Heard From Today

From Herschel Smith at The Captain’s Journal comes an update on our Marines in Helmand Province. After the heavy fighting in Garmsir, the Marines of Battalion Landing Team 1/6 (sort of a misnomer since the battalion did not deploy aboard ship) are logging damage complaints from the villagers and paying to repair the damage.

Just two days after the main Taliban force was routed, Lt. Bechtel put aside his weapons and opened what amounts to a wartime complaints desk in a mud-brick hut. The lieutenant and his men spend their time cataloging the destruction and issuing vouchers to compensate villagers for their losses, whether caused by U.S. missiles or Taliban grenades.

24 MEU moved into Garmsir in late April. The British has previously been unable to control the district, but the MEU provided fresh manpower and awful lot of firepower to get the job done. Interestingly, I have heard (but not yet confirmed) that the MEU was allowed to retain all of its organic assets, including the AV-8B Harriers from the Air Combat Element (ACE). Typically, when a MEU shows up to reinforce a joint or coalition command, one of the first things that the joint command tries to do is pull the MEU’s aviation assets under the joint air component and use them to provide additional sorties to the rest of the forces in theater. While I can understand their reasoning, there is a remarkable synergy that comes from the close relationship between the ACE and BLT on a MEU, and that is lost when the ACE is used to support CFACC missions elsewhere.

Back to Garmsir:

The fighting sent civilians fleeing into the surrounding desert. After the violence ebbed, the villagers returned, in many cases to homes cracked open by artillery, bombs, missiles and rocket-propelled grenades. Soon they were lined up at Lt. Bechtel’s door, testing the Marines’ ability to shift gears on the fly, from combat to the struggle for popular allegiance. Winning over the locals has always been a goal; now, it’s happening in double-quick time.

Fortunately, Lt Bechtel was educated at one of the finest institutions in the land:

At the second meeting, the Marines tally up the cost, using data on an Excel spreadsheet that the lieutenant, who majored in mechanical-engineering at Virginia Military Institute, compiled using prices gathered from the local market.

Heard from again.