Leadership Stories – Marine Infantry Training - Part Three

Another combat exercise that we participated in placed my squad and me in the defender role instead of the attacker.

Our position to hold was near the top, but not at the top.

Prior to the exercise beginning I surveyed the entire location especially at the top and behind us. I wanted to know where we could go if things heated up. What I noticed was that there was a great place just over the top of the hill.

The way the hill was set up was that anyone going up over and going down the other side was completely left exposed. In addition, just below that area was the perfect location to provide cover to those coming over the top of the hill.

I positioned one of my fire teams in this location to do two things. The first was to make sure no one came up from the back side of the hill and caught us from behind. The other reason was that if we had to give up our location on the other side of the hill, we had cover to do so.

I learned early in life that good leadership skills always include preparation and back up plans The other two fire teams I positioned on the other side, but before doing so we went over an exit plan that we hoped would draw the attackers over the hill into our trap, if we got placed into that predicament.

The reason I was thinking in these terms was because I did not like the position they had put us into. The specific location we were to hold was horrible. Maybe they did this on purpose I don't know but under normal conditions I would have never set up in that place. It would leave us much too vulnerable.

So once in our position everyone knew the plan in the event we would have to move back up and just over the hill to where my third fire team was stationed.

We had done the best we could with what we had to provide cover for us. The exercise began!

We waited to see if we could identify the enemy approaching which as a different squad.

Their mission of course was to take the hill we occupied. They were not fully aware where we were on the hill except that we were there somewhere.

I could quickly see that they were able to move up the hill under cover while we were not able to successfully take them out. Under normal conditions I would have either shelled them with mortar fire or hand grenades, but we were not permitted to use this strategy. On the other hand we would have been sitting ducks if they could have done the same.

So as they came up and we returned fire, I sent my fire teams individually back and over the hill to our planned location. We would do this as we would fire off several rounds, they would move back a small amount.

On the final move up and over I wanted to give the impression of retreat so I would be the last one over and I wanted them to clearly know I was moving over in a retreating fashion.

I did this and through this portion of the exercise everything was going as we had planned.

Once over we positioned ourselves and then waited. I instructed that we would not begin firing until we counted nearly thirteen, or when they would have been in the best spot to take out as many as possible. They were to begin on my first shot.

It seemed like a life time but we saw one slowly moving over the crest of the hill. We saw the top of his head first then more and more of them. Then we saw another and another until we counted all of them.

I fired off the first round and that began the fire fight With in moments we had taken them all out and had won the fire fight.

What a realistic feeling and a real sense of accomplishment.

As I mentioned earlier it was a good lesson in preparation and always having a back up plan.

Thank you for reading another one of my leadership stories and may God Bless you!

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