The dumbest move

One of my good friends, Sgt Herndon, approached me one afternoon early in March and told me about his plan to lead a fire team through the city to conduct a recon mission. He asked me to organize the convoy. It sounded like a good idea so I rounded up 4 HMMWVs and drivers and he provided about 8 Marines for the security detail. We rolled out of the Outpost a few hours after dark with a total of 16 Marines, 4 trucks and 2 M240Gs plus our personal weapons. We took a round about way to the drop-off point with me driving the lead truck with all lights out, driving by night vision goggles. A bad move due to the fact that the driver of the rear truck had only been driving for about a week and wasn’t used to NVG driving. It took us about 10 minutes to get to the drop-off point, which was only about a kilometer from Combat Outpost as the crow flies. As we rounded the last turn, the Marine manning the machine gun in the back of my truck told me that he could see tracer rounds. I asked him if they were coming toward us and he told me no, they were going strait up, but had been coming from directly behind us, always a few blocks behind, for the whole trip. I realized that we were not being shot at, but being tracked. Whoever was following us was using the tracers as a way to communicate our location. At this point, I realized that we had no way to communicate with the company. All we had were short range PRRs for inter-convoy communications. As I mentally kicked myself for this gross breach of procedure, we pulled up to where Herndon wanted to insert his team. As his 4 Marines dismounted, my gunner announced, “They’re getting closer!” referring to the tracer rounds. Herndon took his team and got into the closest building available and I verified that we had everyone that we were taking back to the Outpost and stomped on the gas peddle. I ordered lights on because we were going to be moving too fast for NVG driving, rather than risk being caught with only a small detachment and no communications. In my haste, I missed the turn that I wanted to take and had to continue down the street to turn at the point where one of the squads on patrol had been engaged by RPGs earlier in the day. When we pulled back into the hangar bay to park the HMMWVs, I thanked God that we had not made contact with the enemy. As it turned out, the entire security team had jumped onto the nearest truck to them, which ended up being the first two trucks, leaving the 3rd and 4th trucks with nothing but a driver. I would never have forgiven myself if one of those Marines had been killed or wounded. The next day, Herndon and I sat down and berated ourselves for the lack of planning that we put into our little “operation.” Needless to say, I learned a valuable lesson about the 7 Ps that night. Prior Proper Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance. I should have made sure we had at least one radio. I should have put my more experienced driver in the rear truck. I should have been ensured that each Marine knew which truck they were to be in. Well, shoulda coulda woulda, we all learned how not to do it and got lucky that no one got hurt in the process.