John Ringo: Choosers of the Slain

“The first thing to say, and I’ll say it again and again, is that you did very well,” Nielson continued, looking around at the group. “Especially since you are in the middle of training. But there’s no such thing as perfect. This is a method to get closer and closer, though, if you pay attention. Right now, Chief Adams and Sergeants Fletcher, Graff and McKenzie are walking over the skirmish area and working up the full review. What we’re doing today is called the hot-wash. We’ll be going over individual and unit actions as they are known and determining what we can do better the next time. I’ll start with ammunition expenditure.”

He pulled up a list with a graph on the computer screen on the wall and pointed to a couple of high points.

“There were over sixty rounds of 7.62 expended per casualty that was found to have been shot,” Nielson said, pointing at the two graphs. “Not a total of sixty rounds, but sixty rounds per casualty. The low round count was Oleg, which, given that he shouldn’t have been firing at all, was pretty good at only fifteen rounds. Oleg, why did you fire?”

“I… wasn’t doing anything else, Colonel,” the team leader said, uncomfortably.

“You were supposed to be paying attention to everyone else’s actions,” Nielson said, shaking his head. “Chief Adams is, trust me, much more accurate than you are in a fight like that. But he expended no rounds because he knew he wasn’t there to fight. He was there to observe and control. You are given a weapon for one purpose only; self-defense or something that you have to shoot at because you can’t get one of the shooters to do it in time. That is it. Period. I can’t imagine a reason for you to have expended even one round in this engagement. Did any of the enemy get close to your bunker?”

“No, sir,” Oleg admitted, dropping his head.

“Keep your head next time,” Nielson said. “You’re there to control the flow of the battle. If you have to, lead from the front if you’re directly attacked; if you have to engage due to time constraints, you can engage. Otherwise, keep your finger off the trigger! Beso!”

“Sir!” the Keldara said, sitting bolt upright. He’d been bent over talking to the Keldara next to him.

“Three hundred and eighty-six rounds?” Nielson said, clearly amazed. “How in the hell did you expend three hundred and eight-six rounds?”

The day after the hot-wash they took all six teams out and walked the ground, looking over what they could have done better. Mike determined that Nielson was just better at picking out details on stuff like this than he was. Everything from the timing on when he’d pulled in Vil to when he’d sent Killjoy and Vanim down the hill was reviewed and critiqued.

The third day was a final review held in the main dining room of the serai. Mike had had more tables and chairs brought in and there was just barely room for all the militia and the trainers. They’d even brought in the females from the mortar section who were sitting at a separate table with their trainers. The girls were looking smug as cats at being included in “guy talk.”

“Kildar,” Nielson said. “Could you stand up?”

“Here it comes,” Mike noted to Adams, standing up at the head of the table.

“The recon movement to the observation point was good,” Nielson said. “No major flaws there except a lack of putting your point out far enough during the movement. No trash found at your bivouac of the first night although there was debris at the main OP on the hilltop. I won’t get into your choice of targets for the sniper operations; that is idiosyncratic and depends upon human factors I won’t argue. However, your timing on withdrawal was quite bad. You very nearly got flanked by the pursuit party; you’re aware of that?”

“Yes, I am,” Mike said, nodding. “I took a few more shots than I should have.”

“Arguably, you should not have been shooting,” Nielson pointed out. “You should have been spotting and controlling and let Lasko shoot.”

“I wasn’t sure that would work,” Mike said. “The ranges were longer than he’d trained on. I wanted to make sure the sniper fire was good enough to really sting them. But I did pull out too late.”

“Your movement, given the closeness of the pursuit, was about par,” Nielson said, pointing to the map. “Why did you choose to be the bait and send Praz and Lasko directly up the mountain?”

“I was in better shape to run,” Mike said, shrugging. “Praz and Lasko weren’t up to my level of condition. As it turned out, they probably could have made it just as well, but it was a tough hump. In the situation, I took the danger point.”

“On reaching the ambush point you took one of the security bunkers for your position,” Nielson said. “Why? You couldn’t maintain view of the battle from there.”

“I was following Chief Adams’ direction,” Mike said. “I assume that the pursuit party was close enough that Adams just wanted me to get to ground and that was the nearest bunker.”

“In the planning stage you failed to consider the mortars for support,” Nielson said, checking off an item on the list.

“Agreed,” Mike said. “I’d thought of them solely in terms of fixed position use. I’m glad you remembered them,” he added to chuckles through the room.

“Which brings us to the most critical danger point in this action: command and control,” Nielson said. “The true commander of the mission was the Kildar. But he was forward deployed and in action for the majority of the mission. I was managing the battle, but I wasn’t in command. The Kildar should have either relinquished command of the battle or moved to a position that he could manage all the pieces. It worked, because the Kildar and I could work together very well. But one or the other of us should have been designated for command and that person should have been in a position to control the flow of the battle.”

“I’ll comment on that,” Mike said, stepping to the front. “I intend to always command from near the front if at all possible. My intention is to make that possible through better technology. But, yes, in this instance I was without effective maps and didn’t really know where the pieces were. Colonel Nielson ran this battle and did so quite well.”

“Damned straight,” Chief Adams said, loudly, starting the applause.

Mike waited for the applause of the grinning Keldara to die and then waved at the group.

“You’ve completed your first action and your first after action review,” Mike said, grinning. “And I’m sure you’d rather be back in combat than having it nitpicked.” He waited again for the chuckles to die down, then nodded. “Again, you did well. And if we keep this up, each time you’ll do better. But, for tonight, you have met the enemy and survived. There is a custom among the military that from time to time they have a dinner for only their unit, called a dining-in. There are various customs, which we’ll work on as time passes. But for tonight, you are the guests of the Kildar. Tomorrow, of course, you’re back in training. So… watch the beer.”

“Kildar,” one of the men said, glancing over at the two tables of women. “What about the women? Are they to be serving?”

“Not if you want fire support next time, Viktor Shaynav!” one of the women yelled back. Which elicited a room full of belly laughs at Viktor’s expense.

“No,” Mike said, as the doors opened and his various “girls” came in bearing trays. “Tonight you will be served by the women of the Kildar in thanks for being loyal retainers and some of the finest soldiers it has been my pleasure to serve with.”

“Christ, I can’t believe you got it finished so fast,” Mike said, standing on the top of the dam. The outer slope and top had even been seeded and covered in straw to prevent erosion while the inner slope was covered in clay. The weir hadn’t been closed, yet, so the stream at the base still flowed freely. But all that took was turning the wheel. It was barely four weeks after the battle and the whole thing was in place.