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Top comments that mention products on r/CombatFootage:

u/Lust4Cats · 34 pointsr/CombatFootage

It's still not worth it bud...

I'm really upset that these guys died because of this.

We also did the hearts and minds thing as seen here

And here

And here is a Buffel which was used alongside the Casspir

Casspir Patrol

The hearts and minds was never conducted by our Special Forces A.K.A Recces. We would have our "grunts" SADF troops do that after securing the area yet they would always be patrolling with armoured vehicles to avoid this exact incident that happened to these US troops...

I'm not blaming the troops by the way. This comes from a sad heart to see something like this that could have been avoided.

An MRAP or any other armoured vehicle didn't make much of a difference for us with the Hearts and minds tactics in the Border War in Angola and northern Namibia/South West Africa.

Hearts and Minds will only work if you can convince the locals that they would be better off supporting the US presence and the local government than the insurgents.

And the US needs to find out what it takes to convince the locals... obviously for us we weren't fighting religious radicals. We were fighting Communist rebels so it was easier to convince the locals in our war than I reckon it is for US forces in the Niger COIN.

We had troops that were teachers in civilian life teaching the local children, we had SADF engineers building irrigation systems and so on which helped convince and win over support in most areas in South West Africa/Namibia. Much like what I believe US and Coalition troops did in Iraq and Afghanistan?

But again it is a grave mistake forfeiting armoured vehicles for the sake of Hearts and Minds... Because using armoured vehicles isn't going to affect the Hearts and Minds mission that much and if it does there are ways to compensate/offset that negative affect without endangering your troops with unarmored vehicles... I just cannot comprehend sending troops off in vehicles that can't withstand small arms fire, it is just not right.

RIP to those brave men and I pray it never happens again under these circumstances.


If you guys want to read up more about the South African Border War check out these two books. Or you can just look online for articles and check the Wikipedia page. Or search for the South African Border War on Pinterest or any images search engine. And you'll find plenty of pictures of our guys using MRAP and armoured cars which saved a lot of lives.



SADF in the Border War 1966-1989 by Leopold Scholtz

32 Battalion by Piet Nortje

u/carmengentile · 1 pointr/CombatFootage

Thanks man. I appreciate that and love not being dead as well. At the time, I was sure I was gonna be a grease spot on that dusty, narrow road in eastern Afghanistan.

https://www.amazon.com/Blindsided-Taliban-Journalists-Story-Trauma/dp/1510729682

Take care,

Carmen

u/drummer1248 · 15 pointsr/CombatFootage

A great book about this armored charge is "Thunder Run". The book describes in grisly details the battle that took place, and the reasons for sending in an armored convoy to the heart of Baghdad. These brave tankers saved a TON of American lives by piercing through the concentric defenses of Baghdad and destroying them from the inside out.

Book: http://www.amazon.com/Thunder-Run-Armored-Capture-Baghdad/dp/080214179X

u/ORDEAL · 2 pointsr/CombatFootage

The Gun by CJ Chivers is a really excellent and thorough history of the Kalashnikov and its significance. One of my favorite books and authors.

u/crv163 · 1 pointr/CombatFootage

Irwin Rommel was an infantry lieutenant in WWI, and wrote Attacks, a fascinating book on his experiences.

There are some amazing stories of grenade fights on near-vertical mountainsides. Highly recommend!

u/S4R_ben · 1 pointr/CombatFootage

Horse Soldiers, fantastic book about the first ODA's in Afghanistan.

u/kcanf · 1 pointr/CombatFootage

Into the Fire is a good book, I recommend Generation Kill as well if you haven't read it, I liked it more than the HBO miniseries.

u/kaanfight · 5 pointsr/CombatFootage

I see, thanks for the input.


Say, there’s this guy who’s a journalist on reddit that reminded me of you. I saw he was shilling his book, you might want to check it out!

