Life or death in a split second...
...and a lifetime to deal with your decision, right or wrong.
Here's what someone who's been there and done that as a LAV gunner in Kandahar has to say about the incident:
Maybe the soldier who pulled the trigger screwed up. Maybe he or she didn't. We'll find out in due course as the incident is investigated.
In the meantime, each and every one of us should be glad we weren't the one who had to make that split-second decision.
Here's what someone who's been there and done that as a LAV gunner in Kandahar has to say about the incident:
LAV Gunners take these kinds of situations very seriously and they put alot of thought into their convoy SOPs. No one wants to kill kids and innocents - every one of us knows that we will live with the choices that we make on the roads in Kandahar. But the point at which warning shots turn into lethal force is a grey area, with each situation dependant on the circumstances. It's impossible to armchair this one.
In fall 06 I was a LAV gunner involved in a convoy op in southern Afghanistan. At one point a vehicle pulled out and began speeding towards us, and I fired my COAX in accordance with ROEs. When the dust cleared the battle aiming mark on my daysight was sitting right in the middle of some kid's head as I looked through the windshield at him sitting on the driver's lap. The driver decided to stop just in time, and I checked fire just in time. No one was hurt, but I was seriously pissed off. How the frig could the driver have been so stupid? Risking his life and his family's life like that? Doesn't he know that this game is for keeps? If the timing had been a half second off I would have wasted every single ******* person in that car. And I would have had to live with that.
In the early spring 07 another car was speeding towards us. He got the drop on us, and the ****** exploded himself on the side of my LAV. No one was hurt thankfully, aside from the suicide bomber. But what if someone was hurt? Maybe I should have been just a split second quicker on the trigger. frig, I don't know.
These are the decisions made every day by our guys in Afghanistan and it pisses me off to see this crap armchaired. Guys do enough second guessing of their own actions. They don't need john smith on army.ca or on the CBC adding to it.
Maybe the soldier who pulled the trigger screwed up. Maybe he or she didn't. We'll find out in due course as the incident is investigated.
In the meantime, each and every one of us should be glad we weren't the one who had to make that split-second decision.
posted by Babbling Brooks at 1:53 p.m.
2 Comments:
Hear hear.
On August 3, 2006, a Canadian convoy on its way to support a huge firefight in Panjwayi was passing through Bazaar-i-Panjwayi, the main community in the district, when a suspicious vehicle suddenly accelerated towards the convoy.
Lieut. Doug Thorlakson, in the turret of one of the lighter vehicles in the rear of the convoy, made that split-second decision and opened up with his C6 machine-gun. The car bomb detonated immediately, too soon to damage any CF vehicles but with enough force to flatten some nearby shops and kill or injure dozens of civilians.
All this to underline your correspondent's point, that you can't second guess such decisions by the guys in the front lines: most of the time, in fact almost all of the time, they make the right call.
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