Combat Snatch and Grab

Every day this week we’ve learned new skills we might need to use in Afghanistan.  Thought the raison for it all is grim, the actual stuff we do is pretty interesting.  This week our training has focused on first-aid training, vehicle maintenance, and driver training.

The equipment and gear we are using is far better than what what we had in my last stint in a line unit in 2002.  It didn’t get that way overnight, but through five long years confronting battlefield realities in Iraq and Afghanistan.  War may be the best mother of invention.

Also better, or at least more widely trained on and employed, are what the Army calls “tactics, techniques, and procedures.”  The other day we learned how to a “combat snatch and grab.”  Imagine two Humvees driving down a road.  One gets hit and is partially disabled.  How might the second vehicle hook up a tow-line to the first and drag it out of the ambush zone, in less than a minute and without the driver or soldiers of either vehicle getting out of their Humvee?  The answer is clever, clever, clever.  Let me know if you think you’ve figured it out.