It’s called “Blindsided by the Taliban”:

https://www.amazon.com/Blindsided-Taliban-Journalists-Story-Trauma/dp/1510729682

u/ZGG · 10 pointsr/CombatFootage

I've not read that one yet, but I did just finish "The Gun" by CJ Chivers, which covers a lot of the same ground. Also excellent in my estimation.

http://amzn.com/0743271734

u/Thundercruncher · 2 pointsr/CombatFootage

No True Glory: A Frontline Account of the Battle for Fallujah, by Bing West.

Amazon Link

u/stevo3883 · 8 pointsr/CombatFootage

> Road to Huertgen: Forest in Hell

I enjoyed “a dark and bloody ground for a great study of the campaign itself, but you should also pick up if you survive as the author was a young infantry officer who fought through Normandy and straight into the hell that was Huertgen. This is one of the best American memoirs to come out of ww2, a sort of “with the old breed” except taking place in Europe. Can’t recommend it enough

u/PubCornScipio · 6 pointsr/CombatFootage

I quite literally just read a book, D-Day Through German Eyes, which has an account from an MG42 gunner at Omaha Beach who says the following:

“I had a terror of flame-throwers, as my brother had told me about them from the Russian front. Therefore, when I saw through the smoke a man approaching from the sea up the beach, moving from one obstacle to another, approaching the cliffs, I was alarmed to see that he seemed to be carrying a flame-thrower gun and back pack. I shot him with the MG42 at once, and the bullets evidently ignited the fuel tank on his back. There was a very large explosion, and he disappeared completely in a fireball which went up into the air in a mushroom cloud. Both sides stopped firing for a moment, perhaps because we all saw what happened to this soldier. But then the shooting began again, more intensely than ever.”

So, it’s not a myth. Maybe it doesn’t always happen, but it did happen, at least once, and I’d wager a fair bit more given that gas mixing with air and tracer rounds sound to be an explosive mix.

On a side note, its a pretty short read and its only a few dollars. Its well worth the time and money for anyone interested in the subject. It is probably one of the most violent accounts I’ve ever read about combat. These guys experienced the full weight of allied material superiority and paid the consequences for it.

u/IDrink_n_IKnowThings · 2 pointsr/CombatFootage

For those who would like to learn more about this, there's a great book called Thunder Run:The Armored Strike to Capture Baghdad.

u/Myself2 · 1 pointr/CombatFootage

you realise by the end of the war AT guns were everywhere? how good is a tank if it's hit by a AT gun from 1940 and it gets knocked out? From the 50.000 shermans built, only ~10.000 survived

http://www.amazon.com/Death-Traps-Survival-American-Division/dp/0891418148

u/SupremeReader · 6 pointsr/CombatFootage

For something like Politkovskaya's books (also A Small Corner of Hell) you may try The Angel of Grozny and for something akin to Babchenko's (but from the other side), maybe The Sky Wept Fire.

u/bigbourbon · 47 pointsr/CombatFootage

I read this book a while back. Holy shit was it depressing. Made me very thankful to not be in the Russian military.

u/TravelerInTime1986 · 28 pointsr/CombatFootage

In One Soldiers War, he states Russian soldiers also sold weapons and ammunition to the Chechens.

u/nimbusdimbus · 6 pointsr/CombatFootage

Storm Of Steel by Ernst Junger is a memoir of a German Officer during WW1. It is overwhelming in it's bleakness and death.

u/PatsyTy · 5 pointsr/CombatFootage

If you're ever interested in learning about the lead up to 9/11 in full immaculate detail read Steve Coll's Ghost Wars. At around six hundred pages the book is quite long, but it is the most in depth analysis of what was happening on the ground of Afghanistan from the 70s through to 2001. Coll manages to do this in a uniquely non-partisan way, that I have found to be lacking in most books on the wars in the middle east.

u/Me_for_President · 2 pointsr/CombatFootage

The whole book is amazing (note that I had the title wrong earlier). The detail the soldiers provide is far more graphic and horrible than any movie I've ever seen. D-Day is basically a free-for-all where everyone gets to get killed for free. They've also got an audio book of it which is pretty decent.

