What did you do to MY track?
SSG P’s blog kindly asks us to “all bow our heads and rememebr what a great bradley A13 … was”
I’d like to take a moment to reflect on the life and times of Alpha One-Three.
“Wait a minute … you’re going to reflect on a Bradley Fighting Vehicle?” you may ask yourself.
Yes. I answer back. For many reasons, I am. In June of 2002, after returning from a 6 month tour in Kosovo, I was moved from being an infantry squad leader to a Bradley section leader. I had had the job before and looked forward to working in a Bradley section again. I was given a competent gunner, and good driver and the “keys” to Apache 13. It is important to note, that even though it is written as A-13, it is pronounced “One-Three.” In hind sight, A-13 would cause me to no longer be superstitious about that number combination again.
When you take over a track, you just don’t become responsible for a large piece of metal molded into a fighting machine. It becomes an extension of you, and you of it. If it doesn’t roll, you don’t roll. When it needs work done, you and your crew do the work. When they call for “Red Three” on the radio, they are calling you as a person and that Bradley as a vehicle to do there duty. Three men and machine go down range and qualify together. Up to nine men and a machine go to war together. You learn what makes your Bradley different from any other Bradley Fighting Vehicle in the entire army. The Bradley’s mobility, performance and lethality are all interconnected with the crew … the better the crew, the better the Bradley.
From June 2002 until July 4, 2003 my call sign was “Red Three.” My Bradley crew was one of the best in the company, and we operated well together. That meant, my Bradley was one of the best in the company. When you work as a crew member, the Bradley becomes your mobile home. You find comfort sleeping in the crew compartment, and you spend long hours working at your crew station. As I said, it becomes and extension of you and your crew.
Before the war, it was decided that our unit would not be taking its home station Bradley’s with us. When we got to Kuwait in January 2003, we received “new” Bradley’s with all new equipment. The new A-13 was a clean, strong machine and the crew and I put it through its paces during training in February. She was a hardy fighter and just like the rest of us, she was ready to cross the berm and give Saddam’s goons a taste of the Hades. She rode through the entire war with only a few small, but memorable, maintenance hitches. In June, the on-loan A-13 was turned in to get reconditioned and sent back to theatre.
The Bradley known as A13 that stayed back in the States was picked up by another crew when we returned, as I went on to become the companies Master Gunner. She performed well for them, and its new crew scored “Distinguished” during the last Bradley gunnery I ran in October of 2004. This time, our home stationed Bradley’s would come to the fight, and we packed them up and shipped them to Iraq. Around April, 2005 the Bradley commander of A-13 was moved into a different job within our battalion. SSG P, who had been working for the 1SG and I in the headquarters platoon was sent to be its new commander. (See some irony in that?) As with all strong willed Bradley’s, she bucked against her new crew, having them pull extra hours of maintenance, but A-13 became for SSG P like she had been for me and my crew; a reliable Bradley Fighting Vehicle that was accomplishing missions.
Therefore, when I went to the motor pool to see her, the sand and dust on her charred from the blast that she took, I was saddened. The crew escaped from physical harm and the Bradley had done its duty. Just like any soldier who makes the decision to protect his team members, A-13 put itself in harms way … and paid the ultimate sacrifice in the performance of her duties.