharp and, again and again, how to run a safe convoy. And then, less as a lesson than as a warning, there is the impact of casualties.
"There is no textbook answer for what you will encounter in Iraq," warns Lt. Jessica Murphy, a military police officer. "The enemy does not play by a set book of rules or tactics -- they literally change every week."
Likewise, Braeger cautions that troops need to remember they are under continuous observation. "The enemy is getting smarter," he writes. "He watches us and makes adjustments accordingly."
Maj. James Williams, the executive officer of a military police battalion, writes: "Fortunately, most Iraqis can't shoot worth a damn." But then there are the bombs.
Increasingly sophisticated
The insurgents' tactics showed a growing sophistication over the course of 2003. At first, many units suffered direct attacks by rocket-propelled grenades, not unlike those they faced during the March-April war. Then came the roadside bombs -- at first, crude ones controlled by wires, then more advanced devices detonated by cell phones or other remote controls.
In the late fall, reports Russell, the infantry commander in Tikrit, "we began to see many varieties of explosive devices. Doorbell switches became a favorite, followed by keyless locks, toy cars and in one case a pressure switch."
Likewise, the placement of roadside bombs has become more sophisticated. The latest twist is to put a large bomb, such as one built with an artillery shell, in the open so U.S. troops will stop short of it -- and then hit them with a string of hidden bombs along their stopping point.
One of the most heavily studied subjects for the U.S. military in Iraq over the past nine months has been how to safely operate a convoy of trucks and Humvees, the Army's modern version of the Jeep. The core conclusion of several of the studies is that the most vulnerable convoys are small ones of three or four vehicles -- especially those in which weapons are not held visible and at the ready.