Wednesday, April 27, 2005
from the Kentucky Department of Military Affairs
Getting lots of letters from around the country, RE: Our piece, Fighting Kentuckians at MilitaryWeek. We've even received a few from the Kentucky Department of Military Affairs, but the following is a particularly good one:
Mr. Smith,
I want to thank you for the excellent article you composed for your "Drop Zone" column.
"Fighting Kentuckians" hit a strong chord for us here in the Kentucky Department of Military Affairs and for the Kentucky National Guard. The actions of SGT Hester and SPC Pullen have put Kentucky in the national spotlight in reigniting the debate on women in the battlefield. Around here we think of them as "doing their job" ... though admittedly with a great deal of pride.
Raven 42 (the call sign for SGT Hester's unit) will go down in the history books as the most significant firefight a Kentucky Guard unit has engaged so far since Firebase Tomahawk in Vietnam. That event - during which Charlie Battery, 2-138th FA was overrun by Vietcong insurgents - resulted in 5 boys from Bardstown, Ky. dead and more than 20 enemy killed.
Raven 42 was a team effort, of course. As a former - but not "ex-" - Marine you'll be interested to know that the young medic, SPC Jason Mike, who worked so hard to preserve the lives of three wounded 617th Soldiers, proved himself tactically proficient. With his position under heavy fire and in order to protect his charges, he simultaneously picked up both his own M-4 and the M-249 of a wounded troop and laid down a blanket of suppressive fire. A sniper in a nearby building then made a pest of himself, so SPC Mike set aside his brace of weapons and picked up an AT-4 - which he'd only learned to use the week before, "just in case" - and along with a similarly armed fellow troop, took out both the building and the sniper. He then proceeded to prepare his wounded men for MEDEVAC.
I suppose the moral of that story is that in Kentucky, even our medics are not to be bothered in the course of their duties.
I'd also like to point out the actions of SFC Timothy Nein (a resident of Madison County, birthplace of "Kit" Carson), the other squad members and the soldiers of 1st Battalion, 623rd Field Artillery, who were embedded within the convoy and laid out more
than 2,600 rounds of suppressive fire during that action. The 1-623rd troops - ironically the descendants of John Hunt Morgan, whom you mention in your article and whom we refer to as "Morgan's Men" - have been redirected from their primary mission as MLRS crews to serve as convoy security teams. Two soldiers from that battalion have given their lives thus far. A total of 5 Kentucky Guard soldiers have died in Iraq, out of a total of 21 Kentuckians overall.
I also want to thank you for pointing out to me the Kentucky heritage of Jim Bowie and Kit Carson. When I read your article I thought you were surely mistaken. A quick "Google" check proved me wrong. Two more priceless nuggets of information for my rather crowded attic of a brain.
I could go on about our pre-mobilization training program and how our innovative CQB and convoy protection training has been saving lives. But that would shift the focus of this message. I just wanted to commend you for your work and in exchange share a little about Kentucky.
Again, thank you for taking the time to notice and, most important, write about Raven 42.
David W. Altom
Kentucky Department of Military Affairs
See this letter and a few others at MilitaryWeek.com.
WTSjr
Mr. Smith,
I want to thank you for the excellent article you composed for your "Drop Zone" column.
"Fighting Kentuckians" hit a strong chord for us here in the Kentucky Department of Military Affairs and for the Kentucky National Guard. The actions of SGT Hester and SPC Pullen have put Kentucky in the national spotlight in reigniting the debate on women in the battlefield. Around here we think of them as "doing their job" ... though admittedly with a great deal of pride.
Raven 42 (the call sign for SGT Hester's unit) will go down in the history books as the most significant firefight a Kentucky Guard unit has engaged so far since Firebase Tomahawk in Vietnam. That event - during which Charlie Battery, 2-138th FA was overrun by Vietcong insurgents - resulted in 5 boys from Bardstown, Ky. dead and more than 20 enemy killed.
Raven 42 was a team effort, of course. As a former - but not "ex-" - Marine you'll be interested to know that the young medic, SPC Jason Mike, who worked so hard to preserve the lives of three wounded 617th Soldiers, proved himself tactically proficient. With his position under heavy fire and in order to protect his charges, he simultaneously picked up both his own M-4 and the M-249 of a wounded troop and laid down a blanket of suppressive fire. A sniper in a nearby building then made a pest of himself, so SPC Mike set aside his brace of weapons and picked up an AT-4 - which he'd only learned to use the week before, "just in case" - and along with a similarly armed fellow troop, took out both the building and the sniper. He then proceeded to prepare his wounded men for MEDEVAC.
I suppose the moral of that story is that in Kentucky, even our medics are not to be bothered in the course of their duties.
I'd also like to point out the actions of SFC Timothy Nein (a resident of Madison County, birthplace of "Kit" Carson), the other squad members and the soldiers of 1st Battalion, 623rd Field Artillery, who were embedded within the convoy and laid out more
than 2,600 rounds of suppressive fire during that action. The 1-623rd troops - ironically the descendants of John Hunt Morgan, whom you mention in your article and whom we refer to as "Morgan's Men" - have been redirected from their primary mission as MLRS crews to serve as convoy security teams. Two soldiers from that battalion have given their lives thus far. A total of 5 Kentucky Guard soldiers have died in Iraq, out of a total of 21 Kentuckians overall.
I also want to thank you for pointing out to me the Kentucky heritage of Jim Bowie and Kit Carson. When I read your article I thought you were surely mistaken. A quick "Google" check proved me wrong. Two more priceless nuggets of information for my rather crowded attic of a brain.
I could go on about our pre-mobilization training program and how our innovative CQB and convoy protection training has been saving lives. But that would shift the focus of this message. I just wanted to commend you for your work and in exchange share a little about Kentucky.
Again, thank you for taking the time to notice and, most important, write about Raven 42.
David W. Altom
Kentucky Department of Military Affairs
See this letter and a few others at MilitaryWeek.com.
WTSjr
# posted by W. Thomas Smith, Jr. @ 4:28 PM 