u/quintinza · 1 pointr/CombatFootage

If you can get a hold of it, read "Horse Soldiers" which is the story of these guys and their efforts in Northern Afghanistan. It is really gripping and tells the story of how the war on Terror started very well.

http://www.amazon.com/Horse-Soldiers-Extraordinary-Victory-Afghanistan/dp/1416580522

u/merv243 · 22 pointsr/CombatFootage

Erwin Rommel (of WWII fame) served from the start. He has a memoir of his experience that, even while probably self-inflated, shows just how skilled he was as a tactician.

Edit: Crap, I forgot the even crazier one, Storm of Steel. This guy served almost the entire war on the western front, finally getting wounded (not for the first time) in August, 1918, 1.5 months before the war's end. No idea how he made it out, if his stories are even half true.

u/WWHSTD · 4 pointsr/CombatFootage

Definitely Generation Kill, to look into the dynamics of modern war. It's a seriously good, impartial, truthful and entertaining account of the first stages of the second Iraq war seen from the eyes of a battalion of first recon marines. Very well written, too.

War Nerd. Gary Brecher is a tongue-in-cheek military amateur analyst. His views on modern and past warfare are very lucid, albeit controversial and leftfield. His writing style is pretty original, kinda like the Hunter Thompson of war pundits. A backlog of his articles is also available online.

Making A Killing. It's the first person account of a British private security contractor in Iraq. I was expecting the worst when I read it, but it's actually very well written, informative and entertaining. Some of the lingo and drills described in the book actually helped me understand a lot of these videos.

Das Boot is my favourite war book, and it's an embedded reporter's account of a year in a german U-boat during the second world war.

u/Gorthol · 6 pointsr/CombatFootage

Their tactics were better than decent. The Germans, Brits and French all developed effective tactics for seizing enemy trenches pretty quickly. That wasn't the problem. The problem is, how do you seize the first enemy line of trenches and hold it while you're under artillery fire and enemy infantry counter attack? You don't have effective radios and artillery is constantly cutting the phone lines you are able to lay. Signaling is difficult because of terrain, weather conditions, smoke created by fires and the fact that if you're visible enough to be seen by your support then you're also probably visible enough to be seen by the enemy. Even if the enemy doesn't counterattack immediately (which they would), how do you get to the second line of trenches under said conditions? How do you coordinate supporting fires and reinforcements when there is quite literally a wall of flying steel (barrage means wall/barricade in French, which is where the term comes from) between you and your start point?

The main issue was that the offensive technologies (communications, motorized vehicles, light supporting weapons, aerial weapons) hadn't caught up to the defense technologies (barbed wire, concrete pillboxes, heavy machine guns, massed artillery, rail-borne reinforcements). Even if you successfully seized line after line of trench, the enemy could always dig in behind their last line and pour in reinforcements via rail faster than you could break through. With all that said, strategically the allies were idiotic. Continuing to attack fortified German positions again and again and again with very little to show for it is just bad strategic judgement.

I've posted these links before, but if you'd like to educate yourself on WW1 infantry tactics/battle:

Stormtrooper Tactics

Infantry in Battle

To Conquer Hell

Infantry Attacks

Storm of Steel

PS. I know you can find the second one for free on the internet.

u/NFSreloaded · 5 pointsr/CombatFootage

Most books pertaining to the American war in Vietnam trace its origin in the French conflict, though. If that leaves one longing for more, Street without Joy and Hell in a Very Small Place were recently reprinted, and Fredrik Logevall's Embers of War fills any holes left by Bernard Fall, really.

u/FeakyDeakyDude · 25 pointsr/CombatFootage

I'm reading this book for a class right now. Shows how damn brutal some of the Russian troops were in the first part of the book.

u/alteredlithium · 1 pointr/CombatFootage

War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning by Chris Hedges.

