Speaker 1: And we returned to our American stories, and up next
Speaker 1: to story from one of our regular contributors, Richard Munyez.
Speaker 1: Rich is a listener out in Colorado and his story
Speaker 1: today is entitled Midnight at the Live Fire Exercise. Here's
Speaker 1: Rich with the story.
Speaker 2: ADC. This is World News Tonight with Peter Jenning.
Speaker 1: Good Evening.
Speaker 2: The deadline has come and gone. The Iraqis are living
Speaker 2: on what President Bush calls borrowed time. It is no
Speaker 2: longer whether the war will start. About when in nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety one we had a little thing called the Gulf War,
Speaker 2: and in that we sent armored divisions and infantry divisions
Speaker 2: into Iraq, and I'll be honest with you, we clean
Speaker 2: their clock. I mean it looked a little bit like
Speaker 2: War of the World's only we were the martians. Now,
Speaker 2: one of the things that happened here is we definitely
Speaker 2: had the superior tank, I mean the in one tank,
Speaker 2: fantastic piece of hardware. The other thing we had going
Speaker 2: for is we had better training. Now, granted they had
Speaker 2: some actual combat experience, but we had trained to a
Speaker 2: razor's edge. Where did we do this training At a little
Speaker 2: place called National Training Center at Fort Irwin, California, out
Speaker 2: in the middle of nowhere in the Mohave Desert. Now,
Speaker 2: the first time I ever went out there, it was
Speaker 2: about nineteen eighty eight. What had happened was, see, I
Speaker 2: was working Military police investigations time. Now that's exactly what
Speaker 2: it sounds like I was doing. I was a detective,
Speaker 2: you know. I put on a suit, put on a tie,
Speaker 2: and I went out there and I played detective. Well,
Speaker 2: in the FM manuals, there's always need for an MPI
Speaker 2: investigator to go out with division. Well, no one ever had,
Speaker 2: so it's kind of a little bit of a pioneer here.
Speaker 2: This is the first time an MPI investigator was going
Speaker 2: to go out with division out to the National Training Center.
Speaker 2: Now here's the problem. No one knew exactly what my
Speaker 2: job was, so my mission kind of wound up being
Speaker 2: a catch off. What I wound up doing was investing
Speaker 2: an awful lot of accidents. And if you want to see
Speaker 2: some horrific accidents, do it where you got high explosive
Speaker 2: rounds going off being shot from some of those fantastic
Speaker 2: equipment in the world, and see what happens. Add to
Speaker 2: that unfamiliar terrain, things like that and I mean it's
Speaker 2: recipe for getting people killed. This is a story about
Speaker 2: a couple of soldiers that managed to dodge the bullet.
Speaker 2: And I'll be honest with you, they came very very close. Okay. Now,
Speaker 2: what they did with me was I wound up having
Speaker 2: to stay behind at the Provost Marshall's office and I
Speaker 2: got to sleep in a jail celle for the twenty
Speaker 2: nine days were deployed. Well, one night I'm in there,
Speaker 2: I'm sound asleep, and the dispatcher comes back and wakes
Speaker 2: me up and says, Rich, there's been a terrible accident
Speaker 2: out on one of the ranges. What happened A tank
Speaker 2: fired up in APC. My first one instance is, oh
Speaker 2: my god, this is not gonna be pretty. So I
Speaker 2: got up and got dressed and I walked over to
Speaker 2: the officer's baq, that's where the division safety officers were staying,
Speaker 2: and I said, guys, we've had a bad accident on
Speaker 2: the range. We've had a n M one fire up
Speaker 2: in APC. What else do you know? That's all I
Speaker 2: know right now. We said, we loaded up into their
Speaker 2: four by four and we started out and they made
Speaker 2: a few phone calls like that so we knew where
Speaker 2: we were going. And I remember we're driving through and
Speaker 2: it's pitch black outside. I mean, you have not seen
Speaker 2: pitch black, and so you're in the middle of the
Speaker 2: Mahave Desert. So we're driving along and I wound up
Speaker 2: falling asleep, and person I woke up and we're stopping
Speaker 2: and we're stopping at what looks like a trailerhouse and
Speaker 2: still the pitch dark outside. And when the officers got
Speaker 2: out and he went in, he comes out and he's
Speaker 2: got a cassette tape and he said, you guys have
Speaker 2: got to hear this. They plugged it in and you
Speaker 2: hear them talking and stuff like that, and this is
Speaker 2: routine stuff. You're hearing what we call a fist. A
Speaker 2: FIST is a fire support vehicle. This calls in targets.
