Aloha,     A friend at CINCPAC sent this to me - good reading next time any of you feel you've had a hard day. - redvet Interview of SSgt Kevin Vance 25 March 2002 – Bagram, Afghanistan My name is Kevin Donell Vance.  In June, I will have been in the United States Air Force for eight years.  I hold the rank of Staff Sergeant.  I am currently married with two children, ages four and two.  I was born on 3 September 1976 and am currently 25 years old.  My SSAN is XXX-XX-XXXX I entered into the USAF eleven days after graduating from high school. I went to open general basic training.  I was not sure which career path to take until I was asked to try out to be a tactical air control party [TACP] from a TACP recruiter.  I was one of the few who tried out and was chosen.  I went to technical school in Florida for fourteen weeks.  My first assignment was at Ft. Polk in Louisiana supporting the 2nd Armored Calvary Regiment [ACR] for three years.  I then transferred to support the Joint Readiness Training Center [JRTC] for a year.  Next, I was assigned to Camp Casey in Korea for one year.  Afterwards, I tried out for and was selected for my present job.  I have been with my current unit for two and a half years.  I have had basic training, TACP training, Ranger School, Basic Airborne School, Air Assault School, HALO School, and Pathfinder School. At around 0115z on 4 March 2002, I was told that a military member was on the ground in a hostile area in Afghanistan after falling out of a helicopter.  My team was told that another team was attempting to go in and get him, but if they were not successful, my team would go in. We were waiting to find out if we would go in to try to get to our lost military member.  My team was in a helicopter in route and our estimated time of arrival was 0150z.  My team consisted of ten people plus three special tactics squadron members [STS] and we were with eight crewmembers, a total of twenty-one personnel. At 0140z I had noticed we were flying in circles around the mountaintop because I had noticed the same terrain twice.  As we were circling about the third time, we were hit with a rocket- propelled grenade [RPG] around 0145z.  There were sparks on the right side of the aircraft and we started to shake violently.  Then our helicopter just fell out of the sky about 15 feet to the ground.  After the first RPG hit us to when the helicopter hit the ground, I do not remember specifics of what happened, it was a blur.  No one, to my knowledge, was injured from the initial crash. Before I could get off the aircraft, another RPG hit the aircraft where the right door gunner was.  There was only one military member between the right door gunner and myself.   I am not positive how many times our helicopter was shot but I think altogether, four RPGs were shot at us.  I was snap _link_ed into the helicopter, a precaution so we do not fall out of the helicopter.  First I was trying to get my snap _link_/safety line off but the pararescueman [PJ] behind me was pushing me so it pulled tight.  I had a little bit of trouble getting it off; it slowed me down about 15 seconds.  I then ran off the back of the aircraft. By the time I was able to get off of the aircraft, three of our team members were already dead.  One team member was on the ramp with a hole in his head.  There was no mistaking that he was dead.  The second team member was at the end of the ramp face down in the snow.  His position was such that if there had been life left in him, he would have moved his head out of the snow.  I later found out that he had been shot under the arm though his chest and out his above right nipple.  The last deceased team member was lying on his back at the end of the ramp not moving.  These three deceased members survived the initial crash without injury, but had died from enemy fire.  Their names were Marc Anderson, Brad Crose, and Matt Commons. I knew we had three killed in action [KIA], which left seven of our team, three of which were injured.  I had shrapnel in the arm, but did not notice it until later.  My platoon leader had shrapnel in his leg, it was a pretty good chunk, and another team member had shrapnel in his lower left calf and was moving slow.  Our team knew how to fight and how to operate on the ground.  The aircrew did not have the same training. I exited the aircraft and threw my rucksack off but kept it within 20 meters from me.  I figured out which way we were being engaged from and I sought cover behind a cut out in the rock face. It was just big enough for four team members to kneel behind it.  We set up a perimeter.  Two other members were back to my right and three members to my left.  I was closest to the enemy. There were two enemies about 50 meters north of us near a tree.  There was one enemy behind me and to the right already dead.  There were some more enemies to the south coming out.  Then we started to engage the enemy.  I was shooting an M4.  At first, my priority was to keep engaging the enemy to hold them back and then to seek assistance for close air support [CAS] on the radio.  My radio, a PRC 117F, was still in my rucksack.  There was a combat controller [CCT] with us named Gabe Brown who was behind me a bit.  I turned around and yelled at him to work on getting communications running, he already was working on it.  I decided that I needed to be on the line fighting, if I had been on the radio, then the combat controller would have been sitting there doing nothing because he doesn’t have the assault training.  I decided that he should call in the CAS as I directed him.  I told him my rucksack had a radio in it.  A member of the crew dragged my rucksack to the CCT so he had my radio. First, we shot M203 rounds at bunker.  A M203 is a grenade launcher that fits on a M4/16. As the squad leader and team leader shot M203s, I stood up and provided covering fire. When he would stand up to fire a grenade at the bunker, I would standup and shoot at the bunker to cover him.  