A succinct essay about the horror of war and its paradoxical allure.

Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes.

Probably one of the best war novels I've ever read. Based on the author's own experiences as a platoon leader in Vietnam.

u/McDeath · 2 pointsr/CombatFootage

Victory Point: Talks about Operations Red Wings and Whalers; really good book that tells you the other side about Lone Survivor, and how the Navy Seals were so into themselves that they ignored all recommendations about how to perform the operation.

War is a Force that gives up Meaning: Talks about those who experience war and how they become dependent on it (having served combat in Iraq, this book really stuck with me).

u/purpleolive · 16 pointsr/CombatFootage

I haven't read too many books about the subject, but one that I really like is 'Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001', by Steve Coll. It's incredibly illuminating and a fascinating read.

Robert Pape's 'Cutting the Fuse: The Explosion of Global Suicide Terrorism and How to Stop It' is also one of my favorites.

u/TacoDiahria · 9 pointsr/CombatFootage

I read this book about the wars called One Soldier's War. It is some really brutal stuff. The author fought in both wars. The hazing that goes on in the Russian Army is insane. http://www.amazon.com/One-Soldiers-War-Arkady-Babchenko/dp/0802144039/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1426116978&sr=8-1&keywords=one+soldiers+war

u/TomMelee · 14 pointsr/CombatFootage

I'm not a veteran, but I'm a historian (hah!) and most of my best friends are combat vets from various conflicts. I just spent a couple hours on the phone the other day with a young soldier currently in Afghanistan whom I've known since he was a kindergartner. He was back in for testing after having been in his 4th IED strike in 4 months, thankfully there's no evidence of TBI in his particular case. Anyway---what we talked about that is echoed by most of my friends and everything I've read:

We are winning the war in terms of casualties inflicted. We are losing the war financially and in its effect on American livelihood. We're fighting ground war in a place with literally nothing to lose---infrastructure wise. We're fighting with ROE and IROW that don't allow us the ability to "play dirty." I mean, we ARE playing dirty with news of double-tap drone strikes and such, but we don't plant IED's any more and we don't plant mines any more and we assume financial responsibility for material and personnel damage if we can't prove it was Taliban held.

For example, my young friend's MRAP was hit the other day---nobody was killed but ~20k damage was done to the vehicle. That damage was done by a $10 IED, and that damage doesn't include the cost to roll out the QRF and reallocate surveillance resources to secure the area.

There's a steady stream of Pakistani, Syrian, Yemeni, and now apparently Chechen and Iranian mercenaries and jihadists flowing across borders we can't lock down, and then fleeing back just like the NVA did with Laos in Vietnam.

I've read so many Afghan books recently that I can't keep them straight, but one was by a Non-traditional Warfare CO who was part of the first SF group to deploy to Afghanistan with a few days of 9/11. I think maybe it was Lions of Kandahar, but that may be incorrect. It was Eric Blehm's "The Only Thing Worth Fighting For."

Anyway, in the book, he believes that if Green Beret's and other NTW troops had been allowed to continue their mission (which was basically to rally native peoples support around Karzai and bring him to power internally without a major military operation), that the overall events of the war may have gone down differently. He makes very clear in the book that the CIA was given a LOT of power early on, and that folks like Cheney really just really really wanted a major military operation, and how that pretty much messed everything up.

Regardless, Afghanistan is an area that has never been conquered by an invading army, and presents such a very unique challenge between warring tribes (lots of tipsters are actually just playing back old vengeance debts to other clans, sometimes generations old), geography, and tradition that it's doubtful that, short of leveling it all and starting over, there will ever be a unified system of government or peace amongst the peoples.

u/BurningTheAltar · 2 pointsr/CombatFootage

First, I would recommend two books by Bernard B Fall, a French war correspondent and historian. They are peerless historical accountings of the First Indochina War, and are essential to understanding the American debacle in Vietnam. His analysis of the failings of the French were a direct warning to the US, which were largely ignored, resulting in a predictable failure. He died in 1967 while embedded with US Marines in Vietnam after stepping on a mine.

