#12. I agree with your assessment. During some of our worst weeks in Vietnam, we lost about 267 men during a week, which included action in some or all 44 provinces.
The casualties were listed in a weekly DoD/DDI handout on Thursdays. I used these to coordinate American casualties with the Hanoi Lobby protests in 1969/70. Thus I was able to keep a running tabulation on KIA/WIA/MIAs per week and match it against monthly or yearly summaries.
No way we lost 240 at Tal Afar, esp. 30 Bradley Fighting Vehicles (possibly included destroyed and damaged, but this isn’t stated as such).
However, McMaster is not coming off as a very competent field commander and that spells trouble for us right now.
Not listening to combat veterans in the field, like Mark Clark refused to listen to soldiers and journalists who drove basically all the way to Rome and told him the roads were open. He didn’t believe them, held up the advance, and then had to fight the reinforced Germans at a great cost up the Leg of Italy to Rome.
One thing that does bother me, though, is the time the terrorists took out a number of Harriers parked on the ground in Afghanistan. It was noted- barely- in a few news outlets, but that’s it- it was, for all practical purposes, buried under an avalanche of other news items.
Hopefully it wasn’t as lost among those with a need to know as it was to the public , and something of value was learned from that humiliation.
One thing that does bother me, though, is the time the terrorists took out a number of Harriers parked on the ground in Afghanistan. It was noted- barely- in a few news outlets, but that’s it- it was, for all practical purposes, buried under an avalanche of other news items.
Hopefully it wasn’t as lost among those with a need to know as it was to the public , and something of value was learned from that humiliation.
One more thing.
The author tried to make readers be impressed with the credentials of the non-existent source for this “story” by claiming he was an SF officer.
Snake Eaters would not have been sources for such info. It would have been a Track Head.
Be well.