River_Rat_459
02-26-2012, 14:46
A friend of mine from high school who is very much into history noted that today is the 21st anniversary of the Battle of 73 Easting in the first Persian Gulf War.
The US 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment, significantly outnumbered and out-gunned against two brigades of the Iraqi Republican Guard, destroyed 160 tanks, 180 personnel carriers, 12 artillery pieces and more than 80 wheeled vehicles.
For those that don't keep up on your military history, this was a fine moment for the Army and the 2nd ACR in particular. In layman's terms, it was an ass-whooping of epic proportions that demonstrated what America's armor was capable of.
A day or two after this, I was driving a deuce-and-a-half with both a Navy and British intel officer to a Marine outpost somewhere up near the Saudi/Kuwaiti border. We had to link up with a Marine outpost and pick up a (literal) truck load of small arms and bring them back to JCMEC (Joint Captured Materiel Exploitation Center) in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. I was in a military intelligence unit at the time, and they were responsible for the JCMEC. But I digress.
Along the road, we passed several flatbed trailers hauling what was left of several Iraqi armored vehicles of all sorts down the road. I remember looking across at what had been an Iraqi tank and being able to look through it and see the other side of the road due to the hole in it. I didn't have a camera on me at the time.
Something that shocked me as watched this video came near the end. SFC Martin says "I don't ever want to go back to that desert if I don't have to." Pretty ironic considering how things turned out over a decade later.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pF2mnq7ZzcA
The US 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment, significantly outnumbered and out-gunned against two brigades of the Iraqi Republican Guard, destroyed 160 tanks, 180 personnel carriers, 12 artillery pieces and more than 80 wheeled vehicles.
For those that don't keep up on your military history, this was a fine moment for the Army and the 2nd ACR in particular. In layman's terms, it was an ass-whooping of epic proportions that demonstrated what America's armor was capable of.
A day or two after this, I was driving a deuce-and-a-half with both a Navy and British intel officer to a Marine outpost somewhere up near the Saudi/Kuwaiti border. We had to link up with a Marine outpost and pick up a (literal) truck load of small arms and bring them back to JCMEC (Joint Captured Materiel Exploitation Center) in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. I was in a military intelligence unit at the time, and they were responsible for the JCMEC. But I digress.
Along the road, we passed several flatbed trailers hauling what was left of several Iraqi armored vehicles of all sorts down the road. I remember looking across at what had been an Iraqi tank and being able to look through it and see the other side of the road due to the hole in it. I didn't have a camera on me at the time.
Something that shocked me as watched this video came near the end. SFC Martin says "I don't ever want to go back to that desert if I don't have to." Pretty ironic considering how things turned out over a decade later.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pF2mnq7ZzcA