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Combat Fratricide: what it is. What it isn’t.

someone said from behind. Fighting an urge
to be sick and the terror of setting off anoth-
er mine, Jeff numbly followed Lou.

The screams become louder as the two
crawled closer to the source, finally finding
Dave, lying on the ground both legs bent at
the knees, ninety-degrees in the wrong
directions; bones sticking out jaggedly with
blood spurting from several points. Dave’s
combat fatigues are perforated with holes.
Blood covered everything, red, shiny and
sticky. Dave’s screams turn to moans. It is dif-
ficult to imagine that people can bleed like
that. Someone signals that the Sergeant’s
body has been found, dead.

Jeff moved off to the perimeter while the
other members of the platoon attempt to
comfort Dave, and then realized that if the
two hadn't switched places, it might have
been Jeff lying there in the red mud.

Staring at a group of trees Jeff noticed
something was not right, but as he raised his
M-16 rifle, disengaging the safety, a small
bare-chested man jumps out yelling, “ARVN,
don’t shoot!”

South Vietnamese soldiers began stepping
out of the jungle, and Jeff begins to realize
what has happened. The reason there was
no shooting, was the American platoon had
walked into a friendly ambush. The ARVN
hadn’t been able to warn the Americans in
time.

Dave was flown to emergency care facili-
ties, while the rest of the platoon received
orders to head to base. Jeff was left to con-
template all that had just happened. Why did-
n't the ARVN soldiers warn them about the
ambush site? They must have seen the
Americans coming. They were supposed to
be on the same side.

Assault on Umm Hajul

The following story is an excerpt from an
American tank commander, Captain Bo
Friesen, who witnessed and spoke out
against an attempted cover-up of a fratricide
incident during the Gulf War. This portion of
Captain Friesen’s story occurred on the
morning of February 27, 1991. The full
text can be viewed at: http://www.geoci-
ties.com/Pentagon/Quarters/2061/frat1 .ht
ml. What follows is a paraphrased version of
that story.

The Nighthawks tank platoon had been
spearheading Operation Desert Storm, com-
manded by Captain Bo Friesen. What they
had been doing to this point during Desert
Storm was chasing ghosts. They had expect-
ed heavy resistance based on Intelligence
reports, but every report had turned out to be
false. Up to this point there had been no

 

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Tank commander Captain Bo Friesen

bunkers filled with Saddam Hussein’s battle-
hardened National Guard, only vacant mili-
tary installations and burned out husks of
military vehicles, gutted by anti-armour
attack planes.

The Assault on Umm Hajul had been a
deviation from the original orders. Someone
higher up the military food chain had made a
decision to attack this airfield where a large
portion of Iraqi National Guard were sup-
posed to be fortified. The tank commanders
were told to expect tough resistance, the
Iraqis dug-in heavy bunkers and protected
by minefields. A North to South grid-line
coordinate was given out. Everything beyond
that line should be considered an enemy. The
tanks would roll out at 1930 hours.

By 2200 hours it had started to rain. For a
part of the world that was only supposed to
get two inches of rain a year, it had rained an
awful lot. Sometimes torrential rains would
fall at night leaving several inches of mud.
Then during the day, the sun would bake the
earth leaving it cracked and dry by the fol-
lowing evening.

2300 hours saw the passing of the front
line. Now in enemy territory Friesen ordered

the group to keep it’s weapons on safe, but
remain on high alert. The rain had continued,

- soaking through his raingear. Sometime after

midnight the rain had let up, and just before
0100 on February 27 the combat tank group
came into range of the airfield at Umm Hajul.

Friesen requested clearance to enter the
field. The order was granted and as his units
formed up in a defensive formation, the driv-
er called up, “Il see dismounts.” A short
pause, “1200-metres.”

Friesen patched into the thermal optics net-
work. Two or three figures appeared glowing
green through the night-optics goggles. He
gave the orders to maintain monitoring,
requested advise from command and
requested backup. The reply came that a
command unit was coming in to back up the
tanks. Friesen kept his group on surveillance.
The green figures continued to move away
finally entering into what appeared to be a
building. Friesen put in another request this
time to ask permission to fire some warning
shots in an effort to get the targets to surren-
der. Again permission was granted. Safeties
off the tanks fired off twenty rounds of high
explosive 25mm machinegun ammunition,