The problem is that if you have been walking all day the men will be tired and you want them to get as much rest as possible. To achieve this with a small group of, say, eight men it means that to have two men on guard you will all have to do 2 hours on and 6 hours off. Depending how long you are down for one or more pair may have to do two ‘stags’.
In these circumstances it may well be better to have one man on duty at a time so each man only does one stag, or a 1 hour stag, and thereby everyone gets more rest. Of course we don’t live in a perfect world but everyone starts to lose their edge quickly when deprived of sleep and particularly if the weather is very cold.
Sentry POV (point of view) behind a 40mm GMG as a Merlin brings in supplies. (Photo courtesy Tom Blakey)
A good leader will balance the need for security with the need for his men to get enough sleep. On very small patrols – such as 4 man special ops – I have often had the men hide and all sleep rather than mount a sentry and have them all tired. Small patrols are easier to hide than larger and tend to be made up of specialist soldiers too. All I can say is that you had better be sure no one knows where you are. You can, of course, set up trip flares and Claymores to stand sentry.
Choosing the sentry position: In the old days the sentry used to move and sit behind the gun for his stag as the machine gun had a large proportion of the unit’s firepower with the men having bolt action rifles. This would allow the sentry to stop a rush-attack. With the everyone now having automatic rifles this is no longer an issue.
REMEMBER:
As a general rule, if you are going to have sentries then try to have a minimum of two men on guard together as they will keep each other awake, maintain each other’s morale and be harder for the enemy to silence.
Where the patrol is larger and less well hidden it might be thought wise to have the sentries at a distance where they can detect visitors well before the visitors hear the usual sounds of the camp. You might even want to place a sentry on a high rock or up a tree to give them the chance to see visitors in the distance and at least this way they won’t fall asleep – twice.
All things considered it is impossible to give hard and fast rules for the siting of sentries and the commander on the ground must use his experience and judgement to strike a balance between guarding the unit properly, hiding the unit, seeing visitors as early as can be achieved and giving the men as much rest as possible.
DEFENSIVE POSITIONS: HOLD THAT HILL!
To pull together some of the ideas and principles we have been discussing and try to get them to stick in your mind I am going to take you through a kind of composite mission where you have to hold a hill against all visitors and there is a little bit of everything thrown in to show you how it all fits together. In an actual battle or ‘contact’ you often can’t see the enemy, don’t have the right weapons for the job and the rules of engagement stop you doing what you need to do to get the bad guys. Also you would only use some of the kit I mention here and most of the time nothing would be happening – but showing you something that realistic wouldn’t teach you anything useful would it?
Some famous general once said that in warfare both sides make lots of stupid mistakes and the one that makes the least mistakes wins. Patriotism aside, there is a certain amount of truth in that. When you come to do this sort of thing for real, for God’s sake plan carefully, check everything at least twice, rehearse your men until they are doing drills in their sleep and you might just get it right when it counts. But if something can go wrong it will.
REMEMBER:
Don’t forget the ‘7Ps’: Proper Preparation and Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance.
The standard format for a mission briefing is GSMEACS – Ground, Situation, Mission, Enemy Forces, Attachments and Detachments, Commands and Signals. When an officer briefs his men he should go through the information in this order to avoid missing anything out and to aid understanding. For example:
Ground: The ground is mostly level fields with irrigation ditches at intervals
Situation: We are driving the insurgents north to clear our squadron area
Mission: Our mission today is to capture and hold the compound at the road junction
Enemy Forces: We believe the insurgents number around 50
Attachments and Detachments: We have a unit of engineers to put a bridge over the river but our mortar section is missing for this operation
Commands: The column will cross the river when I give the command Water Jump
Signals: The squadron net will be channel 43 and regimental net channel 55
I am intentionally not using this format here so there is no need for the armchair generals to write in...
The situation
The country you are working in has a friendly (to NATO), democratic government and is undeveloped economically but almost entirely built on strategically important minerals such as platinum, copper and tin. So the mining rights are a big prize for any developed country. The neighbouring state over the river is very unfriendly to the local government and to ours. They harbour and train terrorists seeking the overthrow of the local government and these terrorists are expected to seek to disrupt the up-coming election to further this aim.
The national border between these two countries is marked by a wide and fast flowing river. There is a steel road bridge but the checkpoint at the nearest end was abandoned years ago because of insurgent action. The country over the river is officially neutral as far as the diplomats are concerned but everyone knows that they allow the terrorists to train on their territory and launch raids across the river border. Our side has high altitude observation drones which overfly them but cannot strike for diplomatic reasons.
The countryside around the friendly side of the bridge is scrubland and there isn’t a settlement of any size for 50 miles. Not since the town along the road was burnt out. The locals scratch a living from subsistence farming and a few goats but live in constant terror of theft, rape and murder by the insurgents who come over the bridge in their pick-up trucks, run drugs into the country, destroy government infrastructure and make the locals’ lives a misery.
Your mission
Your mission is to deny the use of the bridge to terrorists wishing to enter the country with road vehicles – pick-up trucks mounting machine guns – during the three weeks leading up to the national election. For political reasons the bridge itself cannot be blown up by our side.
If you are unable to deny the road crossing to the terrorists during the election period their access with their armed pick-up trucks may contribute to the downfall of the local democratic government and its replacement by one sympathetic to the aims of our enemies. In other words, what is happening, as is so often the case in foreign wars, is that you are fighting for our country’s interests at second remove by protecting our companies’ access to the strategic natural resources mined in this country. This access is granted to our companies by the local government in exchange for military support.
You are aware that should the enemy be intending to cross the bridge with forces sufficient to disrupt the election they must destroy your position first. And the neighbouring government might help them.
Your troops and weapons