Speaker 2: In this case, this was an set up on a
Speaker 2: little hill there that had a small crew and they
Speaker 2: were calling in targets and all of a sudden, you
Speaker 2: hear a scream cease fire, Cease fire, My god, my god,
Speaker 2: were hits cease fire? And you hear other people screaming,
Speaker 2: see you know, cease fire, sees fire, cease fire, shut
Speaker 2: it down, Shut it down then it goes dead. By
Speaker 2: the time we got out to where this accident had occurred,
Speaker 2: the sun had already come up. D M one that
Speaker 2: was responsible for firing doing the firing is still sitting there,
Speaker 2: setting over on a heel, maybe about five hundred yards away.
Speaker 2: Is the fist. Now, the first thing we got to
Speaker 2: determine is what happened here. And we're talking to a
Speaker 2: major who was in charge of all this, and he's
Speaker 2: telling us what had happened was they were doing a
Speaker 2: live fire. Now, the way they did this was this
Speaker 2: is a response to an attack or simulated attack by
Speaker 2: enemy armor. The way they would handle this is one
Speaker 2: tank would roll up and it would fire, it'd roll
Speaker 2: back to reload. Another one would roll up, fire, and
Speaker 2: they're just alternating back and forth. Only this is you know,
Speaker 2: dozens of tanks doing this, and they had these range
Speaker 2: safety stakes, big long posts pounded into the ground. They
Speaker 2: do this for safety reasons. Well, I get out and
Speaker 2: I'm looking at the tank there and the first thing
Speaker 2: I noticed is that there is a red paint transfer
Speaker 2: on the gun turb and became very close was happening here.
Speaker 2: Every time the tank moved back, the gun tube was
Speaker 2: rubbing up against the gun steak safety stake, and they're filled.
Speaker 2: The fire was forgot to getting wider and wider and wider.
Speaker 2: Now I wonder, I check some of the other stakes
Speaker 2: and they were in very, very firm, but not this one.
Speaker 2: This one was loose. I mean, I can said them
Speaker 2: and shake it with my hand. Like I said, it's filled.
Speaker 2: The fires getting progressively wider and wider. Well, eventually what
Speaker 2: happened is that when they roll up, they got maybe
Speaker 2: two to three seconds to acquire a target and fire. Well,
Speaker 2: they get up there, guess what's in the filled of fire?
Speaker 2: Now the fist they fired at it. Now, the weapon
Speaker 2: they used was what we call a sable round. Now,
Speaker 2: sable rounds kind of an interesting weapon. When this lambs
Speaker 2: into a target, whatever the missile's made of, the shells
Speaker 2: made of vaporize is almost instantly the needle, which looks
Speaker 2: a little bit like a cone, melts to the armor
Speaker 2: of whatever it hit and then goes inside. I know
Speaker 2: to go for I saw tanks that had been hit
Speaker 2: by sable rounds on the outside it they don't too bad.
Speaker 2: Look down the hatch, that's what that hit this tank
Speaker 2: with a little APC and the APC is I mean,
Speaker 2: it's nothing like a tank. It's a very lightly armored vehicle.
Speaker 2: So we went through all that. You know, we know
Speaker 2: what's going on here now. Now we went over and
Speaker 2: checked out the APC. It surprised me at the amount
Speaker 2: of damage to it. The round had come in low
Speaker 2: by that what I mean, went in between the tracks
Speaker 2: and into the engine compartment down underneath. If it had
Speaker 2: hit the ap see square on, there have been no
Speaker 2: survivors on this thing. I mean they were just boom
Speaker 2: as it was. The entire top of the APC itself
Speaker 2: was melted off, and there was a machine gun, an
Speaker 2: M six machine gun sitting on the machine gun mount.