  • Street Without Joy starts with post WW2 French colonial Indochina and the rise of the Indochina War in 1946, giving detailed analysis and reporting on the conflict until it ended in 1954 following the battle of Dien Bien Phu.
  • Hell In A Very Small Place covers specifically the battle of Dien Bien Phu, how the Viet Mihm were able to prevail and how it could happen to the US.


    I also recommend a book by Romeo Dallaire, a Canadian general.

  • Shake Hands With The Devil covers Dallaire's experiences as the commanding officer of the failed UN peacekeeping mission in Rwanda that culminated with the genocides in '94.
u/metalxslug · -6 pointsr/CombatFootage

The Sherman was a mishmash of ideas from people who didn't know what the fuck they were doing. American armored warfare theory at the time of it's production centered around on the idea that our tanks should always bypass enemy tanks so that they could move into enemy lines and destroy other targets. A sound strategy on paper that resulted in American crew and vehicle losses that will boggle your mind. The army was losing Sherman's so fast in combat that both crew size and training were diminished to simply get more units on the field. At some point some Sherman tank crews were reduced to three men who were soldiers that had basic training and were given an opportunity to shoot the main cannon three times before being considered ready for action. These Sherman units suffered around 500 percent causalities, no that isn't a typo.

Anyone who is interested in the experiences of Sherman crews owes it to themselves to read Death Traps.

http://www.amazon.com/Death-Traps-Survival-American-Division/dp/0891418148/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1420849729&sr=8-1&keywords=Death+Traps

u/panfriedinsolence · 6 pointsr/CombatFootage

"The composition and leadership of the insurgents were changing. As the FREs (Former Regime Elements) weakened, (Col. Brian) Drinkwine received warnings that foreign fighters were infiltrating into the Jolan, including the arch-terrorist Abu Musab al Zarqawi...On a night raid two Egyptians were arrested in an apartment with slogans supporting bin Laden scrawled in sheep's blood on a wall. Neighbors told a reporter that foreign fighters were threatening people who played Western music, styled their hair, wore revealing clothes, or even sold wood to contractors for the Americans."


"We heard the Islamic fundamentalists were starting to taunt Saddam's guys, saying the old army guys didn't have the balls to take on the Americans...We saw a change in tactics."


"The Iraqis never tired of talking, issuing long litanies of complains, making passionate promises of stability, and stoutly denying the presence of foreign fighters. The Fallujans were good people, fighting to protect their city. If the Americans would stop firing and pull out, all would be well. It was never clear, though, who spoke for the fighters. Those with the power of the guns remained shadowy figures, never mentioned by name."


"During the third week of April...Bremer's experienced deputy...chaired four sessions...to resolve the siege... Every day rusted and broken weapons were turned in as symbols of progress while the violence continued. As for expelling the terrorists, the negotiators denied they existed. Foreign fighters, they said, were a myth and an excuse to punish the city."


"(American LtCol Byrne asked) 'Can we agree that we share the same goals? That we both want the heavy weapons and the foreign fighters removed from the city, do we not?' (Former regime LCol. responded:) 'That is an American story. There are no foreign fighters...we take care of security by ourselves. If you are not here, there is no problem.'"


"(Muhhamad Latif, a colonel in the intelligence branch who had been imprisoned for seven years by Saddam) and the city elders met with Mattis, explaining that the people of Fallujah wanted no help from outsiders...Latif denied there were any foreign fighters in the city"


"Foreign fighters from Syria and Saudi Arabia trickled into the city. The insurgents organized a ruling council, called the Mujahadeen Shura, which moved into a mosque in the center of the city and issued written passes for Arab journalists to visit the 'liberated' city...The reign of the Taliban had descended on Fallujah."


"Neither the American nor the Arab press called particular attention to the proliferation of terrorist safe houses in Fallujah, while the city elders vehemently denied Zarqawi existed."


