Army Has Made Many Changes Since 507th Ambush Anniversary

El Paso Times | March 23, 2005 | Chris Roberts

[Stand Watch Listen]

Two years after six members of the 507th Maintenance Company stationed at Fort Bliss were captured and nine killed in an ambush in Nasiriyah, Iraq, training has changed to better reflect the realities soldiers are facing, including the lack of a well-defined front line where most of the fighting takes place.

"Hindsight is 20/20; of course we didn't think of it at the time," said former Army Spc. Shoshana Johnson, who was captured after being wounded in the legs. "We needed a different kind of convoy training and an improvement to the armor on the vehicles. It's good to see that some of these things have been changed because it means that what happened wasn't for nothing."

Armor has been added to most Humvees, and soldiers are participating in "convoy live-fire" exercises. The exercises in many ways duplicate the conditions faced by the 507th soldiers when they found themselves surrounded by hostile Iraqi forces two years ago today after making a wrong turn as they tried to catch up to the rest of their unit in the charge to Baghdad during the Iraq war.

"I think they can do a little bit more in the training department," Johnson said. "Infantry, across the board, should receive combat training, maybe the guerrilla-fighting training."

Former Army Cpl. Joseph Hudson, another 507th soldier who was captured, said there is no front line in the current war and he too has seen an improvement in training procedures.

"Our enemy is outnumbered, outgunned and outsmarted. He can only hide behind a building and take a few shots," Hudson said. Both Johnson and Hudson call El Paso home.

The 507th was a victim of poor planning, said U.S. Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-El Paso.

"We cannot jump off prematurely into war like we did," Reyes said. "We faced urban combat, and there was very little preparation done along those lines. We went into war with 60 percent of our vehicles unarmored, and it's taken us two years to get that done. We're still getting reports of isolated incidents with unarmored vehicles. It's been a series of very painful lessons and lessons that have caused the spilling of the blood of American soldiers."

Reyes said efforts are being made to ensure that training is restructured, that vehicles are armored and that new technology used to detect improvised explosive devices is available to soldiers.

"I think we're doing everything humanly possible, but as you know, it's still a very dangerous environment," he said. "We need to get Iraqi forces trained up ... and then get our troops out of there."

Maj. Gen. Michael Vane, Fort Bliss commander, said what happened to the 507th could have happened to any support unit. He said that about a five years ago, a move was started to create the "warrior ethos," which means all soldiers are prepared for combat.

"As you move from a ... (forward operations base) or any other location on the battlefield, the primary thought in every soldier's mind should be finding and killing the enemy, not just moving supplies. So there's a cultural shift ... that gets more of your force oriented on these (combat) tasks and drills."

[NEBUCHADNEZZAR1961]

I noticed they haven't dumped those inherently bad rifles that keep jamming. Sounds like the problem still isn't fixed. Any rifle which needs to be cleaned numerous times a day in a battlefield setting is a hazard to its owner.