Speaker 2: This thing was actually melted and it was both down
Speaker 2: in half. Okay, Now I had to go back back
Speaker 2: to the base, and we kind of have a division
Speaker 2: of labor. Now, what the safety officer would do they
Speaker 2: would go talk to the crew and the commanders and
Speaker 2: everybody else that was associated with this. I would go
Speaker 2: to the hospital and talk to the crew of the APC.
Speaker 2: And this is where I got the rest of the story. Now,
Speaker 2: when I went in there and I told them what
Speaker 2: I was there for, they were nice enough to put
Speaker 2: the crew in the entire in the same room. And
Speaker 2: these guys were messed up. We had a young lieutenant
Speaker 2: that was in charge of it, the sergeant E six uh,
Speaker 2: and a couple of ems. This is the story I
Speaker 2: got here. They are, they're doing their thing, they're calling it,
Speaker 2: they're calling in their fields of fire and st all
Speaker 2: like that. And then the round hit. Lieutenant told me
Speaker 2: when it hit, I mean it actually rocked the APC
Speaker 2: and everything in. Everything in the tank almost seemed to
Speaker 2: catch fire instantly. And he's screaming, you know over the radio,
Speaker 2: you know, cease fire, sees fire, My god, my god,
Speaker 2: were hit, cease fire, And he's trying to get everybody
Speaker 2: out of there. He's getting his EM's out there, and
Speaker 2: they're probably out of this burning thing and all saen.
Speaker 2: He looks around and realizes he's missing a man. He
Speaker 2: didn't know where his sergeant was. He goes back into
Speaker 2: this burning tank trying to find his sergeant. Okay, here's
Speaker 2: what had happened a few moments before the round hit.
Speaker 2: These guys from what we call MOP level four. That
Speaker 2: means you're in a chemical environment. You got protecting mask
Speaker 2: on everything else, well. A couple of minutes for the
Speaker 2: round hit. They were told to stand down from mop
Speaker 2: level four, which you mean to take off your mask,
Speaker 2: so they took him the mass off. The sergeant had
Speaker 2: his mask in his hand and was folding up to
Speaker 2: put it away in his carrier when the round hit.
Speaker 2: He said, the mask caught fire instantly. So here he is.
Speaker 2: He's on fire. What was he do? He panics, He
Speaker 2: jumps out of the tank, starts running down the hill
Speaker 2: before he remember to stop tucking roll. Lieutenant didn't know this.
Speaker 2: He went back into the tank, looked for the man
Speaker 2: for the heat and smoke fire forced him out of there.
Speaker 2: It's a miracle from God. These guys even managed to survive.
Speaker 2: These are the kind of accidents you see happen out
Speaker 2: there sometimes. I mean, this is terrible. I don't know
Speaker 2: what happened these men. I'm pretty sure the lieutenant and
Speaker 2: possibly the NCO were discharged because they're injuries, so they're
Speaker 2: probably have to clicking a pension today. Ogus, that's too bad,
Speaker 2: because Lt. Was an officer was worth.
Speaker 1: Something and a great job. Is always to Monty Montgomery
Speaker 1: for his work on the piece and his special thanks
Speaker 1: again to Richard Muniez, who was a regular contributor here
Speaker 1: on Our American Stories, and his story, well, it took
Speaker 1: place in the Mohave Desert. As he put it, it
Speaker 1: was a miracle from God that these guys somehow survived.
Speaker 1: They were discharged on account of their injuries and are
Speaker 1: collecting pensions. And it's a fascinating look at training, which
Speaker 1: has its own dangers. And as we were talking after
Speaker 1: the piece, a lot less actual death and military exercises
Speaker 1: thanks to lasers and more sophisticated approaches to simulation, but
Speaker 1: still some of our men and women in uniform die training.
Speaker 1: It happens, particularly in aviation exercises. Richard Mune has his
Speaker 1: story Midnight at the Live Fire Exercise here on Our
Speaker 1: American Story