Word: platoons
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...Outside, Mitchell links up with Lieut. Robert Carnahan and two six-man squads from White Platoon carrying M-16s, heavy SAWs (squad automatic weapons) and 240-Bravo machine guns. Flanking them are three Bradley fighting vehicles. Mitchell, 34, briefs his men that a passing farmer has told a sentry about 10 men sweeping around for an ambush. On his command, the Americans run north through the choking red dust and throw themselves on the ground against a nearby railway track. "Jesus, we can't see s___!" says Carnahan. The squads hold their positions as the Bradleys scan the area with...
...clincher on that question came later in the evening. As I returned from a trip to one of the other units at the camp, I discovered that the Brigade Headquarters Area had been surrounded by a platoon of heavily armed infantrymen. I asked a nearby first sergeant if Col. Hodges had asked for the added security during the night and was told, "I don't think the colonel knows. These soldiers volunteered to come do this." I wonder if any of the veterans reading this ever heard of soldiers volunteering to stand guard all night before...
...week. For one thing, the outbreak of war means that, 10 or 20 years down the road, someone will make an honest film denouncing it. ("All Quiet on the Western Front" came a dozen years after WWI ended, "Patton" 25 years after WWII, "MASH" 17 years after Korea and "Platoon" more than a decade after the last U.S. helicopter escaped Saigon.) For another, war gives members of the industrial-entertainment complex - a business designed to offer diversion from the little murders of daily life - to take the world seriously. And that's a spectacle only slightly goofier than movie stars...
...foolish enough to believe that all Iraqi soldiers will be so meek. One day last week a platoon with the 101st Airborne spent the morning learning how to treat massive chest wounds. But even as the soldiers were taught the grim procedures for stopping acute blood loss--apply a tourniquet first; administer fluids afterward--they suffered more from the anxious tedium of waiting for war. Some of the guys got into a separation-of-church-and-state debate; others complained about missing March Madness; some looked forward to this week, when the ammunition arrives and live-fire training begins...
...Western Michigan. Birtwell went 7-2 with a 1.59 ERA and struck out 101 batters in 79.1 innings… With Lentz back in the lineup and a sudden, unprecedented logjam at catcher, Walsh has worked Mann out at first base and Lentz in left field to make a platoon situation possible… The Crimson will open its season during spring break against several Florida teams, then begin its home campaign against Rhode Island on April...