Ken,

Thanks for the post. Semper Fi brother!

How small a world it is. I served with 1st Mar in OIF-I. I am also reluctant to say outright that we're not ready to fight a "conventional" fight because my experiences in 2002-2003. I checked into 1st Mar in Nov '02. No platoon. The battalion's at roughly 30% strength. We're all called back from Christmas leave and told we're going to war. All the Lts present, we were still short quite a few Lts at the time, look at each other wondering where the Marines for the platoons are. Marines from the School of Infantry East and West are sent to 1st Mar, specifically, 1st Bn 4th Marines, at the cyclic rate. On 5 Jan 2003, I have a platoon of 30 Marines; my other squad is in Kuwait at the time and I won't link-up with them until 25 Feb, having never met any of the Marines. We get on ship on 17 Jan 2003, having never conducted a platoon, company or battalion live-fire and maneuver exercise. We did what we could on ship. We trained hard but as far as live-fire goes, there's only so much one can do on a "small" deck. We land in Kuwait 25 Feb. Link-up with the other squad. Train for about 3 weeks in the desert, almost exclusively at the platoon and limited rehearsals at the company level. We have no AAVs at the time. All rehearsals are conducted dismounted or using 7-ton trucks. 19 March we get AAVs; many of these AAVs are in a sorry state. All day and night long our AAV warriors, reservists from Texas, burn the midnight oil getting the vehicles up. We cross the LD 20Mar, towing one of my platoon's 3 AAVs.

In the end, the Marines fought like hell, fixed AAVs under ponchos while on the move at night, executing combined arms, tank/mech-infantry integration, and enduring the elements the whole time... nasty sand-storms, down to 1 MRE a day and very limited water, etc. (Please don't think that I'm even trying to compare this to the Chosin). We even executed a river crossing in the AAVs to get into Baghdad.

I say all this because, as you know, ultimately what we can do comes down to Heart, the Will to Win and Only to Win, Teamwork, Esprit, etc.

All this said, we must be aware of skills that are atrophying and find ways to alleviate this/these problems. I think, at least in the Marine Corps, we're doing this.

Semper Fi,
Scott