Troop to Task
Ken,
This usually is more of a garrison requirement, but frequently in OIF, a new mission would arise. Sometimes this was from the Good Idea Fairy, sometimes it supported improving the security in the populace. And it became difficult for the battalion HQ to track the things I was doing. For instance, in Tal Afar, some of my tasks in my company were:
Maintain limited visibility overwatch all night, every night along a 3.5 km stretch of the outer ring highway, the MSR for the brigade FOB. 2 tanks could do this, but we usually split the time into 2 4-5 hour periods, thus consuming a whole platoon.
Maintain random nighttime patrol presence in some of the neighborhoods - prevented the bigger booms by never giving the enemy a chance to emplace HMMWV-killing (or bigger) IEDs, such as 3ACR had previously in my sector. Now in hindsight, don't think this was the best way to do it, but my method then was through a pretty high optempo.
Each platoon partner and conduct a joint patrol with IA every single day. Later, this got turned into every U.S. patrol had IA with it.
Patrols during the day, focused on a neighborhood, looking at gathering atmospherics, looking for ways to interact with the neighborhood, etc. We were not experts in COIN but we kind of understood that talking to the locals was important. This was pre 3-24 (COIN manual) so we fumbled alot. We should have been gathering info like census and complete demographics.
Assist my Fire Support section with IP partnership, sometimes requiring a squad or platoon for patrols or training.
Maintain 24/7 COP defense - nighttime visits to local houses or random patrols, 4-man guard force.
Escort EOD in sector. I had the EOD team living with me (for good reason, unfortunately).
Maintain QRF ability at +10 minutes (usually quite less). If I had 2 platoons in sector, I could designate either to be the QRF. If only 1, then I had to have one from the COP.
Maintain liaison with IA battalion, assisting however I was able. Lots of visits, lots of chai, lots of planning, discussions, getting to know (and genuinely like) each other. Many combined operations, including everything done at a larger scale.
In addition, other things that came up were:
Some actionable intel, with night-time cordon and search.
Escort TPT or THT (I liked TPT, never found value with our THT, but that is a discussion for another thread).
Hospital liaison visits, IP station visits, Sheik visits, CMO projects (quite a bit - bn cdr wanted money spent!), Cave and ravine searches, joint training opportunities, new patrol base recon, admin movement support (meetings at bn hq, hauling generator back to the FOB, etc).
My BN CDR was pretty good about managing missions with his companies, but sometimes things came down that didn't get a lot of mental muscle from the staff. I was always taught that you didn't say you couldn't do something, you said that I can do the mission but here is what I won't be able to do or do at the same level. In Iraq, you have many directed missions, but so many that you pick up on your own, due to variances in each company AO, that the battalion doesn't always realize how busy you are.
Sorry for my long post, but I found it rather cathartic. There is the haunting that every commander lives with after his combat tour, about what he did and didn't do, and how he could have done things differently. Being at NTC, and reliving Iraq every month, can be a mixed bag for this.
Tankersteve
Originally Posted by tankersteve
). Thanks. Only comment to that is that IMO your Bn doesn't need to know what you're doing in anything near total knowledge but should be enough aware that barring an urgent situation, they wouldn't task you to do things that degrade the total mission. I didn't say that well but I'm sure you know what I mean -- adding that I wasn't there so that's just a generic comment.
, just wanted to break out the whole gamut of duties/missions that tend to get lost in the sauce by higher HQs. 
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