"'For the sake of your city,' Mattis said, 'you must tell Zarqawi and the Syrians to leave. They are killing your innocent fellow countrymen.... Get them out.'" (Chief negotiator Imam Abdullah Janabi replies) 'Someone gives you bad information... there are no foreigners here. You bomb innocent people. We only protect our homes when you come to destroy.'"


-- No True Glory - A Frontline Account of the Battle of Fallujah


u/Springbok_RSA · 10 pointsr/CombatFootage

Thanks man, appreciate that.

Ja I have read several books on the war, I'll list them all so you can maybe pick one up one day.

The South African Border War 1966-1989 by Leopold Scholtz - I highly recommend this book. This is the book that really got me to understand the overall picture of the war although reading the other books and online material as well as speaking to relatives that fought in the war helped fill in the gaps for me.

32 Battalion by Piet Nortje - This book is also excellent. Goes into a lot of detail about personal accounts and experiences of members of 32 Battalion. They were tough buggers, 32Bn was made up of many Angolan nationals that were once part of the FNLA but were cut off and abandoned by their leader Holden Roberto so Jan Breytenbach trained them and thus 32 Battalion was born. Sad what happened to these poor guys after the war... The ANC just prior to coming to power demanded they be disbanded 1993. There is footage of their last parade and disbandment on Youtube. They were real battle hardened soldiers... They deserved better.

Zulu Zulu Foxtrot by Arn Durand - This is a book about his experience in the police COIN unit called Koevoet. These okes were hard as nails driving Casspirs over the enemy insurgents and tied them to their vehicles after killing them. Brutal... There is no such thing as a gentleman's war. No side played fair. SWAPO conducted many atrocities and Koevoet did the same. So it is futile for either side to claim evil yet SWAPO often complained to the UN about Koevoet and when South Africa complained to the UN about SWAPO atrocities which fell on deaf ears. The political bias was clearly evident and is revealed and mentioned many times in every book I've listed here.

Teenage Safari by Evan Davies the memoirs of a 61 Mech mortar man. 61 Mech was South Africa's iron fist our primary mechanized unit. They were the ones that smashed the Angolan and Cubans on the ground time and time again. They were primarily used for conventional battles although they did see some action against SWAPO as well which was almost exclusively COIN/guerrilla warfare.

LZ HOT! by Nick Lithgow - Memoirs of a South African Air Force helicopter pilot. He flew SAAF Alouette III gunships as well as Puma and Atlas Oryx transport helicopters. He also did a stint on the border as part of the infantry prior to receiving pilot training IIRC.

Eye of the Firestorm by Roland de Vries - This is a long one... The memoirs of a Commander of 61 Mech. There is a lot more to say about this book but my comment is getting quite long! It's very detailed and goes into the whole history of 61 Mech and the overall war itself. Though is quite complicated to read at times due to the complex nature of the war and all the operations, units involved and so on.

Recce by Koos Stadler - A book about the Recces (South African Special Forces) and Koos Stadler a very renowned Recce. The accomplishments and actions of the Recces are something else entirely... Ranging from sitting right inside enemy camps to gather intel for weeks if not months on end. To directing artillery and airstrikes strikes over enemy positions deep inside Angola, cutting off supply lines to destroying the SWAPO headquarters, shooting down Russian transport aircraft such as Antonov AN-12's with Soviet officers on board. There are many insane stories about the Recces a truly hard bunch as well as a small unit being only a few hundred members strong IIRC.

Mobility Conquers: The Story of 61 Mechanised Battalion Group 1978-2005 by Willem Steenkamp (Author), Helmoed-Römer Heitman (Author) - Haven't read this one either also very expensive! But apparently a very in depth book about South African mobile warfare doctrine during the Border War.

Mobile Warfare for Africa by Roland de Vries - Haven't read this either but should be a good one since Roland de Vries is one of the founding fathers of South African mobile warfare doctrine and tactics during the Border War.