How One Soldier's E-Mail By GREG JAFFE
Changed Troops Equipment
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Last July, a few weeks after he got back from Afghanistan, Master Sgt. Rudy Romero wrote a quick e-mail to one of his old commanding officers. "How's everything going sir? Let's get together for lunch. I know a pretty good place if you like Mexican," he began.
He followed that with three pages of advice from his tour in Afghanistan with the Army's 101st Airborne division -- everything from the best gloves to take (fleece from AutoZone) to the best socks (Gore-Tex, available in camping stores). He also told his former boss to ditch the Army-issue ammunition sacks and instead buy bags from London Bridge Trading Co.
The 37-year-old soldier figured that sooner or later his former commander would be deployed to Afghanistan and that sharing his experience might make the tour easier. Little did he know that his military version of "Hints from Heloise" would make its way to the Pentagon's top brass and inspire significant changes in the way the Army is equipping its troops for possible future battles, including Iraq.
Sgt. Romero's old boss, Maj. Frank Sturek, forwarded the note to a couple of friends in his unit. They shot it to a few of their friends, and before Sgt. Romero knew it his e-mail, written in all capital letters, had landed in the in boxes of Army Sgt. Major Jack Tilley, the Army's senior enlisted soldier, and Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki, who said he found it fascinating.![[Gearing Up Logo]](http://www.wsj.com/public/resources/images/soldier_logo02062003230023.gif){kind=logo}
It didn't stop there. A month after he hit the "send" button, Sgt. Romero got a call from Sgt. Major Tilley telling him that the Army wanted him to go to its U.S. Soldier Systems Center in Natick, Mass., where engineers were busily at work developing the gear that soldiers take into battle. Sgt. Romero grabbed two of his buddies at Fort Campbell, Ky., and headed out a few days later.
Once in Natick, the three were ushered into a theater, where they answered questions and spent two days meeting the 100 or so engineers responsible for designing the clothing and gadgets that soldiers wear or carry into combat. Sgt. Romero had lots of advice for the people who design the Army's tan desert boots, which troops wore in Afghanistan.
Although the boots worked just fine on the soft sands of Iraq, they fell to pieces after a couple of months in Afghanistan, where the ground is rocky. The engineers took note, and the Army is buying new boots with special composite soles that should stand up better in Central Asia.
His biggest complaint was that Army gear weighs too much. "We were easily carrying 80 lbs. Throw on the ruck [Army backpack] and you're sucking," he wrote.
![[Master Sgt. Rudy Romero]](http://www.wsj.com/public/resources/images/2f_letter02062003231517.jpg) Master Sgt. Rudy Romero shows Army nutritionists how he stripped a prepackaged Army meal to make it lighter. |
To make their point, the three men explained how soldiers in Afghanistan consumed their Meals Ready to Eat, the plastic-wrapped all-in-one food packets that weigh about two pounds and last around three years. Before going into battle they "field stripped" the meals to cut down on their carrying weight. "We kept the high carb stuff for energy and threw out everything else," Sgt. Romero told the nutritionist responsible for developing the meals.
Based in part on his suggestions, the Army is designing a lightweight Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol Ration.
The three raised another practical concern: Too many of the Army's new gadgets use different kinds of batteries, further increasing the load. Some soldiers, Sgt. Romero explained, buy commercial GPS locators from camping stores and discard their military-issue devices simply because the civilian ones use the same batteries as their night-vision goggles. The engineers, who had heard similar complaints before, said they would keep that in mind but made no promises.
Today Sgt. Romero's e-mail is still posted on several military Web sites and in a half-dozen or so Internet chat rooms. The message tells a couple of bone-chilling war stories, including one about the time a 2,000-pound, satellite-guided bomb veered off course and nearly killed his company. "It didn't go off by a sheer miracle I'm sure," he wrote.
But mostly the e-mail focuses on matters far more mundane. For example, Sgt. Romero tells his former commander not to bother with Army-issue winter gloves. They are warm and waterproof, but soldiers can't pull a rifle trigger when wearing them, which is a big problem in combat. Aviator gloves are good, he writes. Even better are the fleece gloves sold at AutoZone.
And the best munitions for clearing out a cave? "Bring lots of Thermite grenades and C-4," he suggests. His unit, not accustomed to clearing caves, never seemed to have enough.
Finally, he advises his colleagues to bring iodine tablets to purify water -- something U.S. soldiers did for decades, but his unit, unaccustomed to the rigors of war, left behind at Fort Campbell. "We've lost a lot of our needed field craft," he laments in the e-mail.
Sgt. Romero's e-mail is full of praise for the training he received before he was deployed and for the troops who fought at his side. "Soldiers did great. You can always depend on them. They are extremely brave and want to fight," he concludes. "They'll do it just like we teach them."
Write to Greg Jaffe at greg.jaffe@wsj.com