{"id":84778,"date":"2025-09-26T02:59:03","date_gmt":"2025-09-26T08:59:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/?p=84778"},"modified":"2025-09-26T02:59:26","modified_gmt":"2025-09-26T08:59:26","slug":"lessons-learned-from-the-battlefield-close-with-the-enemy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/2025\/09\/26\/lessons-learned-from-the-battlefield-close-with-the-enemy\/","title":{"rendered":"Lessons Learned from the Battlefield: Close with the Enemy"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/h1>\n

Lessons Learned from the Battlefield: Close with the Enemy<\/a><\/h1>\n

Most hand-to-hand fighting is over who controls the weapons.<\/h2>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Irrigation Ditch<\/h2>\n

The Rangers had been on the ground for less than a minute when small-arms fire cracked from close range. After evacuating two wounded\u2014one with a life-threatening gunshot wound\u2014they began clearing a large grassy field near the landing zone. Chest-high grass, irrigation ditches, broken sightlines.<\/h2>\n

Spc.\u00a0Joseph Gibson<\/strong>, on his fourth three-month tour in Iraq, felt his boot come down on something odd.<\/h2>\n

\u201cHe was kneeled down in one of the irrigation ditches. I actually stepped on him and just because of how the terrain was I really didn\u2019t even think anything of it. I took about two more steps before I thought, \u2018I\u2019d better see what that was.\u2019\u201d<\/h2>\n

He turned and saw an armed man bringing his weapon to bear. Gibson, looking back over his shoulder and pushing through the grass, didn\u2019t have his own rifle in a shooting position.<\/h2>\n

\u201cHe was fixin\u2019 to shoot me and there\u2019s no way I could have shot him first, so I just got in front of his weapon,\u201d he said\u2014getting\u00a0past the muzzle<\/strong>.
\n\u201cAnd he fired it off right next to my face. I tackled him to the ground and grabbed hold of his weapon \u2026 and I started hollering for help. While I was doing that he ripped my helmet off.\u201d<\/h2>\n

The Rangers were moving in an open formation; help would take a moment. In the cramped ditch, Gibson fought alone. He worked to the\u00a0top position<\/strong>\u00a0and controlled the enemy\u2019s rifle. The enemy then grabbed Gibson\u2019s rifle, which was slung around his head and lead arm on an assault sling.<\/h2>\n

\u201cHe got my weapon, so I start to hit him in the face,\u201d Gibson said. \u201cHe wasn\u2019t trying to aim my weapon at me, he was in no position to do something like that.\u201d<\/h2>\n

Then another turn:<\/h2>\n

\u201cI felt him reaching his hand down to grab a knife or something \u2026 and then he told me in English he said \u2018bomb\u2019 and I realized he had a bomb on him and he was trying to clack himself off.\u201d<\/h2>\n

Pinned in the ditch, kit pressing into his throat:<\/h2>\n

\u201cHe used his foot to push my chest plate up into my throat and it was beginning to choke me so I let all my weight down on him and I hit him in the face as hard as I could and knocked him out for just a second.\u201d<\/h2>\n

Gibson seized the moment,\u00a0created space<\/strong>, and brought his rifle to bear.<\/h2>\n

\u201cI buried my weapon into his gut and fired one off and he hollered and then that\u2019s when I got off of him and neutralized him.\u201d<\/h2>\n

The fight with that enemy ended there; the Rangers fought on for about another hour. Later, Gibson reflected:<\/h2>\n

\u201cAs long as I got out of his weapon\u2019s reach, he didn\u2019t have a chance.\u201d<\/h2>\n

RTWT @ Matt Larsen<\/a><\/strong><\/h2>\n

<\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lessons Learned from the Battlefield: Close with the Enemy Most hand-to-hand fighting is over who controls the weapons.   The Irrigation Ditch The Rangers had been on the ground for less than a minute when small-arms fire cracked from close range. After evacuating two wounded\u2014one with a life-threatening gunshot wound\u2014they began clearing a large grassy…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[5581,2280,387,388,483,484,1893,1894,4418,10,404,405,1898],"tags":[372,18972,14763,9773,6686,8123],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84778"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84778"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84778\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":84781,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84778\/revisions\/84781"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}