I did the same when the crewmembers would run for more ammo.  We tried throwing fragment grenades at the enemy but it they were too far away and the bunker was on the backside of the hill.  The enemy threw fragment grenades at us but they landed 5-10 feet in front of me, buried in the snow and blew up. I believe one of the helicopter pilots was dead and the other was injured severely.  The other pilot opened the door to the aircraft and fell out of the aircraft face first.  He lay there in the snow securing his area.  There was no power to the aircraft without which we could not operate the mini-guns.  One of the team members yelled at a member of the crew to get the power working so we could use those guns.  The mini-guns shoot 7.62 ammo and so does our M240. The crew was taking ammo and giving it to our M240 gunner.  When the crewmembers would run back to the aircraft for more ammo, I would standup and shoot at the bunker to cover them. They were also taking M203 rounds and magazines off of the KIA and bringing it to us.  The crew pulled off insulation from the aircraft to wrap the casualties in to keep them warm.   Then four of us (myself, the platoon leader, squad leader, and team leader) started to assault the tree area where the enemy was coming from while the M240 gunner suppressed it. The CPT Self, the platoon leader [PL], was in charge.  Once we realized that it was a bunker, a couple of enemy came out from behind a tree and took shots at us.  We were moving slow because the snow was up to our knees and we were going uphill.  The platoon leader finally said let’s back up and rethink this.  We backed up because we could not afford to lose any more guys. The combat controller yelled that we have F-15s on station.  The Platoon Leader was next to me and we discussed it.  Then F-15s were overhead and the combat controller was directing them to the enemy according to my instructions.  I told the combat controller to have the F-15s to strafe the bunker and have them come in from our right to our left.  The CCT repeated what I said.  He was smart enough that I did not have to tell him too much detail of what to say on the radio.   We used the position of the helicopter to give clock directions.  He had basic knowledge of CAS so I could tell him to have the fighters do gun runs on an area from which direction and he would get on the radio and make it happen.  The first F-15 pass was really close and I was uncomfortable because I could not tell if the guns were pointing at my team or the enemy bunker so I told the CCT to abort it.  I told him to have them come in more from behind us, so I could tell they were not pointing at us.  I told him to clear them and the rounds hit right by the bunker. I told him to have them do that over and over again.  I think the gun runs were made by both F- 15s and F-16s.  For the first 10-15 minutes, the CCT thought I was the team leader.  He yelled to me ‘team leader’ when the team leader was sitting next to him. At this point, the team member who was injured in the leg and could not move easily was facing one way.  Sgt Walker and I were pulling security on the bunker.  CPT Self and I tried to determine where would be a good landing zone. The fighters did some more gun runs and the enemy was still jumping up shooting at us.  The enemy was moving on us from behind us (we didn’t know this at the time) but the majority of enemy were firing at us were on the hill near the bunker area.  We killed seven of them.  The last time I saw anyone move in the bunker, I was scanning the hilltop and I saw the upper half of an enemy behind some bushes.  I shot three times, got down and stood back up.  This was the last I had seen him.  I never went over towards that bunker so I cannot confirm if I had killed him. Then we shot some more bombs in the bunker area.  I told CCT to direct them to shoot down the backside of the hill north of us.  I thought it was better to have them shoot
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A WOMAN'S WORK [Col. Writ. 5/8/02] Copyright 2002 Mumia Abu-Jamal     When one thinks of war, we are conditioned to think of men in fatigues, perhaps in formation, marching, or driving their malevolent machines of death.     That is the dominant face of war, to be sure, but it is not its only face.     If we broaden our perspective of war, and consider the many victims of war, we find a woman's face, and the shattered faces of children.     In every major war that has been fought in the last century, the death toll has been highest among the so-called 'non-combatants' - women and children.     How could it be otherwise in a world of weapons that drop or launch death on such vast scales as was seen in the world wars, Vietnam, and every imperial skirmish since?     Historian Howard Zinn, in his recent Terrorism and War (New York: Open Media/Seven Stories, 2002), recounts some of the human costs of the much-lauded war in Afghanistan:         It's clear that civilians are being killed in the bombing.         I read an account of one attack on the town of Gudara         on December 1. The village is no more, a survivor         of the attack said. All my family, twelve people, were         killed. I am the only one left in this family, I have lost         my children, my wife. They are no more. [p. 84]     The MyLai massacre of Vietnam was extraordinary in the sense that it received extraordinary media coverage. There were millions

redvet < This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it wrote in message A WOMAN'S WORK [Col. Writ. 5/8/02] Copyright 2002 Mumia Abu-Jamal Snipped With any luck, once the court of appeals overturns the idiot that vacated the death sentence - Mumia's statement will be like this bloke from the Great State of Texas http://www.tdcj.state.tx.us/stat/robersonbrianlast.htm Nigel Brooks