Chapter 2: Patrol Leader's Order
This is the latest chapter of The Ice Man, my book about the Navy SEAL platoon in Iraq that took the blame for a CIA homicide. The book is available only to paid subscribers.
Around 10:30 p.m. on the night of November 3, Foxtrot platoon gathered at Camp Jenny Pozzi for a pre-mission briefing. The men of Foxtrot Platoon shuffled into the tactical operations center. The TOC (pronounced “tock”) was the nerve center for the SEAL task force in Iraq at Camp Jenny Pozzi. It was nothing fancy. The TOC was a standard large, semi-cylindrical tent with plywood overlaid on wooden pallets for a floor. There were half a dozen computer stations for Intel and operational planning and communicating with other HQs.
Lieutenant Ledford, the platoon leader, led the briefing. Ledford was a 30-year-old SEAL poster boy. Ledford came from a proud military family. His father, Kenneth Ledford, had spent 28 years in the Army and received the Navy Cross for a daring helicopter rescue mission under intense enemy fire.
It’s said that staff sergeants run the Army. In the SEALs, the senior enlisted chiefs and lead petty officers were the heart of the organization. They commanded respect for the skills and experience they had accumulated. For all intents and purposes, they ran the platoons. The lieutenants were supposed to be in charge of the SEAL platoons, but they often struggled. Cerrillo had seen many inexperienced officers come and go over his career. Many were too young to lead veteran operators. The enlisted men often viewed those who survived as arrogant. These officers would get an unpleasant reminder that they had not yet earned the respect of their men. Cerrillo said he couldn’t count the number of times that someone would piss all over a junior officer’s gear or rub their dicks on a young lieutenant’s coffee cup. “You never get what you want, but you always get what you deserve,” Cerrillo says.
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