Quote Originally Posted by Ken White View Post
On the take the ammo and automatic weapon and move out bit, years later in the Army, after Viet Nam (and I think the 'after' is important) I sometimes was criticized for strongly and constantly pushing variants of that guidance until and even after I retired (some in uniform hate hearing 'guidance' and training stuff from old civilian employees) which I believed and still believe to be correct but it was in conflict particularly with the Ranger and SF communities and the 'never leave anyone behind' mantra. That's a post Viet Nam (Viet Nam induced???) idea and I often wonder about it given a real busy and big war.
I specifically recall this point being emphasized during our train up for OIF III. Whenever a SAW gunner went down, if you were a rifleman, then you swapped out your weapon for his. Months later, when we were deployed, I remember one of our SAW gunners getting shot in the leg and a 19-year-old rifleman in his team promptly swapped out weapons with him. They'll do it if you train them to. Those lessons from Nam weren't forgotten by all units.